my body, your home

I am staring into your little face as you sleep. Sleep doesn’t come easily to you—you’re like me in that way. But something about being close to my body, latched to my skin brings you enough comfort to rest.

How can something I have hated and despised so much and so often bring so much peace and comfort to another?

I have felt many things about my body of the years.

It grew so fast, matured much quicker than those around me. It has been an embarrassment, a shameful thing.

I have been proud of this body. It grew you and sustained you for forty long weeks. It has nourished you, providing all the nutrients you need to grow and thrive, for five months.

But as the months since your arrival have passed, I’ve felt the familiar hatred creep in.  My waist too big, my breasts too full, my hair falling out in handfuls.

And yet this body of mine is your home.

I have hated my body; this body makes you feel safe.

I have hidden my body; this body has made you thrive.

It has kept you warm, given you peace. It is now yours as much as it is mine.

You’ll be awake soon. You’ll smile and reach your hands toward my face, rest your forehead on my chest. I’ll hold you close with the strength of this body, your home.

pastor of one

Not long ago, I was a pastor to many. I was the one that they called when things were bad, when the test results came back, when the unthinkable happened. I was busy. I was making phone calls, sending emails, visiting hospitals, and planning the inspiring words that I’d share next Sunday.

I gave up the calling to pastor many to pastor just one, a little boy that God has entrusted to my husband and me.

Today my ministry looks like diaper changes and middle of the night feedings and being covered in spit up literally all the time, like sitting in a chair for two hours because my son needs rest and can’t sleep longer than 45 minutes alone.

The pace is wildly different. Part of me misses being needed in the way that I once was. But here’s the thing that I’m clinging to: God is as honored in me caring for my child as he was when pastoring paid the bills.

I am still called to make disciples. I am still called to reflect Christ in the way I live my life. I am still a part of building His Kingdom here.

My greatest hope is that my son will come to know Jesus as I have and learn to serve him as I am, in the simple obedience of today.

miscarriage

It is 1:25 in the morning on a Wednesday and I am awake miscarrying our first baby. 

Nine weeks of creating life ending huddled on the couch, woozy through the haze of pain and oxycodone.

Yesterday the midwife told us that our baby’s heart had stopped beating. The ultrasound tech was quiet. She was sighing deeply, whirling the probe around inside of me, searching for a heartbeat and finding nothing.

Her leaving a surprise, just like the news of her arrival.

Although it was too early to know, my heart told me, weeks ago, that I was carrying our little girl. 

We were over the moon, in love with one another and the idea of starting our human family. We dreamed and schemed and imagined ourselves being parents. We fell even more in love with one another and this family that we were making.

But that all ended on a Tuesday. The hope for a future and a family swept away from us in an instant. The dreams and the excitement given over to fear and grief. 

It has been two weeks since the bleeding. We are still grieving but we are together. 

We are trying to remember this baby that was ours but was never ours. I will press some flowers from a sympathy bouquet. I will hang it on the wall in the room that would have been yours. I will tell everyone who asks about you, little one.

bread & marriage

I am learning much about bread baking and marriage these days.

As you stretch the dough, as you pull at it and push into it, it actually gets stronger. The pressure activates the gluten in the wheat. These stretches and folds, it ensures that your bread maintains the shape and develops the rise it is designed to.

So goes marriage, relationships. As you push and pull, as you stretch and fold yourselves into one another, strength builds. The temptation is to assume the opposite: that the pulling is bad, the friction is harmful so we close our mouths and silence our hearts to its truth. Instead, when we give into the pulling, to the kneading, folding, resting, we develop strength. We produce the intended results: intimacy, partnership, selfless love of another.

These things take time and we must give ourselves over to each part of the process--the painful, the uncomfortable, the counter-intuitive--to truly create something akin to magic.

taking care

I have no idea when or why I started taking care of things. Perhaps it started during my tenure as a latchkey kid...maybe it’s just hardwired. I, like many women, have an innate need to nurture.

What I do know is that now, at 32, taking care is the only thing that I know how to do.

In past lives, I’ve taken care of tasks, of teams, of people, of other people’s babies.

Those things are lost to me now. The pandemic has taken some of them from me; others I layed down to have this new life.

So now I take care of what I can: my sourdough starter. My growing collection of houseplants. My dog and three cats. My self-sufficient husband.

It never feels like enough. At the end of most days, I think, “Did I do anything worthwhile today?” Because apart from baking bread and watering plants and making dinner, it’s hard to say, “Yes.”

I guess that I’m still learning to take care—of myself, of a home, of a husband. I’m learning that I can’t take responsibility for everything, I can’t fix everything, I can’t do everything. 

I am learning to ferret out unhealthy thought patterns, assumptions, and fears. I am learning that I can say no to cake or an invitation, if that’s what’s best for me. I’m learning to accept help and love and gifts and doding on. 

I’m also learning to be okay with putting unfinished things, like this, into the world.

the darkness coming for me

Two years ago today I had an anxiety attack while shopping at Walmart.

I stood there with my hands clutched around my shopping list and shopping cart but I felt paralyzed. My body still holds the memory: the pounding heart, the fear, the shortness of breath, the oppressive fog that caught me as I meandered down aisles, unsure of where I was or where I was going.

When I finally got home, I laid on my bed in a daze. I closed the blinds to close off the world and snuggled my dog and dreaded having to leave my room, having to live my life.

It was a tipping point, a place that I couldn’t come back from. Nothing was going to be the same.

I talked with someone. I asked for help. I started listening to my body and my heart and that still, small voice.

Slowly but surely, with proactivity and Zoloft and counseling and honesty, the darkness began to dissipate.

It’s been two years. 

Yesterday I sat on the couch in my fourth home in those two years, the one that I now share with my dear husband, and I felt it: the darkness coming for me. It started with the pacing, my feet shuffling and unable to stay still, and graduated to a crushing heaviness, a breath-sucking doom. I stayed as still as I could, hoping it would pass. It wouldn’t leave. Was I shaking?

When Zachary finally got off work, later than anticipated, and came into the room he knew that I was not well. Truthfully, I haven’t been well. I have been up and down and sleepless and exhausted. He knew and he knows. Because he held me as I cried earlier that day and as I wept the night before.

This is why I married this man.

The truth is that I wish that the Alyssa who was in that Walmart two years ago would vanish forever. I wouldn’t mind not seeing or hearing from her again. But I am who she was, just a bit more aware. Now I can say, “I am not managing my anxiety well,” or, “I am afraid,” or, “I need help.” Now I can recognize that there are patterns and feelings and excuses that are not healthy, although they are normal for me.

I’m feeling a bit better today...but it’s only 2 o’clock. Healing and health isn’t something that you can rush.

the work of waiting

I am 32 years old. I have been independent for a long time. I have been working my way up the ladder, through the ranks, whatever you want to call it, on my own for the past decade. I have been making the decisions, calling the shots for me. 

And then I met Zachary. 

Love does a lot of weird stuff to you. And one of the scariest is embracing your dependence upon another person.

In May, I left my job. A job that I had worked really hard to get, a job that I really loved. My days used to be really busy: meetings and coffees and tasks and preparation. But I left because I knew that my next job was going to be to support my husband.

Now, my only job is to wait.

For Zachary to get off of work.

For friendships to form.

For this pandemic to end.

For God to reveal the next thing.

Waiting in surely the hardest work of all because there isn’t much that I can do. I’ve been here before, employed by this waiting. These seasons are never easy because they’re murky and undefined, but this one feels different. I feel guilty not working by choice when so many people are desperate for work. I feel guilty lazing around and baking cookies while Zachary works hard to provide for us. I feel like, at 32, I should have answers and a plan. I don’t have either.

So for now, I wait because it’s all that I can do. And while waiting is my work, I want to do it well. How exactly I do that is still something I’m working through but I know that the process of waiting can’t be hurried through.

a new thing.

It’s been nearly a year. Nearly a year without a written word shared with the world.

In September, I met Zach.

In December, I accepted a new role that required relocating to Nashville.

In January, we got engaged.

In April, Zach landed his dream job in Atlanta.

In May, we both left our jobs.

In June, we got married and merged our lives and animal families together in a little ranch home in Decatur, Georgia.

This timeline does not include all of the vulnerability and falling in love and long-distance longing. It doesn’t include the global pandemic and planning a wedding and then re-planning a wedding. It doesn’t include the tears shed over the hard decisions or the moments of surrender that have transformed me into we.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. Because every ounce of vulnerability, every mile apart, every selfless surrender has grown the love that I get to share with Zachary. 

This blog has been many things over the years. It has been healing and growing; it has been poems and prayers. And now it will be a new thing, a thing still unknown, as I become a new thing in this new place.

A new thing. Yes, He is doing a new thing. A new, fresh, purposeful thing.

back from the dead

Well, here I am. Back from the dead.

Since my last post, I’ve moved out of state, started a new job, and jumped head-long into a new life. It’s been far more exhausting than I had originally imagined it would be but also so, so amazing.

Part of the deal with this new role is that my current placement, in the Capital Region of New York, is temporary (probably). I am training so that I can take on a lead role elsewhere. I just crossed my four month mark and now the familiar fears of “what happens now?” are cropping up.

I found this prayer in my journal, dated January 11, 2019. Dated before all of the changes that have happened over the last four months. Dated before all of the loveliness that is my life right now.

Four months ago and still just as relevant, just as necessary for me.

God, I may not know what comes next but I know what you’ve put before me today:

Listen for Your voice

Serve Your people

Obey Your Law, given in love

Pursue You above all else

Tomorrow comes tomorrow.