The Hazy Pink Fairytale

I wrote this a few months ago in an effort to get some thoughts onto paper. Today, it's been eleven months since the loss of our precious little one, and tomorrow is Mother's Day, so these things are on my mind a little more. 

And since it is Mother's Day tomorrow, and since it has been 11 months today, here are some things that I wanted to say about these couple of days for me. Tomorrow may, or it may not be a hard day for me. Since I'm thinking that it might be, and wondering if it will be, I imagine that it's probably going to be less difficult than a regular day, since I overthought it.
I also wanted to say that while I do for sure still desire to be a mother, it doesn't mean that I'm bitter about Mother's Day. I'm thankful for my mother, my mother-in-law and my friends and family who are mothers. God has a reason and a plan for my being a mother and I do trust that. Tomorrow, Carson is being very sweet and has lunch plans for us, "just in case" I'm feeling extra sad, but in reality, I am thankful for the opportunity to experience my mother's love and effort, and that is what I will be *hopefully* thinking about tomorrow. 

If you are someone who is a mother in my life, whether my actual mother, my mother-in-law, or a friend who happens to be a mother or mother to be, I am thankful for you and thankful that you are able to show Christ's love to the children in your life. I pray for you, that you will walk in a manner worthy of Christ, and that your children will see that and be blessed. 

Happy Mother's Day.

--

Once upon a time, a little girl had a dream.

It seemed like a hazy pink fairytale, with a grown-up version of the little girl sitting in a rocking chair holding a sleeping child that was suspiciously red haired like the girl.

She rocked her dolls and kissed the tops of their heads as if they were real babies just falling asleep instead of babies with painted-on, unblinking eyes. She talked to them as if they were her real children. She tucked them in and pretended to feed them with "magic" bottles that made it look like they were really drinking.They'd be put in imaginary car seats on their way to grocery stores, carried about in a little green baby sling just as the little girl's baby brother was carried.

As the girl grew older, she sometimes took care of other people's babies. She would pretend that they were hers though, as she rocked them to sleep or sang to them to keep them from crying. She would walk by mirrors as she carried them, just to see what she would look like with a baby in her arms. She would watch mothers as they talked to their children, deciding how she would interact with her own someday.

She grew a little older and got married. The dreams of holding a red-haired baby became a little more specific. They might have brown eyes, she thought. She wondered if they might be tall and brown-haired and tan easily and look a little more like someone else. She didn't think about these figurative babies constantly, but they came to her mind from time to time.

The girl was surprised when she found out that the dream was coming true. She thought about boy babies and girl babies, what it would be like to have a baby in one of the coldest months of the year. She calculated how old the baby would be at this event or that the following year. She couldn't believe that the things she had hoped for so many years ago would have a face and a name and eyes that actually blinked. Babies were all she ever thought about all of a sudden, all that she could see when she was out. She couldn't believe how much she loved the baby that secretly grew inside her. Every time she felt sick or strange, she thought about the baby and how excited she was that all things pointed to growth and life.

There was suddenly a horrible day where the girl didn't know what to do, but knew that the things she had thought about were not coming true in a few months. There were several terrible days and weeks after it. These things changed the girl a little. She wanted to cry when she saw babies in the store, and one time she did. She wasn't sure how she felt anymore, but the dreams of her childhood certainly felt threatened, as she faced cold reality. She felt like life had bruised her a little, crushing her dreams and heartlessly taking her child.

Months passed, time went on. Some people forgot about what had happened, but the girl knew that she never would. It took awhile for her to dream of babies again, and when she did, it was different. She no longer thought about nine months of bliss, but of terrible endings and worst-case scenarios. She wondered if the closest she would get to her dream was to hold other people's babies and look in a mirror. She wondered how many times she would have to say "Not yet", when well meaning people asked if she had any babies, and if saying that was actually a lie. She wondered why people made comments that suggested that she had never been a mother, when at one time, she was. She knew it was hard, but she wondered if people who had babies knew how much it hurt when they complained about their pregnancies. She cried about petty things like that more often. She was sad more of the time. She didn't really like the kind of reality she experienced.

But still, she wondered about that red haired baby with the brown eyes. She thought about the hazy fairytale. She hoped that it would someday become something to recall to mind when she attended weddings and kindergarten graduations and relived holding those now-grown babies once again. She hoped that one day, she could look back with her children and tell them her story. She prayed and she hoped. One day, she knew, she would have the answers she longed for.

Whether the story would have the outcome she hoped for or not, she did not know. What she did know was that she could not write the ending to her hoped-for fairy tale and that the story was far beyond her understanding. Hope filled her, for she realized that all along, someone else was writing the story.