Mental epiphany to keep me going

I didn't have enough sleep yesterday. 

Perhaps 10 days of Dwayne being out of town has caught up to me and the little bit of lack of sleep crept up on me so I didn't even notice it until I was lying in bed last night thinking about baby Payton.

The reason I knew I didn't have enough sleep is because the doubts crept in along with the panic, the pain, the why's and all the rest of the negative thoughts that come with such a situation.  "How am I going to be strong enough to do this".  'This' being watch our baby going through pokes, surgeries, tests, suffering and weeks of not being held like a baby is supposed to be.  Of course, those concerns are always accompanied by the knowledge that the worst can happen too - that we once again have to say good-bye to a child.

As I laid there in the dark wondering where I was going to summon my strength to ride this rollar coaster again I realized (here's the part where you learn about my epiphany) that I don't have to be strong.  And I think that word is too often used to label people when they stuggle with huge life issues.  As if we have a choice - I've always attributed strength as choosing to go the difficult route.  We don't have a choice, someone signed us up without our choosing and we only found out later that it was a binding contract with no termination clause.  So, we do what we have to.

Anyway, back to my epiphany.  I don't have to be strong.  I can cry, I can be mad, I can curl up in a little ball (not right now since my belly is too big) and sob like the little baby I'm supposed to be protecting from harm (or maybe not since I don't think babies actually cry like I want to).

 I'm allowed to say - I don't want to do this (even though I know I have to, it doesn't mean I want to).  I realized that its ok to let go and not wear a smile showing the world that I think things are going to be ok. If I really think about it, of course they'll be 'ok'. I mean, in a hundred years, this struggle, our previous losses - none of it is really going to matter.  So if I take that down on a more micro level, no matter what the future brings for us and baby Payton, time will allow us to partially heal (experience shows you never really fully heal) and life will go on...regardless of what happens. 

And while life will/may SUCK for a while, we will survive.  One foot in front of the other.  But for the record, I'm not promising to do it with grace, style or STRENGTH.