My Un-Pregnancy: Week 10

Perhaps I should have called this series my un-doing instead of my un-pregnancy because I certainly feel undone. It's funny but by the 10th week of pregnancy, you have a baby and not a fetus. The skeleton has started to form and the bones are becoming stronger so they'll eventually be able to carry weight (the key word here being eventually.) 10 weeks into my un-pregnancy and I feel like I'm seeing slow and steady growth but I'm not as strong as I'd like to be. I've always thought that if I work harder, put every ounce of myself into whatever is before me, I'd overcome. I'd strengthen myself. This is what I will always consider to be my greatest failure and it has taken infertility, pregnancy, delivering a baby and raising that baby to realize this truth:

I am trying to tie my life together into a neat package with the clumsy fingers of a newborn and God, in His infinite patience and love, is stooping to undo my messy bow.

Last week I told you that I am joyful. That wasn't a lie but I want to draw you a better picture of the state of life at the Hervey house. It's like we've both been kicked in the teeth but we're smiling a raw, toothless grin anyway. It has been hard. It has been frustrating. At times I am overwhelmed with joy and other times I am spinning out of control. There have been moments that I will regret the rest of my life because through these cracks that have formed in me from the stress we've been under, hard words and meanness have slipped out of me. I have said hurtful things, shouted words I don't use, doubted. I have been stretched so much that I can't help but see the light through my thin and weary places.

A few weeks ago, one of my readers suggested that I read One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I rushed out that afternoon to buy the book because, as the book's tag line promises, I needed someone to challenge me to live fully right where I am. It has been the hardest thing I have ever read. Her writing is brilliant but her words are not to be approached lightly; they are sharp and painful. It is like taking a knife to all of that scar tissue in your soul. But she wrote something that has changed me. She said that maybe God lets life tear holes in us because we're able to see Him through those hurt places. Where we are bare, ragged and exposed, He is more visible. The only thing is, we have to let Him be visible and more often than not, we are driving ourselves into the ground to patch up the holes and tie ourselves back together.

I have more soul holes than fingers now and I'm tired of trying to fix it all on my own.

I don't want to give too much of One Thousand Gifts away because I think you should stop reading right now and go pick up your copy, but what if the key to a full life is being thankful? As women, don't we always say we're thankful but really hide the fact that we're not? On Sunday, I sat with my husband, mother, grandmother and daughter on the back porch, in the sunshine with full bellies and laughter in the air, thinking not about my blessings but lamenting the fact that my neighbor's deck looks so much nicer than my own. What is wrong with me that in a moment overflowing with blessing, I see lack? Why have I spent so much time wishing I was thin like that girl, wealthy like another, adored publicly like that girl is by her husband and so easy to get along with like her when God has given me more than I deserve? How many times have I asked God to empty me of me and fill me with Him only to secretly hope He chooses someone else so I can just go on with my day, unchallenged? I am just like a child, kicking and crying because the much-too-generous gift I've received isn't what I wanted or thought I needed.

I think of God's love like water and I've realized that I spend a lot of time letting Him fill my bucket, only to dump it out into too many cups, leaving myself empty and stressed because there is never enough when I'm trying to portion it myself. Instead, I need to let His love flow through me and out of those holes I've been trying too hard to fix myself. The answer is so simple I'm embarrassed that I missed it: All I have to do is be vulnerable and stay connected to Him. That is all He is asking of me. It's all He is asking of any of us. He just wants us to be more of a hose and less of a bucket.

I thank God for your holes today and pray that, despite the pain associated with those ragged places, you find peace in knowing that the rest of us are able to see Him through your hurts. To see the light shining through where life has left you too thin and weary. May we all be undone together.