30 weeks...

Well, I had a feeling life would suddenly seem to be on fast-forward after the holidays and once Galo returned home from his trip, and I was right!  The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of anxiety and excitement, a mixture of frustration and elation, anger and relief.  There have been some days of feeling blue and overwhelmed and others of pure confidence and pride.  I suppose this is just a preview of the emotional roller-coaster still to come.

With so much unfolding so quickly, it's easy to get caught up in the next item on the "to do" list instead of fully experiencing each instance of gratitude, of which there are many.  The first piece of happy news arrived shortly after my last post: my glucose test showed I was in the normal range and subsequently I have NOT been diagnosed with gestational diabetes!  One thing's for sure: I have learned so much from this pregnancy about not jumping to conclusions, and it has reframed the way I think about my personal health and wellness.  First of all, my health really does feel more "personal."  I am less inclined to compare myself to others and am more eager to experience things the way my individual body and mind experience them.  In the recent past, hearing or reading that I am "at higher risk" for [fill in the blank] triggered my anxiety and significantly threatened my sense of wellbeing.  Now, I take it with a grain of salt, knowing that even if I am considered to be in a "higher risk" category I am still a unique individual with a unique experience of health and I cannot be put into a box.  I can have faith in my health and be just as prepared for smooth sailing as I am for stormy seas.

Over the years I constructed an image of myself as "unwell" or "unworthy" in a number of ways, emotionally and physically, perhaps as a way of being better prepared for that to actually be the case.  The logic behind it is flawed, to say the least.  It is not God's intention for me to build walls of lies around myself as protection against an unknown future.  And living life that way certainly flies in the face of gratitude.  While I was searching for love, I told myself I would end up alone as a way of being prepared for that outcome.  Once I was happily married, I told myself starting a family would present a lot of challenges and I might never be able to have children.  Once I became pregnant (easily!), I told myself I would have a difficult pregnancy both physically and emotionally and run into health issues, many of which could be directly tied to my own "irresponsibility."  Well, I'm almost 30 weeks along now and my pregnancy has been wonderfully uneventful; the most difficult symptoms have been fatigue and a mere two or so weeks of back issues in my second trimester.  My anxiety is under control.  The few tears I have shed have been due to situational triggers and not feelings of hopelessness or depression.

It would be a tragedy not to learn from this, to not take this moment to be done with this twisted understanding of how to "protect" myself.  Expecting the worst from the world and believing I am broken does not protect me.  Instead, it lowers my self-esteem, denies my blessings, limits my growth, and would certainly be an unfortunate perspective to model for my child.  Why not believe I am whole and complete in God and draw a sense of protection and peace from that truth?

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?  Your Heavenly Father knows you have need.  So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself."
~Matthew 6:26-34