When I don't trust His best

When we found out we were expecting our first child, I was one of those moms that had to have everything new.  Maybe this makes me a snob, but I didn't really want hand-me-down anything.  I wanted soft, unused clothes, crispy new books and brand new furniture for the nursery.

At the end of the day I realize that things are just things.  Clothes are just clothes and books are just books and cribs are just cribs.  But I wanted to start fresh with everything.  Keeping in mind that if we ever had a second child, that baby would probably receive many hand-me-downs.

We ended up purchasing a brand new set of baby furniture for Tommy's nursery.  It was something we could afford at the time and we thought it was a wise investment.  We would use it for our other children...if we ever had any.

But over weekend, one of the things we sold was that furniture.  The crib, the dresser, the changing table.  All of it went at a negotiated price and it wasn't until Monday morning that I let myself cry about what had been disassembled and placed into some stranger's Tahoe and driven away.

It was like watching my longings and dreams slip through my fingers.  And I willingly letting them go.

The logical parts of me remind me that we can get another set if we needed it - we can find something used just as this woman did with ours.  That we did this because we needed money to pay what we owed to the IRS and I didn't want my husband to have to sell a gun on top of everything else he has given up for us.  That just because we don't have this furniture taking up space in our garage doesn't mean it won't ever happen again.

But the letting go of the furniture was more than just a financial decision too.  It was a place I consciously chose to kill my longing.  It was where I was letting go of something I'm not sure I should be letting go of.

To be honest, I don't know what I want here.  When it comes to having another child that is.  I have an immense amount of ambivalence about another baby and that ambivalence feels big for me to hold.

I feel a deep desire to have another child.  Buying a few sleepers for my friend and her new baby this weekend gave me a lump in my throat at remembering what it was like to rock my little boy in my arms every night before bedtime. My heart so longs for another child, specifically a daughter. I see her in my dreams, I have her name picked out.  I think of her often.

But I also deeply feel that I can't do this again.  That it would complicate and make things that are already complicated, only worse.  That we don't have the finances, the energy, the means, the room, the guts to do it all over again.  That I couldn't handle another pregnancy and how would that fit in to my weight loss goals?

My hope is that Todd and I could feel strong together again as a couple before going through another pregnancy and another experience of bringing a life into the world.  Tommy's conception was a miracle for us.  Not just because we didn't know if I could even conceive, but because our marriage was beautiful and thriving then.  Tommy was conceived at at time where our life together was full of so much joy and passion.  I so desire that if we even had another child, that they would be birthed out of a similar place.  I fear what it would mean if they weren't. If we just happened to get pregnant when things were as they are or have been in our marriage.   

It's a place that over the last few months, I've slowly become close-fisted to God again.  I have been attempting to manage my heartache through control and deciding that once again, I know what is best and I can make my life work without Him in this piece of my life and my heart.

I don't trust Him here.  I did for awhile, but my circumstances changed and so did my shifty faith.  I don't trust His best or His timing or what He wants and the when's of a miraculous happening like this.  A lot of my heart believes His timing would be off, that He would be wrong and that whatever He decided wouldn't be for my good as He promises.

It's painful to admit that so publicly, but it's true.

Why does it take so much vulnerability to be open, to wait, to hope and to trust?  And what do we do when it becomes too much to stay that way?  How can we always live so freely and full of longing before it just starts to hurt and become unbearable?  It feels like allowing ourselves to live fully and with deep and glorious longing gets wearing after awhile.  And sometimes knowing God means not having any relief.

The other morning, I simply asked God to meet me here.  To meet me in the place where I am saying no to Him and where I am refusing to trust, where I have taken back what control I can.  I asked if we could sit here for awhile together and look at why I have returned to this place because really, it's not the place that I most desire to be with Him.

I wonder if my heart can be so mended or healed that I never again want to close my hands to what He wants and has for me. Or maybe, like so many things in life, it cycles through.  That there are seasons where it feels safer to trust Him with my heart and all that it holds.

And other seasons, like this one, trust and vulnerability feel like a much harder thing to do.