It was the dead of winter. The snow had turned to ice on the city sidewalks, and everyone I knew was hibernating. Baby Ella was just two months old, and I had been fighting like hell to get my breastfeeding issues under control. Infection after infection, I just couldn’t get it to “work”, and what’s worse, I had a doctor I couldn’t talk to. I felt paranoid every day, all day long, that I was just making it up in my head, forcing myself to fail. The worst part was that I dreaded each and every time I heard my sweet baby cry. My skin crawled. This precious gift from God and I wanted no part of her. I know that Vann felt very helpless. I know he was doing his best to remain strong for all of us. But all I felt was great pain. I was underwater, gasping for breath, praying for release. We made the decision to send Charlie to Tennessee for a week or so to give me a break from juggling two in the midst of everything. Vann was going to drive her to meet his parents somewhere in Indiana. And as he was packing the two of them up, something shorted out in my fragile brain. What if they never returned, and I was left here to care for this child all on my own?? In the midst of all of this chaos, Charlie had her first ear infection. When we finally diagnosed it, the urgent care clinic was 30 minutes from closing and Vann made a mad dash to get her there to be treated. I remember standing in the living room after he drove away. That pit in my stomach, which I can now recognize as hopelessness, was so palpable I could taste it, like grit in my teeth. The world was quiet, and all I could hear was the sound of my beating heart. I had been sucked down into the depths of deep, deep despair. I must have fallen to my knees…the details are fuzzy…but I do know that what I felt that day scared me to my core. Because, this was not my first rodeo, and I had faced these feelings before. Today in MOPS the speaker talked about her struggle with post-partum. It stirred my heart, brought back those not too distant memories. Luckily for me, during that scary time I had a strong support system to fall back on…and a loving God who wasn’t going to let me go. And now I feel a greater stirring in me, a piece of my heart forever linked to any woman walking through this kind of pain. Because really and truly, when you get past all of the facades of life and the things we do to compete and keep up – we are all just a step away from our own collapse, aren’t we? Things are never what they seem. And thank the Lord that He sees inside our hearts and loves us anyway.