We will not fear //

In the 6 months since I lost our baby, a lot of emotional roller coaster days have come and gone. But lately, my soul has been at rest.

On my 27th birthday, my amazing husband took me up north, just the two of us, for an "us" style day. Including two new tattoos I added to my sleeve.

One: our wedding symbol, the two arrows with our initials and two intertwined rings.

Two: a mountain scape with a river coming from it, written under it:

God is in the midst of her she shall not be moved.

This is quoted from Psalm 46:1-7

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.

A trusted friend of mine had sense that Obadiah would have been the type of man you named a mountain after. Thus confirming the idea for the tattoo I had already been thinking of getting.

And though I had tried to stay strong, the loss did move me. After a few months of failing to conceive again, I started to put my "faith" in my own abilities, my own calculating, what I could do to make things work. And the more I tried, the more emotional spinning happened, and the more distraught, depressed, and frustrated I became.

I had wanted to swallow the grief and chase it down with my own solutions.

And in the midst of my attempts, He gently brought a new experience of His goodness.

I had been experiencing strange pains in my hips. A yoga article mentioned that negativity is held in the hips. So I thought i'd see if that was the problem. I laid into a stretch, closed my eyes, and began to verbally let go of negative things I had been holding onto. Asked for forgiveness for bitter things I had whispered in my heart towards people. And when I asked God if there was anything else, I began to think about the day we lost the baby. I could see myself curled up in a ball in the worst pain, telling myself things to convince myself of anything to get through it and & then He said:

He would have been really sick.

I felt a rush of energy poor down my thighs, peace overwhelmed my heart,

and the pain in my hips stopped.

I have a strong conviction of the goodness of God, but His hand in difficult circumstances is something I do not fully understand. But in that moment I saw, perhaps, His mercy.

I had had people say to me "the body knows what its doing, your baby might have been really sick" or "something must have been wrong"... and those comments only made me angry at myself and angry at my body. They felt like brush off comments to disengage their compassion and to give me some sort of quick fix comfort.

But the voice of God, isn't just a whisper or a quick fix of comfort, it's a stream of living water.

In that moment, what I felt released wasn't some off chance feeling. All I could see, before, was the loss I had experienced and that I wasn't getting what I wanted. But in that moment I felt my entire body receive the truth that God is good and He has a big picture plan. Bigger than what I had been willing to see.

And since this moment, my soul has been at rest. I've stopped trying to make things happen, i've begun to enjoy the things I love again, and invest myself into my health and the now that I have, without worrying about what may or may not happen this month or next month. Because I see, there's more at work than getting what I want, and though I don't fully understand it, I trust Him.

I trust His timing and his ways.

Psalm 46:1

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear.