Preparing my heart for Easter

This has been one of those seasons where time has moved both incredibly slow and yet faster than I can imagine.   I honestly am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Sunday is Easter.   Tonight we are on the eve of the Triduum, a time that I typically enjoy above all others because I am reminded of how great, loving, and mighty God is.  There is nothing more majestic than the feeling I get every. single. Easter. morning.  There is always something about the sunshine on Easter Sunday that surpasses all other days.

My heart feels so unprepared.  I thought this would be a lent that would prepare me better than most years.  Oh how mistaken I was.  

The saying that you get out of something what you put into it? 

Yep, true.  

Always true.  

I guess the fact that I was handed a cross before the start of Lent doesn't mean much if I don't do anything with it to help bring me closer to Christ.  The reality?  I'm just still struggling to function with this weight on me.  

Don't get me wrong, I trust.

I trust He will give me the strength to deal with saying goodbye to my baby girl if that is His Will.

I trust that He didn't cause this, our imperfect humanness did.

I trust that while He didn't cause this, He allowed it and that I can't see all the workings of His divine plan.

I trust that my baby girl will have an impact on this world, whether she comes home with us or not.

But Trust does not equal acceptance.  

Trust does not mean that I have yet found a way to truly internalize this news that I rationally have already processed.

Trust does not mean that I have found a way to accept this cross with open arms.  Everything in me wants to run away from it screaming in complete and total denial.  However, the fact that I still have my little girl in my womb and each ultrasound continues to show the same devastating news... makes it a little hard to be in denial.

Trust also does not mean that I've done a good job at using this time of sorrow to advance my prayer life.  As much as I am relying on the graces from everyone else's prayers for me, my family, and our little girl - I am having a hard time turning myself to prayer.  

I want to, but find myself oddly resistant.

Maybe it's because when I do pray, the weight of the cross is more of a reality than I want to acknowledge (even though I know that Christ is actually carrying the majority of the weight for me).

Or maybe it's because God blesses me with the emotion that I've been keeping at bay when I pray.  The grief and sorrow that is waiting in the wings feels like it could engulf me.  I say blesses because I feel so numb most of the time that I know those feelings of grief, sorrow, even anger are part of His healing process... but I am finding it so hard to embrace those emotions I know are coming.

Or maybe it's just as simple as a meager attempt at control.  It is HARD for me to admit (and even harder to accept) that I have no control over these circumstances.  There is nothing I can do to fix it.  There is nothing I can do to change it.  I can't help her.  It's amazing how counterproductive we can be sometimes.  If I can't control anything with baby girl, I at least am "in control" of my prayer life and relationship with Christ.

Sound a bit childish?  Yeah... I know.

Back to Easter.  I sit here trying to prepare myself in a way that I didn't take an opportunity to these last few weeks. 

Holy Thursday - Christ's Last Supper and creation of the Eucharist

Good Friday - Christ's sacrifice for all of us

Easter Sunday - His GLORIOUS resurrection...

These days always impact me.  They always find a way to sink in past whatever it going on in my life and renews my love for a Lord that LOVES us this much!

I pray that is the case again this year.  I need it to be so.

I am broken.

As Christ said on the cross, the spiritual and emotional side of me cries out: "My Lord, and my God, Why have you forsaken me?"

The rational side of me knows the answer is really Christ saying to me: "My child, why have you forsaken me?"

I intend to stumble through the next few days making myself confront my resistance so that I can hopefully come before Christ on Easter morning and truly pray Psalm 118:

"This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice!"

Our Christmas Gift

I recently counted up, and of the ten Christmases that Carl and I have been married, six of them were celebrated while we were doing fertility treatments.  Surprisingly, all six of them fell far enough into my cycle where I could know by Christmas morning whether I was pregnant.  Five different Christmases, I did not get the gift I was hoping and praying for.

This Christmas?

Positive. 

I knew.  As I've "known" with the other three, before that second little line turned pink or blue, that it was going to be positive.  As I forced myself to wait the two minutes to look at the test, I desperately fought that certainty, so that if/when it was negative I wouldn't be crushed.  Yet, as with the other three times, that certainty I fought turned out to be a "knowing" that was accurate.  We were pregnant once again.

The test was wrapped into three separate packages.  Each one larger than the next, in order to hide the contents from Carl.  Once "Santa" had done his thing that night and we were sitting back to admire the packages under the tree and imagine our girls delight in the morning, I gave Carl his package.  It took little prompting to get him to open it, although he was at a loss as to what I would so want him to open the night before.  It was magical to have that moment together, knowing there was a little one growing inside me as we prepared to celebrate our Savior's birth.j

Two days after Christmas, my home test was confirmed by a blood test.  My levels were great - exactly where they should be at four weeks.  After our miscarriage last summer, and numbers that were consistently at the very low end of "normal" and didn't increase as expected, this was at least somewhat reassuring early.  My first ultrasound was set for two weeks following the blood test, and my anxious waiting began.  Until I see that first precious heartbeat, I find it extremely hard to relax and enjoy the beauty of pregnancy.