This is not a Guatemala post.

This is the way my brain works: As I try to process a myriad of emotions and thoughts from our trip to Guatemala, to come up with some profound, life-altering insight to share, I am hitting a brick wall formed by my own  melancholy.

This is the way my brain works: Sometimes, I hide from my own feelings. And I'm good at it. I'm so good at it, that often, I don't realize they're there. Or, at least, I don't realize what's causing them. Sometimes, it takes a trip to impoverished Central America - spending a week focusing on everyone's circumstances besides my own -  to open my eyes to the weight I have been carrying. Sometimes, God uses the bleakness of someone else's humanity to shine a spotlight on the paucity of my own.

This is the way my brain works: I can't tell you about Guatemala. I could, but it would be cold. It would be nothing but facts. "We went here, we ate this, Oliver was cute". There would be no 'me' in the writing. I can't seem to shift my energies. So I'm writing this instead. Because I can't compartmentalize. Right now, all of my emotions are imploding around this one thing and the debris is crushing all the other feelings. So I have to get this out. I have to process the debris. I have to do clean-up before I can move on.

Even as I write, I am nauseated by shame. I can't put this down. I can't leave these things out here. How selfish will they think I am. 

I want to write grand things about God's greatness in the middle of my humanity. Instead, I am going to write about the most mortifying, disgraceful parts of my own humanity, and hope you can see past them to God's greatness.

This is the way my brain works: In the middle of my mission trip, amid the cardboard houses, where running water is a luxury, and they spray their salads with a bottle of disinfectant kept in their pockets -
I was thinking about my unhappiness. My unfulfilled dreams. My 'not-yet' dreams. And I realized how much I don't talk about because I feel like it makes me look ungrateful. I am so ashamed of my own unhappiness, because honestly, I LOVE the life I have and I cannot reconcile loving life and wanting more at the same time. Surely, if I WANT, it means I am not grateful for what I HAVE, and I HAVE so much, and I want you to know that I understand that. I understand that my wants are so little compared to people who don't have clean water. My frustrations are so minuscule compared to families who cannot get a proper education for their children. I am safe, I am sheltered, I am loved, and I get to love. I cannot WANT. Surely, that is so selfish, so appalling, so shameful. I am not trying to belittle anyone else's need. Because there are people out there who are truly in NEED. And the fact is, I am not. I am comfortable. I am FINE.

I don't talk about the things that hurt. I don't talk about the fear I have that I will never conceive a child again. I'm not allowed to be upset over my period every month that it starts. I have a happy, healthy child. And I love him, I really do. Wanting more doesn't make me love him less, it doesn't mean I'm not blessed, or satisfied; but if I talk about it - about the heartache, the frustration - it might. So I argue away my pain. I tell myself it's unacceptable, I find reasons to belittle my yearning.

We planned on adopting anyway, so it doesn't make sense to be upset if I can't get pregnant, right? 

I am focusing on healing myself right now. Pregnancy probably wouldn't be the best idea at while I'm this sick anyway.

It gives me more time and energy to focus on Oliver and cherish these days with him as an only child. 

I am blowing things out of proportion, we haven't been trying that long. There's probably nothing wrong. It just takes a while sometimes. 

All of these things are true. All of them are good thing to remember. But it doesn't mean it hurts any less. It doesn't mean I can't grieve the slipping away of my best laid plans. I can trust God for His perfect sovereignty and also lament when it doesn't look like I imagined. I can recognize my blessing and also reach for my dreams.

I feel like I am over-blowing this. You are probably shaking your head and mumbling "move on, you silly girl".

I am trying. But at the same time, I am learning to accept that this is where I am right now, and to let it be okay to sit here for a bit, to wallow for a moment in the admission of my own sadness, to wait for God to meet me where I am, instead of exhausting myself in the struggle to climb up to the mountaintop where I feel like I am 'supposed' to be.