Good Vibes Only [Mostly]

These past few weeks, there has been a flood of good vibes.  It's made it nearly impossible to have a bad day.  Like I feel good.  Legitimate, not faking a smile, good.  And I know I probably won't always feel this way, the hard days are bound to hit eventually, but that's all the more reason I need to enjoy these times when I am feeling good.  Right now I am genuinely in a good place and I think there are a few big reasons why.

I think I can safely attribute 99% of these "good vibes" to blessings from heaven.  I know this sounds super cliche, so let me try and give you something a bit more tangible.  When I say that I am blessed with strength or peace or hope, I mean this very literally.  This isn't a fluffy, "I don't know, I just feel better" kind of thing.  As I mentioned in my first post, when I was still in the position of deciding whether to keep Everly, I was in a dark place.  I truly felt physically incapable of even imagining a scenario where we kept her.  My mind would not even let me go there.  I was depressed and void of any hint of hope for our future.  It's as if I could actually feel my heart breaking.  But as my mind was opened to the possibility of keeping her and I enlisted the help of the Lord in moving forward with this decision, my heart was changed.  I'm telling you, the difference was as vivid and undeniable as when night turns to day.  In an instant, the darkness was lifted, along with the depression and hopelessness and instead, I felt strong, I felt peace, I felt good.  Since making the decision to keep her, blessings and miracles have appeared in our life - one after another - and that strength and peace I felt initially have been coupled with faith and understanding.  More on that to come, but suffice it to say, I claim little to no credit for any positivity I've shown in this situation.

Another huge contributor to the good vibes I've been experiencing is a matter of expectations.  In life, so much of the satisfaction or disappointment we experience can be traced back to our expectations - how we envision things will be vs. how they actually are.  I think one a silver lining in our situation is that we learned early on what Everly's life would look like.  There are many who lose an infant or child who don't have this "privilege" (if you can call it that) of knowing beforehand what is to come.  Because we have this knowledge, I have been able to adjust my expectations accordingly.  Instead of envisioning her sleeping in her crib, playing with her toys, graduating college, getting married, I envision her life as it is and as it will be.  A life safe in my stomach and maybe even a few moments in my arms.  

At first, I approached this in a very practical sense, but then it came to mean so much more to me.  The more I thought about the life of Everly, the more the spirit confirmed to me that not only is this the life she gets, it was the life she was always intended to have.  She was never meant to go off and do those other things.  Everly was sent here to live this very short life and then return safely to her Heavenly Father where she can watch over our family until it's time to meet again.  She isn't being robbed of the life she was supposed to have, she is being given the life that was designed for her.  And when that feeling sunk into my heart, I felt so OK with it.  I can trust in God's plan.  I can give Everly that life.  I can give her nine months of love, protection, and happiness.  I can even give her a taste of sushi ;)  I can learn from her and from this experience and let her change me and our family for the better.  I can give her a really good and meaningful nine months and then I can rest assured knowing she finished the mission she was sent here to fulfill and that she did it very, very well.  Honestly, when I think of it that way I feel proud of Everly and extremely honored to be her mother.

The other big thing helping me keep my chin up are the blessings that keep pouring down on me.  I know I've said it before, so I apologize for the redundancy, but the outreach from friends and family has been unreal.  Every day it seems there is a package or flowers or goody bag or gift or card or letter or text from someone that reminds me we are not in this alone and that there is so much good in the world...so much to smile about.  It's honestly made it kind of impossible to have a bad day.  

And the last thing that keeps me going is selfishness.  I know it sounds terrible, but it's true.  Selfishly I don't want my life to suck.  I also don't want Matt or Harvey's life to suck.  That's just not what I signed up for.  I don't want to spend my life sad or depressed or broken.  I know I'm allowed to feel that way, but I just don't want to.  I want to be happy.  I want to feel good.  So as much as it's within my ability to control, I am going to fight the sucky in life.

The way I see it is, there are two peaks of difficulty in our current situation...the diagnosis/decision and the birth/death.  Right now we're in this weird limbo between the two.  I feel comfortable in saying we've successfully moved past the first peak of diagnosis/decision and now we have six-ish months until the next peak.  Right now, life is relatively normal.  My pregnancy is no different than it would have been had I not received the diagnosis (with the exception of no baby showers, rearranging the nursery or making other plans for life after delivery).  The actual pregnancy in and of itself though, is essentially the same.  So this is where I feel like we have a decision to make.  We could sit and wait for the next peak, dreading it every step of the way and wallowing in depression (which for the record I think we'd be perfectly justified in doing) or we could chose to live life.  We can enjoy the time we've got with Everly, we can grow closer and stronger as a family and we can have fun.  Selfishly, I chose fun because as I said, I don't want my life to suck.  I know - super eloquently written.  My sister said she's going to cross stitch "I don't want my life to suck" on a pillow for me :)

I feel like every trial I've had prior to this I've had the mentality of "just put your head down and survive this until it's over."  I'm not proud of it, but that's just how it was.  I wasn't one to approach difficult things with a "let's make the best of this!" kind of positive attitude.  I approached the good in life with that kind of positivity but the difficult things were always seen as an annoying hurdle to get past before getting back to the good stuff.  To some degree, I am approaching this trial the same way, in the sense that I want to get back to the good stuff.  The difference is, this trial is forecasted to last a whole lot longer than anything I've encountered previously.  And that's what forced me to change my approach.  It's one thing to keep your head down for a week or two until something is over but at a minimum this thing could rock our world for six months and more realistically, for years/our entire lives.  I can sacrifice one or two weeks of happiness but I just can't throw away six months to a lifetime of it.  Especially not now that I've got Harvey and Everly.  They both deserve better. 

So I don't know guys, six months from now when we hit the second peak, I could be having a serious breakdown because unknowingly I've just been suppressing all my really sad feelings.  I'm honestly preparing myself for that scenario.  But for now, I feel like there are lots of good reasons for me to feel OK.  I have people tell me often that it's OK to mourn, probably because they're also fearing that one day it's all just going to explode out of me.  I want to say for the record that I appreciate those reassurances and that I do know it's OK to be sad and to cry.  And I am sad at times and I do cry occasionally.  It's just for me, this feels like the right way to mourn right now.  And when I hit peak two, I think mourning could look a lot different but I'll get there when I get there.  For now, I am choosing to live.