We're All Complicated

There are times in my life when I wish this wasn't my story.

I feel guilty even admitting that because it is complicated for my heart. I would never wish Lily away and treasure her with every ounce that is within me.

However, it can feel like a heavy load to carry everything that has happened, both from my own choices and things that I didn't choose.

I've been hanging out with a new local friend group lately and started attending a new church over the Summer that I love. These people I've met there have been a gift from the Lord. And sometimes when I am with them, I feel like I am just a "normal" 28-year-old. It is good to feel free and light, which is certainly who I am and isn't a facade by any stretch, however there are many sides to my story and therefore many sides to me.

Eventually these things come out and I share my past, but sometimes I don't want to, truth be told. Sometimes I just want to be me... without being known as the girl who had unplanned pregnancies, the girl who had an abortion, the girl who had a baby, and the girl whose baby died. I don't want people to be sad for me and act awkward with me. I don't want them to stall in thinking of what to say if they broach the subject of bringing up having come across my blog. I don't want people to judge me and the choices I've made and think they've got me all figured out. Grief and trauma and loss, especially experienced alone in many ways, have a way of isolating you and making you believe the lie that you are somehow truly alone.

I say all the time that I am open about my story and know God has called me to be so... but sometimes I wish I could just have someone else's story. I wish I didn't have these complicated feelings and experiences, things I know others I'm around in the same season as me can't understand simply because they haven't been here.

I feel like a fish out of water so often, in all the "groups" I'm part of... I love these people in my life and they minister to my heart in different ways... some help me as a single Christian young woman. Some help me in my loss of Lily. But most the singles haven't had and lost babies. And most who've had and lost babies aren't still single and tangibly childless. I just want to feel normal and a part of something without feeling complicated. I sometimes wonder if I should have kept this all to myself.. but then I remember that wouldn't be right and that I am compelled and called to share for the glory of Christ.

For so many years I think I've carried this feeling around with me... this feeling of being different and complicated. When that might be true... but what I am also realizing more and more as time goes by, is that we are all complicated. We all have hurts, pain, and stories of our own. And the longer we live, the more true this is. We all come to the cross of Christ on equal ground. We are all broken and weak and in desperate need of Jesus. And though my circumstances may be different than those around me, I am the same in that I need Him and that He supplies every bit of grace I could need the moment I need it. We all need to be redeemed even if what we're needing to be redeemed from looks a little different. What we see of someone on the outside is not all there is to them. We are deep, complex, intricate human beings, with so many things that make up who we are, what makes our hearts beat with wild delight, what God has called us to, and where He is taking us in the future.

It does me well to remember that it is into His strong arms that I need to run always first, rather than to any person. It is His counsel I should seek, His comfort I should pursue. Maybe feeling alone and different isn't so bad after all, if it causes my heart to long for Him more.

Lord, I ask for Your grace day-by-day, to allow myself and every person reading these words of mine to walk in the stories You are writing for our lives - stories that shout Your glory and redemption, no matter how painful and complicated things may appear. You are always greater.