be brave

yours truly is a puddle of tears today.  the good kind of tears.  but also the ugly sob kind of tears.  the kind where your heart and every bit of your soul just pours out of you until you feel like you have nothing left ... but yet you have everything and can see and feel and smell and love in a way that words cannot express.  and even if you can't express it with perfect words, you try, because these are the moments that you want to remember.  these are the moments that matter.  so...dear readers a bit of my heart as i remember and reflect on what those words up there have meant to me this past year.   



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a year ago today thanksgiving had come and gone and i was still very very pregnant.  i was a wreck.  i didn't think the little person growing inside me would ever come. i was petrified of having to have another c-section.  petrified.  every bit of me was anxious and exhausted.  i remember getting home from a morning doctor appointment where she told me if the baby didn't come by thursday then i'd be scheduled for a c-section.   i came home and fell apart...completely to pieces...the ugly, sobbing, weeping puddle of tears that seemed to take over every piece of my being.

goodness i was afraid.  oh so very afraid.  and though on that day a year ago i obsessed over the fear of a c-section, deep down i was afraid of so much more. really afraid. really really afraid.

afraid about what life would be like with a little baby. afraid what a new baby would mean to our family, the kids, our marriage.  we had been out of the baby phase for a few years, and now we  were about to go back.  and though we were excited, i was afraid, what was that going to do to us? 

afraid that my kids would be jealous, resentful, angry.  afraid that wes and i would become off, distant, lost.

afraid of the crying and exhaustion.

afraid of our lack of space at home and our plans to stay there for another year or two in the little blue house on mansion street.  we weren't planning to move.  we were planning to stick it out, make it work.  i was afraid that wasn't going to work.

afraid of the holidays.  that i wouldn't be able to do it.  that my kids would notice.  that this would scar them.

afraid of the years to come.  that a holiday season meant to be filled with joy - would be really hard for our family.  with now 2 birthdays, thanksgiving, christmas and all kinds of year-end excitement that it would be a blurr...and not the good kind.

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a year ago today...goodness i remember that meltdown like it was yesterday. i remember the urgent email i sent to girlfriends asking for prayer.  i remember crying so so hard. i remember praying with every bit i had left that the lord would make me...brave.  

brave because i knew it was going to be hard.  brave because i knew it was going to throw us for a crazy loop.  brave because with him by my side i should be...i could be...i needed to be.

and i can remember the very moment a year ago when peace washed over me... and the the lord made me that... he made me brave.  just like that he wiped it out.  just like that he took my fear away.

i went to sleep that night with such peace. i slept so very sound.  i woke the very next morning, my water broke, i went into labor, i delivered (without c-section)...i met my baby girl.  he made me brave.  and he has been doing it around every bend this past year.

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he made me brave during labor and delivery ...one without c-section.  he made me brave when that scary car accident happened to wes and the kids after jane was born.   he made me brave when we were devastated by the tragedy in newtown...at a time when i was trying to figure out this mama to three kids thing and needing to know that nothing is more important than loving these precious children.  he made me brave to embrace our defoyd family thanksgiving, christmas and birthday season in an even more special way ... to feel blessed by it, not overwhelmed, but blessed.  then he made me brave when my emergency appendectomy happened 3 days before christmas and bennett's birthday.  he made me brave to hold tight, to trust him.

then he made me brave when we decided to buy the new house.  he made me brave to trust it was the right time, the right decision, the right house for us.  he made me brave when we packed and moved in just 30 days.  he made me brave when in the midst of all that i accepted a new role and went back to work.

and he's made me brave to process and reflect on all the change that happened in those first 6 months and this past year.  he made me brave to look to him to help figure out where  to go when i often didn't know which way to turn.  he made me brave to see and know that even when things are really scary that dreams do come true.  he made me brave to see and know and love and do in new ways...at home, with my kids, in my marriage, at work, in my community.  that being brave is when he works.

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a year.  what a year it was. a year that changed me. a year that changed us.  a year to be brave.  a year to celebrate and remember.  be brave dear friends, be brave.