9 years In

 All my life I feel like I have been searching for my place, Wandering so to speak. Maybe not all my life, but for as long as I have memory really. I have never really felt like I fit in. This became super evident for me around 5th grade, when kids started to point out my differences in not so kind ways, as kids tend to do. Then at home, around the same time my parents were divorcing after 18 years of marriage. I loved both my mom and dad very much, but didn't really feel like the duplicate of either. My mom seemed to have my sister, and my dad was in a league of his own, nonetheless, I seemed to take my dad's side, because as a 12 year old girl I felt like I needed to be his protector and advocate. He would often tell me, "I was his whole world and all he had left," it felt like such a weight to carry at 12 years old. I loved him so though, and it felt good to be needed. My misplaced advocacy for my dad, drew a wedge between my mom, my sister, and I. It was all so heartbreaking and confusing and I didn't really know whose side to be on. Between my parents, and both sets of grandparents strong opinions of the other spouse, I did realize that there were sides to be chosen. When I was with my dad and his parents, my mom was talked about in a less than loving way, scathing, if I am being honest. When I was with my mom, my dad was always being joked about and criticized. I was often told by either side I was going to end up being just like the other parent or grandparent. I felt defective and unlovable in those moments, like I needed to strive to be someone different, someone better and more worthy and normal.  I ended up always feeling like I was on the wrong side, not necessarily the way any of those adults intended me to feel, it was the way I interpreted and internalized everything during that whole process. Divorce is just a heartbreaking thing no matter how its done. I realize now as a parent myself, I am sure my parents weren't intentionally trying to confuse or hurt me, they themselves were hurting, and processing things, and much like the saying goes, I became the confused collateral damage in the whole process. Children are always the collateral damage of divorce, whether we like to admit it or not. 

To top off the drama at home, as fifth grade wrapped up and I moved on to middle school, the bullying became much worse. I was a skinny little white girl with glasses, a perm, and family bargain center clothes as my wardrobe. I was in a big middle school on the edge of Albuquerque with lots of already street wise kids. Not to mention my mom worked in the office of my school, which brought meanness from both students and a few teachers, who must have thought I received special treatment because my mom was a school employee. In all honesty I probably did, and often took refuge in her copy room office during lunch and passing periods to avoid being bullied. I was terrified to walk the halls or step foot into the cafeteria. 

I ended up getting jumped in the hall one afternoon. Girls rushed me from behind, jumped on my back and either side of me and begun punching me and pulling out my hair. I screamed and fought back, eventually catching the attention of teachers. The girls ran into the nearest bathroom, while I ran down the halls bloody to the office where I burst in wailing and shaking. I was bleeding from my head and scratched all up and down my arms. The assistant principal later determined that if she were to suspend the gang of girls, I would also need to be suspended as well since I participated in the fighting. We were all sent to in school suspension for several days as a compromise. I believe to this day, my mom didn't speak up, because she was afraid she might lose her job, and at the time she was working 3 jobs to keep us afloat after the divorce. This sort of thing wouldn't be tolerated nowadays, but it was a different time back then. A lot of these kids were involved in gangs and their parents were just as scary or more so. I recall several times mom telling the stories of the parents who would come in yelling and assaulting the office staff in defense of their children. Maybe some things never do change. It seemed every night I would cry laying in bed next to my mom. I would beg her not to send me to school. I know now as a parent, that must have been so incredibly heart wrenching for her to endure with me. I know she must have felt so scared and sad, and that her hands were tied. 

6th Grade Kenda. 

All of these hard things were happening just as I was hitting puberty, the time when you are really supposed to be figuring out who you are and where you think you belong. A time thats already usually hard on the parent/child relationship.  I was so scared, tired, and confused. I had no idea who I was, or where I belonged. I was in fight or flight mode and looking back now, thats when I began choosing flight as my defense mechanism. I decided the best thing for me to do to escape all this hard was go live with my Dad, Gran, and Pop, in a small town in Missouri, after all, I was all he had and he needed me right? Plus, maybe in a small town in Missouri, I could find a place to fit in, and not be scared I was literally going to get beaten up on a regular basis. In my mind it was a win-win situation. The night before I left in a Uhaul with my dad, to my new life, I laid in my parents bed with my mom and we cried and cried. She told me I didn't have to go, and I told her oh, but I did. As a mother myself now, I can imagine that me leaving was like ripping out a piece of her heart and driving away with it. Especially after all we had been through with my heart and all the aftermath physically and educationally. I'm not sure I could ever let my growing kids do that, especially not with a man and his family that I no longer trusted or loved. My parents divorce was not really amicable. 

I say all this, not to shame my parents or grandparents, or to dwell on old wounds, but to explain some of my backstory. Middle school and that preteen, early teen time in my life, seemed to be when everything I felt was safe and sure started falling apart right underneath my feet. Suddenly I had a whole new life and had to figure out how to navigate these new scary and winding roads I seemed to be on. I also had the job of growing up and figuring out who I was supposed to be now, and who I was at all really. I guess in a way some of me and my emotional development got stuck in 1996, all those years ago. Thats for sure when my self worth stopped developing and I became a people pleaser to a fault. 

Over the next several years I would go back and forth between my mom and dad and change schools several more times. I ended up back in New Mexico my junior and senior year of high school, graduating from Cibola and going on to New Mexico State University to get a degree in teaching. While in high school, and college, I had several relationships with boys and young men. I broke some hearts and surely had my heart broken. A few of those relationships were quite tumultuous and some even abusive and scary. All this also helped shape my sense of self worth and identity. I felt I had very little value unless people liked me and I fit into their boxes. I loved being told I was skinny and pretty. I found most of my self worth in my physical identity. I was desperate for affection and attention as well as anyone who would say nice things to me and about me. I know most teenagers are this way to some degree. Looking back, I did desperate things trying to find my identity, things I hope my children never do. 

It was my junior year at NMSU that I met Amos. I had come out of another very bad relationship with a guy who lied to me, cheated on me, and went as far as stealing my rent money. I sat on the  kitchen floor of my apartment, crying and telling God I was surrendering and I would stop chasing to try and find someone to love me. Little did I know my boy next door was literally on the other side of that kitchen wall, in his apartment that shared walls and a staircase with mine. I was immediately smitten with him months later when we officially met while doing our laundry and having my dog Petey run into his apartment. He was so cute, was older, had the best deep Texas accent I had ever heard and made me laugh. It didn't hurt that he had a real job and a life plan either. We were engaged 3 months after meeting, and married December of that year 2004. We moved fast, and I am forever grateful that he leaned right into my crazy instead of running from it, which guys in the past had done. 

Amos on our honeymoon, landing in Jamaica.

Now you can't expect any man or woman to save you, or fix all your borken, only Jesus can do that. That being said, Amos has had to deal with a ton of my brokenness. He has taken on the hard task of loving me like Christ loves the church. Of all the humans on the earth, Amos has loved me more unconditionally than anyone else ever has. He has seen my brokenness, my exhaustion, my confusion, and he has patiently loved me through every single second, good or bad. Has he always liked me, probably not! I don't blame him. He has lived with me in the midst of my questions and immaturity and he has helped me to grow up. I've always said Amos really is the better half, and I mean that to my core. I didn't realize how broken, confused, and desperate I was, until someone decided to stay and love me through it. Other than Jesus, its the best gift I have ever received. 

Fast Forward to 2006 and we had our first son Asa Joel. After Asa, we endured several heartbreaking pregnancy loses, one that included an ectopic pregnancy implanting itself into my pelvic wall, and requiring several hours of surgery to find and remove. Then in 2009, we had our second son Asher! Between Asa and Asher, and in the midst of our pregnancy losses, I was so devastated, and thought that maybe we would be a one child family. Little did I know, God had five more babies planned. After our first losses, each pregnancy was so scary, especially in those first 12 weeks. Even after I had another healthy baby, I was still always afraid of losing another one. Every pain brought fear with each subsequent pregnancy. 

Me pregnant with Asa in San Francisco, 2006

Our Christmas baby, Asher James 2009. Our first rainbow baby

Then in 2012 we found out we would be having a daughter. We were so overjoyed, but that feeling faded around 23 weeks, when doctors started suspecting problems with the pregnancy. We were encouraged to abort several times, but our faith in Christ wouldn't allow us to do that. So we went to doctors appointments and scans, we prayed and made plans and Koralyn was born April 9, 2012. Our turmoil with Koralyn really started in November of 2011. Then in March of 2012 my Grandma Juanita died after having a stroke. She was a huge part of my whole life, and not being able to go to her funeral when I was 9 months pregnant with a medically fragile baby was so hard. I also was unable to attend my sister's wedding earlier that month. I felt like I was missing so much. Then in the midst of Koralyn's 108 day stay at Cook Children's my mom was killed in a horrific motorcycle accident. I can't fully articulate the shock and devastation I felt in those first days after my moms accident and death. She died two days before my 30th birthday. I know most who know me, know at least some of this story, it has become such a part of my identity over the last nine years. We buried my mom on May 25, 2012 and two months later on July 25, 2012 our daughter was unhooked from her vent and never took a single breath on her own. We buried her on a Friday I believe. 

2013 comes along and I get pregnant as quickly as I can, wanting so desperately to heal some of whats been lost and broken. Abram was born November 13, 2013 and My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and came to live with us in Dallas in December of 2013. My dad went back and forth between our house and my aunt and uncles in Mesquite. I accompanied him to a lot of his treatments and appointments with Abram in his little baby carrier. My dad went home to New Mexico and died in my sisters den in August of 2014. 

Dad, Asher, and baby Abram 2014

2015 I got pregnant again and had our Karis Mabel in October of that year. Lots of other things have happened in all this time. Moves, other deaths, our kids beginning to grow and change right before our eyes. Lots of changes, lots of decisions, lots of sadness and fun too. Life, lots of life has happened with each passing day. Some days since 2012 have been gut wrenching, some have been magical. Who was it that said life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans? Its so true. Life has happened to me and continues to do so. 

I write to process and grieve and make sense of things. I suppose I repeat myself a lot, and if you don't see me living my everyday life, you might be worried I'm dwelling a little too much on my past and my tragedies. It would be easy to think that, I know. Rest assured that the last nine years I have been living. It feels like I have been fighting to live some days. Other days, a lot of days, it feels like I am just barely breathing, barely surviving whats being thrown at me. Honestly I feel like I have lived most of my life this way. Always worrying about whats around the bend, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Confused about where exactly I am and how I fit in, trying desperately to make sense of things and figure out the big picture while also just managing to keep breathing and fighting to take one step forward and then the next and so on. I guess I have felt in so many ways that life happens to me, I react instead of live and experience and really breathe it all in. As my best friend Nora said I want to be a thermostat, instead of a thermometer. Set the tone and temperature of my days, not just react to it. 

I recently watched a movie, LAND by Robin Wright. It is a movie about a woman named Edee who loses her husband and son in a tragic way, and decides she can no longer be a part of regular everyday society, with its people and demands. So Edee buys a cabin high in the Rockies of Wyoming, and retreats there to try and heal, to try and find out who she is now. No cell phone, no electricity or plumbing, no car. Just her and a whole lot of isolation. Its a beautiful poignant movie, that tells a grieving and healing story so well. In one scene her friend, Miguel, who has saved her life from hypothermia, asks her if she has thought about what she wants her life to be now. Her response is one that resonates with my soul. She tells him, "I want to notice more." That statement seems very simplistic and may even confuse someone not intimate with grief. To me that statement carries so much weight, and ever since watching the movie, I have been replaying that scene and its visuals back in my head. Really contemplating what it means to notice more. What it means to be in the moment at hand, to not always be worrying about the next bend in the road. To breathe it in, whatever it is in the minutes we have right now, because really, 

For nine years and even long before that, I have been searching for my place, my identity, my purpose, my self worth. Grasping so desperately for reasons and rhymes I am not meant to know this side of heaven. Im always moving on to the next thing, hoping that the next season of my life brings with it clarity, peace, and purpose. Always thinking if I could just attain some goal, or win someone's affection, that I would be better. I have honestly had such a warped sense of self most of my life, its left me striving and confused. Add in mounted, and complicated grief, and its only because of Jesus that I have any mind at all to put words on paper, or get up and live my daily life. Along the way, I know my husband and my children have suffered at the hands of my seemingly never ending exhaustion and confusion. Grief and its work can be an all consuming thing. Ive lost friends, Ive struggled with depression and anxiety. I have had many moments over the past nine years when I have wanted to die, not being suicidal, but wanting so badly for all the pain, exhaustion, and confusion to end. Praying to God that when I go to sleep, I just wouldn't wan up to keep facing the pain and screwing it all up. I know to some who have never experienced it, that may sound counterintuitive, but you really can be at a place where you want to die without being suicidal. Its a dark, lonely place and I am willing to bet more that have struggled with complicated grief, anxiety, ptsd, depression and so forth, can tell you they have been there too. Our American society, our family, our friends, can all make talking about it so scary because of the stigma. I am willing to say it out loud because I know now that my worth and value are only found in Christ, not in what others think or say about me. Its a freeing place to get to, where you can air your so called dirty laundry and walk away knowing some will be shocked and/or disgusted at you and that thats okay. It simply means they haven't walked this road, and I pray they never have to. 

Koralyn would have been 9 last Friday, April 9, 2021. I have done much in the last nine years to try and honor her, to try and make sense of her death, and the purpose for it all. Grasping to make beauty from ashes, to find meaning and purpose in the pain. Trying to bargain with God and rush the healing and the meaning of it all.While doing that, I have had three more babies. I have been trying to mother my five living children, and love their dad the best I can every single day. Some days I have failed miserably. After nine years of struggle and wandering, I feel as though I'm okay with not having all the answers. I'm okay with letting go of all the grasping I have been doing to find purpose in the pain. The thing is, I have found and had a lot of purpose in the midst and despite all the pain. Its purpose enough to keep hoping, to keep breathing, to keep fighting the good fight of faith. Ive always wanted to do a good job and make everyone proud. For so long I was desperate to make people like me, or love me, because I had so little self worth. 

I don't have some cliche quote or a nice little wrap up to this blog post. I don't, because thats not how life works, and it's not meant to work like that most times, at least not this side of heaven. I do know that so many are experiencing grief. Someone new joins the club every day. It doesn't just have to be a death either, there are so many causes of grief and all are valid. I am so grateful for my faith in Christ who gives me hope, for my children, who have literally forced me to keep going, for my Amos who has continued to love me at my lowest, for friends who haven't left and even a few who have. I hope the next nine years finds me continuing to fight the good fight. I hope I can slow down, cease all my striving and notice things more. I have been blessed with so much and so many. I don't want to just keep breathing, I want to really breathe it all in. 

For those of you who are new to grief, and struggle, be patient with yourselves. Its a life long road. Yes, there are stages of grief, I have gone through them all, and back again multiple times. There is no timeline or ending it seems. It isn't the neat and tidy five stages they have talked about for decades now, its much more complex than that, even the experts now admit that. You can find joy in your journey, but you will have to sometimes fight to do so. Keep fighting and wrestling with God, He won't leave you. If you haven't found Christ, I can introduce you, HE has been there on my darkest days and in the midst of all of my ugly, when I thought I couldn't breathe or keep going. I couldn't have made it nine years without HIM. Lean in to the people that love you. Some may leave when you need them, try and let them go, it will add to your grief and confusion, but them leaving isn't your failing, it usually their fear that makes them go. 

Lean into your grief when you can, lets the waves come, don't try to stop them from hitting your shore, its all about learning to surf my friends. Love doesn't end when death ends a life, in fact, love may just become more true and real and beautiful when you continue to love despite death. Keep breathing my friends. Keep breathing, and one day maybe sooner, or maybe later like me, you will realize you aren't just breathing anymore, you are wanting to breathe it all in again. You will want to breathe it in, and notice more, instead of just surviving, head down, eyes closed, grasping for the next move. One day you will realize you have opened your eyes again, your noticing again.  

First Corinthians 13:13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." A verse that should be read not just at beginnings, but at endings too.

Us, 2021