Love and Light

I am excited this morning as we are headed to church on our own behalf for the first time in a long time.  It feels like the first day of school for me!  I'm so excited but so nervous at the same time.  I want this experience to be what I have been imagining it to be for the last couple of weeks.  I want to leave the church today feeling exhilarated.  I am upset with myself that I am doubting it.  I've just come so accustomed to doubting organized religion.  I want to be a part of something, but I haven't figured out what it is yet.  My hope is that this is it.  I would love for my kids to have a place to go.  I will go, even if that is the only reason.  I loved going to church with my grandparents growing up.  It was so much fun.  It is something that all children need and should be a part of.  I'm hoping that, if anything, the church can help me get involved in an outreach program of sorts.  The more I think about everything, every day, I think about what I wish I would have had during that horrible experience.  What would have helped me heal faster?  Not knowing any one who had been through that sort of thing was the hardest, so I had no one to talk to.  No one at the hospital willingly handed me any information on support groups for grieving mothers or how to handle my milk coming in or my hormones raging.  I think it is my calling, my duty, to provide women with this.  Even if it is just a postcard with information on it about where to get help, it should go home with every woman who suffers a miscarriage, stillbirth, death of a child.  Some how over the years we find each other, but women don't openly share our dark secrets with the world.  If we are lucky, someone will be brought into our lives that we can share ours with.  This is ultimately self torture.  Women need release.  They need to be able to talk things out.  They need to be understood.  If you are like me and have experienced something like this, you've probably tried counseling.  Counseling didn't work for me, because counselors couldn't understand the pain I was going through.  You know how they say the best people to work in rehabs are the rehabilitated?  They are the ones who connect with addicts, because they are addicts themselves.  They are always one crisis away from going right back to where they were.  But they have learned how to beat their addiction, how to manage it.  They are able to pass those feelings and traits on to the next addict in hopes that they too, will overcome.  I think that is where I come in.  I think there are too many of us living in a funk or a depression, drowning in life.  I want to be the life preserver.  God has put that on my heart.  He wants me to help women through this.  I can see that now as he has brought so many women to me in the past who have had very similar situations, more than most people know.  I never knew why I knew so many.  Why people felt it was ok to tell me their story,.  It is finally making sense, even more so as I'm writing this.  My husband read my blog for the first time last night.  As I said before, a lot of this is new to him, as it is to everyone.  I never shared how I felt about anything.  We laid in bed after the kids were asleep and he read, while I looked Instagram on my phone.  The room was silent.  All of the sudden, he grabbed my hand and squeezed.  He held on tightly, tighter than he ever had before.  With every breath I could feel his grasp getting stronger, he was feeling my pain and I don't think he realized what he was doing.  Tears filled my eyes, but I didn't say a word, because I knew that as he read, he would understand and the story would get better.  He would let go for a moment, but as the story got hard, he would grab my hand again, squeezing and holding on for dear life, like he never wanted to let it go.  The moment had finally arrived that I had been waiting for.  The moment that I needed.  I knew he knew I was sick all those weeks, but I never felt that grasp, that desperation.  I know he was trying to be strong for me and I appreciated that so much, but I guess a part of me wondered if he, or anyone else for that matter, realized how close to death I really was.  I felt that last night and I felt his love for me in that grasp.  A love that has lasted nearly 20 years.  It is a love that is unbreakable and ever-lasting.  My heart is full for the first time in a very long time.  I am complete after writing this mornings entry.  I cannot wait to tell you all about my day after worship.  XOXO