As I sit down to write during nap time, I hear Alex talking. He’s having trouble falling asleep, so I go in and rock him. I haven’t thought of this song in awhile, but it forms on my lips and I am reminded of the journey it has taken me on.
Defender
Rita Springer
You go before I know
That You've gone to win my war
You come back with the head of my enemy
You come back and You call it my victory
You go before I know
That You've gone to win my war
Your love becomes my greatest defense
It leads me from the dry wilderness
PRE-CHORUS
All I did was praise
All I did was worship
All I did was bow down
All I did was stay still
CHORUS
Hallelujah, You have saved me
So much better Your way
Hallelujah, great Defender
So much better Your way
You know before I do
Where my heart can seek to find Your truth
Your mercy is the shade I'm living in
You restore my faith and hope again
BRIDGE
When I thought I lost me
You knew where I left me
You reintroduced me to Your love
You picked up all my pieces
Put me back together
You are the defender of my heart
This song, kept me company in my tears when I had a miscarriage and again in the valley of morning sickness… it came back to my lips when I had Alex and I was ridden with crippling fear. I’ve been singing it through all of that time and I am comforted still as I realize it is the story God has written for me.
Tears fill my eyes now as I come back out to finish writing and play the song. I am letting it fill the room and worship is in the atmosphere as I think of what I want to share with you. Perhaps you’d like to listen to it as you read today…
“You go before I know…”
I did not anticipate my experience in motherhood. I was familiar with it’s challenges but I didn’t think that any of them would be mine as I suppose we all do with hard things. Miscarriage—No I always imagined being very fertile, having many babies. Being a mother was apart of my imagination for as long as I could hold a baby doll. I had thoughts of a big family for nearly as long. I loved the thought of a whole crew of people to have each other to play with and gather around the table and fireplace. In my twenties, I nannied a family of seven children, six of them fostered from three different families and it was then that I set in my mind that seven would be a good number. So, when I found out I would miscarry my first, the thoughts of weakness crept in. Because I didn’t consider it for myself, I felt broken.
When I got pregnant again, I was not so hard on myself about the long months of morning sickness, but the experience itself left me abandoning my desire to have so many. In fact, I vowed to Wayne in tears and exasperation—“I think this will be my last.”
I did not expect to go through crippling postpartum anxiety. I was thoroughly prepared for birth in almost every way—and our eleven-week birth course addressed the issue seriously—but somehow I think that I believed awareness would prevent it. If I did imagine getting a dose of it, I didn’t consider that medication would be a part of the solution. I don’t know why. I suppose it wasn’t spelled out for me. My mother had been on medication for depression during my adolescent years, I guess I thought postpartum medication was different. When I came to that desperate place in postpartum and my midwife recommended medication, it threw me for a wild tailspin. My mother did not have a good experience with it and there were many mixed up feelings that I had about it because of that. The thoughts continued…I am broken; I am weak.
“That you’ve gone to win my war…”
I had no idea that God was writing in me a story to set me free.
“And all I did was praise, all I did was worship, all I was did was bow down, all I did was stay still..”
So began the journey of letting go and letting God, because anxiety and depression and fear are not solved by what we can do for ourselves but by what we can let go of. I began to see that in the many ways I felt uncared for in my life—I was being deeply cared for by the Father. He was proving it to me, out of his kindness, by presenting each of my fears, one by one. He showed me that it is not about me or my strength, but the power of his goodness.
“When I thought I lost me, You knew where I left me, You reintroduced me to Your love, You picked up all my pieces, Put me back together.”
Shame slowly shaded my view of myself as the journey drew out over years, one thing after another, and I just couldn’t seem to pick myself back up. But I had not lost myself—rather the Father was healing me from the inside out, re-building me in places I didn’t realize needed freedom.
“Hallelujah, You have saved me, So much better Your way.”
I would not have selected this course of events, no, my pride and comfort would have chosen a much smoother path. But here I am at the end, saying, “It is truly so much better your way.”
It was a transformational journey and I am ready to share it with you.
I will be sharing my experience with postpartum anxiety in my next blog posts and I want to let you know that though it is a raw story, I am ok and I am sharing this story to give you hope. When I was in the thick of it, I wished there were more people to talk to about it. I want to be that for others. Please read with consideration.
Coming soon…
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