What scares me.

Scrolling through facebook. We all do it. I find myself there at least once every couple hours in a day. Sometimes I just scroll and don't like or post or comment. Sometimes I'm pretty vocal.

Today was just the kind of day that felt like heaviness. Fog filled the sky this morning and for a few hours before the sun came and burned it away. Ed and I got some news in our ongoing fertility journey. The semester is ending and I'm counting my losses and beating myself up for the things I did wrong. And despite my desperate hopes for summer and sunshine, there is still snow on the ground and I've started wearing my winter coat and gloves outside again.

So here I am on a heavy day, scrolling, pinning, listening to some Copeland (the perfect heavy day music) and I come across this post.

(Thanks Brooke!)

This just took my breath right from my lungs like a sucker punch to the gut.

I'm scared. I'm scared of a lot of things. Especially succeeding at anything.

I'm scared that I'll never be a mother. That I won't graduate college. That we'll be in debt forever (and that it will be my fault). That I'm not GOOD enough. That I will turn into the people I swore I'd never be. That I will feel sad more than happy. That I will get stuck.

Stuck waiting. For what? I don't know. But it's that thing that makes me happy.

For a while now I've blamed it on not being a Mother yet. I just know that would make me happy. It's what I was made to be. It's what I've wanted since I could remember.
It's like my life finally got here to this point and now I'm stopped at a wall I can't climb and so I'm spinning around in circles of fear that without scaling this wall I will never be whole.

But I can be whole. I can be brave. Fearless.

I'm not sure how, but deep inside I know it must be true. Because the opposite of fear is faith.

The opposite of fear is faith.

So I have faith that life can exist right here, without children, and still be amazing and worthwhile.

I just have heavy days like today that stop me in my tracks and dare me to give up. Sometimes I might want to give up. Heck, I want to give up more than I want to push forward, that's for sure.

But a prayer, the love of an incredible husband, faith of friends and smiles from strangers remind me that I can't give up. There is too much to fight for.

And there are those amazing facebook posts that remind you to let fear govern your life, not fear.

Dads.

From time to time, I have days where I really miss my dad.
It's understandable, since he's still a huge part of who I am and since I lost him at only 18 years old.

When my Mother remarried Craig, I was anxious to blend our families and make it work. Of course, it didn't go as I had hoped and we struggled in many ways. Years passed with bitter feelings, fights left unresolved and hurtful words lingering in the air.

After I got home from my mission, I wrote him a letter of apology and left it at his door. We had a phone conversation and decided to mutually forgive and move forward.

When I married Edward, Craig's heart softened even further towards me. I know he likes Edward a lot and is happy that I married him. He knows that Ed makes me better.

My father died in 2006. Craig's father passed away 3 days ago. Both had cancer that changed their bodies and took their vibrancy.

Craig is a very different man than my father. He is concerned for my mother in a way that a parent is concerned for their children. He is very scheduled, thought out and purposeful about what he does. He is a do-it-now kind of g
uy and his favorite phrase still lingers in my mind, "better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it." He is a good man.

But Craig never really understood Joe or I. Not why we had such a hard time with our dad's death or why it was a struggle to accept him as our moms new husband. I think we all struggle to understand something we haven't been through.

Craig called me today. (My heart always stops, hoping he doesn't have bad news about my mom.) He started to cry and I cried too. He apologized for never giving his condolences when we lost our father and said he wanted to now. We talked about his dad for a bit, agreed that cancer is dumb, and ended our call.

Short and sweet and a really good piece of closure for my heart.

Craig isn't perfect. Neither am I. But we're getting there. And now we both have angels on the other side to help us.