What to do with it?

Well, as you might have guessed since I can't seem to post anything, I have not been doing well with the impending holidays and our 'lack-of-baby' status. And I am SO FREAKIN' tired of not doing well. I feel like joy has been sucked out of me--I want it, I just simply can't find it. Don't get me wrong, all of my sourpuss-ness has nothing to do with the holidays or the shopping or the cooking or the planning. I KNOW how blessed we are. How BLESSED and LUCKY and LOVED I am. This year especially, I want to remember that we could be in such another place: we could have lost our jobs, we could have lost our house, we could not be able to pay our bills, we could not afford to have any kind of Christmas, let alone the very generous one we most likely will have. So it is just this huge, ridiculous, never-ending battle in my head trying to balance the pity in which I find myself most days and the reality of the world as it really is. And I feel bad talking, or writing, about it because it makes me seem selfish, ungrateful, and just plain sad.

The irony for me is that I know it is okay to feel this way. I know in my brain that this is par for the course, and I'm not the first or last mommy-in-waiting to experience this. I realized two nights ago that it boils down to one thing--I just don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to focus when all I can think about is how much I want to be a mother. I don't know what to do with it when so many of my friends have good news and happy thoughts to share, and I just want to crawl back into bed. I don't know how to respond when my friends are starting on kid number 2, 3, 4 before I've even been able to get one. And then I feel so so so very bad when I feel that bit of jealousy--it makes me cringe just to think how awful it is that I can't just share in their excitement 100%.

Part of not knowing what to do with it also brings up a whole separate beast--the one of self-doubt, the one where I must have done something to cause this. The one where somewhere along the way I messed up so much that now I don't deserve the only thing that has always been a piece of me. I question why I was chosen to haul this load, because despite believing that I must be able to handle it, I doubt somedays that I can. The "why-me" creeps in a bit more and I am feeling pulled in a direction that I can already see is very unhealthy. But like I said, I just don't know what to do with it--with this self-doubt, this unbelief, this deep notion that maybe this isn't going to happen at all.

I have faith that there is a plan, that my time for motherhood is already determined. I really do believe that, despite my ongoing neurosis. I pray that I will know how to wait--that I will be able to wait, patiently, for the plan to work itself out. I know that this is a trial. It is testing my heart, my love, my faith, my marriage, my entire self-worth. I hope I can be strong enough to see it through. I pray that I am. And if it isn't too much to ask, will you please pray too? Because I just don't know what to do with it.