Mount Rainier

God captured my heart with this mountain.

When I arrived in Washington last weekend, it was lost on me that this mountain was even here, and as I traveled down the road on the way to the Love and Loss conference, BAM! 

(Its Mount Rainier, and its glorious.  And very volcanic.  I'm glad I didn't Google it before I left home, or I might not have gotten on the plane. =))

There it was, its presence unmistakable once we turned the bend in the road.  I’ve never seen a mountain like this. The Smokies?  Yes. Been there, done that.  But an enormous peak floating high in the sky, hovering over an inconceivably large mass of rock melting into the east and the west as it stretches across the horizon?  No.  It was beautiful, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some serious How Great Thou Arts going on inside my heart because “mighty mountain grandeur”?  Yes, please.

Friday afternoon over the phone I made the Hubs promise to take me to the Rockies on our next vacation. 

Then Friday night happened.

Can I be real with you?

I wasn’t looking forward to this grief conference.  Not even a little bit. I might have even stretched the truth a little bit in the post I wrote before I left.  Because while I was excited to travel,  and hang out with Fun Aunt Janet, while I was touched that she and Debbie flew me all the way across the country, while I thought it was great that Janet orchestrated a grief conference for moms who had lost babies, I was not thrilled about attending. I knew I was suppose to go, and I knew it was going to be good for me, and in my heart I knew God had big plans, but I was so totally NOT looking forward to it.

Here’s why:

The last time I got on a plane, I was headed to Disney World.  

Folks, this was not Disney World. And I knew it.

It was a grief conference, and the pre-requisite for a grief conference is loving and losing. The loving and losing?  Its not a class anyone would willingly sign up for. The pre-req for this weekend meant that every woman that attended the conference had loved and lost.   I had done the math: every heart I encountered would be as broken and battered as my own, and quite frankly, that’s just not Disney World clientele and not exactly something to look forward to. 

Friday night rolled around and the hearts started trickling in.  The thing about the heart is, the heart speaks through the eyes, and that evening, every pair of eyes I looked into were broken and bleeding.  And by the end of the evening after we had split up into groups and shared our stories with one another, every pair of eyes was wet.  Souls were weeping, and I didn't want to go back.  

And it was far from Disney World and far from anything I wanted to go do over again the next day.  It was heavy.  It was raw and painful to sit with a group of women and show our wounds, to see one another’s hurts so fresh and real.  It didn’t matter if it had been six weeks or 39 years, babies were gone, and these hearts were broken.  And when we had poured ourselves out that evening, there was nothing to do but sit, dumbfounded at the mess.  Sopping tissues in hand, we just stared blankly at the mountain of broken hearts that had been piled at our feet in the middle of the room.  The weight of the world filled those walls, and the burden was suffocating.

When I went to bed Friday night I asked God what on earth I was doing in Washington.  Because the mountain was too high, the burden of these many women too heavy, and Lord, get me outta here.

There’s one person who knows how much I dreaded this weekend, and it was the Hubs.  He knew before I did that I wasn’t looking forward to it.  Honestly, I didn't realize how much I was dreading it, I only tossed around the occasional comment regarding my lack of luster over the whole thing.  But he saw through the slight reluctance and knew that at the core of my being, everything in me wanted to run in the opposite direction of that grief conference.  And he told me more than once that he was praying God would pleasantly surprise me this weekend.  I reminded him that surprises are not my favorite.  (I'm a handful.) And I might have rolled my eyes at him and shrugged my fear off with an explanation that its just hard to leave Newbie or my concern over how much laundry would pile up while I was gone.  There might have even been another eye roll in there somewhere. Then he'd tell me he was praying for a pleasant surprise anyway.  He’d never admit it, but I think he kinda likes having a stubborn wife.  It gives him a good challenge. 

Friday night I laid in bed, gritting my teeth, telling the Lord that I thought it was really lame of Him to drag me across the country just to bawl my eyes out and feel even more broken hearted than when I boarded the plane, as if that was even possible.  I questioned His plan because I knew He was big enough to take my doubts, and I think He probably patted me on the back and said, trust Me, Beloved, and rest.  Tomorrow is a new day.  But I didn't feel Him or hear Him because I was too caught up in my grumblings about how hard the night was and what the heck was I suppose to do now?  And I think even if I had stopped the grumbling, my heart would have been crying to hard to hear anyway.  Then I threw in a couple eye rolls and tossed them back across the country to the Hubs because NO WAY was this weekend going to end up being a pleasant surprise.  This weekend looked like heartache and horror and there weren't enough tissues in the world, people.  

Saturday morning dawned fast.  I threw myself together, scarcely applying any makeup because why would I when its just going to run down my face in a flood of tears anyway?  And I got in the car, numb from the night before and dreading what was to come.  I think I might have shot the breeze with Janet, but that was just a cover for what was really going on inside.  If I thought I could have talked her into turning the car around and just hanging at the mall all day, I would have.

I couldn't believe I was walking through the doors again.  And I was even more surprised to see the other ladies walking through the doors again with me.

 We came in broken and bruised from the previous evening, some of us even joking that we couldn't believe we came back.  Except we weren't joking.  We really couldn't believe we came back.  But there was something noticeably different about that morning than the torturous night before.  Eyes were still wet, hearts still aching, but this time around we knew.  We knew what one another carried.  We knew who and what the tears were for.  We knew not a single one of us wanted to be there.  And there was community in that.  There was community in the puffy eyes and the forget it, I’m not even going to put on mascara today.  And we shuffled together from the table of breakfast pastries and fruit and sat together, a bunch of eye-makeup-less ragamuffins.  A bundle of beautifully broken women sharing Starbucks and heartbreak over breakfast. 

It was a new day. 

We spent the day with the same small group of women from the night before and we talked.  We traveled to a few different rooms where seasoned women- mothers themselves- gently asked us questions about our children and our hearts.  And we answered, wadded tissues in hand. We talked about how we put the hurt in a box and tuck it under the bed and how it was hard to pull that box back out and unpack it piece by piece.  But these women?  These women are the most courageous women I know because they unpacked that box.  They unpacked that box Friday night, and they continued to unpack it the following morning. 

And though our stories were different, we found out we had a lot of the same stuff in the box.

We sat in a circle of chairs and together unpacked the pieces: the stupid things people have said, the fears and hurts and worries.  We talked about the whys and what-ifs.  We talked about how healing is an evasive word because really, while a broken heart can be mended back together again, there will always be the scars.  We talked about how we'll never be the same- how the woman in the chairs is a different woman than she was before those precious babies. We talked about eternal perspective and how we won’t know full healing from these wounds here.  He talked about God and how His ways aren't ours. We talked about blessing in raindrops. We talked about the salve for our wounds- the hope we have in Christ- and we rubbed the salve in deep.  

And what happened was broken hearts were bandaged.  In talking and sharing and crying and praying, we bandaged each other’s wounds. We encouraged one another, and it was salve to the soul; we hugged one another and it was a rescuing breath. 

The mountain was smaller when we scaled it together, because every time we looked back or up or down, we weren't alone.  He was there.  And we were there.  Together.  And look, those ahead of us were still moving, and those behind us needed our hands, and gently pull and encourage and love and maybe, just maybe, we're going to make it.  

Maybe we can do it, this living with a broken heart, after all.  Maybe we are better for climbing the mountain than to have never had to climb it at all. 

It was late Saturday afternoon when we spontaneously linked arms and held hands while a lovely voice sang and I wondered, what if the mountain, the trials of this life, the rain, the storms, the hardest nights, are His mercies in disguise? And as I stood in the midst of that group of beautifully broken women, I found myself feeling so honored to be a recipient of those mercies in disguise- to have walked through the rain and the storms, to have sleeplessly weathered the hardest nights- to know His mercy in ways only a heart that climbs the mountain can.  

When I walked through those doors on Friday evening, I was scared.  I was so afraid to be a part of a group of women whose tears couldn't be hidden and whose hearts were so deeply wounded.  The mountain was too high. But by the end of the weekend, I considered myself blessed to be a part of them, the beautifully broken, scaling the mountain because He loves too deeply to give us lesser things. I'm so grateful for the mountain.  So thankful God used my sweet Eden and my Jubilee girl to break my heart and make me homesick for Heaven in a way that dramatically changed the way I live my life.  So grateful He used my girls to send me up the mountain.

When the conference was over Saturday, I called the Hubs and thanked him for tuning into my heart so acutely that he knew exactly what to pray for, because though surprises aren't my favorite, God heard him, and it had been a very good surprise. 

I'm scaling the mountain, baby, and (SURPRISE!!!!) it's a beautiful view from here.

Thanking Him for the honor of sharing in a weekend with some incredibly courageous women, and giving Him praise today for the mountains and His mercies in disguise.

Sending lots of love to these brave mommas in Washington:

(Ladies- Sorry for posting our soppy no-make-up post-conference picture...I know I promised not to, but I figured since it was blurry it might be safe =])

And a big hug and thank you to Debbie and Fun Aunt Janet:

xoxo,

Brittany