sacrifice

Home. All day. Every day.

Reader, that is terrifying. 

It sounds wonderfully refreshing and free sometimes, but then, other times, it's a right hook I wasn't watching for: I'm going to be home all day by myself with a tiny baby. A beautiful, dearly loved baby boy, yes, but the thought is still intimidating. I am choosing to not hand him off to a daycare worker and continue my own way and career path. I'm choosing to mesh my life and his, not separate them.

Death is frightening. And that, reader, is what's coming. Millie is going to die. 

Maybe only for a season, and hopefully so that from this death will be born a wiser, more mature woman of God (by His grace!), but that future hope doesn't negate the fact that putting to death the Millie that I am now is going to be painful. 

I'm haunted by fears that the parts of me I value so highly are going to shrink away. What if I don't even have time to write?  I never want to look back one day and say sadly to my children, "Oh, I used to write poetry in college." I do not want to give this part of me to the Lord; I don't want to relinquish my white-knuckle grip on this love of mine that seems so desperately inseparable from my identity. I'm afraid that these sacrifices will not be given back to me. I'm afraid that His best for me and our family is not what I want.

Oh, I know that there are groups and forums and programs. I know there are opportunities. I know that this world is full of by-hell-you-can-do-it! support groups and new friends and other young moms; and I know that I am blessed with a beautiful web of friends and family ready and willing to love and speak truth to me. 

I also know this will be good, and worth no matter what I give up, because I believe that God is sovereign over all things, and I believe that His process of sanctifying me is perfect.

I just want to admit: I'm afraid. And I think that's okay, too.