(Sigh.)

Hormones combined with Loss can be a messy cocktail. I got up this past Sunday morning and felt just like that. Like I drank a cocktail and now felt like a mess. There it was. The monthly sign of emptiness. Again.

I am fighting, with tooth and nail, to choose to see it as a monthly sign of ability.

I am wacking a ball with all of my might on an outdoor (17 degree day )platform tennis game and saying that this is a sign for hope.

I am putting on my firstborn son's first pair of big boy underpants (which he peed 5 times in the potty today!) with a tenacity and a will that chooses to say: this monthly sign is the sign of life. Not emptiness. I bring life wherever I go.

I am deciding to remember and remember and remember that I think God spoke to me that it is by His grace we are not pregnant. And whatever that means, I would rather be caught believing than doubting. Faith is prized and precious. (O, increase it, Lord.)

I am choosing to cry. And to not harden my heart. And to talk when I want to. Or not.

I am remembering that I am not the only factor. I am not the only one. I am not the epicenter of all of this. I am appropriately small but cherished.

I am, with a wintery haze before me, saying that I will not winter my faith. I will not let it slumber. I will be awake in a time when death could reign.

Live. Life. Breath. Feel. Laugh. Smile. Cry. Hope. Remember. Fight. Walk. Build a snowman. With a real carrot nose. :)