Mending Is Never Ending

For five days, those five days between that fateful appointment and the day that held the confirmed diagnosis, were the longest five days of my life.

For five days, I prayed - demanded really - that He fix my daughters.

I didn't say please, I didn't even ask, I told him to just. fix. them.

I didn't plead for healing. I was too scared. I was too much of a coward to pray for that. I know He can heal one of two ways and one of those avenues for healing I didn't want because it would mean goodbye.

Two days after the consultation, one day after the surgery that was supposed to have fixed everything, goodbye was whispered . . . uttered . . . cried out in anguish.

Goodbye.

He healed my girls. He fixed my identical twins, Emmerson and Vivienne.

He didn't do it the way I wanted. The way I had pleaded endlessly that He would.

It hurts.

I am now broken. Shattered. Crushed. Hurting . . . everyday hurting. Heart left open to bleed.

Everyday.

I don't know why He didn't perform the miracle I had asked of Him. Somedays, that angers me.

I don't know why.

I still believe He is a healer. I still believe He restores, repairs, renews . . .

It is me . . . crevices of my life that I never knew existed . . . are being healed.

He is mending me.

It's only been 14 months so I am still in the mending process. And 14 years from now, I will still be in the process of being mended. More progress will have been made but it is still a process. 44 years from now, the mending will still be the present action.

I don't believe I will ever be completely healed this side of heaven. I don't believe my shattered, crushed, aching, bleeding heart will ever be completely mended while I am still trodding this earth.

Heaven is where the complete and whole lie.

However, 14 months later, with a different lens to look at life through, I can see how He has slowly started the mending process.

Because I ache, because I hurt, because I bleed, I ache for others . . . for complete strangers in a way that I never would have been able to before.

I have a passion . . . a fire burning within, to do for others, to make beauty from these ashes. It is slow moving, but it is moving. And I hope the moving causes change.

I can see that the moments I did get with Emmerson and Vivienne and the love that was given to them is far more than some ever receive in 80 years of a life lived. They were loved! I was blessed.

I am blessed.

There will always be this heart of mine that hurts and bleeds. I know this. I am accepting this. I don't want pity because of this. This . . . them . . . they are apart of me and I would never trade that for a sky that rained down diamonds. Because I got to carry them and hold them and love them, I am blessed. What mother would trade moments with their children for anything of this world?

And because of this forever ache, I can see more clearly the hurt in this world. I can see and feel and just be when another is hurting.

I can comfort another.

Is that part of the mending? That the thorn in your flesh or the cross you carry can cause you to extend comfort?

I am weeks away from welcoming our fourth child (our first boy) into this world. The whole pregnancy has been one of hope, fear, and trying so hard to trust The One who seemed to let me down 14 months ago. I feel like a lot of this pregnancy has been one where the wounds have reopened and new ones have appeared. Maybe that's just my perspective. Maybe it has all been apart of the mending process.

Some have told me that this Little Man will help me heal. Little Man will heal me in ways I never could have dreamed.

I don't know about that. I am not hoping for that. As much as I want to be healed, I don't want the weight of that responsibility to be my son's.

There was a Son already born who beared that weight.

I want my son to be born with love and dreams and hopes. I don't want him to be born with the job of fixing his mother.

That's not his job. He can't fix me. He can't heal me and I don't expect him to.

There is only one who can. There is only one who can be called the Mender.

This post was part of a link-up with Angie Smith and supporting the release of her third book, Mended. If you are interested in purchasing it you can do so here or here.

Stephanie