A Reason to Sing

     (Short update: It's actually slightly funny to see that the last post I wrote on this blog was the announcement of our family taking the steps to become licensed foster parents. How time changes things! In January we became licensed but right before the last inspection and paper signing in December... we found out that we were pregnant. Seriously, the Lord has the most incredibly crazy timing but I wouldn't have changed it for the world. We had two placements earlier this year - a 5 day old and a 7 month old. We loved both dearly, but no longer are fostering for this season... I'm thinking this post will explain more of why).

When the pieces seem too shattered

To gather off the floor

And all that seems to matter

Is that I don't feel You anymore...

I need a reason to sing

I need to know that You're still holding

The whole world in Your hands

I need a reason to sing

When I'm overcome by fear

And I hate everything I know

If this waiting lasts forever

I'm afraid I might let go...

'Cause I need a reason to sing

I need to know that You're still holding

The whole world in Your hands

I need a reason to sing...

     I have not had a pain-free, normal activity level day in over half a year. 

     That sounds crazy in writing, although it's absolutely true. I don't honestly remember what it feels like to spend an entire day with Owen playing and deciding to do things like going to the park across the street from our house. I don't remember going out on a date with Andrew without my walker and needing to "take it slow" and eventually returning to our house exhausted and going straight to bed. I don't really even remember what our "normal" life was like pre-last December. Things have been so upside down and chaotic, I haven't even really sat down and wrote down my thoughts in any other fashion other than prayers in my journal and desperate pleas for prayer through text message to close friends. I decided tonight that had to change. 

     While 1st trimester nausea and sickness were just starting to wind down, I began having pain in my pelvic area that I nervously noticed one day in particular walking through Costco. I had run in to grab last minute ingredients for the Titus family Christmas get together, and felt as though I was going to miscarry the precious baby in my womb. I felt as though the pain was radiating through my entire pelvic bone and I remember not enjoying the evening like I always do with the family because I kept panicking and watching for "signs" that my greatest fear was coming to pass. 

     With great thankfulness, James is now nearly 34 weeks and I was not indeed having a miscarriage that December evening. The pain continued though, and when I went in for my very first visit with my midwives on the 28th of December, I was already at the point where I asked for a referral for physical therapy or whatever they thought would help. (Those who know me well know that I very rarely will bring up pain that I have been experiencing on my own accord to my doctors... Andrew didn't have to prod me to bring it up that morning, I already knew it was bad). The words "Pelvic Girdle Pain" came into my vocabulary and I began weekly physical therapy with a pelvic area specialist the very first week in January.

     Fast forward to now. As the months have passed, my pain has sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly progressed. I cannot walk outside the house without the help of a walker, and many days I cannot even get that far. I've been issued a disabled parking permit by my doctors, and have used it gratefully every time I end up getting outside of the house. My various pelvic support bands are essential for any amount of walking and I've gotten to the point where if I reach the top of our stairs without one on, I immediately turn around and go back into the house to get it - it's just not worth it to move without it on, no matter how sick of it I am.

     I have been in bed more hours this half of a year than many years of my life combined. I thought that the three months I was near bed-ridden with mold toxicity in 2014 were terrible, but I could always close my eyes and lay down and find some sort of relief from the dizziness, some release of the faintness that clouded all the rest of the hours of my day. This time around, nothing has helped. If I lay down too long, my pelvis grows more and more tender and painful, and yet if I don't lay down enough during the day I quite literally collapse. What used to be uncomfortable is now horrific pain, and what used to be annoying is now the audible sound of grinding in areas of my pelvis that I know enough of the human body to know should never be a normal occurrence. Sleeping used to be the time of relief, but with every move, every readjustment I wake with mind-numbing pain and trips to the bathroom (which are even more now that I'm in the blessed third trimester) make me wonder if I can actually complete the following day.

     Regardless, life goes on each and every day. Owen needs to be cared for and nurtured. Dishes and clothes need to be washed. Dinner needs to be cooked, and life needs to go on. Unfortunately, nearly every single thing that I used to do and complain and grumble frequently about goes undone - falling onto my sweet husband's plate for the time between Owen finally getting to sleep (about 9pm) and when he personally collapses into bed (normally between 11:30-12am). The one routine that has remained somewhat in tact is homeschool - it's become what I look forward almost more than anything else with Owen. He adores it, and I can sit next to him and watch his eyes fill with joy and wonder as concepts begin to connect and paint gets splattered as he learns to mix colors. And reading. Oh, the sheer amount of books he and I have read together on the bed or the couch... those two things remain nearly "normal", like a sweet God-ordained relief from the hellish season I feel utterly trapped in.

...Will there be a victory?
Will You sing it over me now?
Your peace is the melody
Will You sing it over me now?...

     I broke down last night. Realizing that it's been over a half of a year in this pain feels overwhelming. Mind-numbing. Debilitating. The worst part is the fear that while I am only 7 weeks from my due date, most women who have this severe of PGP are not immediately well after delivery, averaging about 6 weeks of post-labor recovery until they are somewhat back to normal, and around 6-12 months. Sometimes, like last night and parts of today, I literally do not know if I can handle that. I am seeing my sweet family less and less as they have to do most of their activities without me. I am missing out on one of the sweetest seasons with Owen, and even more so, the last season of it being just him and me. I miss my husband, the most servant-hearted and tender man I have ever met in my life, because when he puts me to bed at night, it is as if his night has only begun. 

     So today, after driving to another PT appointment, I listened to this song ("Reason to Sing" by All Sons and Daughters) on repeat, holding back tears and realizing that I actually AM in this season that seems often like a never ending nightmare. I don't know when it will get better for sure, and I don't know what it looks like for me to be a mama and wife and daughter and friend when I don't do any of the things that used to define those categories to me. I feel many times like a burden and a waste, lazy and dramatic at best. I know these are lies, without question. But they are a daily fight to keep in their place as lies and not allow them to creep into what feels like truth. If I am honest, I am at a loss to think of how these next 7+ weeks will look like, but maybe I don't need to know. 

     Because... even through every single moment of pain and anxiety and what feels like my heart falling into some sort of darkness, I know the end of the story. I know that one day, some day, every tear will be wiped away. Every disease will be erased. Every pain, painful memory, and hurt will be healed in an instant. I used to fear reading the book of Revelation, thinking that it was too scary and weird and would give nightmares. But going through the book this past year in Bible Study Fellowship, the Lord encouraged me through the one book of the Bible I vowed I never would enjoy, and never find comfort in. At the perfect time, the Lord brought me through those chapters, and showed me that He may not heal me. Not in my timing at least. But I can rest securely knowing that one day, that beautiful one day, everything will be gone aside from joy in His glory and my praise and adoration of Him. That this really is a "light and momentary suffering" even when the hours feel like generations and the pain is nearly unbearable. 

     So, I'm not sure. Not sure how to process this, not sure how to communicate what has been on my heart and mind for months, and not sure how to stand in that last paragraph when all I want to do is wave a white flag of surrender and quit. But for now, for tonight, I get to share. I get to open up the wounds that have been festering, and not worry about trying to put on a cute outfit and makeup so that even when I can barely take steps with the walker I can appear to have it together, but actually just be here and real and honest. Because I've sat here before. Typing away on this very same laptop sobbing and crying out to the Lord because I don't understand. As I worried and was wracked with anxiety throughout Owen's pregnancy, as I nearly lost my life to Postpartum Depression, as my body was slowly shutting down due to mold toxicity, as I mourned yet another month of a negative pregnancy test... and yet, the Lord at each and every moment has been good. His will has been done, and I have not been let go of. I do not believe in the least "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" but I do believe that in my weakness He is my strength. That His grace IS sufficient and that His power IS made perfect in my weakness. I may not "feel it" but I cling to that truth as the pain tells me to lay down and stop typing. And, Lord willing, I will continue to cling because He will continue for eternity to be worth it - even when I don't cling and find that it is He who is doing the holding. 

...'Cause I need a reason to sing
I need to know that You're still holding
The whole world in Your hands
And that is a reason to sing...