I guess the best place to start is with my thoughts behind starting this blog. The road to this day has been building for a couple of years now. I started feeling stirrings in my heart and soul that maybe I wasn’t living life to the fullest. On the outside, it looked like I had everything together – a happy marriage, 3 loving children and a part-time job I really enjoyed – but on the inside, I was struggling.
Then this past several months, several very unexpected things happened in my life. The first event was my sister loaning me a book about intentional motherhood. As I read through it, I realized that I had been living life by the seat of my pants and just reacting to things as they happened. There was nothing “intentional” about my mothering or any part of my life.
The second was that my part time job that I thought I really enjoyed was pulled out from under me. I thought I was truly making a difference and helping my employer (a fellow Christian) be more successful. I also viewed my students as “my mission field” – people I would not have come in contact with otherwise. I suddenly had 20 to 30 hours per week available that had been not been there. I picked up a second book my sister had loaned me by the same author and found God using it to heal my wounds and to bring me to a place where I was truly willing to take stock of my life - every aspect of it – and see where I really was.
Next came a very wonderful heart-to-heart talk with my sister. As we talked, and I shared some of the things that had impacted me from the books she loaned me, I was amazed to hear that she was walking through some of the very things I was – questioning our very foundational beliefs and both echoing that there had to be more to truly living a full, God-centered life than we had found.
Then in July, just 3 weeks shy of my 40th birthday, we found out that our 4th child was on the way. We went through the full range of emotions – shock (we had thought God had “finished” our family as our youngest was 6), worry (how would this affect our family make up and concern over the already stretched budget of a self-employed family who was suddenly without the small paycheck I had been bringing in), but all of these were quickly replaced with great joy and anticipation. Yes, this was a major life change, but we had a huge God that had ordained this little life growing in me and would provide for all of our family needs.
Then just as quickly, this great joy turned to grief when God chose to take our little one home much sooner than we could have even imagined. So, I suddenly found myself ready to “celebrate” my 40th birthday with a deep grief when I had determined that I was going to look at 40 as an accomplishment and celebrate life.
It is now 4 weeks past our little one’s home going and I am still slowly working on healing both physically and emotionally. But sometimes, it is in these crucibles of hurt and questioning that God can bring the clearest picture of where we are at and where we should be.
All of these events have led me to where I am now….realizing that I have been surviving rather than living – not just through the last weeks of grief, but for many years. As I have finally started to truly be honest with myself, it has led to some very startling discoveries. And it is these discoveries that I hope to share in the posts of this blog.