Losing my petals

I have not been myself lately.  I am tired, so very tired.  I am trying to take on too much at one time and I know that now.  Mind you, I think 12 months ago I would have been able to do all these things and not blink an eye.  What's happened to my inner strength, my don't give up attitude?

This year can not end soon enough for Hubby and me.  We started the year threatened by one of the greatest floods our country had ever seen.  Trapped in our home for four days while the suburb around us went under water.  At work this year we've gone through four different bosses in eight months, one of those being the biggest chauvinist jerks I have ever met.  He made my time at work while he was there hell.  Turning me down for promotions that he'd already promised and questioning my worth around other staff.  I started my Masters degree in order to better myself and get the heck out of there, dropped my hours and smiled the day he left!  We've lost Hubby's Grandad to cancer, and while we were away for four days at his funeral his boss closed the store he managed and sacked him! Since then, my Pop has been hospitalised with renal failure, we sacked out old fertility specialist, got a new one and had surgery.  There is no doubt that I will be relieved to see 2012 and hopefully a fresh new start.

It could be really easy to crawl into bed and not come out for a while.  Really easy to walk away, give up and give in.  But that's not how Hubby and I are.  We work hard, we stick it out, we try to find the good in everything and pray for a better tomorrow.  But I have to admit, I may have had a little bit of a meltdown the other day.  Having spent all day at work, finishing at 11pm, I came home to work on one of my essays for uni.  I got to bed at about 3am.  The next day my alarm went off, I got up, put on a load of washing, ate breakfast and then went outside to hang my clothes on the line.  

Now I'm not really sure what happened after that, all I can recall is sitting in the sun, admiring the fresh little seedlings popping up from the pot I'd planted seeds in months ago.  They were so small, so fresh and I was so proud to see that I had grown something from scratch.  Then something caught the corner of my eye.  My strawberry planter; the same little bush that I'd planted almost two years earlier, that had NEVER produced a flower or fruit in all that time.  But that day to my utter surprise it had not one, but 14 fresh little flowers.  They were at all different stages in their bloom.  Some not even out of their buds, some with all their pretty white petals and some had already shed their petals and the fruit was swelling in their middles.  

I was utterly fascinated!!  I sat there, for what I now know was two hours, staring at those little strawberry flowers.  Out of nowhere they had bloomed, only to lose their petals in order to produce that all important berry.  Nobody minds that fruit flowers lose their petals.  Nobody tells them they're no longer pretty.  The flower is just the beginning of its journey and it's so proud of losing those petals that it creates a bright red berry just to show off to the world.

What a lesson at such an important time.  I may not feel pretty, I may feel over-tired, worn out, a little less than my usual self, and that's okay!  I don't have to always be that person I think I have to be.  I believe that I am meant to have children and that God wants us to have a family.  So, I'll happily lose my petals in order to bear our fruit.  And I would lose them every day and never grow them back in order to show the world, "This is what we created!"