Gestation Diaries: On Being Tired + Finding Rest

"You look tired." 

If I had one penny for every time I heard these three words strung together in secession, dripping in pity and sympathy, I would surely have enough money to feed every hungry child on the planet, or better yet, broker world peace. Surely.

It happened again this morning during drop-off at my son's school. One of the ladies on staff was kind enough to ask how I was doing. I nodded, saying nothing because to be honest, today was a pretty decent morning. I actually showered and managed to iron our clothes the night before. I woke up early and put effort into my appearance, a luxury time generally does not afford me. My hair was styled (and I use this term loosely). I was even wearing makeup that I didn't put on in the car, which is pretty much miraculous. I stood there reflecting on how I was winning at life, my pregnant belly at least six inches extended from my waist, holding Lincoln's hand. We were the picture perfect pair standing stoically on the freshly buffed tile like monuments. Then out of the blue, she said those dreaded words. Matter-of-factly. Decidedly. Nonchalantly.

"You look tired."

I raised my eyes to meet hers in silence, the thoughts flooding my head all at once. 

Tired?

I, a lover of words who prides myself on knowing the most politically appropriate thing to say in any given moment, was speechless. I immediately questioned her motives. She relayed this information as though it were some sort of revelation, then stood waiting for some sort of response. I searched her face carefully for clues. Finding none, I studied her petite frame, the perfectly curled bob, the carefully applied eyeshadow, liner and mascara, and finally her outfit that screamed, "I have time in the morning!" I could feel myself growing hot, resentment building, my conscience holding onto my tongue for dear life. 

You see, I tried for the world today. I willed my body into submission and carefully planned every detail of this morning, and you know what? It actually paid off. My world was rotating perfectly on its axis before this moment. Before this woman looked past the makeup and the hair and saw me. Worse still, she had dared to say so. And I despised her for it.

The truth is that I was tired. Am tired. I live in a perpetual state of functioning fatigue as do most mothers. I do not mention this for sympathy. I mention it because it is a fact.

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Somewhere along the way, every parent learns what it means to keep going in the tired. You shoulder new responsibilities because whether you feel like it or not, your kid needs dinner and a bath and clean clothes. You become more disciplined. You exchange routines for spontaneity. It's easy to get lost in the hum of your new life. It's easy to forget about your own needs ... your own self. It's easy to wake up one morning, look in the mirror and find someone you don't recognize staring back at you. Someone who is aging. Or less fun, or sleep deprived.

Then one day, you wake up with a sudden burst of energy and decide to truly "try." All you need is a good pick-me-up to get out of this slump, you tell yourself. So you lug out the makeup reserved for special occasions. Paint your nails. Give yourself a face mask. Take an extra long shower. Shave. Whatever your thing is. And you will feel good - much better actually. More like your pre-tired, pre-parent self. 

You step out of the house on to a day full of errands, or work, or life with an extra pep in your step because today, even if only for today, you feel like you. Not mommy, not daddy. Just you and the hours in this day. Anything is possible. 

Inevitably though, your weakness will show. Sooner or later, you will come face-to-face with your snarky woman in the hallway - the one who can see. right. through. you. She takes many forms: a sudden crisis at work, something important you forgot to do that has major implications, car trouble, an over drafted bank account, a sick kid, or in my case, the straight-up truth. She is life, friend, and she always finds you out. Somehow she always pulls you back, sucks you in, reminds you that you're a faker, and it was only yourself you were fooling all along.

____

I must have said something in reply. I'm quite sure I did, actually. Something polite and benign and forgiving. Pride would not let me concede that her words felt like an undefended jab to the gut. I gathered my dignity there in the hall, then awkwardly escaped, shuffling my son into his classroom and hurrying out of the building.

Once safe in the car, I quickly pulled the top flap mirror down, just to make sure I wasn't crazy. My mouth dropped in horror. The person I thought I was when I left the house was not the person staring back at me. My makeup? Yeah I don't know what happened. You could see the circles under my eyes from a mile away. My hair, my previously perfect and glorious hair, looked like one big, messy frizz. And my eyes, as usual, were the dead giveaway. 

Sigh. I thought I was doing OK today. 

Here's the thing I'm learning: there's a lot in life that you can fake, but when it comes to rest? Rest cannot and will not be faked. It refuses to be manufactured or engineered. There are no substitutes. Either you stop and make the time to care for yourself or you suffer the consequences. Sure, you can get by on coffee and sheer willpower for a while, but sooner or later, it will start to show in one area or another: your face, your health, your mental and emotional stability. Fatigue will not hide silently in the background. Like a toddler in the grocery store, it will throw a temper tantrum until you have no choice but to pay attention.

I hate that it works like that. I'd rather convince myself and the world that I can do it all. I enjoy being the force that keeps our home, our little world spinning. It gives me immeasurable satisfaction when the house is immaculate, and the laundry is done, and dinner is waiting on the stove when my husband walks in the door. The sheer accomplishment of being that consistently reliable wife, that ever-prepared mom, is addictive. 

But alas, life has a way of reminding you that you can't do it all. My resolve to do and be everything to everybody is just as strong as ever, but my body handed in an "effective immediately" resignation the moment I saw those two pink lines on the pregnancy test for the second time. My capacity to take on more and do more has decreased dramatically - seemingly overnight. I am forced to the hard truth that I am not. I can not. 

I need rest. I need help. And I hate being so needy.

____

Like most things in life, rest is a discipline. I, for one, the perpetual achiever, am not wired to rest. I don't wake up in the morning and wholeheartedly pursue the things that recharge my soul. In fact, I often run in the opposite direction in wholehearted pursuit of what needs to get done. All the while, my conscience tugs on me throughout the day. It begs me to slow down, be quiet, find time for prayer, sit with my thoughts, be still. It is no match, however, for my yelling, screaming to-do list. And if I'm honest, I'd rather spend my energy doing. Accomplishing. Achieving. 

But if there's anyone who can get through to stubborn Christina, it's God. This pregnancy, this fatigue that refuses to be covered up or ignored, is actually a blessing. It is forcing me to stop and see what was true all along: that I am not self-sufficient and that I need to discipline myself to truly rest every single day. I need to create moments and times where I can just be still. 

It's tricky, though, because when I say rest, I don't necessarily mean sleep. More often than not, I get more rest from writing than taking a nap. I find rest too in audio books and prayer and long walks. To find out what gives you rest, you only need to ask, what recharges your soul? What gives you a true sense of peace and calm and God's ever-near presence? Do more of that. Invest more time in that. Consistently say no to the things that make you anxious, worried, tense and stressed so you can make time to stop and just be.

These days, I'm letting go of unrealistic expectations that my life will always be perfectly ordered. I find myself saying no (or at least wait) more and more to household chores. Anyone who knows me knows that this is significant growth because I have major OCD. But I am slowly learning to sit in the mess and be OK. Instead of feeling the need to constantly control my environment, I am trying my best to practice controlling my thoughts and my spirit. 

It is nerve-wrecking at first. Many times, I feel like I'm dropping the ball. There are days when I call my husband and plead: "Tell me I don't have to cook tonight. I don't want to cook tonight." There are evenings when I have to reassure myself over and over that it's okay if the sink isn't clear, or there's a ring in the tub, because right now, what's most important is that I take this time to be fully present and fully reliant. There will be time to clean and vacuum, but first, Christina.

Wanna know the ironic thing? You would think that putting rest first would make me less productive. It only makes logical sense. I have a limited number of hours in the day. If I stop to take time for myself, or to spend with God, that's time I'm not doing something else. But it's just the opposite. I find that when I say no, or wait to my to-do list, I create opportunities for others to help me that didn't exist before.

Those dishes I left in the sink so I could spend time reading in bed? My husband washed them, unasked. My sister invites us over for Sunday dinner. My mother washes and folds every stitch of clothing in my house. These are the blessings I miss out on when my pride won't let me be anything other than superwoman; when I'm killing myself to be all and do all; when I'm wearing the lie that I don't need rest. I'm fine.

Underneath it all, I have this irrational fear that if I stop for a moment - stop working, stop going - everything will fall apart. The world as I know it will cease to function. This is not the case of course because thankfully, it's not my job to run the world, and when I try, it only leaves me burnt out and resentful. It feeds the lie that I don't need others, when what I'm craving more than anything is to truly be seen and loved, despite how messed up I am.

I still get it wrong. I still have the annoying tendency to choose less important, more dutiful things over rest and prayer and the life-giving words of Scripture far too often. But I hold fast to the promise that every time I end up here - weak, heavy laden and yes, tired - every single time, He will give me rest.

On Miscarriage + Infant Loss: Death Does Not Win

Editor's Note: National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Day is observed in October of each year. Today, I'm taking a break from "The Gestation Diaries" series to share my own confrontation with loss following a friend's fourth miscarriage earlier this year. To the millions of men and women holding on to faith despite the deep pain of dreams denied and deferred, may you find hope, healing and acceptance in Christ.

___

He came to us in the tiniest of packages. Eyes closed – the peach fuzz on his head so faint you’d miss it if you weren’t looking closely. But I noticed everything that day down to the smallest details: from the broad nose that so closely resembled his mother’s, to the dark silhouettes that foreshadowed what would have surely been gloriously thick eyebrows, to the pronounced ridge in the middle of his thin lips, to the oversized hospital swaddle that drowned his tiny frame in a sea of cotton.

Everything about him was beautifully tragic.

The nurse gently placed him in a clear hospital bassinet, as we huddled around him in silence. More than anything I wanted to scoop him up and cuddle him close, to whisper comforting words in his ear and tell him everything would be alright. More than anything, I wanted to hear his cry. Would it be shy and faint or loud and demanding? More than anything, I wanted him to live. Hope died with him that day at 20 weeks gestation. And once again, my heart refused to find comfort in a world that took babies away before they ever truly lived.

His bereaved mother told me later (and I sensed a hint of pride), that he had taken a few brave breaths in her arms before passing from this world to the next. We never saw her cry – not that day, or in the hard days that followed. She’d made her peace the night before, when her worst fears materialized and the pre-term labor became so forceful that the doctor ordered morphine. 

“It is well,” she told her own mother who barely made it out of the hospital room before bursting into tears.

But it was not well. This was not the first miscarriage. Or the second. Or the third. This was the fourth. This was no misfortune. This was déjà vu. The same time last year, we had huddled around another plastic bassinet in a different hospital trying to come to terms with the same fate of another beautiful baby boy. The year before that, we had huddled in her living room grieving the miscarriage of baby number two. And many years prior, she had silently grieved the loss of the very first baby, which she did not even speak of until recently.

It was not my baby, but oh how it was! I announced my pregnancy just weeks before she shyly told me of hers – an act of courage itself. I was thrilled to learn that we were due days apart, my second and her fourth. We chatted excitedly about all the milestones our boys would experience together – birthdays, adolescence, graduation – and all the while, I prayed earnestly, unceasingly that this baby – baby number four – would be the one. I prayed for the son in her womb more than the one in my own.

Standing in that hospital room, looking down at another sweet, precious child gone too soon, the future we’d imagined for ourselves was erased. I wracked my brain for something, anything encouraging to say.

Everything happens for a reason? But what reason could there possibly be for this?

Don’t stop believing? But hadn’t we all believed this time, and the last time, and the time before that?

God’s timing is perfect? But what about when God’s answer was no?

Everything seemed so completely inadequate in that moment. There were no words as we came face to face with death in the tiny bassinet, yet again. There was no comfort, only foggy doubt and the heavy weight of dreams deferred.

For weeks after, my own grief made surprise appearances in the most random moments. The tears came freely and without warning. On a Sunday morning in church when I could not will myself to sing the chorus of the familiar hymn, “I Surrender All.” During a panel discussion on immigration where the speaker shared his wife’s battle with infertility and their answered prayers for a baby who was now one year old. And most often during prayer, when words frequently failed me.

Grief didn’t give way to reason until weeks and weeks later, and when it did, I allowed myself to confront the one burning question that refused to go away, no matter how much I willed it to.

Why?

Why should I be allowed to conceive so easily when she had tried for so long? Why should my second pregnancy be complication-free, while her fourth was over at just the halfway mark? Why would God keep taking her babies? How could this be good?

I want to tell you I found redemption in the story, the rest of which is still unwritten. I want to say that at some point I had a grand epiphany that made it all make sense, or that I found a string of pearls in the pain. But the truth is that weeks have turned into months and I still do not know why.

Two worlds have collided here in this tender space in my heart. Feelings do not trump my faith in a sovereign Creator and His plan, but neither does faith erase the deep pain of loss. They co-exist in the grey space between what is and what could have been, and I am left to cope with the all-too-familiar ache that lessens with time but never truly subsides.

What do we do when life brings us here? To the grave? To what very well may be the end? What do we do when the rest of the story is so beyond our control? When we want to trust but it hurts and we are scared of being disappointed? What do we do when the whispered prayer that hangs between God and us is not for a new job, or for a bigger house, but for life?

I do not pretend to have the answers. Even now, as I think about what the future holds, the tears threaten. I cannot say with assurance what will happen in my life or yours. I do not know whether there will be a baby number five and even if there is, I can’t control his fate. I am powerless to bend the universe to my will.

But I know the one who can.

It is this tiny glimmer of hope, the smallest mustard seed of faith that refuses to die within. When all that seems right and fair in life is shattered like broken glass, these truths remain: God is a good God and rewards everyone who seeks Him. His ways are far above ours. At this very moment, He is controlling the universe. And despite what it looks like on this side of eternity, miscarriage does not win. Stillbirth does not win. Chemical pregnancy does not win. Sudden infant death syndrome does not win.

Death does not win. 

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More on miscarriage + infant loss from This Joyous Home:

• "An Open Letter: To the Mothers of Unborn Children this Mother's Day"
• "The Unborn"