Fear

May 19, 2010

It is getting closer by the day. Each day that goes by is one day closer to us meeting our baby. Like everyone else that should be a day full of excitement and anticipation. For me it is a day full of anxiety and fear. Every morning I wake up I can’t help but think I am almost there and some morning’s it takes my breath away and some days I just lay in bed for what feels like hours and stare at the ceiling screaming out why?? Even though I know in my head I will never understand until I get to heaven, it doesn’t make it any easier in your heart to not have any answers.

I don’t remember ever being this scared. I would get scared when I was little when I saw Chucky Cheese for the first time; I remember clawing the back of my dad’s neck when we went into the haunted house @ Disneyland. I remember getting into trouble growing up and my mom would tell me “Just wait until your Dad gets home, he will deal with you” I remember listening for my dad’s footsteps coming down my hallway, the fear and guilt of disappointing him was horrible, that alone was worst than any punishment I actually received and deserved. I remember being scared and shaking as I heard those famous music notes right before I walked down the aisle. I remember lying in the hospital about to get my first epidural when I was pregnant with Elijah, I was petrified. When Malachi was so sick as a baby and not even the doctor’s knew what was wrong w/ him. I was so scared we would loose him. All those times of being scared and yet they were all different feelings of being scared. Different level’s, different kinds of fear , when I got married that was a good scared (nervous) versus seeing Malachi as a sick baby and not knowing what to do to make him all better. You would think that would be similar to what I am facing with Zeke but it is not.

We all experience fear in a different ways. We all react in different ways. I reacted different each time I looked fear in the face. Wondering if your life will ever be the same. Wondering if you will ever get past it and be happy again. We do get past it and we do move on and sometimes when we look back at the times we thought we were “really” scared we laugh because that was nothing to what we experienced later on in life.

I have learned to not ask “what else can happen” trust me you make that mistake one time and you will never do it again. This is my “what else”. This has got to be by world’s worst fear. I knew in January it was not going to be easy, I knew it was going to be the hardest thing our family has gone thru, but I never imagined the helplessness and the suffocating feeling it can bring you. I do not know how anyone gets through pain and grief w/ out a relationship w/ God. We have walked a very long road of grief and we have many more miles, but it hasn’t been completely dark along the way. Our relationship as a family has grown. Our relationship with one another has grown. I have always imagined God being this big great man on a chair looking down on me, waiting until I screw up to punish me. A couple years ago I realized that wasn’t who he is at all. I started to see him as my best friend as a friend that no matter what he was always standing beside me, a friend I could talk to anytime of the day. Today he is not just a friend to me he is my best friend; he has been there when I was screaming at him in the shower and he didn’t leave me. He was there in the nurse’s that take me straight back to a room so I don’t have to sit w/ all the happy healthy pregnant woman wanting to be my best friend; he was there with a box of Kleenex when my father in law died. He is there in my boys when they do their silly new trick w/ a straw under their armpit and make very realistic gas noises at the very moment I needed a good laugh or I was going to cry. I always thought people were crazy when they said they felt God’s arms around them, until now. He is holding my hand every time I walk into the doctor’s office and I can picture him sitting beside me appt after appt when they tell me bad news about Zeke. As painful as this experience has been, the relationship I have gotten from it has been beautiful. Do I wish I would have gotten it a different way? Heck yeah, but I heard someone say something the other day that rang so true to me, “In order to be great you have to almost break!” We have to get to the point were we are done, we are tired and we are not happy w/ the way our life is going before we can truly come out of it and learn something about our self. Not to say that you have to go through something as painful as loosing a child, but we all have to get on our knees’ however that happens and look to God. He is the only way you have laughter in the midst of pain. He is the only way you will have light when you are in so much fear you don’t want to close your eyes at night. He is the reason you can keep going and as much as want to and as easy as you think it would be, YOU DON’T GIVE UP