After our miscarriage in August of 2020, I wanted to get pregnant again so badly. It was the main thought that consumed me. I imagined that getting pregnant again would take away the horrible ache and pain I was feeling and I thought I wanted that pain gone more than anything. A few months passed and I hit my 26th birthday in November, still not pregnant. The emptiness was deep and persistent. I was grieving and trying to be hopeful but felt impossibly stuck somewhere between the two. Despite tracking my body temperature, important dates, and eating healthy food, I still wasn’t pregnant.

Arriving in December was very disheartening and I decided I needed a break from the mental exhaustion of tracking and calculating and desperately hoping. A few days before Christmas, I realized that my period was late. I journaled about my hopes and started to mentally *feel* pregnant. I told myself I’d wake up the next day and take a pregnancy test. I went to bed imagining how fun it would be to announce to our families at Christmas. The next morning I woke up to find I was definitely not pregnant and the disappointment was again so crushingly deep. The weight of looking at the past and the future was overwhelming. I decided to take a social media break and try to focus on one day at a time. I wanted to be present and mindful in the days that God was giving me, as painful as they were.

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All throughout this month of August 2021, I’ve avoided the “one year ago today” memories from Google photos. I’ve put my hand on my growing belly a lot to focus on deep breathing and being mindful of the day and moment I am in and not to dwell too long in the past or future. Now that I am pregnant again, I’m aware that the pain of loss never really fully goes away. The fears and dark thoughts that took so much of last year still lurk in the corners of my mind and heart. The anxiety sometimes still wakes me up at night and tried to steal my breath away. But I know how deep my anchor goes. I know for certain that Jesus will never leave me nor forsake me, because He never left in my darkest night. When I told Him I couldn’t keep going, He held me fast. When I woke up angry and bitter on so many occasions, He met me and didn’t abandon me to my pain. It has been a process of fighting for truth and hope in who God says that He is and the fight is a daily battle. The Holy Spirit has been at work in the day to day moments of fear, doubt, anxiety, joy, hope, and mundane to reveal God’s character and power to me again and again.

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Xavier and I are celebrating our 6th anniversary this week and it is crazy to think of how quickly these years have gone. At the same time, I look at our wedding photos and it feels like I almost don’t recognize that couple anymore. I love that we are getting gray hair together already. I love that we’ve experienced so many seasons together. I love that we’ve known each other for almost a decade. I love that Xav knows the different levels of my grumpiness and when I need to faceplant in a snowbank or eat brownies. I love that he texts me every single afternoon to ask “How’s your day going?” I love that, when I showed him a pregnancy test 7 months ago, he said, “I knew it.” I love that he puts toothpaste on my toothbrush every night and says “Good morning choco” every morning. There is so much wrapped up in the little day to day moments and I want to remember those things as much as I remember the dress-up, fancy, family photo shoot days.

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I almost didn’t have anniversary photos taken last year because my heart hurt so much I didn’t think I could smile. I thought about not having them taken this year because it seemed like too much work mentally and physically. And yet, I’m always so thankful for the photos after the fact… looking back and remembering the different phases of life that we were in on each anniversary has become such a meaningful and unexpected tradition.