Brave Like Gracie

I've been into reading lately. Little portable escape routes.

But reading pre-Gracie and reading post-Gracie feels different to me. Like I understand something there that I didn't before.

I love to write. It is a hobby and it helps me escape a little. But I've always struggled with protagonists. Specifically protagonists in tough situations. I could just never really get behind them emotionally. For example, in a lot of these hero stories, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, pick your poison, I would read about these protagonists who were the "key" to saving whatever world they had to save.

They were the only ones who could do it. And to me, I was like "come on! Buck up Harry! YOU are the chosen one so just do it!"

And when they were frustrated or reluctant I always thought, Well geez. It's for the greater good you know. Pull it together.

Call me insensitive. Call me immature. I probably was both and more.

But I feel like I get it now.

I was the chosen one. I was chosen to be Gracie's mother, to be the vessel that got her here and back to her Father in Heaven. And I can say that many times I didn't want to be. I didn't want to carry that ring to Mordor.

I would sometimes lay there at night with my husband and throw a tantrum like a five year old and just keep saying, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to be this. I don't want to do this!"

Sometimes I would hope I would miscarry. They told me every dang appointment I was going to. Please, just end it, I thought. Or can't this be happening to anyone else? ANYONE else?

But it wasn't. It was me. It was happening to me. It was my "quest".

And now she's safe and sound and things are returning to that quiet stability I once knew. And I feel different about life. I feel older, sure, but I feel stronger. I feel sad, but I feel great hope.

I guess I can see now that I am the protagonist of my story. And I will get discouraged and I will get beaten down but I feel like I can be brave now, something I had never really felt before.