New Year’s Do Over

Can I take a mulligan and try this again?

It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted. At the start of last year, I was hopeful that I would get back into the flow of writing, but no such luck. After all, writing is a piece of me, but less puzzle and more Lego. It doesn’t neatly click into place and produce the completed picture of Lauren. Instead, my little 2×3 piece gets pulled apart, set aside, and eventually knocked off the table until I summon the energy to pull it from the dust. Then, I work to find a new place where it fits until life gets crazy [crazier] and everything is reconfigured again.

Will it fit this time around? I don’t know, but here I am. 

It’s wild to think that I’ve had this blog for over eight years. There’s been so much change in our lives over that time. And the weirdest part about writing through these seasons, or rather why I haven’t written through some of them, is figuring out where all of my pieces go. Last year, when I planned to start writing again, I was solo parenting while my husband was a geo-bachelor living on the other side of the country. I had support from family and friends, and my husband could visit often, but we were in survival mode. A place we’ve come to know far more intimately than I would prefer. So I wanted to write, but inevitably, that piece didn’t fit when the metric for success was just getting through the day. 

In some seasons, I’ve used this blog to process my feelings about the immense weight of having a child with a life-limiting condition. And in this one, I’m not sure how I feel, let alone how to write it. In part, I feel myself sliding back into the heavy pressure of parenting a medically complex child. My husband is back this time, but we’re walking into 2025 on the heels of a rough year, with Wonder Woman’s longest hospital stay to date and a struggle as she tries to return fully to her baseline.

I’ve heard people describe grief like a ball in a box that contains a pain button. At first, the ball is enormous and takes up most of the box, constantly bumping the pain button. Over time, the ball shrinks and moves around the box, but it will inevitably bump the pain button. What’s surprising/frustrating to me is that anticipatory grief functions in the same way. Over time, it has gotten smaller, but it still makes itself known— it has not disappeared. I understand that grief doesn’t disappear, but I guess I thought that if given enough time, anticipatory grief would disappear. Maybe it does for others. It has not for me. Eight years is a long time, and I want lots more. So what does writing look like in this season of hope and fear?

In other seasons, I’ve written about the lessons God has taught me in parenting, specifically young children. The attitude and antics of a preschooler make for funny anecdotes to share, and God has certainly taught me a lot about His patience with me during the process. But sharing the lessons that a pre-teen will teach you is a little less funny and a lot more intrusive. These boys of ours are figuring out their lives, too, and it’s a lot more complicated and deeply personal than the universal experience of angry toddlers. So, how do I respect their privacy and still write honestly and authentically?

I don’t have the answers yet, which is a frustrating place to be because I like answers. I like directions and a clear path forward. The only Lego I want to build is the kind that comes with step-by-step instructions, even if it is 50 pages of pictures. But that’s not how things work. God didn’t drop down a manual and leave me to tackle it on my own. Instead, He says, “I know the plans I have for you…” (Jer 29:11). He knows the plans, not me. He goes on to say, “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” (v. 12-13). My job isn’t even to seek the plan and where the pieces go, it’s to seek the one who holds the plan and trust Him to direct the placement of each and every piece.

So this is me blowing the dust off this one piece and asking God what He wants to do with it.