Inside the profile

Four years ago today, December 15^th, 2011, I was inside the profile; but I was not alone. I was in the OR—operating room, undergoing an approximately four to six hour surgery. I was having that final surgery.  A lot of prayers were being sent up for me, in fact my surgeon prayed with my parents and me.  The surgery went well although there were complications during recovery. But I survived those too.

 The last couple of years, my ‘anniversary’ came and went without barely a thought, but somehow this year, today; it is really on my mind. I have decided not to ignore the process and just allow myself to think about it. I am happy to be alive and well; emotionally, mentally, and spiritually now.  And I was fine after the surgery, but then I began to become very sad.  I started to realize I would really never carry a child now that I had that final surgery.  Before the surgery, although I was having a lot of physical problems, I told myself I still had a chance. But the surgery was a finalization.  And that finalization hit me in a delayed reaction kind of way.

I had to eventually visit a psychologist after constantly crying for days and not knowing how to stop it.  He eventually told me that I was grieving a loss, and that was when the light bulb went on for me! I was not allowing myself to grieve because I didn’t know I was grieving. I did not know I could grieve something I never had.  And on top of all of that, I had stopped praying.

Bottom line, I have been on a journey.  And I know millions of women around the world have been on the same or similar journey.

Inside the profile with me, whether I felt it or not at the time, was Jesus. Yes, what I went through was almost unbearable, but I survived.  God was with me, and He knows my end to my beginning and my beginning to my end.  Check out my logo! You will see someone in the profile!  He is always in the profile. 

I intend to...

Intention. It seems like an innocuous word filled with hope doesn't it? Honestly, it's a word that gets on my nerves because it is usually preceded by some task that was supposed to be completed but was not.  Usually the task or event was not done because something else got in the way.  'I intended to wash the dishes, but I got caught up in a long telephone call with Aunt Nelly'.  I intended to go to church this morning, but I decided to sleep in after a late night of studying'.  'I intended to finish my homework by the deadline, but I got sidetracked'.  Excuses, all excuses.  Even if the excuse is a good one, it is still an excuse.  And though I believe intentions not followed through are excuses, we will all be found guilty of these in-completes at one time or another through out our lives. The best we can do is to make sure our in-completes become less as we mature.

We can do this by making sure we do not have too much on our plates at any given time.  We have to make our no mean no, and our yes mean yes.  It takes work, we might lose friends and acquaintances, but we must remember that we only live once and life is short.  We cannot afford to get mired in overly long to-do lists and being talked into taking on tasks we have no business saying yes to.

But what if we turned intention on it's head? What if we decided to live life with intention instead of intending to do things we never get to?  What if we chose intention instead of bitterness? I believe, as do most people, that life is about choices.  We choose to get out of bed in the morning whether we want to or not.  We choose to go to school or work whether we want to or not.  We choose joy instead of bitterness.  We choose happiness instead of sadness.  Don't get me wrong, I am not saying to pretend we don't feel a certain way.  We are beings with emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, etc.  But what we do with those emotions is what is important.  As we mature physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we must live with intention.

Life takes us through some very sad places.  For many of us life did not turn out the way we expected. Some of have been hit with untimely death, unwanted divorce, a marriage that never happened, or children we never had.  For many of us, our hearts have been broken and twisted into unrecognizable forms.  Hearts broken into so many pieces we do not believe they will ever be put back together again.  But what would happen if we lived with the intention that whether our hearts healed or not, we would be a positive force in our little corner of the world? What if we lived with the intention that our broken hearts would not rule us, but that we would rule that brokenness? What if we realized that the brokenness became less, even if it never completely disappeared?  What if we found that in the brokenness we realized our calling, the reason we were put on this earth?

No, the broken heart and broken dreams are definitely not the path we would have chosen, but the fact is it happened.  What we do about it is what matters.  What if we lived with intention?