Riley and I have a new favorite song, "Carry Me" by Josh Wilson. I love it because it is about God carrying us through trying times, times filled with an unclear future and anxiety. Riley loves it because it's catchy, because she likes to be carried, because I sing along so passionately as we drive along in the car and she gets a kick out of mommy's singing, or perhaps for a deeper reason...I don't know, but she requests it all the time and I am happy to oblige her...it is a song that is good for both of us right now. All that I write in this particular post is not from my own mind. I am paraphrasing some of it from our minister, Curt Spark's sermon this morning, but it just goes so perfectly with a truth I have been struck with lately that I had to share. I just love it when God takes my own life experiences and truths He is revealing to me and then reaffirms them with a Sunday morning sermon, as if to put a final explanation point at the end of the lesson.
"My grace is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect in weakness" 2 Corinthians 12:9. I have heard many people say of a trying time in their lives, "I didn't know how strong I was until (insert trying circumstance) happened." I have found that to be absolutely not true for me. The truth is I didn't know how weak I was until I lost 6 children to miscarriage. I didn't know how badly my heart could hurt. I didn't know I could be the type of person who would struggle to get out of bed, or cry for the better part of my day, or withdraw from my family and friends. I know it is not popular in our culture of self sufficiency where depending on someone else is viewed as weak, but the truth is I was weak and I was depending on someone else to carry me through. No, I didn't know how weak I could be...but what I learned was how strong God could be. I didn't know that in my weakness and suffering the perfect platform for God's strength was being created. If I have shown any strength at all throughout this whole ordeal, it was not my own, but God's shining through me. El-Shaddai is a name for God meaning "strong", "powerful" and at the sane time also "comforting", "nourishing" and "providing fruitfulness". I have come to intimately know God by this name. He is certainly El-Shaddai to me. When there was no way, by His strength and power He provided a way. When we thought life could never be produced between Jason and I again, He made us fruitful and created life out of the two of us. When this world told us it was impossible, God made it possible. If that isn't strength and power then I don't know what is. And when I needed to be carried, during the long, sleepless nights of worry and anxiety, during the moments of uncertain futures and crushed dreams, during the times when my arms ached for babies I never got to hold and I just begged God to let me know if my babies were boys or girls, if they were blonds or brunettes, if they were lively and energetic little people or quiet and reserved little ones, all the things I would never know about them, I asked God to let me know them somehow. The moments I doubted God and His word and His love, during those moments when I was completely weak, He was comforting me, providing for me and carrying me.
It takes a lot of faith to say all this, because it is written from the viewpoint that all has turned out OK at the end of this storm. But we don't really know that yet. I have six weeks to go before we will know what God's plan is for this pregnancy and this baby. I still fear I will lose her. Day by day I am learning to trust God more and more, but it's a process and I still struggle with this fear and anxiety. Despite that fear, I am writing in faith that El-Shaddai is going to complete this good work He has started in me and deliver this baby girl to us healthy and safe. I am writing in faith and believing in His strength and power and love and provision. The thing I am most humbled by and most thankful for is this realization that I don't have to be strong, I don't have to have it all figured out, I don't have to have all the answers. And we didn't have any of these things when we closed our eyes and jumped off the cliff. I didn't know how strong God was going to have to be for me throughout this pregnancy, I didn't know what the right option to pursue was, do we do this treatment or that one, do we trust this doctor or the other one, there was no clear answer for us and we had no idea how to move forward to have another baby. We did not have all the answers we wanted so that we could make that decision (We probably never would have. There is just too much unknown in this world of fertility and unexplained miscarriages and the new science on immune related pregnancy loss). We were so weak that our only choice was to finally, in a moment of desperate faith, throw our hands up in the air and give it to God, take the terrifying jump, not knowing exactly how we would land, but trusting that the landing place would be God's arms no matter what. We had no answers. We had no plan. We just put or faith in a miracle providing God and jumped. And we have been allowing Him to be our strength ever since. We have been depending on Him to carry us ever since. I have been asking Him to carry me and to carry my baby and to allow me to carry her safely for almost 9 months now. In retrospect I see that God equipped me to act out the lesson before I even had learned it...it is only by God's strength that that is possible.
So I fully admit my weakness in all of this, in all of life. And I praise the God who is powerful and strong and loving, the God who is my strength, my El-Shaddai. I stand in awe of the miracle He is giving us. The words of many doctors are seared into my heart, "There is nothing more we can do for you.", "We just don't know why you keep miscarrying." and of the baby I carry now a doctor said to me in the early weeks when the pregnancy was struggling along..."It is unlikely we can save this one." God looked down at us all and in our weakness He created our Vivienne and made the impossible happen. "With man it is impossible. But with God all things are possible" Matthew 19:26.
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
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