Grocery Shopping & Grace

I went to the grocery story yesterday. And I enjoyed it.It could be the specific grocery store, or the fact that I went at a time where it was essentially empty.  It could be because it was 70 degrees and sunny outside. On January 25th. It could have been any number of reasons.But the grocery store... it's been the bane of my existence.My pregnancy with Jacob went like this: Go to Asia for six weeks, find out I'm pregnant the morning of day 1, eat random not-my-normal food, not have access to my own kitchen, and survive morning sickness. Return to America to 100 degree weather in the upstairs duplex apartment we lived in with no a/c, experience the jet lag + morning sickness combo, move into a new un-air-conditioned house [which, in the summer, means you just get all the energy sucked out of you!] and then promptly find out your son's "incompatible with life" diagnosis. And then: grief.Over the past year [it's almost been a year...] since Jacob died, the bane of my existence has been all things dealing with grocery shopping, making lists, deciding what to make for meals, cleaning up the kitchen, washing dishes, basically anything you can think of regarding meals. Essentially - we were in survival mode.Not that we're not still. But I think we're coming out of it again slightly. After we lost our second baby two months ago to miscarriage, we were thrust back into numbness and survival instincts as we just did whatever we could to keep going.We've been on the receiving end of meals and gift cards and so many blessings as people have cared for us.And I've cried many tears and wasted many hours of sleep over feeling guilty and anxious for asking my husband again to be the one to go grocery shopping for me. We've always split it more 50/50... until that whole saga I mentioned above that started with me being pregnant in Asia - and I've been so much more dependent on him to take care of meals and food and asking him to bring me snacks because I just can't get off the couch  over the past year and a half. As if he isn't grieving himself and as if I wasn't already needy with all of the pregnancy need-to-eat-this-right-this-second and actually-i-dont-want-this-even-though-i-requested-it moments.The truth is, there's something that I personally find so enjoyable about me caring for my husband by providing meals and grocery shopping for him. It's not that he can't cook [you should try his chili] or grocery shop [he's great at it] or be an adult himself. But I apparently take some identity in being a wife, equating some wifeliness with meal and food prep... although it's really not at all a requirement for being married. It wasn't in our vows, or even in his expectations of me. But for me, it's just something I so wanted to be able to do for him. To serve my husband. To make him food. Not the other way around.In all transparency, my reality has been that for the past 11.5 months - and probably for my entire life - I've felt so much guilt and anxiety crushing my soul, surfacing most obviously as I've walked through the darkest days and the deepest grief.  And it always spilled out most in the littlest things. Especially in the grocery shopping.As I would process my grief with my counselor, my anxiety and my guilt, it always came up. I just want to take care of the grocery shopping, I would say in sobs to her. [And at home, later, to JM, himself.] I know he can do it, and he wants to do it, and he offers to do it, I'd say. It's just too hard for me to. And I feel so guilty about it.And she'd remind me - this is your first November. This is your first December. Your first Christmas, without him.And we'd talk about grace.See, at the root of all of my experiences of guilt and anxiety over grocery shopping always seemed to boil down to one thing: control. I longed for control over my emotions so that I'd have the capacity to do things like grocery shop. I longed for control over my exhaustion so that I could do things like have the mental energy to decide which meals to make, and actually cook them.  I longed for control over my independence - I wanted to take care of myself. I don't want to have to depend on anyone, especially my husband. I want to be able to do it, to say it, to think it, to feel it, all on my own.  I'm capable after all. Aren't I?It didn't stop there. I wanted to control how my husband viewed me. I wanted to control how others saw me doing. I wanted to control how I came across and how I conveyed my grief and how I even saw myself. I wanted to control how others remembered. I wanted to control how my future would go. I wanted to control how Jacob was formed and I wanted to do it over again - but this time do it right. So he'd live. Because ultimately, I wanted to control God.I didn't believe that He could do it as well as I can.And I say that in past tense as if I'm over it, but if I'm honest, I'm surrendering that to him today, too. And tonight. And again, tomorrow morning.In the past two months my world has come crashing down yet again, even more swiftly and leaving me desperately more broken and wanting for more. And in God's sovereignty and grace, two days before we didn't see the heartbeat, my counselor challenged me in my clawing for control and encouraged me to go home and talk it out with Jesus.And I didn't. But then I did.I did when I cried out on my bed how just so freaking mad I was at Him for doing this to us. I did when I sobbed for an hour on the bathroom floor again because this isn't how my life is supposed to be. I did when I came back to my counselor two weeks later and confessed I was free-falling because I couldn't hold on anymore to the life and the image that I thought I was "supposed" to have.And I did when I heard her speak words of truth and grace into my life as she told me that I've been out of control all along, always curled up in God's hands, it's just that I feel like I'm free falling because I've finally let go of control.  Control I never had to begin with. Control that I thought I was having to hold onto because otherwise my life would spin out in chaos.I could finally be at a place where I let myself be okay with not being okay.It has been the most freeing of months that I've ever experienced.Darker and weightier than ever. Questions and complications and seriously-is-this-ever-going-to-end moments.Full of grace.Grace upon grace.Freedom.Pain.Confusion.Missing my kids.And grace.So yesterday, I'm taking my time shopping in this new giant grocery store and I'm realizing that I'm actually enjoying it.It was a sweet gift. A generous gift. A gift that showed me that in that moment, and on that day, and in that store, God gave me the ability to experience enjoyment of something that previously held me in so much bondage.Grocery shopping. An errand that this I-wish-I-enjoyed-cooking girl usually categorizes under the necessary-to-continue-to-survive column in the list of my to-dos for adulthood. Suddenly it became a holy place, sacred ground for me. A marker of the freedom of the letting-go type of grace I was receiving from God.  A refreshing hour of taking my time and just doing the next thing and actually, for once, enjoying it.There is still grace to be found. There's still pain that I'm feeling.  But there's freedom in the sweetness that I was never actually in control to begin with. And I'm starting to surrender my life to God's will. For real this time.  It's terrifying. But I think there's more freedom there too. He's meeting me with love. I surely can let go. He's got me.