Mixed

Mixed.

It's what I feel like, my thoughts, my heart right now.

Happy.
Content.
Painful.
Raw.
Surprised.
Longing.
Fulfilled.
Missing.
Pierced.
Wondering.
Knowing.
Joyful.
Breathing.
Breathless.

A curious jumble.  Just to caution you, this is going to be a very forthright post.  A direct, honest, straightforward writing.  I need to post because I need to straighten these things out.  This will be a raw post.  You may be shocked.

"Give sorrow words; the grief that doesn't speak whispers o'er the fraught heart and bids it break" From Macbeth

Anyway........

For some reason, more than any other time in my life, twins haunt me.  We prayed for twins for at least 5 years, and never thought about it.  What I mean is, it seems that everywhere I go, everything I read, every post I see.....I see twins.  Everywhere.  It pierces the very depth of my heart with a hot, sharp, rapier-like sting.  I've read countless blogs, through surfing from other people's blogs, where the mom has had or is having twins.  I see twins at the grocery store in my hometown where I never even noticed them before.  I see matching outfits at the thrift store.  I remember the day I was told I was going to have twins.

It sucks.

I'm surprised by how painful it is, even with one of my twins in my arms.  Even while nursing Pennie.  Even while having the fulfillment of having one live, healthy, beautiful baby.

I'm taken aback at the depth of my most intimate thoughts.  I look askance at myself when I feel the cheated emptiness of that place that Olivia left unfilled.

I'm ashamed of the anger I feel when I see those other families, happy and full with their twins. When I sit in a room full of people and hear the words of the man who paid someone else, a surrogate, $20,000 to be implanted with two embryos and now has twins, I feel that sick, scornful pain.  When my specialist tells me that what happened to us happens in less than 5% of twin pregnancies, I feel the scoffing irony that we are now in that 5%.   I try to quell it, to give it to the Lord.  I'm hollowed out by the skeptical sarcasm of the voice in my head that tells me it's all so unfair.......and why me?? And it's MY voice!

Why did God gift us with our very fondest desire, our most fervent prayer of two lives, just to spirit one away on the very heels of my clamping down in possession of those lives?

Why?

Even as I glory in every nook and cranny of Pennie, even as I soak her up like a thirsty, dry sponge, my heart asks why.  My heart is half, but strangely whole.

I can't make anyone understand it.

I scarcely understand it myself.

My arms are full, but oddly empty.

The cloud of joy that I live in is rimmed with sorrow.

My smile is tinged with........hardness, against my will.

So........

I continue to give all of these things to Him Who knows exactly why.  I try to remember that He is neither shocked nor repelled by these tears and frays in the fabric of me.  I remember that it takes emptying out to be really full.  It takes feeling deep sadness and going through sorrow to know real joy.  If there isn't any hardness in me, or sickness in me, I don't need a Doctor.  And the half of my heart that is gone is being taken over by the other half that is still living, that is Pennie's.  The arms that are aching to hold two halves of one whole shell are now learning to be filled with cradling, kissing, gazing at the face of Heaven in my Pennie.....

And remembering that I can hear the wind, hear the ocean,  and feel the cleansing flow of healing in that half of the shell, and I feel whole again.