Times

I am weary.  So very tired.  So much suffering.  Those I love are suffering...my own pain compounded.  I begin to doubt.  The voice in my head says "You are crazy to still be hoping.  You will never have another child.  The sooner you accept this and move on, the better."  I begin to wonder if I really even want another one and remind myself of all the benefits of only having one child.  But why the gnawing ache then?  I wonder if I have slipped under God's radar.  I battle the thoughts that say I must have done something awful and I am being punished.  I cry out to God, "Where are you?  Will this string of bad things ever end?  Will you ever deliver us from this struggle?"

"You need a break" my therapist says as if she has read my mind. "Four years of pain and stress, your entire marriage.  Infertility and miscarriage, your husband takes on a second wife (his business), concerns about your daughter's development, a relative with cancer.  People will expect you to find peace with this and move on but no one would ever expect a person to find peace so soon if the deaths were of husbands, wives, parents or children who had been born.  Life has dealt you an awful lot of terrible things the past four years and your pain is very lonely.  Few people know what it is like to lose so many babies". She goes on, "What you really need is a break from the darkness.  You need life to be good again, happy again, for things to just go your way again.  And they will.  I can't tell you when but at some point they will.  This season of pain will not last forever.  Hard times will come again and your response to them will evolve but for now, you just need a break."  I start to cry.  No one has ever said this to me in all these trials.  No one has ever got it or understood how very tired I am or how much I long for a break.  It is very lonely and someone has finally validated this solitary road I walk along.  These are times that test us, they don't bring us close to our breaking point, they bring us to it and beyond.  These times break us and we must endure the time it takes to heal from the break.  I hear this and weep in my car....

I know I need You
I need to love You
I'd love to see You but it's been so long

I long to feel You
I feel this need for You
I need to hear You
Is that so wrong

Now You pull me near You
When we're close I fear You
Still I'm afraid to tell you all that I've done

Are You done forgiving
Or can You look past my pretending, Lord
I'm so tired of defending what I've become
What have I become

I hear You say
My love is over
It's underneath
It's inside
It's in between

The times that you doubt me
When you can't feel
The times that you question
Is this for real

The times you're broken
The times that you mend
The times you hate me
And the times that you bend

Well my love is over
It's underneath
It's inside
It's in between

The times that you're healing
And when your heart breaks
The times that you feel like you've fallen from grace

The times you're hurting
The times that you heal
The times you go hungry and are tempted to steal

In times of confusion
In chaos and pain
I'm there in your sorrow under the weight of your shame

I'm there through your heart-ache
I'm there in the storm
My love I will keep you by my power alone

I don't care where you've fallen or where you have been
I'll never forsake you
My love never ends
It never ends.

The times I doubt Him, the times I question Him, the times I am broken, when I am trying to heal, when my heart is broken and I hurt, the times when life is chaos and pain, in the midst of the storm, in these awful times He is above me when I look up and reach for Him, below me when I can't stand and fall, inside me as I walk this lonely road and in between this place of suffering and healing.  He is everywhere.  He loves me and nothing will ever change that.  Nothing can separate me from His love. "neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:39  And because of this I can believe my therapist when she says a break is coming.  I hold tight to that truth.  I believe it.  And because of it I once again do not feel stupid for still holding out hope of a little one who is now known only to God but who will soon be known by us.

I love you always and forever and no matter what.

Listen to Times by Tenth Avenue North