if i’m being real, i was reaaaaaal bitter & full of resentment at one point in our journey. i wanted so badly to be the one announcing the pregnancy & not the one just liking the facebook post. i remember feeling like i was missing out on so much. it seemed like all of my friends & neighbors were having babies. it felt like every holiday included at least 3-5 pregnancy announcements & every month those holiday announcement babies were being born. i had major FOMO of being a mom. i felt like i was missing out on being a mom at the same time as all of my friends & that meant that i was missing out on life. i wanted so badly for it just to be my turn. so badly that i refused to be happy for anyone’s happy things, pregnancies & achievements. i wanted all of the happy things for myself, so much so that i only wanted those happy things to happen to me.
i don’t remember when it was, but one day, i woke up & realized that i didn’t like the person i was becoming. i realized that i had plenty of friends that weren’t pregnant. i realized that just because the happy thing i wanted wasn’t happening yet didn’t mean that there weren’t ANY happy things happening to me-- in fact, there were LOTS of happy things happening to me! i remembered a quote that a dear friend had told me:
“Those we see daily are the ones God has given us to love.”
i realized that God was giving me SO many people to love… so many babies to love. no, i wasn’t waking up for 2am feedings. no, i wasn’t changing a million diapers. no, i wasn’t setting up a nursery or dressing my baby. but there were SO many babies for me to simply love. there were so many friends (that weren’t even parents yet & some that were!) around me that i could show love to. we were able to show love to our family.
when i remembered this quote, i realized that it was time for me to make a change. i decided to start acknowledging other people’s happy things & tried to start sharing in their joy. can i tell you a secret about joy? there is so much to go around. our capacity to feel joy can only grow. you can share in someone’s joy simply by liking their image or by saying congratulations. for me, it took time to level up from just liking an image to saying congratulations, but i got there. when i started saying congratulations and sharing in my friends’ joy, i felt my capacity to feel joy grow.
after i made the decision to share in peoples’ joy, i made another decision to repair my relationship with God. for years, i was really mad at Him. i felt abandoned by Him. and i felt like my prayers & sincere requests for a baby didn’t matter. so i stopped praying. for a long time, i stopped praying. so when i decided to repair my relationship with God, i decided to begin praying again. i’m still not perfect at it, but i try to pray every day-- with meaning & with heart. and every once in a while i try to pray out loud because i feel a stronger communication with God when i’m praying out loud.
another change i made has been immersing myself in scripture or meditation every day. again, i’m not perfect at this practice, but i find that just talking to God isn’t enough. we can’t just rant to Him, we need Him to speak back to us & we do that through reading (or listening) to scriptures. this change has transformed my days & seriously helped me resolve so much of the bitterness i’ve felt towards God in my journey.
the last change i’ve made is allowing joy to be a part of my journey. for a long time, any time i felt joy or happiness i would just push it aside or ignore it. i didn’t believe that i could be happy or that i should be happy. i pushed it away because i didn’t want it to be a part of my life. after realizing that i could be happy, i started letting joy and happiness be a part of my life again. i started letting the happy feelings stay for a minute longer, and then a minute longer, and then another minute longer to the point where i was happy for an entire day. and then another day. and then another day.
i realized that while a lot of the journeys that i followed involved a whole lot of bitterness & resentment, my journey didn’t have to be that way. my journey could involve joy & happiness. my journey could be filled with faith & trust in God’s plan. my journey could strengthen my marriage. my journey could change me for good.
your journey can do that for you too. you absolutely do not have to be full of bitterness & resentment. your journey can involve joy & happiness. your journey can be filled with faith & trust in God’s plan. your journey can strengthen your marriage. your journey can change you for good.
