When It Seems So Hard To Trust.

To Trust . . .

It seems easy and can be hard.

It seems hard and can be easy.

I choose to trust. I made that promise that I would.

It seems easy but it is so hard at times.

Seven and half months ago, I walked into a hospital, received some of the worse kind of news a mother could hear and I chose to trust and to believe.

I trusted and believed in the One but it didn't make the outcome different.

Now, for me, trusting is hard because I know.

I know that to trust doesn't mean that all of your dreams come true.

I know that to trust doesn't mean that you get what you want.

I know that to trust doesn't free you from pain.

It is a hard and an easy thing to trust in the Maker. It is hard when you have had a child, a dream, a miracle die in your arms.

It is easy when you have learned that He is enough.

It used to be an easy thing for me to say that I trust my loved ones in His hands.

But now? I know to trust means that His plan prevails. I know that when my husband is lost in the clouds, the wind could be lost under wings and he would not return home. I know that children don't always out live their parents. I know to trust doesn't free you from a painless life.

I still choose to trust. 

I trust because, despite this pain, I have learned that He is enough.

I do not know what life has in store for me, and to be honest, I am sometimes fearful of that. But then I turn toward the heavens and declare that I trust that He is enough.



















Stephanie

Ten Years Ago . . .

Ten years ago on this exact date . . . I have no idea what I was doing.

I know what was going on around this time ten years ago but I cannot, for the life of me, pin point what ten years ago today was. And it is kind of weird that I can't. I have a freakishly good memory. Freakish because it not only freaks out my husband but myself as well.

My memory is a photogenic one.

A couple of years after we had started dating, my husband had mentioned something about our first date.

He got it all wrong. So, I did what any sweet, normal girlfriend would do. I let him believe that he was right.

Not, really. I am not "any sweet, normal girlfriend". He was wrong and I let him know it. I corrected him. I let him know what movie we had scene and what time the movie had started. I told him the movie theater we went to, where we had sat, and what he was wearing, right down to his shoes. Up to that point, I thought everybody was able to remember those tiny details. I found out, that that is not the case.

And its just not with big days like First Dates, it is with anything.

I rarely forget a face. I sometimes pretend that I don't remember who someone is because I have learned how my memory can creep someone out. So . . . sometimes I pretend that I have no idea where I know so-and-so from.

For example: you pass someone in a store and you both look at each other and the look on the other's face is that they recognize you from somewhere. I try really hard to have this look on my face as well. Then, after a few minutes, they will say something like this, "You look really familiar to me, do I know you from somewhere?" And I will respond, "I was just thinking the same thing." All along, I know exactly where it was I had scene them, what season it was, who was with them and so on. But I do not say that!

I have learned that I don't. I used to. I stopped after I saw the looks on those peoples faces and that look said something like this, "Oh, my! Have they been stalking me?" or "This girl has no life. I think I will end this conversation right here, right now."

So, I pretend.

My memory can be really painful too. Because I just don't remember vaguely. I remember in vivid detail. When a memory surfaces, I smell the scents from that day, that moment. I can feel the chill from a winters day or the warmth of the summers sun. I feel all the emotions from that moment and the emotions that are bubbling over in the current one. I see the faces of those that were near. I hear the words that were spoken floating on air around. If I was alone, I remember where I was sitting and how I was sitting. I remember which lights were on, what TV show was playing and which scene was being acted out.

In the recent months, I have wished for my memory to not be so clear. It has been painful. All consuming. My freakish memory has made this grieving thing all the more hard. I remember every detail, every moment I had with Emmerson and Vivienne. Most of the time, those memories come out of no where as I am going about my day and they hit me like a sledge hammer.

But then I am so grateful that I am able to remember, to feel those moments with them again. Those memories, those moments, every one of them were blessed moments. They are all that I have.

I cannot remember everything. Just almost everything.

Which is probably why I am unable to remember what I was doing ten years ago today. It is a little frustrating but also a little liberating to know that I am not a slave to every moment that I have lived.

I cannot remember what I was doing ten years ago today but I can remember what was going on ten years ago this month.

My husband had got a new job with a different airline. We were not that many months away from September 11, 2001 and the airlines were still clouded with uncertainty. He was in training down in Texas for almost three months. We had only been married for a year and a half and the three months apart had just started. The flight benefits the company offered were not yet ours and we could not afford for me to fly down and visit him even once. He was too busy with training to come home, so we spent three very long months apart.

After those three months, he was based out of Boston. He was stuck on reserve (its basically like being on-call) so even if he didn't get called out to fly, he still had to be in Boston since that was his base. He was on reserve six days a week. I took advantage of our flight benefits and flew out to Boston as much as I could to visit him.

He had one day off every week. Since he was commuting, he flew home on and back on that one day off. We spent six hours or less together a week, if that. Most of those days, he stayed in Boston because the trek home wasn't worth it.

Ten years ago I remember missing him A LOT. I was frustrated A LOT. I spent a lot of time wishing for my husband to have a "normal" job. I wanted to be able to plan for our future without having to wait for his job circumstances to be "better".

Ten years ago, I felt like our life was on-hold due to his job. We wanted to move but needed to wait to see how things with the airline was going and for his schedule to improve. We had to wait on those things before we could consider moving, starting a family, planning vacations and for me to go back to school.

It was so frustrating!

In those ten years, my husband has gone from being a First Officer stuck on reserve and commuting to holding a line (having an actual schedule), upgrading to Captain and being based out of the city we live in.

All of that has helped but his career is still a little frustrating and a little lonely for the both of us at times.

Just writing this, many memories are flooding me right now. I remember a lot of those flights out to Boston to visit him. I remember where I was sitting on the flights, what I wore, things we did in that city, things we said to each other and how we embraced after too many days apart.

Some of those memories are sweet. Some are bitter. All of them have been worth it.

Stephanie

The Choice is Yours

I was alone. That day, after I had given birth and then had that life end in my hands, I was alone. I still had one tender heart beating below my own but I felt so alone.

My husband had left to make some phone calls. The first time he had left my side in over a day. He performed a job I don't think I could have done: informing loved ones that a sweet life was over and that we still did not know the fate of the other.

While he spoke words of deep pain, I laid in a bed, completely weak and utterably dependent on others to move physically and I wept. I cried out in anger and confusion and a hurt that surpasses anything I have ever felt before in my life. I felt so alone. The most alone I have ever felt before.

I! HATE! YOU!

Those three words, silently screamed, were directed at the God I had prayed endlessly to since we had learned the diagnosis of our sweet girls.

I felt like He had left me. Never to be seen or felt or trusted again.

Where was He? When I needed Him most in my life, where had He gone?

A few hours later, when I was weak from the medication and the emotions and the wrestling, I saw two roads lay before me.

They were both dark. They were both treacherous, unpaved, unknown roads. Both consumingly scary.

One road, I could travel down myself, completely alone.

Source: puckbox.tumblr.com via siriah on Pinterest

The other road, was just as dark and as scary, but I would have Someone with me.

It was my choice.

And as angry and as hurt as I was with the One I had called my God, I chose the latter.

It wasn't an easy decision.

I knew deep in my heart that there would be no way I could do this alone. I had never seen anything so black, so desperate before in my life and I knew I needed someone.

Someone much stronger than I. Someone much wiser.

I made a choice that day and I reached out and grabbed tight to His hand.

It wasn't an easy thing to do.

This thing called Faith rarely is.

It is a daily choice and some days it is so hard.

We sometimes don't have a choice when it comes to circumstance but we ALWAYS have a choice in how we will respond.

My response was, and every day since, as been to choose to trust The One who sees it all. To trust that, even now, He can perform a miracle. He can turn the ugly to beautiful.

I choose to trust.

On the road I didn't choose to take, I am choosing to trust in the One who calms all storms.

I've been faced with choices before, just like all of us have. I haven't always made the right choices. Responded in ways that were good or healthy. Some of the choices have led to more pain.

Our struggles with infertility left me bitter and angry. There were baby showers of close friends I couldn't attend. People didn't understand and I couldn't explain. But I know I must have hurt people.

I didn't realize the depth of resentment and bitterness until I held my first born in my arms. I became so ashamed with how I had let that situation . . . that trial affect me and make me into a person that I wasn't, that I made a promise to God, "I promise You, the next trial You place before me, I will trust You. I will let You make me into something You desire. I will allow You to make it something beautiful."

To say that I remembered that promise the day I held Emmerson and Vivienne would be a lie. I didn't. I couldn't.

I didn't remember that promise for a few months. But I had already made my choice.

I was going to choose to walk this road with God.

A few months later, when I remembered my promise, it made that daily choice a little easier. I had made a promise.

And because when I made that promise a few years previously, I knew in the marrow of my bones, that the beauty of God trumps everything else.

He gives beauty for ashes.

There is always a story in a trial. I want this trial, this story to be one that honors my girls and makes them proud to call me mom. And I want my promise to my God to glorify the majesty of the King.

"We only are broken and this is beautiful: in brokenness, we are instruments in the hands of the Wounded Healer."

Ann Voskamp 

One Thousand Gifts

Stephanie

Living Life

With my daughter on my hip, I walk into my parents house. I thought my Mom was at work so I was stopping by yesterday morning to check on my Dad.

My Mom had to leave for work in a couple of hours. She was cleaning the kitchen and then had to get ready for work.

My Dad was sitting on the couch. His usual spot sense he got home from the hospital. He has a hint of color to him. Not much. He is still so very pale. And . . . he is so thin.

He lost over twenty pounds in the first two weeks after his surgery. It's just too much weight to lose.

I told him a week before that he needs to eat. "I don't want to. Everything tastes funny," he tells me.

"I know, Dad. I understand. But your body is using a lot of calories to just heal itself. Drink those protein drinks. That will help."

I walk into the house, say hello, ask him how he's doing.

"Not bad." That's my dad for you.

My daughter runs to the kitchen to see her Ma maw.

"I had a long conversation with God yesterday. I cried for a good while. I told Him that I wanted Him to heal me and to do it fast. I'm tired of this. I don't like being like this."

His eyes well up with fresh tears.

"I have that same conversation with God all the time. I've had it a lot over the last seven months. Sometimes life . . . it is so hard."

"I cried yesterday for no good reason."

"Dad, I cry every day. At least once. It's okay to cry. And there is always a good reason to cry."

"I don't like this."

"Tell me about it. The healing really hurts."

I grabbed the leash and then Toby (their dog), placed my Dad's shoes at his feet and put a jacket on him.

"The sun is out and it is so warm for the last day of January, lets go for a walk."

We walk, not far, but we walk. It's good to get out of the house sometimes. Specially when you feel little desire to move at all.

I was just doing for my Dad what he did for me immediately after the loss of Emmerson and Vivienne. He would come over, sometimes drag me out of my house and take me over to his, telling me that getting out would do me a world of good.

We return from our short walk and I tell him that I have dinner already cooking in the crock pot. I tell him to get his medication and that he's going to be spending the day at my house.

"I don't have anything at my house that you don't have here, other than different chairs to sit in and walls with different things to look at. It will do you good though."

He tells me that a coconut cream pie sounds good. I go and get him one. I was so excited that something sounded good to him.

Before dinner, he asked twice for something to snack on. I would fetch the goodies for him, all too excited to see him eating. He ate all of his dinner and a piece of pie. When I saw his cleared plate, I felt like a proud mama.

Life is strange sometimes. How places can be traded. How life can take turns and make you appreciative . . . grateful . . . for things, moments that you would not have considered blessings previously.

I haven't done anything huge or magnificent or prize worthy. I am doing for my dad what he had done for me. I'm going over to his house to check on him. I'm bringing him back to my house so he can have a change of scenery.

Breathing love is expressed in all of those little moments that leave an impression . . . leaving a footprint of a memory.












Stephanie