Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

It's taken me a long time (likely far too long) to have acquired the ability to silence my thoughts.  I was raised very vocally and to embrace negativity.  My priest referred to this as "awfulizing" yesterday in church.  So I know that some of you who have read my last post, "The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants" may have finished it with a bad taste in your mouth.  Nine years ago I would have too.  Nine years ago I had lost my firstborn and was expecting my first rainbow.  Health, not gender, is all that mattered.  But more than that, had I read my own words I would have felt anger at the author's lack of appreciation and gratitude for what she had been given.  Her complaints about gender would have incensed my grief over the son I had just buried months before when she had so much and I had so little.

Fast forward a few years and a few healthy rainbows and even after having two healthy girls I still would have not been able to swallow those words without tasting the bitterness.  I still would have thought that she just should appreciate what she has and not let what she doesn't eat away at her.  I probably still would have reacted with some anger.  So I understand if my feelings don't punch you in the gut like they do to me.

I get it.  It's hard for me to wrestle with these feelings knowing how very blessed I am to have these four daughters.  I just can't help wondering if these feelings are stringing behind Eli's death, if they've been buried and set aside since Wyatt's death, if they're a culmination of feelings after both boys' deaths or if it's something brought about by the end of my childbearing years?  Probably a little bit of everything.  But will they dim or go away and if so, when?  Will my heart ever put this to rest?  Add another unanswered question to the pile that has accumulated in my last ten years.

I don't know what has brought you to my blog.  Even if I have read every single detail of your loss(es) I could never possibly understand.  Likewise, no one can truly understand mine or these feelings that well beneath the surface.  Words of judgment and comparison come easy, what's hard is letting those words pass unspoken and without action.