A different reality

During these last couple of weeks of being back at work, I have had an overwhelming feeling that I am lost.  A feeling that I went "off-track" somewhere.  I was preparing and anticipating for the reality of motherhood and working part-time (or not at all).  Instead, I'm left with a new reality, a very different reality.  I'm back at work, and some moments feel like nothing ever changed - no pregnancy ever happened because I'm right back where I was - doing the same thing I was doing before.  But the fact of the matter is: everything has changed.  Everything inside of my heart and inside of my head is different.  Some days I wake up with agonizing emotional pain, wondering why any of this had to happen to us.  I wake up and I don't want to face the day.  I don't want to face this reality.  Some nights, I lay in bed with tears streaming down the sides of my face, wishing I could still be pregnant with my baby girl.  I have cried myself to sleep too many nights to count.  Sometimes the struggle seems pointless.  Then sometimes, when you add in the stresses of the world that is speeding along as we're trying to hold onto our sanity and put ourselves back together, it can all be too overwhelming.

There's a poem titled "Welcome to Holland" that a friend shared with me.  This poem so accurately sums up how I feel right now.  Sometimes I sit and cry saying, "I don't want to be in Holland.  I want to be in Italy".  It is unfair.  To any family that has had to go through the loss of a child - it is very unfair.  I don't have an answer as to why these things happen.  I spend probably the majority of my time crying out to God asking him to show me why.  Today I was just telling God that I don't know why my human mind is so desperately trying to connect the dots and gather an understanding of what has happened to us - but I NEED that.  I NEED to understand!  What I do know is that this situation has drawn me so much closer to God and has completely changed my thought patterns toward this earth and the time we spend here.  It has also changed my thoughts about heaven and hell and the reality of those places.  More than ever, I understand how temporary this life and this body is.  I understand that we do not live forever and something is going to happen when we die - we are going to go somewhere.  I know more than ever that I want to be in heaven because a piece of my heart is already there.



"Welcome To Holland"
by:  Emily Perl Kingsley

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum.  The Michelangelo David.  The gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.  It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.  You pack your bags and off you go.  Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy!  I'm supposed to be in Italy.  All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan.  They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.  It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place.  It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.  But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.  And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever  go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.