Mothering, Solo

For as long as I can remember, I've dreamed of being a mom. Growing up as the oldest of six kids, plus babysitting, nannying, teaching Sunday school and youth group and working as a children's librarian gave me more than ample practice. I graduated high school with lofty pre-motherhood dreams of being a famous journalist, and felt both flattered and deflated when my senior class voted me "Most Likely to Have Ten Kids" instead of "Best Writer" or "Most Likely to Succeed."

On a humid May evening in 2013 Nathan took me out to a fancy dinner and announced that he was ready to start a family. I'd been itching to have a baby almost from the day we got married, but wanted to wait until he felt the same way and came up with the idea on his own. In less than two months I found out I was pregnant with our first child, and spent our Alaskan cruise fatigued and nauseous but deliriously happy - I would have endured far worse for our precious baby.

I will never forget the day I walked into the pregnancy center, ecstatic to hear our little one's 12-week heartbeat for the first time, and exited in shock. There had been no heartbeat. Nate met me in the parking lot, and we held each other and cried. We buried our sweet Hope in the back garden of a tiny suburban house we'd rented with glowing dreams of parenthood - of pushing a stroller around the nearby lake and witnessing those first toddling footsteps on the tile floors.

In the aftermath of Hope's death, and the uncertainty of whether we'd ever be able to have children, I realized just how badly I wanted to be a mother. After being Nathan's wife, it was the most important vocation on earth to me. Nate and I grieved together, healed together and were overjoyed when in early January I discovered that I was pregnant again - less than three months after the miscarriage. It seemed too good to be true, and I battled intense fear for this little one's life throughout the early days of the pregnancy. One day in particular I was sure I was going to lose the baby. Heavy bleeding and cramping led to an emergency doctor's visit, and while I was wracked with terror Nate prayed and told me he was in faith that God was going to grant us this baby's life.

Our daughter was born in September and we named her Elissa - "promised of God." She is a daily reminder to me of heard and answered prayers even when everything in my life has been torn apart. I don't even want to imagine what life would be like without her; she is a living, breathing, tangible reminder of Nate and will embody his legacy every day of her life.

Today is my first official Mother's Day, and I find myself on this parenting venture alone. Single parenthood is something my wildest dreams could not have conceived of. I see the plethora of parents - mom and dad, together - at church, at the park, at restaurants, at the mall. Dads tossing their little ones high in the air, pushing them in strollers, tickling them till they shriek with giggles. Thankfully I have a multitude of family close by who help out in invaluable ways. Yet I am the one struggling to open the stroller and juggle all our gear and keep Elissa fed and clean and entertained - day in and day out, alone.

There are so many days where I am overwhelmed at the thought of a lifetime raising our sweet Elissa without the talents and gifts of her daddy, the best man I've ever known. My heart breaks at the thought of all she is missing out on in his absence. I worry that I can't be both parents to her, that she will grow up lacking what only he could provide. In these moments of worry and self-doubt, it comforts me to remember how much Nathan believed in me and in what I would have to offer as a mother. On the day he asked me to marry him he wrote me a letter about all the reasons he wanted me as his wife. He said that one of the first things he noticed about me was that I would be a great mom. His complete confidence in me, and the memory of our many conversations about parenting, enable me to keep going when I feel so grossly inadequate. God called me to this journey of single mothering, and He will give me the tools I need. It blows my mind to think that every day of my life has been in preparation for this overwhelming job assignment. Not a day goes by when I don't desperately miss the daddy that Elissa will never know this side of heaven, but I am thankful that her heavenly Father holds both of us in the palm of His hand and will never let us go.

One year ago on a five-mile hike in Big Bend, 24 weeks pregnant with Elissa

Mother's Day 2015, carrying Elissa ALL the way up and down Weverton Cliffs :)

Life Eternal

This Easter, the day that Christians everywhere celebrated with rejoicing and singing, also marked six months since I became a widow. It is staggering to celebrate a day which marks Christ's resurrection from a grave, and Nathan's descent into one. How has it already been six months since I heard Nate's voice, made his last supper, hugged and kissed him goodbye for the last time?

God has been merciful to me this past week. Instead of the crushing despair that I imagined, I have felt a growing sense of victory. Christ rose from the grave victorious over sin and over eternal death. In His ultimate victory, Nathan has also found victory. He has confronted our biggest enemy, Death, and won. He has prevailed over sin once and for all, and is now living the Great Adventure that will continue for all eternity.

I used to fantasize constantly about Nathan coming back. I half expected him to; it was too incomprehensible that I would never see him again until I join him in heaven. Now, although I long for Nate with everything I am, I'm convinced that, given the choice, he wouldn't even want to come back. Heaven is that wonderful and his perspective has changed so much that I believe it will feel like the blink of an eye to him before we're all together again, never to be apart.

I want to share two things that have filled me with hope over this past week in particular. The first is a rare foretaste that I had of Nate in paradise. In May 2014 we spent a week in Turks & Caicos, and it was the stuff his dreams were made of. He basked in the shimmering turquoise ocean and endless stretches of white beach, completely fulfilled and at peace. He never wanted to leave. Jordan and Christene were with us and sometimes the three of us would go off exploring or shopping. Nate refused to leave the beach. Once we came back and couldn't find him until I spotted a tiny speck floating all alone in the vast blueness. I remember thinking that Nate was as close to heaven as anyone could be in this life.

I am so grateful for these memories because they are a glimpse of what Nate is now experiencing. His dreams have come true, his deepest longings are fulfilled, his goals are attained, his soul is forever satisfied. And yet I know he misses me. I got to Turks & Caicos a couple days after he did, and while he was waiting for me he sent me this picture with the caption: "I'm incomplete without you..."

In my mind's eye Nathan is exploring and rejoicing and delighting in Paradise, tingling with the anticipation of one day sharing it with me and Elissa and all of us who love and long for him more than ever.

The second thing I want to share is Nate's last text to me, sent six months ago today after he was released early from night shift. Before I knew that his soul was already home, I woke up to this message: "Praying for you! I can't wait to see you...going to get home early :)"

I still get chills at these last words from him. Little did he know that within moments he would be HOME, in the fullest sense of the word, earlier than any of us could have imagined. I know without a shadow of a doubt that he is praying for me. I know he can't wait to see me. And I can only imagine that famous smile, the last thing he left me, dazzling with all the radiance of heaven.

Trust.

I startled awake, inexplicably terrified. God, I said to the strange stillness, help me trust You. It didn't come. Trust as I've known it will never come again. Before, when I hadn't experienced crushing tragedy and life was more or less the way I wanted it, the way I planned it, trusting God somehow equated to nothing really bad happening to me. I would fulfill my part of the bargain, do the right things, say the right prayers. God would then do His part - send His angels to guard me and those I loved in all our ways. We wouldn't even strike our foot against a stone.

Now, in spite of all my right living, the prayers prayed and churches attended and Scriptures endlessly read, the worst has happened. There's no guarantee the worst won't happen again - if anything could be worse than this. I am face to face with the reality of evil and death despite all my trust. I am afraid. I am angry, and I am broken. What will He do to me next? How can He expect me to trust Him now?

The bedrock of my trust has been revealed. It wasn't so much God - His character and His promises - as it was my safety and security which I naturally chalked up to God taking care of me because I did all the right things to make Him happy. I've found that this God, the one I spent my life believing in, doesn't exist. There is no such thing as an obliging Genie in the sky who keeps his end of the deal I've imposed on him through my so-called righteous living. As Elisabeth Elliot said, if God were merely my accomplice in my pursuit of a safe, happy, fulfilling life, He has utterly betrayed me.

But the God who has called me to trust Him - to trust Him even now - is so much more. This world, and everyone in it, is all about Him: His story, His plans, His eternity. Either God is real or He isn't. If He is real, then everything He says about Himself is either true, or it is one lie after another.

I don't want to survive this. I don't want it as a part of my story. But I have been left here, and it is for a purpose. I cannot live one more day on this earth if God isn't here. I can't draw my next breath if He is a liar. So I repeat Steven Curtis Chapman's words to myself, over and over again. Sometimes it is a silent anthem in my head; other times I say it aloud, through clenched teeth:
 

I know Your heart is good

Your love is strong

Your plans for me are better than my own

And I will trust You.

All I can conclude about God in the aftermath of this devastation is that He is incomprehensible. He calls Himself good and loving, then does what feels like the opposite of good, the opposite of love. To trust Him now will never look the same as it once did. Naivety was obliterated that early morning on the freeway, and in the aftermath there is no such thing as blind faith. God's promises for good and not for evil are still the same as they always were. He has not changed. What has been completely rewritten is my definition of good. "Good" is not the things I wanted, planned and dreamed for myself. Good is God. God, somehow, even when all of my senses scream otherwise, is good. And in that goodness I pray that I will someday, with more surety and conviction than ever, relearn to trust.