For a long time, I had convinced myself I had nothing to say. Rather, I had a lot to say, but it made my brain hurt a little bit trying to connect it all. And if I couldn’t fully understand it, how could I articulate it in a way that anybody else would?
I had a lot to say, but I wasn’t quite sure how to say it. So I just set it all aside, stored up on a bookshelf and buried in another prayer journal. There were moments, however, when the bravery built up. When the words bubbled over refusing to be contained, and I found a trusted friend with whom to share it. “Hey, could you listen to this thing that came out of my quiet time?” I asked, and then gauged her reaction.
The first time I thought that these words coming out of me might not be what the average girl experiences happened at the coffee shop around the corner. I sat with two friends on a hot summer day under an umbrella shade. We sipped our iced coffees, and I nervously opened my journal, reading the most vulnerable parts of me.
When I finished reading, I looked up, and their jaws were on the floor.
it was the moment that I knew I had to keep writing
To keep digging, keep recording these thoughts that sometimes feel like a foreign language. Because somehow, someway, God will string them together in the someday-way that His Spirit intends.
* * *
Seven or eight years later, I met a girlfriend for lunch. It was another summer day, another al fresco meeting place in another city 130 miles away from the first. I had countless journals filled with things I had never shared. “I know my story is written in there,” I told her between bites of chicken pesto and swats of flies. “There’s an entire book tucked away in those journals. I just don’t know what the ending is yet.”
* * *
A couple of years after that, I started publishing the words. I was still in the thick of my waiting and grief – Shawna only being gone for seven months. And the day before my first blog post, I was grappling with the heaviness of another, “no, you’re not pregnant.” (That made it an almost-even 89 months in a row.) I had been pretty good in the few months prior in terms of protecting my heart. But that weekend, I allowed myself to get hopeful after getting sick in a coffee shop bathroom. Logically, I knew it was a stomach bug. I had been traveling home from a weekend away where a girlfriend had been sick in our hotel room 12 hours earlier. But still, I hoped it was a fluke. I begged God for a miracle. I took a test, “just in case.”
There wasn’t even a hint of a pink line. First, I was angry. And then? I got so sad. How much more sorrow? When will You say that this waiting-road has been long enough for me?
The next morning, I limped to His throne of grace, begging Him to meet me because all that I wanted to do was go crawl back into bed. Lift my head for me until I can lift it on my own, I prayed.
Help me to think on Your lovingkindness, I prayed, writing down the words of Psalm 48:9.
Give me a voice of thanksgiving to tell all of your wondrous works, I wrote, thinking of Psalm 26:7.
and then, I wrote the words that changed everything
Maybe now is the time to start my blog. To go back through the really rich moments I’ve had with You, to remind myself of them again. And to share with other women in similar scenarios. To have a voice of thanksgiving that is honoring and worshiping You through every rough moment. Yes, I might curse. I might yell. I might cry hot, angry tears. But I always want to turn around and still say unequivocally that You are good. You are kind. And You love me.
At some point along the way, I stopped talking and started quietly suffering in silence. The next morning, after years of knowing that I would write a book someday, it was finally time to start writing (rather, re-writing old prayer journal words).
That morning, I found my voice again.
You just don’t know…your words, God’s Word, the revelations of truths I had heard a million times (I am a Preacher’s daughter) yet never comprehended. I’ve not suffered the long waiting journey of delayed fertility; I have 4 amazing young adult children. But I know where your words come from. I know the depths of aching and sorrow from delayed answers. I know the angry tears, the moments of feeling so lost that you may never find your way back, the setting aside your Bible because you just can’t….. And I know, God. Is. Good.
Thank you. For being a conduit of God’s “pull my hair back whispers” and gentle nudgings back to where it all started for me. Where I allowed the numbness to provide a layer of protection against the disappointments and the pain. Where I stopped being a conduit for those I could be reaching because I had let my well run dry and had nothing left to give.
It is a process, this coming back to the ground level of loving God and letting him love me. But He is so faithful. I am overwhelmed with his patience and grace.
I have learned more from his Word in the few months since I’ve found your blog than in all the decades I’ve been a Christian combined. Thank you Jane, for your love for God, your heart for others, and your generosity in sharing your story, the ups and the downs. I feel like we could have been friends if I had not grown up on the east coast and you on the west. You are a kindred spirit, without even knowing it, and I am thankful for you.
Misty, the feelings and disappointments and numbness you described – I have fought such similar feelings, and I found so much encouragement from your reply to this post. God has been gracious lately to remind me of the journey we’re all on and how similar our griefs can feel. There’s so much hope in that and so much community – knowing that we’re all hoping and hurting in so many similar ways. So thank you for sharing that!
And JANE. Your words never cease to remind me of God’s never-changing goodness despite the pain and confusion we feel. You have no idea how much hope your words bring. I am entering into a similar waiting season to the one you’ve described here, and it brings me so much encouragement to see how you fought to seek and believe God even on the days when the tears won’t stop flowing. Thank you, as always, for your honesty and for the truth you share here.
So glad you did!!!
Jane, first I adore everything you have written!! And I soooo could have written those first sentences!! I just cannot get it from my head to the page!! Thanks for so much good solid teaching and encouragement!!
I’ve been grappling with God telling me I am to write a book some day. I won’t even write in a prayer journal. Writing was my most favorite thing until someone violated my most intimate words and so I stopped writing. Although fertility is not what I was waiting for I was waiting I came across your book unexpectedly and it was everything I needed. I suffered from depression for years. I was a bad mother in the sense that I was not present. I can say now after 6 years of being a mother I am finally present. God healed me. I’m finally clear headed. I knew I was waiting but I didn’t know what for. I am a whole new person and you inspire me to write down the crazy thoughts in my head.