A Hard Week

 

 

I knew something in my new photos looked familiar.....

 

My Rachel

 

My Little E

I think the new baby might look a little like big sister, Rachel....

I think I've just had the hardest week I've had all year.  Literally.  Being in this week of  'where I was when I got the news about Rachel' is shear torture. Remembering what it was like to learn she was going to die at the same time I started feeling her move all the time.  Every kick reminding me she was going to die.  Every day closer to her death.   And with every kick, twist and turn that my Little E does, I feel it in my heart.... why did she have to die?  And everyone around me is so beyond emotions over Rachel that it isn't even something they consider - let alone give me any understanding or grace for. 

Hormones, grief, the pressure to 'be happy' over a new healthy baby, the responsibilities of life and failed attempts at trying to communicate simple things about my heart with defensive people.  I hate it all.

Ever since my pregnancy with Rachel, I have tended to want to be more introverted - especially in pregnancy.  Forgive me if being pregnant isn't all smiles and joy anymore.  Forgive me if I fail to use the right words - or want to talk about something that still hurts from 2 years ago.  Forgive me that I am far from perfect.  That I have expectations.  That I have standards for what I consider to be 'loving' and dare say so.  Forgive me that I am not always easy to love.

But you know what, I am all done trying to please people.  It's an impossible job.  Somebody is always unhappy with something I've done, said, or don't do. And quite honestly, I have reached the end of my rope.

I'm just trying to get through a complicated life, with a ton of responsibility and no help.  I don't have a role model for marriage, for raising a bunch of kids to love God, for how to grieve a dead baby and run a nonprofit.  I daily just try to hang on by a thread and trust God.  And to be honest, therein lies my biggest struggle - I don't get Him.  And I'm sick of trying to convince myself I am just so happy with this road He gave me to travel. 

Right now I don't even care what His point is or what 'beauty' has come from it - all that beauty that everyone else got to experience while I received the pain and judgement necessary for it all to come to be.  Although that does sound similar to the cross that Jesus had to bear, I must admit in my humanness,  I struggle with the desire to want to take that on for everyone else's sake.  If only I were Jesus.... or could be more like Him.  I guess it does make me appreciate even more the truth about what He did for me. 

I wish I could turn back time and keep my daughter and not have to deal with any of this and just live a normal freaking life.  that's what I want.  A life where "being like Jesus" just meant I served at the soup kitchen or helped a neighbor in need.  Why did I have to get such a heavy cross?  And when the heck is it going to lighten up?   Even Jesus had someone come along him and help him carry His cross when it looked like he couldn't go anymore.  It's like nobody thinks mine is still heavy.  Well, it is.  I'm thankful for all the help I had over 2 years ago, but I'm still in this, still carrying the weight, still trying to do what God wants, and still missing her like crazy.

I just want her back and she is never coming back.  And I don't know why He couldn't have made it different.  He's God.  Put the stars in the sky and knows them by name....  why couldn't He have just healed her?  For my good?  I don't know.  I believe it some days - today isn't one of them.