In Process: Jacob's Changed Me

This time a year ago I was just a few weeks into knowing I was pregnant, sure that the little baby incredibly growing within me would be changing my life. I think I even thought that and said that so flippantly. "This time next year, our lives will be so different!" It was innocently, but beautifully, joyful, as it should have been. All I knew was that there was a little blueberry-sized person within me, and that person would somehow change me.I didn't know how yet, and that was exciting, exhilarating.The wind was fully in our sails, as we often say to describe how life was pre-diagnosis, and I was blissfully joyful. Finally, I thought, I get to do what I've wanted to do my entire life! I get to be a mom! I am a mom! This is what I was made for.Fast forward and here we are today, and my heart aches with the pain of having to accomplish something as a parent that I firmly think no parent should ever have to learn to do for their child.  Preparing to say goodbye, learning how to survive "life's first cry and final breath" of my own baby, and celebrating his life after experiencing his death.I'm torn between two extremes.Yes, I am a mom. Yes, God made me for this. Yes, God gave me a son. Yes, I have been able to experience all the joys that becoming a new parent gave me, and I've been so, so blessed.  That innocent and beautiful joy is a sweet, sweet memory, and still part of how I feel when I remember those moments of pregnancy and baby kicks and fresh baby skin.  It's not bad at all that I felt that way, and it's the way every pregnant mom should feel.  Finally, God gave me what I had always desired.  My first child.And then, the other side of things.  The side that remembers that even as I was so excited that God was making me a mom, that meant my life was changing, and I took time to process and grieve through leaving full-time ministry as I had experienced it up until that point in order to shift my focus and become less invested in the ministry on campus and more invested in my family at home.  But I got used to that, and then one week into the last semester - or so I thought - of full-time ministry and I receive a phone call from my doctor and my world experienced a dramatic shift.Ten months from that moment and here we are.  I'm back to where I once was.  I no longer have a baby, and I am facing a completely different picture of daily life than I had adjusted to imagining.  I'm back to where I was before, or so it feels.But I'm not who I was before.  And I don't know that I want to go back.I don't mean ministry - I love getting to spend my days as a missionary to college women and know that God has given this opportunity to our family to be full-time on campus proclaiming the gospel as our primary task... it's quite the honor, actually.But I'm not who I was, and at times, looking to "go back" to who I was doesn't feel right.  Because that's not me anymore.  Some aspects of my "former life" still draw me in and make me feel alive, but some just don't anymore.  So, how do I keep adapting and growing and transforming into the person God is creating me to be?  What does God have for me now, even in the mundane and in the exact place He's called me to be?  I'm eager to see.A few weeks after Jacob was born I was out with my cousin - although cousin only scratches the surface... best friend, extra sister, those words seem more accurate - and I remember crying with her over our meal at one of our favorite restaurants.  We had a conversation that may not have meant much to her, but it was so significant to me.I said to her, in the midst of rattling off different ministry ideas or things I was thinking about that I wanted to be a part of (I ramble to her a lot... she's a patient listener): "Jacob has changed me."And she asked me how.And then she affirmed me that he has changed me.And for some reason hearing that truth gives me - if these words can even express that feeling - great courage and strength and comfort and joy and an anchoring to my soul that says he was real, he mattered, he loved me, and we love him.  And yes, he's my son. And yes, he's changed me.I can't yet confidently put into words what exactly his life has done to change me, although I read an article recently that says that baby boys leave traces of DNA in their mother's brains... so maybe I really am permanently physically changed... if everything you read on social media is true... (ha!). I digress...I do know this: I want to live my life with passion. Jacob reminded me that we don't know how much time any of us have, and I don't want to waste it. And I don't think that not wasting it always means doing something extreme, because I think not wasting it also involves the mundane, everyday life things, too.  But Jacob has anchored me to the reality that this life is fleeting even as it's eternal.  In his short time on earth, he pointed us all to the Lord, and he certainly has changed my relationship with the God.  I'd wager any bet that my sweet son - so tiny and helpless and worthless in the eyes of the world - brought more glory to God in his 40 weeks + 5 days + 7 hours than I have in my 28+ years, and I'd also stand forever by the fact that he mattered, that God had purpose for him, and that he had great worth.In fact, in hindsight, how God has used Jacob is beginning to seem so clear to me.  My own purpose seems a little more fuzzy.  Not because I don't have one - and not because I don't know the general will of God for all of us, which is, among other basic truths, to know God and glorify him and love others - but because I'm finding my footing again.  My reality has changed, my world has been rocked, and I look to the future through different lenses than I once did.So what does that mean for me? I'm not sure.  But I want to press in.  I want to lean in.  I want to experience God more, to know Him more, to see Him more clearly.  I know that Jacob's life has not been in vain, and I also know that God has a great deal of grace for me through Jacob's life, and I trust him that part of that is showing me more of how I can glorify Him through my life, just as Jacob did.I'm terrified and yet more courageous.  I'm feeling timid, yet brave.  Vulnerable, and so strong.  Broken, sinful, deserving of judgment, and yet fully embraced by my God because of His grace.I'm in process.  I'm stumbling through the darkness right now, but desperately seeking the faint light I see in the distance, all the while being led by God himself towards it.  So, I ask Him... what do you have for me, Lord? And I pray... here I am, I'm yours.Jacob has changed me.  Here's to seeing how the rest of the story plays out.