Mortals

This experience is just plain hard.

 It is exhausting but can feel empowering at times. It is depressing, and discouraging but also enlightening and purposeful. It is long and short, confusing, yet so clear. We have feelings of denial, joy, frustration, inadequacy, acceptance, disorientation, sadness...sometimes all in one day. We feel heavenly help and the powers of darkness.

We are filled with FAITH and know that in the LONG run this will be the thing that sustains us and gives us hope. But, we still live in a finite state and the day to day emotions, coupled with ceaseless responsibilities of work, kids, home maintenance, etc make this so hard.  I don't  want anyone to think that me and Jason are sitting around for 7 hours a day reading and praying and listening quietly to hymns. Don't think that our kids are perfectly behaved little creatures who listen the first time, clean up their own messes, talk respectfully (all the time) to us and their siblings. We are regular people who thought life was plenty hard before this happened. Our house looks like a bomb went off about 12 minutes after a deep clean,  Lincoln is constantly poking Ethan which gives him 110% chance of a scream, and I'm afraid that my normal patience level has been cut at least 30% since the pregnancy started. Here's an everyday example: The other day Ethan and Lincoln were sticking their lunch meat to the sliding glass door just to see how long it would stay there.  We are definitely trying our best, but we don't have it together all the time..hardly any of the time right now.

We understand what God is asking of us...but that doesn't mean that it is easy for us. We believe that he will provide the way for us, but that doesn't mean that we see it all right now. We are sad when we make preparations for his birth which feels like we are really making preparations for his death...knowing that we probably only need 1 blanket for him and 1 little outfit.

Just because we have faith in God and his plan doesn't mean that this isn't excruciating for us. I am still a mom. I still love Eli and I still want to hold him; I still want to rock him to sleep and feed him and dress him in cute little Adidas track pants. Knowing what we have to do doesn't automatically erase those desires and make this a flowery path with butterflies and cupcakes. It feels like the highest mountain I've ever encountered strewn with rocks and thorns and dangerous side roads...lots of rain and hail and frozen wasteland...with a promise of something afar off. We know that the promises afar off are absolute and our faith doesn't waver in this, but the immediate prospect seems more than overwhelming. Despite this, we readily acknowledge that each step up this mountain is made possible by the power God gives us to move our feet and the help and encouragement that he sends us through our wondrous friends and family. We have seen many flowers blooming despite the snowy weather conditions. And we can't wait to see the view from up there....