Several weeks ago I lost a friend from college, who took his life tragically and unexpectedly. He was an exceptional human, the life of the party, a friend to many…

This past week I lost another friend. He hasn’t been part of my life since we were “kids”. But since learning a few days ago that he {also} took his life, only one month or so after my other friend, in the same tragic way… I have felt myself feeling cynical, angry, and of course, sad. As I’ve still been trying to process the death of my other friend, left with so many questions of how does something like this happen, I find myself constantly asking the question… How could these good people be choosing to take their own lives? Leaving behind children, parents, siblings, friends…

As we go into the new year, we’re all setting goals for ourselves. We want to lose some lbs, eat better, organize our homes, declutter our closets… We’re planning for all of the ways we can prioritize our physical selves and our outer circumstances. And pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has the same or similar goals and plans for the new year. Me, included.

I’ve never really shared anything personal on here before, but I’ve woken up today with a deep yearning to speak my story and zero idea with how to do it. God has spoken to my heart, and what I heard was that sharing my passions is great, but sharing my real story could be a lot more important. You see, I think of life as one big passport. And our major ups and downs are stamps that God puts on our pages. And they don’t go away; they just accumulate to a book of adventures and stories and memories. And documenting them can sometimes give us something enriching to look back on after those times have passed; been lived and enjoyed and processed. So here I am. Writing this personal “journal entry” in this world that I usually only share the “good”, “the beautiful”, and the “exciting”. But there are more stamps on my passport. And I feel like this one needs to be documented. For me, and me only. And if this story touches just one other person or gives one other person that ability to see things from a different perspective or help them feel more inclined to share their own story, than that is all the more reason God has put this stamp on my pages… So here goes nothin.

Yesterday was a rough day. As I’m typing this, I really can’t believe I’m putting this out there. But I’ve expressed before that sometimes the best way for me to process things is to be completely transparent. With a large network here (and I’m extremely grateful for that) sometimes I have a hard time talking to people one-on-one about things, as it can be hard to rehash things that are hard over and over. But sometimes if I feel like if everyone already knows the personal parts of my life, it makes it easier for me to deal  with pain openly and not feel like I have to process it alone. I’ve done a lot of psychological evaluation on myself, and I think I’ve come to understand why I am this way. And I accept it and just try to do whatever feels right in the moment when it comes to this platform, despite the opinion I’m certain I’ll get from others. This is, after all, MY page to share my story and my thoughts. So, here I am…

Anyway, I’ve had a long several months on a journey of discovering my own personal health, all the while trying to decide if it was God’s will for us to have one more baby. We’d been “officially” out of the game for almost 5 years. (You can speculate what that means.) For more than 4 years, I had never looked back on that decision. After having one girl and one boy, I’d always felt “done”. God had given us everything we possibly needed to complete this family, and “complete” I have always felt. Until about year 4 years later when I started to realize that my littlest was off to full-time school soon. I started to process this thought, and with each passing day, I started second-guessing that big decision we’d made at such a young age. You see, my husband and I met when I was a freshman in highschool. We’ve dated since I was a freshman in college, and we got married and had children before most of our friends. We were still pretty young when we had our children. (I had my daughter at 25, and my son at 28.) So looking back on this this decision that we were “done”,  I’m now thinking we were merely babies just starting life. So skip 4 years later, we decided to put ourselves back in and see where it led us. I’ll skip a lot of the details {for now}, but after what feels like an extremely long journey… it’s been about a week now that I’ve found out I was finally pregnant.

I’ve felt like the Earth had literally tilted its axis and put everything just perfectly in place for me. I’ve literally felt like the luckiest girl in the world. And yesterday I woke up and had to face the realization that this baby wasn’t going to make it to earth this go-round with me. I know I was SUPER early on, and I can only imagine how other women must feel after being much further along. But to me, I was already so invested. So attached. So insanely happy. So, here I am this morning. We’re packing up to go to the beach. And all those things (minus one) I still have to be perfectly happy about and grateful for. I still feel “complete” in so many other senses of the word. But this lingering pain in my heart is so hard to process and so hard to understand and I find myself constantly questioning where to go next. I’m emotionally exhausted, yet all of the questions remain and cannot be ignored or replaced with other emotions. I’m 100% aware that “whatever will be, will be” and that “it is in God’s hands” and “everything happens for a reason”. So, no offense, but please spare me the cliches. I’m probably the biggest believer of this knowledge. And that knowing is definitely helping me accept this position I’m in and will help me move forward. But today, at this moment, I just need to feel. Feel this pain and yet still reflect on the blessings that are right in front of me. Maybe that’s why we ironically had this beach weekend planned for today? When this first started happening yesterday, I was so upset. How could this happen right before our beach trip? This trip was going to be so perfect. Watching our babies play on the sand, holding my husband’s hand with one hand and the blossoming baby in my womb with the other. EVERYTHING was literally perfect in my world. But today, my reality has changed. Yet I still have these 2 beautiful babies in front of me to be so extremely thankful for. I have a husband who has been so incredibly selfless on this journey with me, taking every single step without question. Because he knows my heart and holds it so carefully in his hands. He’d literally do anything to make me happy, and this process has taught me that more than ever.

So, I’m going to pack up our suitcases and our car and head to our own little paradise 30 minutes away, process my pain, all the while thanking God for this place I’m at in life. And I won’t ignore the sadness in my heart, but I also won’t let another opportunity for a stamp on my passport to go by without being in the moment of it. This last weekend before my youngest baby goes to Kindergarten and my big girl goes to THIRD GRADE!? What?! I don’t know how I got here so fast, but it’s been so much amazing, and I don’t want these moments to go by without appreciating the time I have with the babies God HAS given me. Right here in front of me.

Before I could do it, though, I needed to put this out there. To acknowledge the truth of this moment in this time of my life. So here it is, raw and real. If you’re still with me, thanks for letting me open up about this very real experience in my life. If not, that’s OK. This “stamp” was more for my documenting than anyone else’s. And it will always be here in my pages. Part of me.*Please forgive any grammatical errors. The words were coming quickly, and not overly-checked.