By Natasha Hayden
October 2, 2015
It is barely October (my favorite month!), but for many reasons, I have been looking back over this year and the challenges and changes my family has gone through.
In January, our contentment and happiness was rocked by a sledding accident that put my three-year-old daughter in the hospital with potential brain damage. I was deeply shaken, wondering if the rest of our lives would be different. But the bleed into her brain dissipated with no obvious lasting physical effects. The emotional trauma lingered a little longer and will, perhaps, stay with her father and me for a long time to come.
In May, after a year of wondering and waiting, I found that I was pregnant with our third child. It wasn’t an easy decision to make to have a third. We already had a boy and a girl. Our small two-room house fit us, and we were getting close to paying it off. I wavered back and forth about whether or not I wanted a baby. Ultimately, it wasn’t up to us. We struggled to get pregnant with our first child, and this time, we had some trouble again. We left it in God’s hands, and he decided it for us…about a year after we thought we were ready.
In August, we became more serious about looking into new houses, and in the space of one very interesting week, we found a house, got our initial paperwork in order with the bank, made an offer, and began the process of closing. That process is nearing completion now, about a month later, and soon, we will be moving from our home of 12 years, a thought that brings both excitement and melancholy.
Last week, I watched my cat Chewbacca, who’s lived with me nearly as long as my husband, fight his last days of a disease I didn’t even know he had and be euthanized before my eyes, his little body stilling under my hand.
I laugh (and cry a little) to think that I had hoped for a less eventful year at the close of 2014. This one’s not even over yet, and ahead, I know there are expected joys and unexpected losses, blessing and pain all mingled together so that sometimes it is hard to tell one from the other. Such is life. We can prepare all we want, but only God knows what’s in store for us.
This is illustrated so well in even that first moment we draw breath into our lungs. No matter how much a mother prepares for the birth of her child, when labor hits, she has to go with the flow. I wanted to try a natural birth with my oldest, but I had gestational diabetes and had to be induced and ended up with an epidural, thank God, and that’s just how it goes.
As I’ve shared before, two of my pregnancies ended in miscarriage, and a little bit of that fear that my children’s lives are out of my control has remained with me ever since. I can no more protect my children now than I could at their conception and birth, as I was so strongly reminded in January and again, a few weeks ago, when my five-year-old son ran a kid-size motorcycle into a tree, five feet away from a lake. He walked away, but part of my heart still beats on the ground where I stood. We plan and plan and live in frustration when control inevitably slips from our hands.
On these contemplations, I venture into the last quarter of the year, preparing as best I can for a future that is, really, out of my control. But one thing I know for certain: God has brought me through so much and will bring me through the rest, little scrapes and lifelong changes all. I can trust in his control. I might rather remain in comfort and security, going at a slower pace than the rest, but contentment is found in letting go amidst the chaos and knowing he will catch me wherever I fall.
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