For later...

Dear self:

You do not cope well with morning sickness. Weeks of sitting in one spot simply serves to feed your tendencies to hyper focus. All you can think about is how awful you feel and how you simply MUST sit down again, and how you will NEVER dig yourself out of the disaster that your house has become.

At four weeks of sickness (10 weeks pregnant, 9/1/12), you are suffocating under a blanket of guilt. That the children haven't been properly cared for, fed, nurtured, taught...and that you haven't really parented them at all. The kitchen table hasn't been fit to eat on, the fridge is full of rotting food, and the bathrooms are filthy. There are DRIFTS of dog fur in every corner and the carpet feels mysteriously crunchy.

You have become a hermit in stretchy pants and sports bras. Your hair is in a permanent ponytail. You have cancelled every reason to go out of the house and have even solicited friends to take your children where they must go. The first week of school was a paltry sham.

Your trips from your comfy chair to the bathroom have become reconnaissance missions, you are shocked to see that you really and truly are the heartbeat of your home. And you are very, very, very scared by that. You are also seized with the desire to somehow, by hook or by crook, figure out a way to make the house run smoothly without you...so that when this precious babe is in arms you can stare at her and forget the refrigerator for a few weeks.

One minute you realize that you've forgotten what this sickness is all about, that it really is such a tiny drop in the bucket of time, the next minute you are weeping tears of joy because this is all such an amazing miracle and you can't wait to meet the next member of your family. And weirdly, even though you are supremely miserable, you are thinking of what it would be like to do this yet AGAIN!!! But then your mind quickly rushes to the sweetness of the thoughts of adoption that have run constantly through your whole life like a steady, predictable stream.

You are honored to be chosen by the Lord to bear witness once again to His miracle of life, His miracle of creation, and to hold in your charge for a season another precious soul. Your body is but a vessel, filled up to please and praise the Creator. You are blessed.

Love, me.