I forgive me.

guilt (/ɡilt/) - noun: 1. the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime.

I've made it a mission to embrace my guilt.  To accept my grief.  To feel my pain.  No therapist recommended this, but as I look at my perfect, healthy blessing asleep by my side, I know it needs to be done.  In January of 2012, I changed.  I became a completely different person.  A person I could no longer recognize.  While I have found pieces of my self throughout the last four years, I don't think I'll ever be the same again.

I was sitting in my apartment listening to my son sing a silly song about worms to my daughter.  She was smiling, he was laughing, and I was falling apart.  Ever since my oldest child was born, I knew I wanted kids.  Before him, I had no interest.  It wasn't in the cards for me.  I was going to get my degree from SFA, move to New York, and open a coffee shop where I could sit and listen to the stock market and read all day while lounging in an oversized chair sipping on foreign beans.  Before my plans could begin, I was pregnant.  The moment I became a mom, everything else went out the window.  My dreams weren't lost in motherhood, they simply changed.  My purpose on earth became overwhelmingly apparent.  I was born to be a mom.  Four years later, I became a mom for the second time.  I had a daughter.  The urge only grew stronger.  I needed another baby.  I loved and love them both, but I knew my heart wasn't full yet.  Then, two years later, I was pregnant again.  The circumstances were horrendous, but they didn't drown out my joy.  I was going to be a mom again!   To this day I still can't accept that it was God's plan, but on a Tuesday morning, my pregnancy ended, or so I thought.  I miscarried.  For the next twelve hours, I cried, I prayed, I was angry, and then it got worse.  Wednesday rolled around and when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.  I lost the second baby.  Just like that.  They were both gone.  Never to be held on earth, never to experience life, never to take their first breaths, just gone.  Once reality hit, the guilt took over.  

I didn't deserve them.  I was in the middle of a divorce.  I was at my weakest.  I was struggling to make it through each day as a single mom while trying to keep up with my college classes.  I didn't have a job.  They were better off this way.  It didn't take long before the same thought began to replay in my head over and over and over again.  You don't deserve these two lives.  You aren't good enough to be their mom.  I couldn't shake it.  I believed the devil's words.  I didn't deserve them.  I would have failed them.  They died because I wasn't a good enough mom for them.  These thoughts have haunted me night and day for the last four years.  

Today, I will let these thoughts go once and for all.  I will no longer allow the devil to win.  Yes, I lost my twins, but I believe with all my heart that I would have been the best mom on earth for them.  I don't want to believe that God "allows" innocent children to die, but I know He has a hand in it.  I honestly don't want to know the details though.  His plan doesn't align with mine 99% of the time and this is one of those times.  I will always long for my twins.  I will always have two holes in my heart.  I will always dream of them, imagine their faces, and think of their milestones, but I will no longer let the devil relish in their deaths.  I AM their mom whether he likes it or not.  

Today, I forgive me.  I will begin to believe I deserve my precious rainbow boy.  I will no longer allow the guilt to eat away at my soul.  I will embrace my three living children and honor my twins by continuing to be the best mom I can be.  I will grow, I will better myself, and I will love myself.  Today, tomorrow, and the next.