Choosing Hope

I did so well this time. Six months. Six months I flourished. I was so careful, so aware of my needs. My nutrition, exercise, water, rest, all of it. I was so careful. And in the last two weeks it’s crept up on me. Slowly, silently taking hold.

Postpartum Depression doesn’t discriminate. And it’s close friend, anxiety, is just as ruthless. When they’re together it’s a combination that leaves you constantly fighting to stay afloat.

It’s different this time. The fight is the same but this time I am not the same. I’m talking. Exposing their secrets. Shining light into the darkness. My hubby, my mom, even an acquaintance that God told me to tell, and you. I’m telling you.

We don’t talk about this much and that’s really part of the problem. Depression never tells you to reach out or speak up, it tells you to sit quietly, you’re the only one. No one will understand. And truly, unless you have lived it or loved someone that has you probably won’t. But none of us are alone. Not one.

Prayer is my fiercest tool in battling the dark blanket that falls. Nutrition is also key. Talking, exposing the ugliest of it, that changes everything. But it’s also the hardest thing. It’s hard to make sense of it all. There aren’t words that clearly describe it. No way to explain the way it feels. The way you seem to be drowning slowly and silently and your brain stops working for you and becomes detached. It’s weight. Heaviness falling over everything.

You won’t recognize the face of depression (anxiety) itself. It doesn’t look any different. It looks like me.

It looks like a wife wildly in love, a joyful, happy mother who adores her baby. It looks like one who pushes through and keeps showing up for her family. It looks like blessings and hope. It looks like beauty.

It also looks like exhaustion that feels heavy like death. It looks like battling through a constant fog to stay present and show up. To work hard at listening and hearing and being where you are. It looks like the sudden need to clean something with irrational urgency. It looks like utter panic that something will happen to your baby and feeling the terror of that when all is well. It looks like nightmares and deep anxiety over the reality of how fragile life is. It looks like so many different things for every different woman.

I have amazing support. I’m using it. And I am struggling but also so so good.

Writing these words feels cathartic and yet terrifying. Anyone with depression (anxiety) knows the hardest thing is this. Talking about it. It’s impossible to explain, and yet makes just enough sense to sound crazy. That’s exactly why it’s an epidemic. We need to be exposing it. Fighting it. Coming alongside each other.

Someone with depression (anxiety), postpartum or not, doesn’t reach out. That’s the very nature of the disease. And never mistake it for anything other than a disease. It isolates, suffocates, and steals life.

But there is so much hope. So much.

First, talking. It’s the hardest thing. Something I have to physically force myself to do. But it’s critical. Nutrition, feeding your brain and balancing your hormones is a must. Hydration is another big thing, especially as a nursing mom. Exercise, which is also monumentally hard, is so important. It produces endorphins and releases tension and provides energy. And rest, allowing yourself to rest is so crucial.

For me, prayer is the biggest thing. Staying present with Him minute by minute. It’s the only thing that anchors me in the fog. That shines joy into the darkness. The one way I can keep fighting on one step at a time.

Yesterday my teenager was talking to me in the kitchen. I was making dinner. Fighting to stay present. Praying through each second. I realized suddenly I hadn’t heard anything he was saying. I stopped. Turned and looked at him, and said quietly, “I didn’t hear you, I’m struggling today, can you tell me again?” And he did. In that moment I made a choice, a choice to be vulnerable and to expose my weakness. A choice to fight to be present when showing up was hard. I don’t get it right every time. But when I do I win a little of me back. It exposes the disease and leaves more room for my heart. It’s taken me five pregnancies, five rounds of this battle, to get to where I can do that. I’m so so grateful.

I’m sharing because I know that speaking my truth will empower my healing. I also know I’m not the only one.

There is hope. There is help. You are not alone. You are loved. You have purpose. You have a future.

Just like me.

Postpartum Support International

We’re back, and looking back.

The last time I wrote here I was totally unaware of all the change to come. God was leading me to empty my hands. I laid down my writing, two flourishing businesses, and then a short while later a women’s ministry. In the beginning of that season I had no idea why He was asking this. But a few months later it was vividly evident when there were two pink lines staring me in the face.

Thinking back over it I’m astounded at the grace and timing of it all. And here I am now six months after the birth of our only daughter and the words are again just beginning to flow. The businesses sit dormant and I don’t know if they will ever be picked up again, or if there will be something new He leads me to. For now, I’m just so happy to be back here with you.

There are exciting things in the works for the next few months. I’ll be writing a lot about parenting newborns and teens. The amazing amount of parallels and vast differences that come with straddling those two phases, and everything in between. There will be a new series called, “Unfiltered”, where you will be invited along with my mother-half, Leslie, and I as we share our coffee dates with you, a bit of the inner workings of our relationship, and even a Q&A with us where you can ask us anything. And we do mean anything.

We are so excited to get these wheels rolling again. To share our adventures and catch up. Make sure to follow and don’t miss a thing! Thank you for your patience during our quiet season! Looking back I am so incredibly grateful for His leading to slow and savor the last year and a half.

This next season is just blossoming with amazing new beautiful adventures. We hope you’ll come along!

For now here’s a sneak peak of my latest stunning achievement.

Isn’t she just GLORY!?

Thanks for stopping by. See you real soon!

Legacy

I’ve though a lot the past few months about what a legacy actually is. The way you weave it into being by the way you live your life.

Often, I think we relate to the idea of a legacy as if it’s some unattainable abstract for the “regular folk” that we are. As though, if you don’t have millions of dollars and aren’t a household name somehow your legacy is small, maybe even insignificant.

What if your legacy isn’t so much about what you own, but WHO you are? What if it’s about a child you raise?

A man or a woman, who’s heart you tended when it was small. When the world wasn’t so scary and big. When the hard things were more about who really left that towel on the floor and letting them walk through the consequences of their choices.

A lot of this heart-research I’ve been doing, no doubt, stems from the reality of growing a fifth baby inside. To be honest, it was a sore spot between God and I for a year. A place where I felt Him leaning on my heart to surrender and embrace the idea. But my little heart was too wrapped up in the “can’ts” and the “buts” and the “I’m doing something else for You”.

I’ve learned, digging into the deepest places of His heart, that often what seems like the very thing I don’t feel qualified for is the space where my greatest calling meets His strength.

I’d like to tell you that I’ve got this faith thing figured out and that trusting His leading is easy. But it’s not.

Simple. But not at all easy.

There is the greatest glory in the places where I am smallest.

The legacy I leave will not be one that writes my name across stones and leaves people talking of me long after I’m gone.

The legacy I leave will change the world. It will be a legacy of hearts that beat after His. Five of them.

The one thing I’m qualified to do. The ONE thing, is to be His. Fully surrendered to His heart and His way. An offering to His purposes.

My legacy is His legacy. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’ve lived a lot of my life searching for purpose, direction. My calling. What I have found is that it’s less about defining my identity and so much more about simply listening to who He says I am.

The world would tell me that simply being a wife and a mother isn’t really enough. That my potential and impact are wasted. The world will tell me that this “job” I have doesn’t produce income and so therefore doesn’t have great value to my family. The world will say that five kids is really a lot, and place us in some overachiever category with the rest of the crazy people who drive large vehicles because they don’t have other options.

I’ll remind the world that the only place I want to be is smack in the center of His will. Regardless of how crazy it seems, or much it stretches my little human heart.

I’ll remind them that I’m raising the pastors, missionaries, and worship leaders of tomorrow. That’s doesn’t even mean that’s the title they will carry on their business card. Those will be the titles He and I, together, carved on their hearts. After all, in the end that’s who we all are.

I will be His pen.

Will you? Will you write His story on the pages of time? The words He lays on your heart. The depth of the love story that He presses into your hands. Will it be the song that plays long after your gone?

Maybe it’s the opposite for you. Maybe He is asking you to live a life without children, or maybe without a spouse. Maybe it’s choosing to love someone who’s own wounds have scraped your heart raw. Maybe it’s loving children who weren’t born from your body, ones He birthed instead from your heart.

What will your legacy say about you? Will it be one that you intentionally wrote by choosing Him over and over again? Or will it read of choices made by excuse and the path that seemed easy at the time?

My prayer for you, and for me, is that the legacy we leave will speak to the immeasurable love of the only One who was ever worthy of being remembered. Whose heart was crushed for us, body broken that we might breathe again. And again.

My prayer for you, and for me, is that what they remember of us is Him.

That the people we love and the children we raise are a beacon in the darkness. A message to the world not that we lived, but that He does.

He is the only legacy I want to leave.