Her

Sometimes I wish I could go back to being her. That young mom with 4 kids ages 5 and under who was exhausted and yet bursting with joy that I had 4 small adorable little men. And counting. I see her smiling face that looked like she had a joke behind her eyes because they seemed to be laughing.

Oh sure she was tired, and sometimes she worried about having more kids (though really because she was worried she wouldn't be enough for the kids she had), but always she could not believe God had given HER kids. She certainly didn't deserve them, nor was she even good at being a mom, but still He gave.

But I will never go back to being her. I can't.

"And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8, ESV)

Today I found myself thinking on Elkanah's response to Hannah as I questioned myself and my grief.

But it's not about what we already have. Do we not all, barren women, husbandless women, do we not ALL have reasons to rejoice? Christ has risen! But that doesn't make death and sin and earthly life any less a cause for grief sometimes...or sometimes all the time.

I will never go back to being her. I have been taken off the course of married and being fruitful and multiplying and instead my body has turned into a death machine.

It reminds me of the parts in the Divergent trilogy where Tris and Tobias have to go through their "fear landscapes" in which they are forced to either watch the death of loved ones or even kill loved ones over and over again. It's not real, but in the simulation, it feels very real. 

I'm trapped in this sick reality where I am handed a precious life and then cannot sustain it. I can do nothing to protect it, to nurture it, to save it. Something that is supposed to just happen, won't. And time after time I have to watch my body grotesquely expel what it was supposed to house, to protect, to bring safely to the waters of Holy Baptism.

It's not real because this life is not our ultimate reality, heaven is. This nightmare will end and that is why it is worth fighting through until our Savior comes for us. Those 6 children of mine are indeed safe. But while I'm here it's very real. And I can't choose to leave this reality when I want to, nor would I, because I have children to care for and a husband to love: a vocation to perform. 

We all have vocations, whether or not they are the vocations we want, whether or not they include children or husbands. 

But the hard reality is that regardless of whether the Lord does allow another child to be sustained and brought into this life, I have had to watch my body become the enemy of life and I will never be the same again. Until Jesus comes for us I will always have to look back at that girl with the laugh behind her eyes and instead see the woman that has replaced her. A part of me has died with my 6 stillborn children, and when I look at our family pictures I will always see the empty spaces. 

I must say I never realized back in my newly married naivety and joy that perpetual parturition could be turned into perpetual death. But what's a girl to do? 

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

There's something strangely comforting about having it all come crashing down around you, to be left helpless and defeated and to become a hostage of death....because someone else became death's hostage before me...and well, he conquered it. 

So while this feels real, and it will be real for quite some time, it WILL end. sigh. Sometime.