I think most people who’ve gone through difficult times look back at some point and think, “Well, I never saw that one coming, “ or “If you’d told me a year ago that this would happen…”  When I look back to my college years, I expected that I would find an interesting job, get married, and start a family.  Then the chaos of marriage and kids and work would ensue in some happily tumbled domestic fairy tale.  If you had told me then what my experience would be to date, I would have believed the greatly talented husband and the wildly interesting job.  I would not have been able to process losing five babies in miscarriage.  If you had told me the miscarriage part even five years ago, I would have said, I know people who have made it through that kind of loss, but there’s no way I’m strong enough to deal with that.

And now I find myself on the other end of the last four years, slightly dazed and confused, but surviving.  I began thinking about things I wouldn’t have imagined for myself in the last decade.  I would never have imagined writing a blog, for one; I used to equate blogging with diarrhea of the typing fingers (and I have never wanted to be an inappropriate web sharer, providing way too many details better left unsaid – there are some things that should never, ever be published).  I would never have imagined that I would have the courage to share some of the things that I have written or posted in the last two months.  I would never have imagined the strain a decade of life together and five miscarriages could put on my marriage, but I also would never have imagined the growth and grace that have come out of my marriage in the last six months.

When I started the blog, I thought it would be a place to share some of my creative writing and the personal aftermath of multiple miscarriages, but I never thought I would be posting “live” about another one.  (I’m still assuming that lab work today will confirm what my body’s been saying all weekend.)  I know the process, and it’s a little scary to think about sharing it while it’s happening.  The stages of grief are pretty tough to work through, and I was never too public about what I was dealing with before the blog.  I promised myself when I started blogging that I would be honest, warts, doubts and all; now that I am faced with sharing the denial, rage, acceptance, et al, I am terrified anew that I’ll be a lot like the naked emperor.   A ridiculous response to be sure, but it’s the honest one.  It’s still hard for me to imagine that anyone but God could love me for exactly who and what I am, and sometimes I struggle to believe that God loves me just as I am.  I am astonished every time I look at the blog stats that people actually read what I write (people, as in more than one person, as in not just my mom who might be forced at gunpoint to read…).  It’s an amazingly enabling feeling that combats the fear.

The next six months will be hard to write about honestly; it’s much easier to say I’m doing well and only post happy things, but it wouldn’t be the truth.  I know it would not be helpful to anyone else going through the same thing.  Some days are much easier, even downright hilarious while my brain reboots over the next six weeks of the “ditz” stage (I was not aware until the second miscarriage that stupid is actually one of the stages of grief, but last night I called the refrigerator a microwave six times…), and some days are bleak and scary.  But this time around, I’m sharing as much as I can (decently) put into words.  I know it will make me look harder at the process, which should help me to move forward, but you, dear reader, are in for a ride through crazy town.  I hope you packed your clown suit.