My All in All

Photo by Brigette Billups

One of the first memories I have with Lampley took place in the hospital on her first full day of life. She was snoozing in her bassinet next to my bed. The girl had already shown she was going to be quite the sleeper. And unlike her big sister, Lampley was totally fine with sleeping all swaddled up on her own.

Suddenly, she started to cry. And even though she was hours old I could already tell it wasn’t a hunger cry (although the girl can eat). It was a “mama I need you near me cry’. So I jumped up and gently rubbed my fingers along her cheek and told her over and over “It’s ok Lampley girl, Mama is right here”. Within a handful of seconds she was back asleep, and so was I.

I think about that moment often as I rock her to sleep. I look down at her little face snuggled into my arm and remember how easily I was able to calm her down in that first moment of distress. Thankful that she let me.

These days a rub of the cheek doesn’t quite do the job in terms of getting her to settle. I know she needs more than that now. There are still plenty of moments where I have no idea what to do to make it better when she is so upset. I know I can hold her, I can rock her, I can tell her I love her, and I can pray that she will give me something to help me understand how to make it better. I loose my patience, I get frustrated, but I keep trying to help her because she is my world - it is a honor be the one to comfort, provide, and care for her.

My connection with my daughters isn’t one I can put into words very easily. But when I think about how deep my connection is to them I am overwhelmed at the fact that God knows me even more than I would ever know my own children.

Psalm 139 verses 1-6 reads:

‘You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, to lofty for me to attain.”

Not only does He know me, He knows what I need, where I need to be and what I need to be doing. Such as it is a mother’s role to care, teach, provide, comfort and love her child - it is His job to comfort, to provide, to teach, to care and to love me.

But there are times where the places I end up are not where I want to be. There are times when I am overcome with grief, sadness, frustration, and it leaves me confused. Why this Lord? Why here? Why now? When I am in the pit of those valleys it is hard to find comfort in the fact that He is in control. I cry out to Him in the same way a child cries out for comfort from their mother.

And then I am reminded, sometimes years after the fact, of how He has always been there. How in moments of utter heartbreak He found a way to shine His light, to remind me that even when it makes no sense whatsoever - He will comfort me through each and every joyous and heartbreaking season.

There is a song that sings of how He alone is our comforter. He is our light, our strength, our song. He is firm through the fiercest drought and storm. It is in the love of Christ that we stand. That song, In Christ Alone, is just one of the many that the Lord allows to play through the speakers of my mind when I need to be reminded of how He is working to comfort me.

So today, I encourage you to look for the moments where God is comforting you. It could be a song, a kind word, a funny commercial, or a story from the bible. And it might take some time to find, not because it isn’t there, but sometimes it happens without us even knowing and years later we will see what He was trying to do.

He is there. He wants to hold you as tightly as you want to hold the person you love. Let Him. I promise He will never let go.

Change the Meeting

Each morning I set my alarm in hopes to get up, enjoy a nice hot cup of tea, and sit on this porch to have some time with Jesus. But no matter how early I set my alarm this girl always wakes before it. 

I’ve had a pretty set morning routine for a while now. I read a devotion, either New Morning Mercies or Savor, I write my prayers in my journal, and then I get ready for the day. But lately my quiet time looks more like rushing through the reading and praying for all the things before Lampley gets too worked up and needs me to come rescue her from her crib. I wouldn’t say there is a lot of sitting and listening for what Jesus might be trying to tell me. Call me human but I struggle to keep my focus on what I’m reading when I can also hear Lampley through the monitor. 

Like Lampley, who is constantly changing the schedule on me, I am having to change the way I meet with Him. It’s something that should be easy to do right?! But for a routined (almost OCD person) like me, changing up my meeting time with the Lord is very challenging.  I have a way of spending time with Him that went from learning about Him & growing with Him, to I must complete A,B, C and D or He is going to stop loving me. But that’s not true. He will meet me no matter where I am. Something I’ve always known but haven’t been great at practicing. 

I can pray while I rock my child back to sleep. I can pray while I do the dishes or fold the laundry (thank you Jennie Lusko for reminding me of this). I can pray (for some serious patience) while helping Jane Taylor as she tells me that she can do it herself. My prayers still count and are heard no matter what time or where they are said. 

The meeting may change but the outcome never will. Regardless, He loves me. He wants to connect with me. He wants to be a part of every thought and conversation throughout my entire day. He wants to tell me things in the busy and loud, not just in the quiet. 

He wants us still to learn about Him. To spend time in His word, to read stories of how He has worked in others. But He knows where we are, the seasons we are in, and He is willing to meet us wherever. He leaves the 99 to find you. We only have to engage back with Him. 

“ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” - Ephesians 3:16-20

Four

If I could post this picture a hundreds times without the rest of the word thinking I was crazy, I would. It is without a doubt my favorite picture and probably will be for a long time. Yes, I love it because we all match perfectly for the holiday of July 4th. Yes, I love that it was taken in front of my best friend’s house and if you look closely you can see her sweet boy riding his bike in the background. Yes, I love Jane Taylor’s outfit. I stalked the internet for months trying to find the perfect look for our new neighborhood’s biggest day of celebration. But what I love the most is that in this picture there were four of us.

Four. We weren’t planning on becoming a family of four at the beginning of July. We weren’t planning on having a new baby arriving in March. We weren’t expecting to have two kids under two. It wasn’t in our plans. But in early July we were reminded that God is in charge and this was the greatest unexpected plan we could ever receive.

A couple weeks later I miscarried. An unexpected pregnancy turned into an unexpected loss. And it rocked my world. Hard.

The question “why”. Ugh. I hate that question. Has been at the forefront of my brain ever since. Why did God give us this baby only to take it away? I was just beginning to process the idea of this baby being born. What the nursery might look like. How to convert the stroller into a ride for two babies. What would it look like taking two kids into the grocery store. And as all of those exciting, nervous thoughts were coming into play – our baby returned to Jesus.

It was amazing how I could go from receiving the greatest news to the hardest news all in the same month. How quickly my days went from dreaming to heartbreak. No one told me my body would go through all the motions again like it did after giving birth to Jane Taylor. No one told me that my postpartum anxiety would come back. And boy did it – worse than ever before.

I was great around people because they were a wonderful distraction. A moment in time where my head wasn’t having to fight off the darkness that seemed all consuming. Alone was scary. Night time was the worst. Becoming a one in a statistic hit me harder than I thought it would.

Summer was hard. I would lay on the floor in a ball of tears wondering why. Why us. Why me. Why am I going through this season of darkness. What Lord do you want me to learn from this. What was the point of gifting us new life only to take it away. It brings me to tears just to even type it out.

I am not on the other side yet. I am closer. But I am different now. Pregnancy is different now. I see mothers differently now.

I also see God differently – in a very good way. See through all of this I have had to lean on Him more than ever before. I see His work. I see His kindness. He works so hard to remind little fragile me that He has got the strongest grip on my heart. He is in charge. He is fighting for me. And it is a beautiful gift. I wish it was a gift that I didn’t have to receive through a heartbreaking loss. But I am so grateful for the way my eyes see Him now.

October 15th is now a day that will have a bigger impact on our hearts. So will July 1st – the day we found out we were pregnant. July 10th – the day we lost our child. And March 5th – the day our baby was supposed to breathe his first breath in this world.

Apart of me will always long for the child we lost. These dates will be filled with a mix of emtions. But I pray that when these dates come and go that I will use them to remind me of how great our God is. His plan might not make a lot of sense but it is set into motion for a reason only He knows. Putting my trust in that fact is the best thing I can do. It is not always easy. Some days it is the hardest thing I have to do. But it’s all I can. I pray for the mother’s who have lost today and I pray that through the hard moments they can see how tightly God is holding on to them too.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” -Psalm 147:3