I knew it would be a hard winter. It didn’t disappoint. The depression weighed heavy, the cold numbed, the bitter dry season felt never-ending.
I knew it would be hard. But I didn’t expect the first tastes of spring to be so hard too.
March started and hope got in line, and I thought, oh good, now it will get better, now the gloom breaks, now the load lifts. And maybe it’s because I expected it, maybe it’s because I demanded it, but whatever the reason, it didn’t come.
With March comes spring and daylight lengthening, but did I forget for a moment who I am, did I miss my own story? March brings memories. Memories of when that season first began, memories of when life began unfolding, and March brings memories of wrecking.
And I keep rolling around the memories in my mind, as my body reacts to its own remembering, and I remember the moment I couldn’t sing to Him.
It was a Sunday, March 11th, three years ago, when that other world was beginning to end. I was late, I knew I was late, but no one else did. Not even my husband, because how do you tell him again? I was late, and I remember when I first thought it, first looked at the calendar, first realized I just might be pregnant. I was late and I was terrified and I just knew, if I had to go through another miscarriage, it would break me.
I stood in church with my secret, and I knew, though no one else knew, He knew. They sang “I Exalt Thee”. And I stayed quiet. I, who loved to sing, couldn’t. I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t raise my hands, and I wasn’t angry at Him, I just knew I could not honestly sing a song pretending like I submitted to His Lordship.
I couldn’t sing because I couldn’t lie. I was wrestling Him, wrestling since the moment I realized I was late and sobbed on the bathroom floor begging Him to not let me go through it again.
Oh, I had no idea. No idea that He would have me walk it again, walk it in deeper waters, walk through it and so much more.
I had no idea He would bring me through that.
And every time since then, when we sing “I Exalt Thee”, I’ve sung with such gratitude to the God Who gives us second chances to sing again. To let me live to sing again, to let me trust to sing again.
And as this March has rolled around, and that memory rolls around, I realize I’m mostly sure that was the song, the song I couldn’t sing that day, but I realize I’m not 100% sure. What if the memory is marred and it was a different song?
I text our worship leader, tell her my memory, ask her, can she go back that far in time to see what songs we sang that day in March? She can, she does, but first- she’s awed, sends me the list for this next Sunday: “I Exalt Thee” right there on that list.
And she steps back in time for me, back to that day I was silent, and sends me the confirmation: “I Exalt Thee”, March 11, 2018, sung with “Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful” and yes, I remember it well. Stoic while the music played.
And as I keep rolling memories around, it hits me. That day, the day the hemorrhaging hit and the ambulance came, that moment of emergency, it was during church. And I remember how even that was a weaving of God’s hand as help was near and the church family stopped to pray for me. But it hits me now for the first time, that I could watch that service.
I click on Facebook, scroll back in time to step back in time, and there it is recorded, May 20th, 2018. The church service that was going on when it all went wrong.
And it’s eerie, watching it, seeing the people who came to help look down at messages sent and rush out of the service. Seeing those who came to help grab others out of the sanctuary. Watching then the others continue in worship, when I had been in the ambulance flying to the hospital. I see them, remember seeing their same clothes when they came to visit me in that hospital that day. I hear the sermon, the point made about “Even If…”, what would then become a favorite of mine to cling to.
And all of it is surreal, but nothing gives me chills quite like when the music starts and the congregation joins together in singing “Worthy of it All” and then goes right into “I Exalt Thee.”
And I picture myself standing there weeks before, unable to sing it; picture myself that day laid out in an ambulance, unable to sing it; picture myself weeks later, given that second chance, singing it.
I text the worship leader, tell her the story, tell her all of why I’m asking. She tells me, the next 2 Sundays we’re singing “I Exalt Thee”. This Sunday, March 14th (the anniversary of when we found out we were pregnant with Elim), we’re singing it with “Worthy of it All”, just like they sang it on May 20th, 2018 when I faced death. And she tells me the next Sunday, we’re singing it with “Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful”, just like that Sunday in March when I couldn’t even sing.
Isn’t it a gift to ever see His fingerprints?
March memories are strong, and PTSD is high, and we are close to nearing in to the end of a long adoption journey. The day comes when one more big step is to be taken, but the adoption worker calls instead, tells us the adoption file’s been lost. And it’s like all the wind’s been knocked out of me, and March is starting out way too cold, and I sink to the kitchen floor and sob my broken heart out.
“Mommy, you sad?” She comes to me, takes her baby bear’s blankie and wipes my tears. And she has no idea, no idea as I sit on the kitchen floor bawling my eyes out how my heart is wrapped around her, wrapped around her word “Mommy”, and suffocated by this system that still hasn’t let us be fully wrapped together.
They lost the adoption file, lost it, and I am about to lose it. How can this journey be dragging on still? How can we be one step away for six months? And now, two steps back. If not more.
And my heart is already March-hurt, and the winter’s too long, and I remember the daffodils. They should be coming up now, others are posting their pictures of them, and it’s time.
And I tell you, I decided to go look outside for our daffodils, not to see if they were growing, but because I was convinced they were not. I had given up on spring, given up on new seasons, and sure, goodness blooms for other people, but surely not for me, not here. So I went to look in the yard for more barren, dry, empty places. But of course they were there.
There they were, small and new and hopeful. Though just days before the ground was covered in snow and ice, there they were. Little miracles and proof of the God Who can bring spring right out of winter.
And the next week? The adoption worker finds the file. She calls with the good news, and my joy lasts for one minute before PTSD comes crashing in and anxiety wracks my brain, bracing it for what would go wrong next. That’s the odd thing with PTSD: bad news is heard as bad news, and good news is heard as bad news too. It’s a messed up neuro system no doubt, and I know it’s irrational, but my heart rate and mental loops and shaking won’t listen. And this adoption news in March feels like pregnancy news in March, and this time, can I sing?
Even though winter claimed this earth just days ago, new life burst through now. The barren trees now bud with red beads of hope, the daffodils defy all odds and press through. God is singing again, springing again, He is the God of song. And He’s helped me sing again, helping me still to sing again, and I know one day He will heal my PTSD and give me a whole new freedom to sing again.
He gives us so many chances to sing again. To sing to the God Who sings again. The God of new songs, singing over us.
Will you sing too?