Daryl Dixon Got Me Through Mothers' Day

When your zombie-eyed dog snuggles you while watching zombies....its a perfect moment. 

I've been watching a LOT of The Walking Dead lately. And by a LOT and LATELY, I mean I started at 0 and am halfway through season six, in under a month. Healthy, no way. Surviving, absolutely.

The thing is. Hope. Hope is the thing. Every episode is full of gore and pain and death. And yet, you never stop being pleasantly relieved that Rick still has Carl and Maggie still has Glenn. (not funny writers....)

But the reason I have been swept up into this show, is that, if this real life zombie apocalypse were to happen, and people were to fight.....at least it would resemble what is happening in my own heart today.

Today is Mother's Day. Social media was flooded with pictures of beautiful, strong women holding the precious babies God has blessed them with. I was joy-filled with them. I 'loved' most of the posts I saw....my dear friends so excited (and rightly so) to celebrate being mothers. These pictures made my heart happy.

So let me just get to it. The real reason I am writing this post. To share something with all of you who would know or care about me enough to read my blog. I'm not too worried about posting this, as I am sure a very low percentage of my 800+ 'friends' will click to read......

Six weeks ago, I went in for a surgery to remove some fibroid tumors. I went in with the fullest confidence, in my surgeon, the procedure that I had heavily researched, and the God who has always shown up. When I woke up, the world's worst recovery nurse looked down at me and said "they had to take it all." I shockingly responded, "they had to take my uterus?" "Yes, you can always just adopt."

They had to take my uterus.

An emergency hysterectomy.....a few friends have casually said that word...:'hysterectomy' as I have been recovering (and loved so very very well in that time)....and the sound of that word makes me immediately nauseous.

It's gone. My fertility. My hopes of experiencing the intimacy of carrying my child inside of me. My ability to do that which is definitively female. My uterus is gone.

And I'm really sad. You know, if I were a better writer, or in a more capable mood, I would find a synonym for the word 'sad'....but nothing fits it right now. It's an ache I've never experienced.

My bones hurt. And I'm far enough out of recovery to know that the pain in my gut isn't the surgery, it's the sadness.

And I'm just in the sad stage now. I've done the anger....there was another blog post I started that will forever be locked away in the world of "good thing I kept that to myself." I've also done the bargaining....can you have a baby without a uterus if you go into a coma and the placenta is the only thing to protect it? No. Have there been successful uterus transplants? No. Is there any way to have a baby post hysterectomy? No. These are all things I've googled, and the obvious answer is no. Will Megan Flinn ever give birth to her child? No.



I could go on and on. It was my only dream. I never cared nearly as much about being married as I did about being a mother. All of my friends have secret Pinterest boards planning their weddings....I only have parenting ones. Teaching kids to read early, building resilience in your toddler, how to raise independent children in a world of helicopter parents....the list goes on and on.

I've cried more than I ever thought I would cry. And I'm not a crier. And I'm definitely NOT the woman who cries in front of other people. But those walls are down. The sadness is too much.

This entry is probably a mess. And I started with a dumb preface about a zombie show, but I don't know what else to say. I feel like my world is divided into Pennsylvania and Indiana....and Senegal and Panama and China and Ukraine and Kenya. People that I love from all of those places will read this. And I'm ok with that, because I might not be the only one....

And I can't actually bear telling anyone in person anymore.

And I'm not sure when I'll stop crying. Or if I will. At some point dehydration has to be a reality.

And some day I'll be elated over my spiritual children, my upcoming adoptions, the foster kids I will have filling my house...I'm just not there today.

This just really fucking sucks.

- - - - - - - -

These are some of the beautiful things people sent me today....knowing that I have people in my corner helps me to know that I will survive this. This won't kill me....or make me bitter or steal my hope. I will be different....but I will still be me.

What about James?

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.....Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you." James 4:7~10"

This really doesn't sound like the abundant life I've heard Jesus came to give us. But it must be. There must be something worth the weeping and the moaning and the gloom. 

I have had a lot of desires over the years. I have thrown myself into ministries and loved hard. So hard. I have had deep desires for cancers to be gone, for babies to be born, for women to be restored to who God created them to be, for marriages to be saved. I have watched the sin and brokenness of this world swallow people whole. Mental illness and the deep psychological effects of trauma run rampant here. Right here, in the great United States of America. Right here in every day of my life. 

My soul is tired. My very soul. I feel it in my bones, in my heavy breath. In my gut. Weariness and exhaustion have crept into every tiny particle of my body and spirit. I don't quite understand why it hurts like this. Why there isn't a break from it. A friend referred to it as a 'hamster wheel.' It all just keeps coming. 

For the thousands of prayers I've prayed; prayers for healing, restoration, life, joy; I've seen so little tangible answers of 'yes' from the One I've prayed to.

So I'm torn. I want to rage and be angry and throw my fists to the air and fight Him, tell Him He isn't doing it the right way. This hurt, this ache....this longing for abundance and joy and freedom, this should not be here. Not if the debt has been paid like it has been. Not if He says He is both sovereign and loving. My soul shouldn't be hurting like this. 

In moments its tempting to say the prayers and move on. But the dilemna is that my heart doesn't work like that. When I pray for the Talibe in Senegal, or the girl who is forced back into trafficking on the east side of Indy, or the friend who sits, still barren....I can't stop at the thought. My heart feels the feelings. I need to DO something with those feelings.

Most days, I just hold them. Because I'm too angry with God to talk to Him about them. 

So it comes out in a snotty mess. In a snotty, crying mess. I scream at Him. I don't understand and this life, this broken, hurting life, it isn't fair. And all that hurt in my soul, in my bones, in my breath, it comes out in the snot and the tears and the shaking. 

My prayer life isn't calm. 

And I get all the anger out. I yell and I sob and I pace around the house. And in the last moments of these prayers, I just collapse. I'm exhausted of the brokenness and the sin and the hurt and the yelling. 

And in those last moments I often hear these words from Him, "I love you and I love them."

Then James makes sense. The weeping and the gloom, they draw me to this moment. And I'm not ok with the brokenness of this world. I still have longings, I still have aches. But I am ok. 

The Creator of the Heavens and the Earth still whispers to me and loves me.

Knowing I'm loved doesn't always feel like enough, but it does make me ok enough for another day of fighting.

There is no logic to make it make sense. There is no way to give weight to why it is worth it. But to be drawn back into Him. To be a crumpled mess and know that He's holding me. He's holding all the mess of me and this world....it is worth it.