Year 4 After Loss. Death, Divorce, & Discovering Truths.

” My story is filled with broken pieces, terrible choices, and ugly truths. It is also filled with a major comeback, peace in my soul and a grace that saved my life.”

On July 6th, 2018 I awoke to a home loudly submerged in chaos. I stood in the kitchen. Breakfast on the go, as my beautiful creations ran around our home. It would seem just like any other day and to the world it was, but that day was the day that only four years ago I awoke in my home to find one of my creations had left it.

One where breakfast was not being made, but a tiny twelve pound life was attempting to be restored and where loud chaos was my broken screams, ambulance sirens, and the sounds of the stretcher that carried her tiny body being rushed into the emergency room.

I am a few months late for this post. Or maybe I’m just on time. Life has changed more this year than any of the others. Extremely difficult decisions have been made, and a new discovering of myself began.

My yearly updates have always been about progress ahead.  About finding the joy in the pain and continuing to carry on through. It’s been about me surviving through the repercussions of life thereafter child loss.

Except this year was filled with set backs, brokenness, and a complete loss of who I was. This year the person I had worked so very hard to become vanished as my life was stripped back down to reveal so many ugly truths.

See that girl above? The one with her toes dug into the sand as the waves wash over her feet. Despite the last three hundred and sixty five days, she STILL survived. Despite the waves and the storms she is still standing.

This year lead to the end of her marriage.

This year lead to her being left for the first time in years, maybe ever…….alone.

This year lead her to realize that there was still a fire in her that she thought a damaging relationship and the death of her children had distinguished years ago.

This year brought her closer to her children in ways she could never imagine.

Most importantly this year, that girl, myself,  has lead me to embrace the fear. Something I have avoided and battled with my entire life.

Fear was something I hid from. I thought it protected me, kept me safe from hurt, from loneliness, from allowing myself to make the wrong decisions.

……..and it did. To some degree.

It also caused me to allow thoughts of unworthiness to stay way too long within me, It stripped away amazing opportunities, and it held me back from taking chances where I had no control of the outcome.

Fear damaged my relationships and caused more loneliness and isolation as I hid my broken marriage from my friends, and church family in order to keep my got it all together image.

Fear kept me “safe, ” but fear also lied. Because it was that very thing that also kept me from finding myself.

This year I took the opporunity to embrace everything it has thrown at me. As someone who has strived to make every single decision based intentionally on the outcome this hasn’t come easily.

I’ve made mistakes, I’ve allowed myself to become too reckless at times, and I have had repercussions because of it.

But I have learned some very beautiful things not only about life, but beautiful truths about that once- was- beaten- down girl above.

The one with her feet in the ocean, a smile on her face, holding on so very tightly to one of her own.

I remember the days when I so desperately wanted to tell her.

I wanted to tell her that I knew that very image was one of the first times she breathed in not just the salty ocean air, but a peace and free-ness she had been so long without.

I tried to tell her that she was strong and beautiful….and that  someday she would look in the mirror and not just see the labels, scars, and names that have been branded into her the last thirteen years.

Most importantly for so long I wanted her to know that she deserves to be loved. Wholly. Entirely in all her messiness and imperfections. That she doesn’t have to settle or feel like because of her past she is unworthy of greatness. 

One thousand, four hundred and sixty days have passed since this journey of healing has began. My family looks different, my life has drastically changed, and my story has not been written the way I had imagined. If I have learned anything from my journey it seldom ever is.

I have learned that life is beautiful and ever changing. That it’s okay to live fiercely, to take chances, and to not leave possibilities undiscovered.

This year I was shown where I came from, what I’ve conquered, and the person I am because of it.

I’ve learned that in the midst of it all. God really is a “God of the hills and valleys.” That regardless of my choices and mess ups I am still loved.

I have no idea what the next chapter will bring, but I am ready because I do know one thing for sure.

That now matter how many times I’m told I can’t……I most absolutely will!

#Whosheis   #Whosesheis    #Shewill

Much love, Serre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To The Woman Who Feels Alone……

Aug 1, 2017

I don’t remember exactly when it happened.

That pivotal moment when I realized I was married but I was alone.

I don’t remember if I was sitting on my couch after the kids were in bed or If I was driving to run errands like any other day.

I don’t remember because there were so many times. There was not one pivotal moment but many over time where lonliness sunk in and self worth was ripped away.

Lonliness so deep that even though in the same home I had never felt so far apart.

I don’t remember when we stopped trying.

Really trying.

The moment I realized that he had been checked out for awhile now and I was clinging to something that no longer existed.

I do remember when the fighting stopped, the battles seized, and the day came when there was nothing left to fight for.

Expectations and opinions of others encouraged me to keep going for awhile. I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to disappoint God. I wanted the world to think I had it together. I didn’t want to be judged. Judged for a relationship I had no control to fix. One I begged for to heal. One I had desperately  prayed for years for God to restore.

I had given my everything. All of me for so long what if it was a mistake?

Except one day I woke up and realized I had given so much with so little in return that I wasn’t even here anymore.

Not the real me anyways.

Just the shell of a woman who went through the motions, who encouraged strength, and faith, and trust, and self worth but didn’t believe any of them for herself.

A woman who was living a lie, who wanted so desperatley to fit into society’a standards, to be seen as an overcommer, to live up to others expectations and willing to put it all above herself.

The mother willing to continue to teach her children, her daughters that to receive love meant to give up everything about themselves in return.

All because I cared more about what the world seen outside of my home then what my children could see in it.

Because for some reason thats what we do.

I don’t know whats next.

To say I am terrified would be an understatement.

But I do know one thing for sure.

To the woman who has left….

You are not alone.

This is so extremely hard.

The guilt is not yours. Get rid of it.

Find your support. Your going to need it.

The pain doesn’t just go away.

The lonliness is still there. For now.

Theres days youre going to question your decision. That choice is yours. Find your support.

The God I beleive is still there. Let him be.

Youre going to just need time to think. Take it.

Its going to take time to learn to love yourself again. Embrace it.

You may seem like you failed. You didn’t.

You may seem so very weak, but your strong.

Most importantly in a world where right now you feel unloved, unwanted, and not good enough.

Where you feel judged and looked at as the one who didn’t suceed.

Remember you are so so much more.

You are worthy of love, of respect, of happiness.

You are worth it.

You always have been.

You just couldn’t see it yet.

I hope you someday do.

That someday you realize that no matter how alone you feel, you never really are. 

 

Picking Up The Pieces…

Aug 25, 2018

My Sweet Little Ones,

Right now life is crazy and painful and you’re confused.

Right now it feels like everything I promised you was a lie. That what God intended for marriage, I have failed. That what you deserved, I took away.

….. and right now I don’t have the answers.

There seems to be alot that has happened in our lives that I haven’t had the answers for.

But I do know that even though it doesn’t make sense right now every single decision I make is with the best intentions of you living a great life.

That what may seem like a weakness, a failure, or a giving up took every single ounce of strength I had in my body to do.

That even though I know you are all hurting in your own ways in this very moment, that life remaining the way it has, was not only hurting you more but impacting the very way you see your own self worth in the future.

Right now life is a blur, and you may not be able to see it but between the cracks and in the nearly never quiet moments of our everyday busy lives brokensss is pouring out of me too.

You are so very loved.

I want you to not only be told what love is or how love is meant to be but to be shown it, to see it lived out.

I want you to continue to seek God and trust him even when right now I am trying to very hard to hide my own struggles and anger with Him.

I want you to know your worth, to learn what you deserve. So that in the future you learn to love and treat others in the very ways you would expect, and not to accept any less in return.

I want you to learn from my own failures. To see that I’m human and not perfect. That as much as I don’t want to dissapoint you I will. But to hold on to the One that doesn’t.

I only hope that you you look back someday and see that everything I have done, every decision I have made….has been done with love. That I have always been right here walking with you. That in all of my imperfectness there has been nothing but a perfect love for you.

Love, Mom