Friday, October 21, 2011

strength and courage


"Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places." -unknown

I came across this quotation this evening, in the form of this greeting card someone had pinned on pinterest.com.


I had been browsing pinterest for about half an hour, trying to pass time until the laundry is done and I can fold it and go to sleep. Jake is on his overnight route tonight, and it's hard for me to sleep anyway, so I was hoping to get into a zombie-esque state of mind before I went to bed. I was doing a pretty good job of numbing my thoughts, actually, until I saw that image on my screen.

It stopped me dead in my... right-click-new-tab marathon.

I actually find it a bit amazing that I even noticed the quotation. As much as I love language,

writing, reading, poetry, prose... when it comes to inspirational quotations, I don't generally notice them. If they're sung to me in a song lyric, they stick, but if I see a quotation on a brightly colored square in a lovely accented bold font plastered on a Facebook page or other website, my eyes automatically (it seems) skim over it. I don't know, I guess I prefer to read things in paragraph and standard sentence form? That seems so... unlike me and my love for the arts, visuals, poetry, and such. Ah well, that's how it is. I pretty much skim right over anything of that nature.
For example:

Generally speaking, something even as basic, bold, and punchy as this little ditty wouldn't catch my attention.

I wish I knew why. Hopefully, dwelling on that won't keep me up all night.

But anyway, for some reason, the quotation above caught me, in all it's unlikeliness to have done so.

That's pretty... lucky? Or meant to be?

I think that's a pretty fantastic, and quite fitting, quotation/proverb to relate my current season of life to.

It's been over a month now since we lost Sprout. On the 15th of October, I cried my eyes out to my husband, telling him how I'm just not feeling like I am "over it," yet, and asked him to accept me for that, as I accept him for having moved on.

I still don't think I've moved on. But, I do feel stronger somehow. Until that day, I hadn't really cried about it in over a week, so naturally, that little meltdown caught me off-guard. I shed a few tears on my birthday, thinking about it, and how I was pregnant last year on my birthday and "should have been" this year (in my mindset, of course), and up until this evening when I read of another friend losing an unborn child, I was tear-less again.

I hate to say I'm "proud" of that, because it seems a weird place to issue the term "pride," but I do take some peace in knowing that my heart is mending.

Yes, it was broken. It still aches for my lost child. But, it's healing. Slowly, steadily.

I will admit there have been a few days here and there where I just didn't feel I had the courage to face the fact that I had to get up, go on, knowing I'd lost a child. But, I did it.

I would have been in the second trimester now. I soon would have been feeling my baby move for the first time. Those are moments I am missing, longing and aching for, as I type this.

But, I know that someday I will have those moments again.

I haven't much else to say about it, I guess. I already feel that I've babbled enough.

In perfect timing, the dryer just buzzed.

Godspeed, friends.

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