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Day 9 - BS

On my drive to work everyday I pass a billboard that reads “your birth, your baby, your bond, your way” from a local hospital system. It has a pic of a mom with her cute baby.

I gotta call BS on that one.

For myself and so many other women (I’d dare to say all), birth and bonding doesn’t go their way. Pregnancy doesn’t go their way. Their baby’s life doesn’t go their way. This is to no fault of their own. Sometimes everything goes perfectly except one little thing. Or it could be a big thing like mom had to have an emergency c section, or went into labor early, their favorite doctor wasn’t on call, the hospital messed up their medicines, their baby needed resuscitation after birth, mom experienced medical complications after, or their baby was born with no heart beat or born with a life limiting diagnosis. 

Literally anything can happen. And we (moms, humans) have no control over a lot of it. Obviously prevention of what you can prevent makes sense. A lot, you can’t prevent. 

We walk around in this world, like we have control over our situations at all times. 

But we don’t. 

When we realize we aren’t in control of our life, we finally can accept that God is doing a way better thing than we thought we were doing on our own. We can stop, hand over the yoke and breathe. How freeing. 

Obviously, we didn’t get to choose any of Jack’s story. Obviously it sucks to lose your child. And obviously we are not “on the other side looking in” seeing all the reasons God allowed what he allowed. 

But I *have to* trust that His plan is better than mine. I have to surrender. It has been so very clear that I am not in control. When a situation just feels so tirelessly broken, I must lean into Jesus then still. I have to surrender every day, sometimes every hour. It’s not a one a done thing, if a forever, over and over thing. 

If we say we are in control, when something doesn’t go our way, we blame ourselves because we were controlling that thing so it must be our fault. We say I should or shouldn’t have done this ____ and it wouldn’t have happened. That’s a lie.

I feel like I’m rambling. All of this is to say, you aren’t in control and it’s a good thing. And don’t listen to billboards. 



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