I get this question ten times a day at least and I answer politely with: “I’m ok.”

Because I can’t pour my heart out time and time and time again and say to you:

1. I am frustrated

My frustration overspills into my conversations and my interactions.

To the point of ranting in Primark over toddler pants and leaving people perplexed at how vexed I can be over a pair of  pants missing from the pack.

I am frustrated with our loss, in practical terms, not only emotionally. God knows how much energy, drive and determination it took to convince Alex to have another baby. And then He goes and takes this baby away. Just like that.

As if to say, your efforts meant nothing. Go ahead, have another go. Start all over again.

Bang your head against the wall of fear and insecurity and financial pressure, of marital discord.

Put your body through another nine months of prenatal depression, puffed up everythings, weight gain, moods, tiredness. Just go ahead. I may or may not allow you to keep the next one.  But I will not remove the desperate desire from your heart either. The desire to hold and nourish and breathe in a newborn. YOUR newborn. because that’s how I rock. All mysterious and conflicting. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just you go ahead…

I am frustrated with the church. I am! I am frustrated with the lack of empathy. With the lack of action and initiative. With the awkwardness. With the comfortable approaches of “we shall let the Lord speak.” With the “prepacked” answers to life’s most painful experiences. With the lack of plans. With the lack of strategies. With the lack of understanding that for people like me, church has stopped being a social club and it is now either source of energy and strength or…the very opposite. I can’t stay in the middle anymore. I can’t “do” church anymore. I need to BE church. I am burning with the desire to be meaningful and be of help.

I am frustrated with my body and my mind. I am back to waking up at night. I am so flipping exhausted at the end of the day, by my thoughts alone! I eat to comfort myself and then I get frustrated with my bloated stomach.

2. I am lonely

I am. I am lonely in my grief. I am lonely in being the only one in my circle of friends who has lost a baby. I am lonely even in the midst of a crowd now.

I am lonely in the church. Not the building, but the assembly of people.

I am lonely in my marriage. We grieve the loss of our son but not together but in different ways and at different tempos. Always at odds with the other’s grieving process. Separated. Lonely while ever so close.

I am lonely on my spiritual journey.

We have had firemen/women Christians showing up when the going was tough. Much appreciated, indeed. When the prayer was needed for healing. When there was still life in Georgie’s wee body. Once the light was extinguished, they dissipated. Disappeared. Vanished. Hidden. Moved on to the next crisis, to the next Christian, to the next “hope.”

But you know what? Although I do not present as a crisis situation anymore I still need friends. I still need love. I still need company and a shoulder to cry on.

I feel lonely in my Christian journey. I have been burning to serve the community, the lonely, the needy, the non-crisis situations, the unlovable for almost two years now. I have journeyed through hell and I feel I have finally emerged from the fog only to find myself on my own in my desire. Why has this burning desire been put in me, why the atrocious journey if there is no leader to lead me from where I find myself now. What am I to do with myself? I can’t sit on a rock and wait for another two years until everybody catches up. What I am to do with myself meanwhile and this suffocating desire I have not created nor placed into my heart? WHAT???

Well, I will do the only thing I know to do. I will protest, I will rally, I will boycott the heavens’ gates and erode my husband’s ears with pleas until I have the “twins” I was promised two years ago. A healthy baby and a place to serve, where I will feel at home, fulfilling my calling and spilling the love that can no longer be contained into my heart.

I will not shush. I cannot. Just like Hannah, I will plead and inconvenience with my cries until I get my answer. Until I have my Samuel and until I am assigned my role in His temple.