Looking back

In 2012.....

I was kind to myself with greater consistency.

I began to believe more truth and I renounced more lies.

My writing was written with more depth, feeling and heart.

I had a more normal relationship with food and remained binge-free all year.

I saw relationships heal and grow - especially with my Robin and my sister and dad. 

I took on full-time hours at work.

I led a Journey Group for women at my church.

I turned 31.

My relationship with Jesus felt like a relationship - I stayed near and close.

My marriage nearly fell apart.  BUT GOD....

I owned up to where I had done damage and asked God to let me really see my husband.

I saw my marriage spring back to life. 

We fell in love all over again.

I said goodbye to more friends that moved away.

I let myself feel,  even the hard things, and didn't buckle under the weight of it.

We cut up our credit cards.

I endured disappointment after disappointment in regards to a job change for Todd.

We played in the rain together.

We had a weekend getaway to celebrate six years of marriage and much life lived together.

We jumped.

I enjoyed life-long friendships.

I felt more comfortable in my own skin and who I am as a woman.

I learned that I was going to be a mommy all over again.

I stood in my cousin's wedding.

I danced.

I began ministry with the youth group at our church and remembered how awesome teens are.

I survived Tommy's fractured arm and his first cast - at three years old.

We sold things and got rid of unnecessary clutter and made room.

I celebrated the news of another healthy baby boy.

 I fought fear and began to trust God in new places.

My parents watched Tommy for us - it was the first time I had ever asked.

I decorated my home for fall and Christmas without buying anything new - and I was content.

I got my Gramma back.

I took a picture of my pregnant belly - on purpose.

We made new friends.

We asked hard questions and said hard things.

We celebrated, wept, prayed, cried, rejoiced, longed for more, and laughed.

We lived and learned and grew.

Looking back, what I see most is where He was in all things.  Where God held us and how He sustained us.  Where He pursued my heart and where I leaned in to Him and His care.  Where he blessed us and made Himself more real.  Where He was invited in and how nearness to Jesus was what made my year not only bearable, but full of sweetness and memories. 

My Poppy said something very wise once.  He doesn't think that God should come first in our lives as if He was some kind of priority.  God should be at the center of everything in our lives - a part of everything we do.  He should be at the center of our marriage, how we parent, in our relationships, in our jobs and homes.  Not first and foremost, but at the center of all it.  This year I truly began to ask Him to be that for me - my center.  To be in all things with me.  

And indeed, He was.

Without You, I fall apart.

You're the One who guides my heart.

Lord I need You - every hour I need You.

If my year had a theme song, it would be this one.  May I always need God in every year.

A letter for mom

Mom,

You missed my first great love and you weren't there when he died and I thought I might too.

You missed my nineteenth birthday and my twenty-sixth and my thirty-first and all of those in between.

You weren't there when my shady boyfriend stole all of my money and left me owing thousands.

You missed seeing me off to my amazing trip to Israel.

You weren't here when I bleached my hair blonde and did a million wretched things because I was hurting so badly and was so very angry at God.

You weren't here to watch me meet Todd and fall in love with a man I never expected to fall in love with.  You missed the night we got engaged and celebrated downtown, my five-stone diamond ring sparkling as bright as our eyes did.

You missed my bridal showers and my wedding day and seeing me in a wedding dress that I didn't really like. 

You haven't been here to talk to about marriage and what your experience was like.  You've missed watching me struggle and flourish in my own.

You weren't here when I was told I had PCOS and that it would be a "miracle" if I ever got pregnant.  You missed it when I would cry every month my period would arrive and my hopes for having a baby would be crushed.

You missed it when that hundredth pregnancy test finally came back positive and I got to announce that finally, at last, I was going to be a mommy.  You weren't here to get to be a Grandma.

You missed my first pregnancy and now my second.  You haven't been here to ask questions and put me at ease when I want to panic about every strange thing my body is doing.

You haven't been here to see the FREE me. 

You weren't here to see me dance my ass off for the very first time.  I danced and danced for hours and it was glorious.  And now I dance any chance I can get.

You've missed seeing how God would bring healing to my heart.  How He would give me peace and restore relationships and make things new.

You've missed countless family gatherings and trips to the zoo and watching me freak out about finding my first few gray hairs. 

You haven't been here for twelve Mother's Days and thirteen Christmases. 

Perhaps you can see and you have seen everything from Heaven.  I like to think that you can look down and have a view in to my life - or that you have some way of knowing.  It brings my hurting heart comfort to think about what your face would be like for me when I struggle or I'm sad or when I'm experiencing victory or feeling joy.   The deepest parts of me know that for all I've done and been through that you are so very proud.  And you should be proud too - because you had a hand in shaping me.

But you haven't been here.  You've missed out and so have I.  You've missed watching me grow into the woman I am today.  There will forever be a void - a hole that you left and no one else can fill.  What is true is that I was deeply impacted by your life and your story and all that you were and weren't to me - I still am.  You may be gone and you may have been gone for thirteen years, but your memory and the place that I hold it in my heart is still very much with me. And I hope that it always is.

Missing you this day.  I ache for Heaven and the moment I finally see you again.  When there will be no more missing out and no more missing you.

Love,
Jenn

An unusual anniversary

It's been one year.  One entire year of not binging.  Of not opening up my pantry and my fridge and consuming everything I could until my stomach would hurt and I could barely breathe.  It's been an entire year of having a more normal and healthy relationship with food.  It hasn't been perfect and there is still room for much improvement.  Yet, today is a day to celebrate progress.

My last binge was December 26, 2011.  It was the day I realized that the cloud and the shift I wrote about yesterday came on Christmas day and I was doing what I usually did when I felt intense emotion - eating, and eating a lot so that I didn't have to feel any of it. 

Throughout this last year, I've over-eaten some and I haven't made the best food choices either.  But it's been a binge-free year for me.  It's been a year to see recognizable progress where my eating is so much more normal than it's been since before I can even remember.   For a disordered eater to see where you eat normal portions and have normal meal-times and eat until you feel that normally full-feeling on a very regular and daily basis - it's a big deal.  The therapist I spent most of my year with last year would tell you that.

I've learned in the last year that I can feel.  That pain and suffering and disappointment won't do me in if I allow myself to feel them rather than check out entirely.  

I've learned to say goodbye and grieve and even endure a crisis like my marriage almost ending without turning to food to medicate with.  

I've learned to really hate the overly full feeling my stomach gets from eating too much.  The times I've over eaten have left me physically miserable and it's a feeling in my body I don't care to feel anymore.  It might be weird to admit that I somehow enjoyed that feeling I would get, but I did.  

I've learned to run to God and talk to Him daily about what I need, what I'm feeling and where I'm at.  With all that this year has come with, I've remained close to Him.  Even in my anger and confusion, I stayed in relationship with Him and kept the conversation going.  I believe that it's truly by His mercy and grace, that I've finally been able to let go of damaging ways and surrender to my need for Him and His care.

What's ironic is that I have nothing to show for my progress when it comes to my physical body.  I'm overweight and pregnant and of course losing weight is a bit difficult.  Even so, I know there is progress even if no one else can see it or knows that it's there.  And perhaps that's good for me.  To acknowledge and recognize progress outside of what shows up in the mirror. 

I've been healing from the inside.  The outside will soon follow - of that I am sure.

I want to remember this day as there could be another binge in my future.  I could have a slip.  Yet, I have so much hope.  For my body and my eating disorder and how my relationship with food is changing.  There is something to celebrate and today I am claiming victory for having a binge-free year. 

Would you celebrate with me today? 

Happy one year binge-free anniversary to me!

The Shift

The day after Christmas is my very least favorite day of every year.  Regardless of whether or not I have to work (and I do this year), the day just feels like a drag.  All of the merry-making has come to a close and the decorations and leftover sugar cookies feel suffocating rather than inviting.  Perhaps because I'm pregnant and I'm officially ready to get everything in order for Jake, I'm especially ready to usher out the holly this year.

Yesterday was....okay.  Christmas day itself always seems to be a bit anticlimactic.  It was full of wonder and sweet memories - especially with Tommy.  Yet it left me longing for more too - for more meaningful and reflective times.  I seem to always miss what isn't there.  I was feeling lousy too seeing as I'm in now for round three of this awful congestion and cough thing that has been with me now for a good chunk of my pregnancy. 

There are a few days at the very end of the year though that bring with it this great shift within my spirit.  December 28th is the anniversary of my mom's death and it's something that I have always felt with great depth.  My soul feels sad and unsettled and it was last year that I recognized that this great dark cloud, this shifting, comes not on her death date or the day after Christmas....but on Christmas day itself.  

Last year was the first year that I really took care of myself in this familiar darkness that I find myself in every year.  Instead of eating and numbing out to my pain though I let myself cry.  I watched a sad movie and took a long bath and I wrote some.  I made myself a mug of hot coffee and I let myself sit in quiet and feel and just be.  In addition to that, I accepted an invitation by my step-mom last year to go over and sit with her and we ended up having the most honest, healing conversation we've ever had in all of the years of knowing each other. 

Grief remains the same.  The loss of my mother and all that we didn't have when she was alive and all of the memories that never will be, they weigh heaviest on me these few days every year - so close to Christmas and times that are full of so much fun and memory-making.  But how I respond to it is changing.

I'm learning to lean in to it, press in.  To feel what is there instead of ignoring it and pushing it away.  I'm learning to acknowledge it and invite it in and let it run its course.  It's taken awhile, but I'm figuring out how to care for myself when grief comes - especially over the memory of my mom.  It's okay to be tender and vulnerable and it's okay to be that way even if it's been thirteen years since I last saw her face.

In a few days, the cloud too will pass.  My home will breathe new and clean with Christmas put away and the preparations for my second child will be well underway.  And I will have felt what I needed to and been kind to my heart.  Because my Jesus has brought healing to me even though He has never taken away the sting and ache of grief. 

And another shift, another wave, another page will turn.

Anticipating

The cookies are baked and decorated.

A little boy is bored out of his mind waiting for Christmas to finally get here.  He keeps asking when it will snow.  Do you think it could happen in 70 degree weather?

I'm cleaning and cooking and preparing for tonight's Christmas Eve dinner and celebration with Todd's parents - the new tradition we started last year.

When I stop to rest in between all that needs to be done today, my littlest one kicks and moves within me reminding me of miracles and healing and all that I have to treasure this Christmas.

 

Tomorrow we will awake and spend the morning with my parents and siblings.  It's something we haven't done with them in four very long years.

 

The anticipation is absolutely glorious. 

And my heart is unbelievably, overwhelmingly, about-to-burst-with-joy full.

When Christmas found me

Some of the things that were on my mind and heart and plate have passed.  The doctor's appointment (where I had to do a three hour blood glucose test) I was dreading is done and over.  We have an official "plan" for Christmas now.  And I cancelled the cookie decorating event with my family last night because I was wiped out after my appointment and decided there was no way I could roll out cookies and put them in and take them out of the oven all day long.  It was disappointing to cancel, yet it was kind for my body and my heart too. 

After a lengthy nap yesterday, our little family of three headed out to have dinner together and went to look at Christmas lights in a neighborhood that is famous for doing it BIG every year.

See what I mean?

I haven't gone looking at Christmas lights since I was young.  I was quite little the last time I went to this very neighborhood.  I may have even said something to Todd last night starting with the phrase, "Well, twenty-something years ago...."   Wow, I'm old.

Tommy was absolutely in awe of how much there was to see.  Some things were animated, some yards played music.  Some things were handcrafted and homemade and were quite unique.  I loved hearing him in the backseat squeal with excitement and wonder.  It made my mother's heart full and left me with much to treasure.

I felt like a kid again.  When life felt simple and magical and was full of twinkle lights in December.  When you feel safe and loved and it feels like ages before Christmas day will finally arrive and you can finally tear into that one big present under the tree that has your name on it.

My heart feels changed this Christmas.  It's been changed because of circumstances, both financial and physical, and how I've been forced to see things differently and do things differently than I'm used to. It's been changed because of tragedy and horrific stories of the evil in this world.  But mostly it's been changed because I've allowed my heart to journey with Jesus in new ways. I haven't shut him out.  He's been invited and wanted - maybe more than I've ever invited Him in or wanted Him with me before.  I never realized how much I left him out of my heart at Christmastime. 

I woke up early this morning - 5am to be exact - but I was feeling like me.  The me that loves baking cookies and watching Christmas movies and can't wait for the excitement that Christmas morning brings.

Maybe it was the lights.  The magic and wonder of what we saw last night that made me feel childlike and innocent.

And maybe it's been everything.  The tragedies that have made me ache and weep and have caused such tenderness in my spirit.  The gratitude I've found for what I have, especially in my little growing family.  In the relationships that have been renewed and restored to me and are evident in text messages and warm smiles and conversations.  Maybe it's been seeing where it's become easier to be kind to myself - to make kind choices for my body, for my heart and soul.  Maybe it's been the early mornings I've spent with my Savior.

Somehow all of it - every twinkle light, every tear shed, every moment spent with those that I've loved has changed me.  I do believe that the Christmas I feared was lost has been found.  I didn't find it though.

Christmas found me.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Lack of words

Writing is funny sometimes.  Last week, my words flowed with ease.  My thoughts felt cohesive and neatly packaged like a Christmas present, and the last few days I've felt like my writing mojo has taken a vacation.

I've started and stopped about half a dozen posts today.  My heart full of thoughts and feelings, and all of it calling me to rest and spend some time in prayer and solitude.  I've been swirling in the wake of last weeks horrific shooting.  In the stress that planning Christmas day feels like.  In my disappointments over the season and the every-day worries that seem to increase with carrying a baby.  I've noticed that when I have too much going on inside of me, it's often times an invitation from God to slow down and talk to Him about it all.  To name those things one by one and create space for calm where there has been only chaos.

Maybe that's all that needs saying today.  My heart is full and I need some space to sort through some of those things and just be for a while.

And a slower-paced Christmas allows for the time to do that....