Key~Notes

I appreciate the sweet comments left after the last post.  Each day I find myself getting better . . . finding it easier to be okay with what has happened.

I think that’s what I really need most of all . . . why people saying that I might have more children someday is hurtful.  I know that they want to help . . . and I love them for it!  However, those comments seem to say on another level that my life as it is right now is not okay . . . that it needs to change . . . to be fixed.  And yes, I’m well aware that no one actually MEANS to say that . . . perhaps it’s just how I perceive things!

Honestly . . . it IS okay.  It’s not my first choice . . . (heck!  it’s not even my SECOND choice!) but it’s okay.

I think that especially as women in the Church, we want to “fix” things for everyone . . . we want other people around us to have the life we think they “should” have . . . the great marriage, the x number of kids, the cute little house around the corner, the “perfect” life.  What we fail to realise (and I know I’m guilty of this too), is that our plans, even as kind-hearted as they may be, aren’t the plans our Father has for us.

We see someone who isn’t in the “status quo” and it makes us uncomfortable . . . we feel the urge to “fix” things for them so that their life can line up with how it’s “supposed” to be.  Perhaps that’s a part of why single women and other women (such as myself)  who don’t have the “cookie cutter” lifestyle feel so alone in Relief Society sometimes.  We feel as if our experiences aren’t validated because people are either trying to fix things for us (even by simply saying nice things!) or ignore us completely because they’re uncomfortable with something so far removed from their own experience.

I think that very issue has the potential to become a huge stumbling block for many people.  I wonder how many of the sisters in my ward who are less active or inactive have felt that exact same feeling of “otherness”.  I know that there have been more times in the past several months than in the rest of my life combined where I’ve felt like giving up . . . throwing in the towel and not coming to Church.

It’s not that I don’t have a testimony!  I’ve really struggled with my testimony in the past few years, but 2009 is the year where it was confirmed to me that I DO have a testimony of the Restoration. 

It’s just that sometimes it feels easier to just stay home with my family where it’s safe rather than stick my neck out and attend Church meetings and not know when I’ll end up sitting by myself or when the next crying jag will come, further alienating me from the other sisters in my ward.

Perhaps that’s part of what I needed to learn from this latest in the series of trials.  Perhaps now I personally will not become a stumbling block for the sisters around me who are “other” . . . I pray it may be so.

Over the past few days I’ve started to feel better about the situation . . . realising that she’ll have to answer for her actions . . . and I have to let her go . . . I’ve always felt somewhat responsible for her . . . kind of like a big sister if you will . . . but I can’t do that anymore . . . she’s an adult . . . she’s made her choices . . . she’ll have to live with the consequences of those choices.  I will continue to pray for her but I have to let go.

You know, I don’t even think of her son as mine anymore.  Now that I examine it, I’m not ever sure I did, except for those few blessed hours when I thought he WAS mine.  I’m not sure it even makes sense, but it’s like Zachary and her son are 2 seperate people.  Like Zachary really only ever existed when he was going to be ours . . . and when she chose to keep him, Zachary ceased to exist.  Like there really was a death involved . . . even if it was “merely” the death of my dreams.

I have ALWAYS felt like our family was not complete at one child.  In fact, I was given a blessing several years ago which stated quite clearly that I would have more than one child.  During the time when we were preparing for Zachary’s arrival, I felt very strongly like that was to be the fulfillment of that blessing I’d been given so many years earlier.

After things fell through though, I was given another blessing which seemed to indicate that I would be as Sarah was . . . only knowing one child in this lifetime, but blessed to have a numerous posterity.

I guess that’s what makes it so hard when people whom I KNOW mean well say things like “I’ve been praying for you that you’ll have the opportunity to have more children” or “you never know when another child will come into your life”.

Those things hurt . . . It feels like somehow they’re telling me that if I would just have enough faith, that I would magically get pregnant or another fluke adoption situation would present itself to us (we are NOT putting our papers in to adopt, either through LDS Family Services, or through the province . . . we’ve been specifically told those are not things we are supposed to do).

I suppose what I need is for someone to acknowledge that this very well could be my family for this lifetime.  That another child probably will NOT come into my life . . . that this palpable ache I feel of empty arms will never go away and that I’ll always hurt in some ways (though that hurt will likely get easier as the years go by) when I see a mother with her baby.

I think people are afraid of that though . . . they want to see things through rosy glasses . . . rather than face the hard truth that having faith in God doesn’t always make things right in the end.