Weak Enough

(You came back after reading my first ugly! Ha! For real though, if I have one person come back that isn't Best Friend I can do the next one. It super helps cause I'm always afraid. TRUTH.)

I struggled a lot with how to do my second post. I mean, I accomplished the, "here's why I'm blogging in the first place", "here's why I named it Hallelujah" post... but now what?? I can't bomb my second post if I want a post number three. So I had to have a conversation with me: Annie, TRY HARD. Don't be annoying. Don't be offensive or bunny-trail (my favorite). Don't be watered down. Be REAL. Be really, really, awesome at REAL. Okay? GO.

UGHHH. You guys, I can't even stand me sometimes. The above thought-process is exactly why I ended up with a tugboat in my hand in the first place: trying, so, incredibly, HARD, to be good enough.

Here's my issue with life: I thought if I worked hard enough, thought things through long enough, and controlled the outcome of those two things well-enough... I could make my life safe and happy. I'd finally arrive at the general golden place of "the shelther of His wings", and be safe with all the other impressive Christians that smiled a lot. Only, making my life feel safe was an uphill battle since I spent the first twenty-some years of my life going through one ugly trauma after another. Pregnant at 17, adoption at 18. Massive car accident two months after that with facial destruction. Single parenthood by 23, immune disease at 25, financial ruin at 27 with the housing crash, and then…

I guess you could say I kind of got to know God a little through all of that. His job of rescuing me and keeping me safe was an overtime one. He pulled me out of these deep amazing pits that were impossible (I was a master at digging creative pits, or jumping in ones that other's would dig so nicely for me). While at the time I had no idea where the pain came from that led me to self-destruction in the first place, I knew I wanted it over. I was tired of pain and pits and despair. So I turned to God, hard; I had HAD it with painful life - I wanted peace. I got a degree in Interior Design, a good job I loved, and bought my own condo with my sweet Josh and enrolled him in private school. After having a boyfriend perpetually from the time I was sixteen to twenty three, I went five years without a single date.

Finally, in 2010 I met a Christian man and after dating for nine months we got married. We had another boy, Max, and I quit working to be a stay-at-home mom. We were leaders in church and I was ready to use all my pain and hurt for good. I loved people - hurting people - and I'm good with people. I could sit down with them all the day long and tell them how much I genuinely understood the struggle and difficulty in knowing God - and how much he loved us, too. GOD WAS MY THING. He made my life not insanity and trauma. He gave me purpose in the pursuit of people who hurt like I used to. I was safe, now. I thought my pain was gone, now. I was serving God with everything in me because I loved him. I was also serving to prevent the life of pain I used to have from ever resurfacing.

And then the whole stillbirth thing. Pain again.

I honestly didn't even know it still existed in modern times. When I called the nurseline and they told me it was possible Oliver was dead, I smirked a little: "oh come on. That doesn't happen." I think I remember reading about it in a history book once, in the same chapter that explained the Black Plague. But now? Babies don't die like that anymore. And in any case, I selfishly and naively thought I wouldn't have to go through stillbirth because God would obviously save Oliver's life, last second, when I prayed super duper hard with mustard-seed faith.

But I never even got a chance to pray.

Yes, I prayed throughout my pregnancy, I prayed he'd be safe. Who cared? No one. There were plenty of nights where I prayed and he was already gone, and I didn't even know. I didn't get to, "pray, have faith, and get all your friends to pray Annie, before he's gone." No. It was just, "too late, Annie. Too late."

So what was the point then? Who cares about everything I was doing for God if he didn't even care enough to give me a chance to pray?! I know what you're thinking - I would have thought it too back before: God isn't a vending machine and prayers aren't always answered our way. But when you're in the middle of trauma, you don't think that way. You think about all the miraculous pregnancy stories you'd heard while in ministry about people whose babies were supposed to die, but somehow made it through anyway. Why? Well, the parents never gave up believing God would come through for them. They were super-duper faithful Christians.

But me? I wasn't so super duper. I wasn't good enough to have a miracle story like that. I didn't even get to pray.

So I checked out. My old life of being abandoned and unsafe, was back. I wasn't good enough. I never would be. I toasted to God saying I was "done". I was so, so, worn of trying to feel his love, so I just wasn't going to work for him anymore. I couldn't stop being a Christian, because he was as real to me as people - I loved him still. But I just wasn't going to try to work on that "good and faithful servant" thing, ANYMORE.

The funny thing was - come to find out - God actually liked that idea.

I'm not saying giving up on serving God will help you - that's where life is fully lived. Hear me - what I'm saying is that my whole ugly story from childhood until 32 had been all about trying to be good enough, and God needed me to know that I already was. He knew I could only learn that if he came through when I wasn't, trying, SO, HARD.

If there's anything I cry harder about than Oliver's missing presence, it's the lengths that God has gone to to show me this life of trying to be "enough", isn't life at all. My, "hard-working enough, smart enough, perfect enough, Christian enough…" striving thing? Well, it was all I knew to do - it was my lifestyle. You don't give lifestyle up easily - you don't even know your lifestyle until you have to change it. So now, now that I was finally worn out from trying, I was weak enough to let God lead.

And He leads so much better than me.

A month after Oliver died, one of my favorite people in the whole world came into my life in a crazy coincidental way. You guys, listen: this Megan person randomly emailed me. Her sweet baby was stillborn too. At 24 weeks, just like mine. With no cause, just like mine. She lived five minutes away from me - FIVE. She was my age, my culture, my kind of person.

Her sweet daughter that was born still? Her name was Annie - like mine.

And three months before we met, she had had her Rainbow Baby - the sun after the storm. His name?

Oliver.

It's going to take everything in me to describe what God did through this amazing woman in my next post without drowning my computer in tears and snot. There's just no way.

When God leads... it's SO MUCH BETTER.