i remember

today is a day that i'm supposed to stop and remember what i lost.
if only it were that simple. because it seems to me, that i remember every day - that i couldn't forget it if i tried.

but today people all over the world are stopping and lighting candles, sending up prayers, saying thanks, and crying tears of grief.
today the world stopped for a few minutes in remembrance of you.
how powerful that is.

it's easy to feel alone.
to feel as if no one else understands - oh, but they do.

i wish no one understood. i wish no one ever had to feel this pain - this hurt deep inside.
a dull ache to remind me of what i had.
a reminder of what i don't yet have.

sweet baby, you were all i ever wanted. please know, that every day that passes i think about the person that you would've been. i know one day that i will see your face - and somehow i know deep inside, that you'll be looking at me with that same smirk that your dad gives me.
that smirk that melts my heart.

i know you're at the feet of Jesus. i know there's no place on earth that could possibly compare - even though selfishly sometimes i would trade anything to have you here with me. you're in the best place that you could possibly be - and as a momma, isn't that what we always want for our children? to be healthy. never sad. always young, beautiful, and happy. you have that, my sweet, and i could never dream of taking that away from you.

you are so precious to me. i love you.
He is holding you tight for me until i get there.

Prologue

So, once again, this little blog has gotten pushed to the back burner. Because when real life hits, sometimes it hits hard and fast, and you just need a few minutes to take a breather. To let it all register. Try and find a good foothold, so that maybe the next time it won't knock you down as hard.

I don't think I've found that foothold yet.
But I'm trying.
And that's half of the battle anyway.

I've thought of so many posts that I wanted to write. Maybe something about being "home" - or better yet, what home is. Once again, I'm trying to be a runner-girl so I tried to get something going about that. A post about Maggie, because let's get real, girlfriend is basically my favorite thing on the entire planet.

But none of those felt right.
Too forced.

Tonight while I was being trying to be a runner-girl, I got to thinking about this blog. What it has meant to me - how it has helped me. There are all kinds of blogs out there: fashion, lifestyle, mommy, diy, food - you name it. And as much as I would love to belong to several of those different titles, I'm not sure I fit.

I don't write as often as I should. I originally thought that I would write at least every other day, just about my everyday life. I thought I would want to capture every detail. But you see, I've been too busy off living those details to bother putting them down - and isn't that way better anyway?

As it is, this blog has collected the big stuff.
The heavy stuff.

But there's a subtle theme that runs throughout.
A little ribbon that ties all of it together.
Something that I feel gets mentioned in every post.

You see, I want my kids to read these words. To see these lessons. To know my voice, without ever having to hear me speak. I want them to know that they're not alone, and that others have gone before them, and faced battles head on way before they were even here. I want them to know how much I love their Dad, and about our lives whenever we were starting out.

I want them to know how much they were wanted.
Loved. Needed. Cherished.
Long before they even came to be.

I want this blog to be a love letter to those who will come after me.

So years, from now, whenever my kids read these words, I hope they know, that even now I was planning, loving, and praying for them. I hope this may become as much as a lifeline for them as it has for me. 

And who knows, maybe one day they will sit down and write their stories out for their children.

What a legacy that would be to leave behind.

Neil Hilborn

"I want her back so bad - 
I leave the door unlocked. I leave the lights on."


It's hard sometimes to be moved. To let your soul be moved. To let your heart hurt.
Watch this video and think about the hurt.
Think about the beauty.
Think about all of us - just trying to find our way.
Trying to make sense of everything.

I pray I never lose the ability to be moved by others.

hindsight

I'm not really sure where this is going. I just want to write. I want to hear the clicking of the keys - a constant and steady rhythm that soothes me. Putting words to paper - or the equivalent of putting words to blog. Taking my thoughts and maybe going full circle with them.

Somewhere along the way I hope it all starts to make sense.
I'm not holding my breath though.

But for now there is a puppy asleep on my toes, obnoxious people buying homes on House Hunters, and my mind is racing.
sidenote: how are these 24 year olds affording $400,000 homes!? tell me your secret! If you are a 24 year old buying a huge house just know that I secretly hate you. Not really... but really.

Hindsight is 20/20.
And I suppose I should be thankful for that, but tonight I wish it would come so much sooner. I wish that I could see the good - because sometimes it's so easy to focus on the negative.

I get so downhearted when I think about this past year - I know that it won't always be this way. But tonight, I'm lonely - I've been lonely for almost a year now. I think it's easy to glamorize someone's life, and when I post pictures of dress blues, fun adventures, and small little places of beach paradise, it's easy for you to think that I'm living some sort of fairytale - and sometimes I convince myself of the same thing. Somedays I need that. I need that glamour, and idealization.

But in reality? I married my husband in January and haven't spent the night with him in over 8 months. We were together for two weeks before he left again. He left for bootcamp in October of 2012, so that makes almost a year since we've lived together - woken up together. I haven't been on a date with him since the end of January. We have to have a liberty buddy accompany us everywhere we go, even in the apartment - so we have had no alone time since January. None. And the day I found out I miscarried, he wasn't even allowed off base to be with me.

How's that for newlywed life?
Still jealous?

Over the past week Sam and I have been talking about the days when we were so poor, that literally all we had was each other. Sometimes we couldn't even pay the electric bill - we ended up in front of our fireplace cuddling and eating a ton of marshmallows for a few days. We didn't have cable - or even internet for a while. And we thought it was so terrible. I remember complaining. I remember wanting more. I remember crying all the time.

But then - then there is hindsight.

Once we were so far removed from that situation, I can look back now and see it all so clearly. What I wouldn't give to go back to then. Because we didn't have a lot of material things - but boy, did we have so much love. It was enough to keep us warm on cold nights, and entertained on long weekends. We didn't have much - but we had more than enough. We talk about how much we long to go back to those days. To simply be together.

Oh, hindsight.

I like to think of hindsight as coming full circle. Being able to see your blessing. Because isn't that what we're really doing whenever we reflect back on our lives? We're able to clearly see the blessings that have been given to us throughout the years, that we were so quick to take for granted.

But we get in such a hurry - at least I do.

I'm lonely right now. Life is hard. We've been thrown some serious curve balls, and been down in some rough valleys as of late, and I just want to see my blessing. I want to be able to look at it clearly and say, "I see it now. I see why this time in my life was so great. What I wouldn't go back to relive it and do it better - appreciate it more."

But that's not how it works.

Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. And if there is one thing that hindsight has taught me, one thing I can see clearly with my 20/20 vision - I'm going to hold on to those things unseen, because one day they will be made clear. One day I will be able to see what I had faith was there all along.

We will be able to see our blessings.

Hindsight will come around one day. 

I just hope it's tomorrow. 

Probably not. But you can't blame a girl for dreaming.

In hindsight this picture will probably be really embarrassing.
But tonight I don't care, and it makes me giggle.
Kisses- K

ghost hunting

Last week we reserved tickets to go ghost hunting. Apparently the Pensacola lighthouse is one of the top 10 most haunted places and/or lighthouses (we were unclear as to which) in the US.

Obviously we had to go.

After three weeks of trying and them continually being sold out, we decided to book our tickets a week in advance. For most, this seems like the obvious solution. In the Marine Corps if you try to plan anything more than a day in advance, it's like you're begging for something to go wrong. We all held our breath all week, and twice it looked like it was all going to fall apart (goodbye dolla dolla bills y'all), but thankfully it all came together - thank you Jesus.

This has no bearing to the story, I just wanted to use this picture.
He makes cute faces.

So after a long day of go-karts and mini golf, we set off to finally go catch some ghosts.

Pensacola Lighthouse.

Honestly, it was pretty cool - historically speaking. The stories were interesting, the atmosphere was appropriately creepy, and the walk up the 9475480 stairs was worth it to see the view from the top.... well until I realized that it wasn't encased and I had a mild panic attack - but we'll just pretend that never happened.

However, at the end of it all, Sam and I decided that we were definitely skeptics. Everyone else was so certain that they felt "touched" or something, but both times we chalked it up to being a head game. 

While I was sitting outside looking at the lighthouse, I started thinking about the whole "ghost hunting" experience, and I realized why I just couldn't buy into any of it:

I've never had to look for ghosts - they're very present in my everyday life.

No, I'm not about to get all "I see dead people" on you, nothing like that. But there are days that I feel haunted for sure - by memories, by loss, by anxiety, by depression. These ghosts of mine are all too real - and I don't need an electromagnetic device to tell me so.

It seems impossible to be scared of anything these days, after what all I've been through. Seems silly to go ghost hunting, because I think that our "ghosts" are never really hiding. They're always there. Ready to come out whenever you are vulnerable - or maybe have forgotten about them for just a second.

Tonight I forgot for a split second about the heartache and pain that have consumed a lot of my life the past several weeks. I was having a good time with my husband and our friends - I almost felt normal again. No sooner did it happen though, then someone said, "So when are you all thinking of having a baby? You'd have the cutest babies." Cue the anxiety attack that was waiting just below the surface.

Oh, there you are.

While everyone else was trying to catch ghosts, I was trying desperately to run away from mine. 

Tonight my heart is heavy. My mind is restless. 

I don't want to be haunted anymore. 

pensacola ramblings

i am overwhelmed by the response i received from my last post. i had no idea that people would even read it - and more so that they would reach out to me. i've been contacted by so many beautiful people who have offered prayers, advice, stories, and even thanks. it touches my heart to know that in some small way by sharing my story i have helped someone else - that maybe in it's own way, my experience has a purpose beyond myself.

i suppose that's what a testimony is though. you go through a trial, and once you're coming through the other side you share with others what you've learned. that's how we grow. how we learn. i'm grateful to have been able to share my story in such a platform that was even bigger than i knew. 

sam and i are still dealing with everything, but we're beginning to be at peace with the situation. this is largely due to you all - to the prayers that have been prayed for us whenever we were unable to pray for ourselves. thank you. 

thank you, thank you, thank you.

***

i view this blog as my own little space of the internet. a place that years from now i can look back on and reflect on what my life was like whenever i was a newlywed living in pensacola, and getting my first taste of Marine life.

i'm an overly sentimental person.

some say pack rat, but overly sentimental sounds better.helpful tip.

i'm the person who writes down when a picture was taken, who was in it, how old they were, and the situation surrounding each picture on the back of them all. i still have concert ticket stubs stashed around my house and storage unit. i hang maggie's first collar on the christmas tree with the ornaments. i still have receipts from my eighth grade trip, y'all. 

hi, my name is kayla, and i have a problem.

but i think when all is said and done, maybe it's not such a problem - a little inconvenient at times, but i think one day everyone will thank me for holding onto all these memories, and making sure we never forget. and this blog is just one of the ways i'm ensuring that our memories, emotions, and lives are documented.

okay, maybe i could let go of that receipt from eighth grade trip, and no one would notice.

so far, pensacola has been ..... a change. 

i'm a kentucky girl through and through. i wear a necklace around my neck just so everyone down here knows that i am not a local - i may as well tattoo it on my forehead. 

told you so.

even though the change has been anything less than graceful, i'm finally starting to embrace this new little place that i'll be living for the next couple months. i guess it's about time.

1, 2, 3: we spend lots of hours at the dog beach. 

4: our first night in pensacola - aka: the first time we'd been together since early february. we went to McGuires - and they were in trouble, so he had to wear his Chucks.

5: first family photo in 8 months. Memorial Day cookout at the apartment.

1, 2: love getting to skype my best friends, and these sweet babies.

3: when liberty is secured, that leaves only one option - The Crows Nest.

4, 5: a wedding Sam was in down here. it was just as awesome and beautiful as it looks.

1: beach bumming. he wanted to take a picture like i used to in high school. jerk.

2: couldn't resist getting a picture with Hubs when he's in his Blues.

3: while Sam was on bravo shift, that meant that most of our dinners took place on base. i would cook, pack everything up, and go sit at a picnic table and eat with him so we could spend some time together.

4: beach all day, err'day.

5: william and lucas came to visit, so we obviously had to take them to mcguires. also, i'm wearing a "dress" that i got a target, that i didn't realize was actually a large maternity tank top until after the tag was off - #sorrynotsorry #storyofmylife

***

i know my blog posts are generally heavy and well thought out, but this is also a place for me to put down our adventures and pictures so that i'll never forget. because just as the hard stuff shapes you and changes you, i think sometimes we forget that the good stuff can as well. i never want to stop focusing on my good days - the days where it doesn't seem that anything important happens. because those are the days that life happens. and those are the days that we so quickly forget about in the grand scheme of things.

so, here's to the small days as well as the big ones. to being content with where we are, and excited for where we're going.

and here's to pensacola - because as much as i sometimes dislike it, i'll never be able to argue its significance in my life. it's where my husband and i got to be together for the first time in our married life. it's where i learned a hard lesson about loss. where i learned to branch out and make friends. and where i learned that i'm never truly alone, no matter how i may feel.

the one that's hard to write

I've put this off for a bit. I knew that I needed to get it all off of my chest, but I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to let myself feel the feelings that I knew would invade by opening myself up. There were too many feelings, and I just needed to keep them at bay and deal with them bit by bit. But I feel like it's time that I let go - and that starts here.

On Monday, June 30, Sam and I experienced a miscarriage, and on July 1 that news was confirmed by a doctor.

That is the first time since that day that I have used the word miscarriage.
I couldn't bear it. Saying it out loud felt too real.
Too raw.

I think I knew that whole time on Sunday what was happening, but I just didn't want to let myself believe it to be true.
Because I want to be a mama... I want it so bad. So badly in fact, that I'm scared I want it too much. That it's not okay to want something so fiercely.

Growing up when people would ask me what I wanted to be whenever I "grow up" I could never come up with an answer - ever. Even when I was a senior in high school - even now. I remember being a freshman in high school and telling my Mom that all I ever really wanted to do was be a wife and a mama. Is that such a bad thing? It felt like people always looked down on me whenever I would be honest and say that...

"but you're so smart"
"but you need to be able to support yourself"
"you're setting back women's rights by 50 years"
"there's more to life than that"

I've heard them all. And you know what, I respect your opinion. I fully respect your right to do whatever you want in life - because I believe that's what Susan B Anthony wanted whenever she went up to bat for women's rights. You can do whatever you want to do, whether that be work for a huge cooperation, join the military, be secretary of state, or be a mama and a wife that stays at home. Neither of these choices are any less than the other - they're all amazing opportunities, but the most amazing thing of ours - it our CHOICE. No one is telling me what I have to do as a woman, I get to choose. And that's the basis of feminism - you choose what you get to do with your one life, and no one can tell you it's wrong.

But on Monday it felt like the choice was taken out of my hands. I felt broken - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When I heard the words being spoken for the first time, I felt like this choice had been taken out of my hands. I felt like I was falling, and I couldn't help myself up. My world had started to crash all around me, but no one else knew. Then the doctor said, "You'll probably have to have a D&C to get the rest of it out."

And that -
that was like taking a bullet.

Because of my personal beliefs, "it" was not some no named science experiment, "it" was my baby. They have to get the rest of my baby out of me.

Oh hey, rock bottom. Nice to see you there.

I was angry. I was angry every time I saw someone post about being pregnant. I was angry every time I saw someone else being happy. I was angry at myself, because I felt like I must have done something wrong. I was angry at my friends and family, because nothing they could say could make me hurt any less. I was angry at God, because he took away the one thing I wanted most in the world.

I was angry. And it was eating me alive.

One night I sat down on my bed and held the onesie that we had bought, and finally I started to let go. And do you know what God told me?

It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be mad at me. I understand. I understand your pain. Just please don't stop talking to me. Yell at me, cry at me, just please don't stop talking.

That was my turning point. That's when I finally realized, I'm not in this alone. When I looked at Sam and said I didn't understand, He did. He understands, and I have to have faith that He would never do anything to hurt me - His plans far exceed what I could ever have envisioned. And when my heart is breaking, I choose to believe that His heart breaks as well - my tears are His tears.

Monday night I told my mom and Sam that I didn't want anyone to know. I wanted to keep my pain centralized. I didn't trust anyone enough to be able to handle me at my worst. I begged them not to tell anyone.

The other night while I sat on the bed and prayed, I came to a realization.

My God is not a God of fear.
But more importantly -

My God is not a God of PRIDE.

I said it. Threw down the gauntlet.
I was being prideful.

I didn't want anyone to know that my heart was broken. I didn't want anyone to know that I could barely make myself get out of bed. I didn't want you to know that for a few days I could barely look at myself in the mirror. I didn't want you to know that in five minutes, it felt like my world caved in.

I didn't want anyone to know that my life was anything less than perfect. I wanted to keep up this charade that portrayed the way I thought my life should look. But life is messy. And more often than not it never goes the way it's supposed to.

So here I am, laying it all out on the line. I'm laying down my pride, and admitting that I can't do this by myself. I can't keep pretending that I'm okay, when in reality I can't even see "okay" at the end of this tunnel.

Sam and I lost a baby last Monday.
And it's terrible, and heartbreaking, and sometimes I still feel like it's not fair.
But at rock bottom, I found a peace and trust in my God that I never had before.

I know that the hurting isn't over. I'll probably always wonder and think about this little person that I never even got to meet. And I don't think I'll ever know why this happened. But the outpouring of love that I've received from people this week - that's what I'm going to choose to focus on right now. Because my life is so full of love - and people that are willing to love me whenever I can't love myself.

So now, I'm going to go get ready and go to the beach with my friends. My friends who came down whenever I needed them most - and reminded me of just how good it feels to belly laugh until you cry. I'm going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and trust that this isn't the end. God will use this somehow - and I can't wait to see what he has in store for us.

Please pray for us.

For better or for worse.
I've never loved this man more than I do right now.