I don't remember where I read it, maybe it was Fresh Brewed Life, but it struck a cord with me, this idea that we get homesick for our true home, heaven. Today, I was hit pretty hard with it. This time of year is always a little tough for me. I think I figured out part of the why today.
Eight years ago right about this time of year, I became pregnant. It was our first pregnancy and even though it took us a few months, it was still within the realm of normal considering the form of birth control we had been using. I hated being pregnant. I loved the fact that I was going to be a mother, but I suffered from terrible depression through out the entire nine months. It was awful and I never said anything about it to my doctor, because I was afraid they would put me on meds that would hurt my developing child.
I was terribly excited to have that part of my relationship with my daughter over and move into the holding, feeding, changing era of our lives together. In August of 2004 she was born. In December of 2004 we decided that we were going to try to have another child. We wanted lots of kids and we weren't getting any younger. A couple of months went by and nothing happened. Since I was breastfeeding, I would get upset, but not concerned. Then after we stopped breastfeeding, nothing changed. I would occasionally buy pregnancy tests, only to feel like I had wasted what little money we had to send myself into a downward spiral.
After a few years, we finally came to accept that we weren't going to have anymore children. In fact, in the midst of all that struggle, God spoke to me and various ways to let me know that Joel and Hannah and I were going to be the extent of our family. It wasn't going to get any bigger through birth. The one verse that He has brought me back to over and over again is Ecclesiastes 4:12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. So many dreams and hopes of my life were based in a quiver FULL of children. I expected God to bless us with more children than I could carry in a minivan. I was determined and set to raise them and to care for them. And it was not his plan. It was never his plan for our lives.
I've come to terms with it, but when that little baby is paraded all around the church and we sing songs about the Christ child, I get homesick. I long for a place where my body isn't broken and where my dreams line up with God's desires. I yearn to have the wound within me healed and that will only happen by returning home. And so I struggle and I cry and ponder. I hold all these things in my heart, just as Mary carried things about her first born. I never know exactly what it is that will set me off, but today it was the song "He's got the whole world in his hands" and when the verse about the itty bitty baby came on the screen with hands holding the tiny feet of a newborn, I could have fallen down and sobbed with the longing to be whole.
It is not that I now desire to have tons of children, God has spoken with me about that enough that I am pleased with the life that He has given me. It is that in the midst of that reminder that I am broken, desiring that which is not my own, that I long to be home. And so this season with its babys and mangers and songs of infants, I feel my brokenness raw and earthy. Almost as if I am there in that manger covered in the newness of life and gasping for breath as if it were my very first. I want to be reborn and live this life as His child, to be free of the things of old and to cling to what is new and being remade. I want to be His and to call his throne room my home.
Eight years ago right about this time of year, I became pregnant. It was our first pregnancy and even though it took us a few months, it was still within the realm of normal considering the form of birth control we had been using. I hated being pregnant. I loved the fact that I was going to be a mother, but I suffered from terrible depression through out the entire nine months. It was awful and I never said anything about it to my doctor, because I was afraid they would put me on meds that would hurt my developing child.
I was terribly excited to have that part of my relationship with my daughter over and move into the holding, feeding, changing era of our lives together. In August of 2004 she was born. In December of 2004 we decided that we were going to try to have another child. We wanted lots of kids and we weren't getting any younger. A couple of months went by and nothing happened. Since I was breastfeeding, I would get upset, but not concerned. Then after we stopped breastfeeding, nothing changed. I would occasionally buy pregnancy tests, only to feel like I had wasted what little money we had to send myself into a downward spiral.
After a few years, we finally came to accept that we weren't going to have anymore children. In fact, in the midst of all that struggle, God spoke to me and various ways to let me know that Joel and Hannah and I were going to be the extent of our family. It wasn't going to get any bigger through birth. The one verse that He has brought me back to over and over again is Ecclesiastes 4:12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. So many dreams and hopes of my life were based in a quiver FULL of children. I expected God to bless us with more children than I could carry in a minivan. I was determined and set to raise them and to care for them. And it was not his plan. It was never his plan for our lives.
I've come to terms with it, but when that little baby is paraded all around the church and we sing songs about the Christ child, I get homesick. I long for a place where my body isn't broken and where my dreams line up with God's desires. I yearn to have the wound within me healed and that will only happen by returning home. And so I struggle and I cry and ponder. I hold all these things in my heart, just as Mary carried things about her first born. I never know exactly what it is that will set me off, but today it was the song "He's got the whole world in his hands" and when the verse about the itty bitty baby came on the screen with hands holding the tiny feet of a newborn, I could have fallen down and sobbed with the longing to be whole.
It is not that I now desire to have tons of children, God has spoken with me about that enough that I am pleased with the life that He has given me. It is that in the midst of that reminder that I am broken, desiring that which is not my own, that I long to be home. And so this season with its babys and mangers and songs of infants, I feel my brokenness raw and earthy. Almost as if I am there in that manger covered in the newness of life and gasping for breath as if it were my very first. I want to be reborn and live this life as His child, to be free of the things of old and to cling to what is new and being remade. I want to be His and to call his throne room my home.
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