Perseverance
Romans 5:3-5 says “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
I tried to proofread; forgive me if there are typos. This mama is running on little sleep!
After the birth of my first child, our sweet daughter, I had experienced postpartum anxiety. Shortly after discharge from the hospital I got pretty sick, I had little support, and my mental health began to spiral. Breastfeeding wasn’t working. I was obsessed with her feeding. Everything made me anxious. I woke up with the feeling of a pit in my stomach every morning. It totally rocked my world. I experienced a brain fog that is hard to explain. Simple tasks didn’t seem so simple and took me increased time to complete. My husband and I drifted apart, each fighting our own battles, resulting in some marital issues we had to work through. It wasn’t the blissful experience that you see other mom’s have on social media. I felt like a failure in so many ways. If I’m completely honest, I was a little nervous for my postpartum experience this second time. I hoped and prayed it would be different.
I felt in my heart this second postpartum experience would be better. So many of my friends would speak life over the situation and similar things to me; that this would be a redemptive experience. I felt God gave me confirmation on this when I realized our son would be born during the Feast of Tabernacles/Sukkot 2022. This is a time of great joy and to meditate on the provision and faithfulness of God. I had high expectations. I will say there were multiple triggers for me; things that were similar to my experience last time, but with a different outcome. In order to stop from spiraling, I had to surrender and trust God day by day.
I didn’t want to be induced this time around- but you guessed it. I was induced! The induction process was about half the time (praise God) and instead of being in labor for 28.5 hours I was only in labor for about 13 hours. With our daughter, I pushed for 3.5 hours and this time, 4 minutes. Our daughter had meconium in the womb (which delayed me getting skin to skin with her immediately) and so did our son, but he didn’t need suctioned and I was able to get my golden hour/skin to skin with him immediately. Birth wasn’t nearly as traumatic and I was in a completely different headspace this time. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with all of this!
Breastfeeding was a huge goal of mine this time around since I didn’t do it last time. I know fed is best, but it’s something that is really on my heart. It’s best for me and him, will save our family money since we are now a one income family, and I don’t want to deal with the formula shortages. I got him to latch and we were doing it! We were breastfeeding! Soon after we got home, latching became very difficult. I needed my mom each time to get him to latch. I was up every couple of hours and became very sore. He wasn’t having the recommended soiled diapers and was continuing to lose weight at our first doctor visit. I became very discouraged and disheartened. God gave us breasts to feed our babies and here I was, failing- AGAIN. By the grace of God I was able to get into a cancellation at the lactation consultant (who was booked out two weeks). We came up with a game plan. As hard as it is, I am sticking with it to the best of my ability. My husband would encourage me not to give up and to try my best, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how he is fed. I soon realized sometimes I can be very quick to get discouraged and to give up.
I’m struggling with lack of sleep, out of my ordinary routine, and with severe hormone dump. I have days where I’m okay and days where I am sad and cry. My mental health is much better than it was last time, but I also am having moments and days where I struggle. I talk about trusting God and His faithfulness all the time but I am also struggling to maintain positive and grateful thoughts. I go to worst case scenario and begin to meditate on what’s going wrong, instead of all the things that are going right.
“I’m fighting with my husband because he does/doesn’t do x, y, and z.” “My baby isn’t getting enough milk because he’s losing weight and not pooping so I am failing; I might as well just switch to formula.” “How am I going to take care of both kids when they need me at the same time when my family leaves?” “There is this dream and business I want to build but no one is going to want to read my content.” “You are paying too much attention to Atlas and you’re being a bad mom to Remy.” “You can’t handle this.” “This person is now upset with you because you did/didn’t do X, Y, and Z.” Stress and resentment start to build. Stress makes me spiral and affects my milk supply. It’s not a good cycle. There are so many things that I doubt myself in and listen to a lot of negative self talk. Sometimes I guess it’s easier to give up than to swallow my pride and fail. The thing is, if I give up, I did fail because I didn’t push forward or at least try my best. Even if I do fail, what matters is I am doing my best, being obedient to God, and leaning into Him for the outcome. If God is my Father, why am not I listening to what HE says about me/others instead of what the devil is trying to accuse me/others of? Why do I let the devil counsel me on myself, my husband, and others? The enemy wants us down, discouraged, relying on ourself, not trusting or thinking the best of others, and to give up on what God is calling us to. He is there to cause division in your marriage, your family, get you to doubt the provision and faithfulness of God, and to keep you from whatever it is God is calling you to do. We have to persevere through the warfare and through the hard stuff. God wants to use our suffering and perseverance to give us hope instead of discouragement and despair. God wants a chance to show us who HE is.
There is a quote I heard that goes something like this, “if daily you do what’s hard your life will be easy and if you do what’s easy your life will be hard.” You have to do hard things through persevering. Anything that is worth doing is HARD and you have to pick your hard. Breastfeeding is hard but so will the stress of the cost and finding formula. Getting back in shape will be hard but so will feeling bad in my own skin. Getting up early and running on little sleep will be hard but so will the stress of not having things in order and doing what I need to do in order to take care of the home. Marriage is hard, but so is NOT working on your marriage. Getting up early to get quiet time with God with a toddler and newborn is hard, but so is NOT getting my time with the Lord and having my mind renewed. Starting an online business is hard but so is staying in a place of lack, worrying about finances, and ultimately not using your God given gifts. Everything is “hard”- the question is which “hard” will grow you and draw you closer to Christ and the purpose He has for you? Staying home and raising two under two is going to be hard, but so would going back to work and paying daycare to spend more time with my children than I do. Budgeting and being disciplined with money is hard, but being in debt is even harder. Do you see where I’m going with this?
God can give us the strength and endurance to overcome to do these hard things. Another quote I read recently that really resonated with me talked about how difficulty is actually the atmosphere surrounding a miracle, or a miracle in it’s initial stage. According to Romans, instead of letting suffering discourage us, we should be clinging closer to Jesus, depending on Him, and allowing him to encourage us and show Himself faithful to give us a hope for the future. God cannot show His faithfulness without trials. Think about it, how can He rescue us and come through if we don’t have a trial or suffering for Him to rescue us from? There has to be a situation for Him to show His glory through. It doesn’t make it easy, but it is encouraging. I need this encouragement because if I’m honest, sometimes I look more at the physical circumstances than God. It can feel like His promises aren’t true or like He has left us when things don’t do as planned, seem rocky, or don’t turn out how we thought.
I am not even two weeks postpartum and am not sure how this whole journey is going to end because it’s still unfolding but God is continuing to teach me valuable lessons. As I’m going through this, a friend reminded me of something profound. “Easy was never the promise. Victory was.” We aren’t promised that things will be easy or go our way. We are promised the faithfulness of Christ and ultimate victory, however He chooses in our lives. I’m still grappling with this. I don’t remember it perfectly each day but I am writing this because it’s a lesson I am actively learning and something we all need to remember. God uses all things to grow our surrender, our trust, and aide in our sanctification. It’s a hard pill to swallow that the blessing is in taking up our cross, dying to our flesh and completely clinging to Christ instead of having everything go our way.
James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Here is what I am grateful for. I have two beautiful and healthy children. I have a marriage that is far from perfect but has two people in it who are willing to fight for it and grow. I’ve had the support of my family here to help me these initial two weeks which I’m so grateful for. I am doing way better with breastfeeding this time than I did last time. I’m always seeing the hand of God move in my life so I can remind myself of that when things go crazy. I don’t have the stress about going back to work and am grateful I can focus on being home with my kids. So I am going to continue to persevere in Christ. I don’t know the outcome, but I know the Author. It might not always be pretty, but it will be worth it.
