Having Reached the End of Myself

by | Sep 27, 2012 | Faith, grief, motherhood, Pregnancy, Scripture, Uncategorized

floating

 

How easily we share our triumphs and proudest moments. Facebook updates. Twitter exclamations. Instagram slices of time.

I post the funny things my boys say. I upload sweet photos of new sisters.

 

How easily we share our dreams and daily pleasures. Amazon wishlists. Spotify playlists. Pretty pinterest boards.

These are not the deeply rooted dreams, the ones planted in us from our very beginning. These are the daydreams that lie on the surface of our lives.

Here are a few of mine: chicken coops and vintage cookbooks, Irish poetry and organic gardening.

 

This is what I do not share: weakness. Also, failure.

There is no social media application for shame. Which is, itself, a shame. 

Hiding our weakness, we hide the resurrection power within us. Because we know: “The body that is sown in weakness … is raised in power” (I Corinthians 15:43). Covering up our shame, we deny the One who told us “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

 

I have PCOS, and the same broken hormones that always made it hard to get pregnant also make it impossible to feed my baby. And so the end looks like strange herbs and hours at the breast pump for me, bottles of formula for her.

Bottles to be grateful for, bottles to break your heart.

 

My baby girl is two weeks old, and I have come to the end of myself. It’s a very short road; the journey didn’t take very long.

But what comes after me? (Or, more precisely, Who?)

Do I believe the kingdom logic that my end is really the beginning? His beginning?

 

Looking ahead, the view is murky. I have no idea what’s there. I maintain my sanity by focusing on 12-hour blocks of time. The lactation consultant suggested 24. Even that felt like too much.

But, looking back … the view is very different.

 

Because, I have seen amazing things (Luke 5:26). 

 

(this post prompted by Summer’s beautiful confession)

 

About

by | May 25, 2011 | Uncategorized

Christie Purifoy is a writer, a reader, a wife, and a mother.  She declines to order those roles according to their importance but does admit to occasionally feeding her children cold cereal for dinner so that she can read just one more chapter.

In 2010, she received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago and has taught literature and composition to undergraduates at the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, and the University of North Florida.

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She considers her three children to be walking, talking (and, too often, whiny, arguing) embodiments of God’s good love.  She describes her experience with Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome and infertility in a memoir, Moonlight in Winter.  This is a story of how God draws near when we are in pain.  It is written for men and women, married and single, parents or not.  It is written for everyone who has ever asked, “Where is God when I hurt?”

Christie believes that God is writing a love story for every person who follows Him.  Her own life has been a journey of love, but it is through pain that the story of this love has been revealed.

 

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