Emotional Instability

When the shock wore off, I fell headlong into a season of emotional instability that was foreign to me.  I had lost myself, and I missed myself, but I didn't know where I had gone or how to get me back.

I never fully understood the depth of the word 'devastation' until I had a miscarriage. I was almost paralyzed by sorrow. The smallest things would make me cry. So. Many. Tears. Eventually, I was able to stop feeling ashamed of the tears and accept them. If I saw a newborn in the grocery store and had an emotional breakdown in the middle of aisle nine, it was okay.

My relationships with others suffered. Friendship with anyone pregnant or who had a baby was an exceptional struggle. As their due dates arrived and their babies grew up before my eyes, I spoke to them less and less. It wasn't anything that they had said or done, I simply couldn't face the reality of what my life would have looked like.

While I usually lived with a continual spark of creativity, I was empty. I had no motivation, no energy, no desire. I turned to the screen on my phone to fill the hours with empty distractions so that I wouldn't have to face my thoughts.

During this season, I was not acting in wisdom, which is described so beautifully in James. While experiencing emotional instability is part of the grief process, I was not asking God to help me through it. To be honest, for a while I was stuck and wanted to stay stuck. I wish that I had embraced God's wisdom and experienced the character that He promises in His Word- pure, peace-loving, sincere, and full of mercy and every good fruit. Eventually, I realized that I was ignoring the very One who knew exactly what I was experiencing and who longed to be present in my pain.