Five years ago today, at about this time, I tasted freedom.
Freedom from the words, the lies, the fears, the failed hopes, the cages, the abuse.
God spoke the most clearly He had ever to me two days earlier, in the shower at his house of all places, that I had to leave. That if I was to continue in that relationship I would be in defiant and blatant sin against the Savior who bled for me.
Don't get me wrong. I knew all along I was in sin. But that morning the Lord caused me to see Himself and my desires in an entirely new way. One that left no room for my preconceived notions of who He was and what sort of God He would be to a returning sinner such as myself.
That day, the day of the shower, I swallowed too many pills and tried to end things and couldn't.
But two days later, five years ago today, I did.
Only by the grace of God.
As I drove home, I cannot put into words the sense of closeness to my Jesus that I felt. The closeness that had been there throughout the past five years, past decade even, but that had been veiled by sin, and idolatry, and my own desire to quench the Holy Spirit's consistent promptings to return to my first Love.
So, I'm celebrating that today. That freedom. That sweet closeness. That change of perception that caused me to long to follow my Jesus more than ever before.
But, in God's great loving-kindness, I am also celebrating a glad surrender. A surrender of desires too deep for words, and desires which told through blogs only become palpable and bite-sized. A desire that pulls at the very core of my heart though, and that if I don't share it now, I honestly feel I may burst.
I'm surrendering my desire to be pregnant.
Andrew and I have been trying to have another baby since July of last year. Seeing as we weren't expecting to have Owen when we did (see my post about why here) I assumed that God would work a miracle like He did the first time, and we'd be holding a sweet little babe in a little less than a year.
But that wasn't the Lord's plan.
Walking into BSF this fall, I hugged so many ladies who had seen me through what was one of the darkest years of my life (see this post for more of that story) and so many of them kept glancing down at my belly and asking "so... any news??" I smiled and shook my head but was convinced that by the end of that BSF year I would be glancing down at a swelling belly and crying tears of joy thinking of how good the Lord was to bless me with another baby.
But, again, that wasn't the Lord's plan.
As the months went by and I threw out negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test, my hopes started failing. I began to question why the Lord would be "holding out" on me. I began to fear that the gap in ages between Owen and a future sibling would be far too much and that every month I wasn't pregnant was a month more of painful waiting.
Two weeks ago, a dear gal in my group brought her sweet 4 day old baby to BSF. We started trying for another baby roughly the same time last year, and while I was honestly so happy for her and her family, I also felt crushed.
"Look what I'm not giving you"
"Sucks to be you, you want this but I'm not sure you're there"
"Just be happy for all the women you're looking at who are pregnant and stop being such an ungrateful woman"
"How can you think you're sad when you've already had one baby and so many other women desperately want even just one and can't"
I felt like all these and more were what the Lord was telling me. That He was showing my the "Promised Land" but not allowing me to enter. Walking through the Life of Moses this year in BSF I struggled again and again with how the Lord could be good and merciful in showing Moses the Promised Land at the end of his life without allowing him to enter it. I mean, I knew that God was good and merciful. But I didn't really believe it. It felt as though He was rubbing my non-pregnancy in my face just like He must have been doing with Moses on that mountain. It was so terrible that I nearly walked out of the room halfway through the teaching.
So why am I writing about a glad surrender?
Because of Jesus. Because the Lord is not who I falsely believed Him to be.
In the last week, I feel as though the Lord has literally opened my eyes to His character in a way I have never before experienced in my life. To the point that I can literally type out that I believe God is good, and that showing Moses the Promised Land was God's mercy on Moses and not wrath or anger or something akin to a bully.
And I can type that I do deeply trust that the Lord isn't withholding His best from me by the fact that I am not pregnant again this month. In fact, if this deep knowing of the Lord had to come from these months of pain, they were all worth it. If this deep knowing of the Lord means that I never have another chance to hold my belly and feel a sweet kick against my hand, then (deep breath) it is still worth it.
I felt compelled to type this all out because, frankly, I want to raise this up as an Ebenezer of sorts. A monument to the Lord in which all who pass by (or scroll through as the case may be) can say with certainty that this was none of my own doing, but entirely the Lord. That He is and was and forever will be good and merciful and faithful.
Do I desire to be pregnant? Yes. So much. But at the same time, instead of saying "Fine Lord! Do what you want to! I didn't really want another baby anyhow!", I find myself simply falling before His feet and placing the desire there and softly saying through tears "Thy will be done". I know He knows my desires more fully than I know them myself. I know He loves me. This glad surrender is so very different than almost any other surrender I've had in my life before.
I don't know what the Lord's will for my life, and for my body and for my family is. I really don't. But I feel like offering this desire up to Him is a freedom and a release from a bondage that I never knew I was held in until right now. He is so, so good. I don't know His will, but I know Him. And that's all I desire.
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