Brave Thursday

One of the parts of being pregnant that I loved the most was every Thursday when I would change to a new week in my pregnancy.  Each Thursday I would get an email notification of what milestone my little baby would cross that week.  I realized that there was no way for a website to know exactly what my specific baby was doing but it was neat to know what the baby would be doing at or around that time.  Thursdays were special.

Grant was born on a Thursday.  I'm not sure I really realized that correlation at the time though.

In the weeks after he was born, Thursdays began to be really hard days for me.  Days marked with wondering why this happened to me, feeling I was wronged, and a lot of crying.  I remember one Thursday morning I was talking with my mom before work.  We don't mess around in the morning when we talk.  There is no time for small talk when we have a short period of time to talk before we each have to start working.  A friend of mine had been induced the day before and I was certain she was going to have the baby that day.  

Let me take a second to explain that for me there was a very strange range of emotions that I have felt in regards to the pregnancies of friends who remained pregnant after my baby died.  I guess the best I can explain it, would be a bittersweet feeling.  I have felt so relieved when my friends' babies have been healthy while at the same time feeling so sad at my situation.  I say that to explain that I wasn't feeling jealous of my friend, just feeling that very strange conflict of feelings within that morning.  

So anyway, we were talking about that very strange feeling I had, to be happy for your friend (truly happy) and feel so sad at the same time.  I remember telling my mom that I just didn't understand why this baby couldn't have been born on a Tuesday.  It is then that my mom shared words with me that have changed me.  My mom has this way of letting me know that she's listening and validating my feelings without letting me wallow in my self pity or whatever my negative emotion of the day might be.  I can't remember her exact words, but they went a little something like this.  I understand that Thursdays are hard for you, but maybe you need to think of them in a different way.  We don't know that Grant died on a Thursday, we don't know when he died.  What I do know is this, on a Thursday, you are braver than I have ever seen you.  On a Thursday, Josh was braver than I've ever seen him before.  We all had to be brave that Thursday.  On a Thursday, there was a new beginning, when you were brave for Grant and you did something that was so hard.  So maybe you should think of Thursdays as Brave Thursdays instead.  

I think we all have "Thursdays" in our life.  Those things that we see as something negative instead of seeing them as an opportunity to celebrate, to appreciate the ways that we've been changed because of them.  Changing the painful into a positive requires us to reframe our thinking.  It might mean that we have to stop and listen to what someone else has to say to us about our situation.

Since that time, I've been able to look at Thursdays in a different way.  It isn't always rainbows and butterflies when I think about Thursdays and what they meant to me, but I can look at them and appreciate the work God has done in me.  How he used a Thursday to change me and make me braver than I've ever been.

What is the Thursday in your life?  How can you change your thinking to make it a Brave Thursday?