Silent but not still

This blog has been pretty silent lately, but my heart has been anything but still. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, but that I have had so much to say that I’ve been avoiding saying it or even thinking about it, and I definitely haven’t wanted to say anything publicly about all the tumultuous thoughts I’ve been having. Our baby, Hannah, was born December 10, 2014, and died on December 13 from a heart condition called TAPVR that was undiagnosed until she was born, and I am now pregnant again with another baby girl who is due March 26th. The closer the birth gets, the more anxiety I have and flashbacks to Hannah’s birth. As I lay in the cold room with my arms strapped to the surgical table, mental-patient-style, with no control while my body was shaking uncontrollably, my mind was racing with thoughts of why they weren’t bringing her over to me, and my heart was about to break into a million irreparable pieces.  Many people think the baby we are about to meet will repair our broken hearts, but anyone who has experienced the death of a child knows that is ridiculous and there’s no way this child will make everything better.

Yesterday I read an article about the complicated emotions of having a baby after a stillbirth. Even though Hannah wasn’t born still, most of the article resonated with me so much that I could have written it.  It’s so hard to process fear, joy, guilt and hope (and grief) all at once, and I, too, have gone into survival mode – hence the silence. When I’m in emotional survival mode, I don’t talk or think about my emotions much, which is probably the most unhealthy thing I could do, but it is what it is and I really am doing the best I can. My husband has also gone into emotional survival mode, but he never has been one to process his emotions very well, especially since Hannah died.  I think he has felt that one of us needed to remain strong, and since I was falling apart, that job was for him.  But even someone who is “staying strong” has to release the trauma, and for him it all comes out in anger and avoidance behaviors instead (he watches about 15 tv shows and 5 movies per week, in addition to his regular facebook presence). Now that I’m in survival mode, too, that means we both have fits of anger, and there has been a lot of yelling in our house, of which I am queen and he’s the apprentice, alternating with the silent treatment, of which he is king and I’m the apprentice.

When they say that the death of a child is hard on a marriage, this is what they mean, and we’ve known more than one couple who have parted ways after the death of their child. We recognize this and we don’t want that to be our story, so we’ve been trying our best by going to counseling, but we’d appreciate it if those of you who have been praying for us would keep praying, and pray even harder for our marriage. We both believe that the only things that can save our marriage now are God’s grace and our hard work. I finally convinced Nathan this week that he should be seeing a counselor, too.  He saw a counselor 5 times in the fall and then apparently the counselor deemed him “all better” so he stopped going. That guy either hadn’t seen many people with complicated grief and trauma, or they never really got into talking about Nathan’s heart. The second year after the death of a child is much harder than the first with more complex and darker emotions, we’ve heard many couples say who are further down the road, so I’m sure that adding this baby in that second year is going to make it even harder.

These three paragraphs have taken me an hour to write. The words just don’t flow now like they used to. I’m out of the shock phase of grief and into the “emotional lockdown” phase.  Writing doesn’t come easily anymore, and the writer’s block is probably the result of the fact that I’ve been blocking my emotions so much lately. One consequence of my silence has been that people have stopped reaching out to me. I think they figure that since I’m not talking about my grief journey much anymore, either that means I’m doing fine, or that I don’t want to talk about it, so they stop asking. That’s what I would assume if I were in their shoes. But what people don’t realize about me is that when I stop talking, it usually means I’m doing worse emotionally and I need more help. When I say I’m fine, it means I’m not but I’m not sure what else to say. We are only eating because of my mother cooking us meals, because I get too overwhelmed and can’t fulfill my duties to go grocery shopping, cook, etc. Decisions are really hard for me right now. The baby will only have clean clothes because of my mother. Some days Adelaide only gets quality attention from Grandma, too. I’m already worried about postpartum depression and how that will complicate this second year.

My loneliest times of day are afternoons and evenings, when I struggle the most with the depression and anxiety, which is also the time of day when Nathan is gone at work, and none of my friends want to hang out because they have their own families to be with. After all, most husbands come home at 5:00, so why would they want to call and ask how I’m doing between 5 and 9pm? They’re thinking about getting dinner on the table for their families and kids to bed. I would go out somewhere in the evenings to get out of the house (because for me getting out of the house does help), but that would require spending money that we don’t have at a restaurant or coffee shop, and then I’d have to arrange childcare because my 4yo would get antsy going out in the evening, and I can’t imagine going out much by myself to restaurants with a newborn and a 4yo. There are occasional evening activities at church, but usually they don’t have childcare, so again… I don’t expect anyone to save me, but just explaining why my husband’s 2nd shift is so very lonely and why I’m dreading the time after the baby is born with my high risk of adding PPD to the mix. He will only get one week off from work, unpaid.

Well since this is such a painstaking blog post, I suppose I’ll just end it. I should be getting home anyway. It’s Nathan’s day off and I snuck out of the house at 7:30am to come to Panera because Adelaide woke me up at 6:45 (after also waking me up at 3:30am, Nathan waking me up at 12:30 and 2:00am, the bladder waking me up an additional 3 times, and the dog pacing around at one point in the night) and I couldn’t fall back asleep. I’d love to purchase a hotel room for the next 2 weeks so I could get decent sleep! Anyway, since I snuck out while he was still sleeping (and the wide-awake Adelaide was banished to her bed to wait for him to wake up), Nathan is probably wondering where I am. I don’t usually do things like this, but my heart just feels so all mixed up that I needed a couple of hours to sort it out – even though this post isn’t a very good job at doing so. I should really start a journal instead of this blog so people won’t have to read all of the gunk.

Thank you to those of you who continue to pray for us and care.  I’d say 80-90% of our friends never ask how we’re doing or mention anything about Hannah unless we do first, but I know that there are those who still do care.

A Letter to My Sweet Hannah

Dear Hannah,

You went to Heaven 14 months ago today, and my heart still aches like it was yesterday. Mommy really misses you, and so do Daddy and Adelaide. You’re perfect and happy in Heaven, and we are so glad about that, but we still wish you could be here perfect and happy with us. Are you having lots of fun with your brothers, Peter and Elijah, and your cousins, Barnabus and Conner? You have lots of boys to love you. I almost said look out for you, but you don’t really need that in Heaven since there are no dangers there (although from what I’ve been reading in Revelation this year, there are some pretty scary looking creatures if you ever make a trip to the throne room). Sometimes I wonder what you spend your time (even though I know time is only for us here on earth) doing there, and I wonder if you look like you’re 14 months old or something different. I like to imagine that you’re 14 months and not some old soul, but I also hope that I’ll get the chance to see you grow up when I get to Heaven myself, so don’t grow up too fast.

I’m thankful that you have lots of people up there and down here who love you. Grandpa went to live there in Heaven last month, and I hope he’s settled in well by now. I know he’ll be so much happier there with Jesus and you than he ever was down here. He had some really good things about him, like his fun sense of humor, his enjoyment of children, and the way he said what was on his mind without caring what other people thought (though sometimes we all wished he would care a little more). He could remember lots of things about other people and their lives, especially the dates that were important in their lives, and I think that made other people feel that he loved and cared for them.

As you know, God has sent us your baby sister and we will get to see her next month. She’s due to arrive the day before Grandpa’s birthday, when he would have been 75 years old, but I think she’ll probably get here before that. She seems to be a mover and a shaker (especially late at night and early in the morning), so I doubt she’ll wait around to be born when the doctors say she should be. We were surprised that she got here so quickly, because we weren’t ready to have her join us yet when she arrived in my belly last July. We were still so sad over losing you, but I think if God had waited until we felt ready for her, she might never have come because I don’t think we’ll ever feel ready. Our hearts will always be sad for losing you.

I wanted you to know that Baby Simba (as Addie calls her) is not going to replace you. She could never do so, nor would we want her to. Some people here don’t understand that. They think that we have moved on from you and are “all better” because we’re having another baby, but I know they just don’t understand what it’s like to keep on with the living when you’re still missing someone who is dead. It’s like living in two different worlds, with your feet on the ground and your heart in the clouds. Sometimes it’s hard for me to be happy with Baby Simba and enjoy her being in my tummy, but I’m trying to enjoy it because it might be the only time I have with her. Maybe she will have to go to Heaven, too. I hope not, but I know that there are no guarantees in this life.

I think that losing you has made me less grumpy about not feeling well in my pregnancy. I can’t move very well, and sometimes I cheat and use our old handicapped placard when I go to stores. My hips and back hurt all the time, though sometimes if I ask really nicely, I can get your daddy to rub my back. It’s hard to get in and out of the car. I throw up about 2-3 times per day, which is way better than it was with you! I have a blood clot in my leg that was really hurting for awhile but now the medicine seems to be helping. I have to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. I wake up about 7 times per night, and sometimes (like this morning) I can’t fall back asleep again. But I’m so glad that I get to do these things to have one more day with her. When I was so sick with you, I didn’t really appreciate and enjoy that you were alive inside of me for that time. All I could think about was not being sick or pregnant anymore, so I’m not going to cheat myself of enjoying this pregnancy. Baby Simba moves around way more than you ever did. I think she thinks my bladder is her trampoline and some internal organ is a banjo she can just twang away on. Sometimes it really hurts, which I never experienced with Addie or you.

I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed lately with everything that I have to get done before Baby Simba gets here. I have loads of laundry to do and sorting/locating baby clothes which I had buried after you died, and this takes me a long time due to my hip and back pain. I have to drag the basket up and down the stairs one step at a time, and I have to take frequent breaks because of the pain. Here on earth we have this thing called taxes that we have to pay, and I have to get all of that figured out before Simba gets here because I won’t be able to do it very well with no sleep after she arrives. There are lots of other little things that need to get done, and I find it difficult to do them all while trying to take care of Addie. She expects me to watch her do everything, especially when she’s playing with her toys. I think her favorite thing to say is, “Watch me!” and I feel badly that I can’t just play with her all the time. I still have a hard time switching focus from one thing to another (that’s called divided attention) after my car accident, so every task takes me 4 times as long when I’m with Addie, and that’s most of the time. I wish I had about 4 days by myself with no physical pain so that I could just get everything done on my list and then I’d feel more ready for Simba to arrive. Some people call those times a “staycation” when they get to stay home alone and get stuff done.

I love you so much, and I miss you. It makes me happy to know that you are always happy, always satisfied, and never crying. Jesus takes care of everything you need, and he plays with you lots I’m sure. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always felt that I wouldn’t be alive until I was old, so I hope there won’t be too much time before I get to come and join you. It would make me sad to leave my family here, but so happy to not have any more pain or sadness. I’ve seen quite a lot of it in my 36 years, and probably more than my “fair share,” from what I understand of other people’s lives. However, I think I also have more than my fair share of wisdom and sensitivity to other people’s pain. When people read this paragraph, I’m sure some of them will freak out and worry about me, but it’s ok to long for Heaven. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop living on earth, just that my heart knows that this place of brokenness and sorrow is not Home.

I love you,

Mommy

Sometimes my mind feels like it is filled with blossom-less, brambly rose bushes, brittle thorns protruding everywhere, ready to impale my thoughts as they travel along the thought highway.  It feels all jumbled up, impossible to navigate clearly, quickly or directly. I have the thought to do a task, but by the time I walk across the room to add it to “the list,” the thought is gone, deflated by another thorn. Many things have added thorns to the highway, including the brain injury I had at age 24, depression, anxiety, grief, pregnancy, hormones, sickness, and other stressful life events.  I don’t know how to clear the road so my thoughts can flow freely again. Writing seems to help, as does singing, but some days, like today, I just can’t pull myself together to get things done.  The laundry has piled up now for weeks as the anniversaries of 2 of my babies’ deaths have come and gone (and one approaches in February); I can never get caught up. The dishes pile up until we have nothing clean to eat with. The paper clutter mounts until I can’t find anything anymore. Deadlines and appointments are missed.  The clutter in my mind seeps out to create the clutter in my house. Even when I have the time to work on it, I don’t know where to start, much like I don’t know where to start to deal with everything that has happened in my life.

A life of trauma often seems to beget more trauma.  Child abuse, bullying at school, and witnessing my father’s unstable mental illness and my parents’ rocky marriage would have been enough trauma for one person to heal from for the rest of her life, but to my chaos was added the blood clotting disorder (and 3 surgeries for blood clots in my 20’s), the car accident with the broken leg and brain injury when I was 24, the appendectomy and blood clot in my arm when I was 26, the kidney stones and surgery when I was 30, the 2 miscarriages, the seizures Adelaide had when she was born and her week in the NICU, the unexpected death of my full-term baby, the unstable career path I chose and the resulting poverty, most recently my father’s death…I don’t understand why one life would yield so much trauma. Have I done something wrong in life to deserve it all? Did one trauma cause the next? Most of the trauma I’ve faced has been outside of my control, especially with all of the health issues and the death of loved ones. And yet somehow it must be something I’m doing wrong that produces sadness instead of a relatively trauma-free life like most of my friends experience. How do I begin to heal from a life filled with 36 years of trauma? How do I keep from passing it on to my children?

Every time I think I’m OK again and able to trust God that He will protect me, another major trauma happens, which makes me hesitant to let my guard down (aka – I’m anxious all the time, and I assume the worst is going to happen).  I probably have PTSD (yes, it’s not just reserved for military folks) as a result of everything that has happened in my life. I struggle with negative thinking, which makes all those “positive thinkers” not want to hang around me because I’m “too negative” of an influence in their lives and I “drag them down.”  Their sheltered, perfect lives don’t know how to walk beside a person like me. So I become more isolated, which deepens my depression and anxiety, which makes it even harder to attain peace and freedom in my life.  It’s not up to people to save me; that job is for Jesus, but it certainly helps when you know that there are people out there who love you and enjoy your presence rather than just tolerate it.

I wish I knew how to “fix myself” and just be happy go lucky again. I wish I knew how to write about lighthearted topics instead of always such heavy content. I wish I knew how to have innocent faith like a child, instead of always struggling to keep my faith. I wish I knew how to get through a single day without yearning for Heaven, to be content with the life I have. Somewhere at the end of this struggle that I call life, is an eternal, heavenly life of perfection, peace, and beauty, with my Savior and my babies. If anything good will come from this stressful, traumatic life of mine, it will wear my body out sooner than the average person and I’ll get to be in Heaven before most people.

My Dad’s Death

My dad, Denver “Bryce” Daniels, died a week ago tomorrow, on January 3rd. He was 74, and he would’ve turned 75 on March 27th, the day after our baby’s due date. He kept saying to me the past few weeks as he was in and out of the hospital with low oxygen stats, unresponsiveness, and other symptoms, how excited he was to meet this new grandchild. When asked if he wanted to stop dialysis, he said no because he wanted to be there to meet her.  God had other timing, and I wasn’t expecting him to go so soon.  I had long ago forgiven him for the many hurtful things he had said and done to me in my life, but I wasn’t ready for him to go. There were many things I never said to him, but I do remember telling him that I had forgiven him.

The last time I saw him was a few days before his death.  On December 29th, he was again sent to the ER because his oxygen had been down in the 50’s and he was unresponsive. My mom had a flight to catch to visit my sister and her family, so I stayed with him at the ER for 4 hours while the doctor waited for the CT scan and blood work results to come back.  He found nothing alarming, so sent him back to Brewster Place. As I sat beside Dad for those 4 hours, he was restless. His back hurt on the ER “bed” (and I don’t blame him! Those things are hellish when you have to lie on them for hours on end!), and it took me 3 times of buzzing the call button over 40 minutes just to get the tech to bring him one pillow for under his knees. I guess patient comfort is the lowest on their priority list in the ER. I do remember giving him a hug and telling him I loved him before I left the hospital to go pick up my daughter for her nap. They were just about to transfer him to dialysis. He said he loved me too.

After the tech brought the pillow, he immediately fell asleep and I continued to sit with him. His blood pressure fluctuated, and I noticed he had periods of sleep apnea. As I watched the monitor, which periodically set off an alarm, his heart rate became irregular when he had the periods of apnea, and his oxygen would dip down to 80 or so, but never alarmingly low, and it always came back, so I never asked the nurse. Now I wish I had asked, but I also know I can’t blame myself. When it’s a person’s time to go, it’s time, and Mom said she thinks Dad knew his time was near. Toward the end he made signs of the cross over his chest (even though he wasn’t Catholic) and he prayed aloud to Jesus.

Before my mom left town for 10 days, I remember thinking that I really hoped nothing major would happen with Dad while she was gone, because I was not his Power of Attorney, and I wouldn’t know what to do. And deep down inside, I wondered what would happen if he died while she was gone, but I dismissed the thought. That would certainly never happen. That would be too much for me to handle.

My Uncle Tim and his wife, Di, came down to visit from Iowa that weekend. I was glad to see them, and they had a good visit with Dad that Friday.  Tim, a doctor, said he had to do the Heimlich on Dad at the dinner table because he seemed to be choking and passed out.  He said as we ate dinner together that it was scary, even for him.  The next morning Uncle Tim was calling me, which I wasn’t expecting because I thought he and Di were heading home that morning and I didn’t expect to see them again.

He said that Brewster Place had called, and Dad was found dead in his bed about 8am.  The aide had checked on him about 7am and he was snoring loudly, and then when he checked on him again at 8am, he was gone. I needed to know for my peace of mind what caused his death, so I pursued an autopsy, which showed that he died from a fatal heart arrhythmia. The forensic pathologist hypothesized that Dad’s sleep apnea caused his heart to quiver and get out of rhythm, and due to an old unknown heart attack that he had survived which left half of his heart 80-90% blocked, his heart wasn’t strong enough to get itself back into rhythm that time. He also said that sleep apnea itself is very dangerous and can kill a person instantly, so it makes me want to force my husband to use the CPAP that he was issued more than a year ago, but never used more than a week because it was “too uncomfortable.”

God was looking out for me with the timing of my uncle’s visit, because he was there to take care of the details like signing the cremation paperwork, contacting the cremation society, helping me box up Dad’s belongings, etc. The smartest thing my dad ever did for his family financially was prepaying for his cremation, burial plot, etc, because in the end he had to go on Medicaid and there was no money left for those things, so we would have had to pay for them. I thought it was morbid at the time he did it, but now I’m thankful.

Every time someone asks me how I’m doing with my dad’s death, I say I’m not sure how to process it all. It’s just too much. I can’t grieve any more than I already am. Dad died January 3rd, but January 4th was the one-year anniversary of Hannah’s memorial service, and today it has been 2 years since our third baby, Peter Ashton, was born at home with his arm waving at us, at just 13 weeks gestation. While the technical term is miscarriage, he was still born and deserves the dignity of that recognition. It’s all too much to process, and too much to remember. I didn’t even realize it was Peter’s day until my mother-in-law messaged me about it, which of course made me feel horrible for forgetting, but glad that she remembered.

God won’t keep our hearts from being broken again, at least not in my experience. It’s not God’s job to prevent our broken hearts, but to mend them when they are broken. If we think God will prevent our hearts from being broken again, we put our faith in danger for the future time when we are again crushed. So we trust Him with every part of our hearts-healthy, broken, mended, scarred, and vulnerable to future hurts, knowing that the same God who has been there for us in the past will be there always. I rejoice that my dad is now perfect, healthy, and wholly mended, and worshiping Jesus. He also gets to see 4 of his grandchildren that he never got to meet here on earth. I’m sure he’s happier than I can even imagine, and I’m thankful for that.

Happy New Year

I truly hope your New Year is happy overall. However, as we who are grounded in reality know, there will be moments of sadness for every person, and for some, great sorrow and life-changing moments. Life-changing moments can be happy or sad, or both, and our life-changing moment that we pray will be more happy than sad, will be the birth of our daughter. Our fifth child (hopefully second child to be born healthy and live) is due March 26, the day before my dad’s 75th birthday, and as I look ahead I know that even if she is healthy, her birth will be bittersweet. This will be not only because of our grief for our daughter, Hannah, who was born last December and went to Heaven three days later, but also because my dad might be starting hospice services soon, which means 2 different doctors would predict that he has 6 months or fewer left to live. 

So as I look ahead to a year of joy and sorrow, I’m trusting that the same God who has been with me since my birth, will carry me through the ups and downs of this year to come. I’ll end this post with a picture of our daughter excitedly holding a sonogram picture of her “Baby Simba.” She is looking forward to holding her sister, and I’m looking forward to finding pants that will fit her! 😊

  

123

The other day WordPress sent me a summary of my blog for the year. It said I had over 14,000 views on my blog, with 122 posts. The OCD part of me really wanted there to be 123 posts for the year, so here’s number 123. I’m going to cheat a bit and paste a Facebook post that I wrote last year that showed up on my “On This Day” app for today, rather than spending much time writing tonight. I’ll try to process 2015 sometime soon, but not tonight because I spent 2.5 hours at the grocery store this evening and I’m exhausted.  I know many of my posts this year have fallen into the “TLDR” category for most people (Too Long, Didn’t Read), but that is their loss. I’ve had a lot to say, and I haven’t worried about editing to be concise, because if I worried about perfection, I would have never written in the first place. I wrote with the disclaimer that the syntax wasn’t perfect, which freed me to get the words out. In the midst of all those jumbled, unedited words flowing from my head to my fingers, I hope there have been some words that have changed calloused hearts and the way people view grief. Grief comes to us all at one time or another in life, and the more we try to hide from it, the more it will burn us. But when we learn to embrace the process and let the feelings wash over us, we will become stronger people as a result.

To those who have patiently read every word, thank you for honoring me by hearing my heart. I’m not sure who you all are, but I thank God for you and the love you have shown. I hope everyone has a Happy New Year filled with blessings and happiness, as well as the strength to face the moments that won’t be happy.
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Written on Facebook December 31, 2014:

This video gives some facts about Pi and says at the end, “Some scholars claim that humans are programmed to find patterns in the world because it’s the only way we can give meaning to the world and ourselves. Hence, the obsessive search to find patterns in it.” However, the Bible says that God is not the God of disorder but of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33), he makes the crooked paths straight and turns the darkness into light (Isaiah 42:16 and 45:2), and he makes order out of chaos (Genesis 1:14-19). I believe He created us to find order and patterns to make sense of our world and find evidence of His hand in creation. When something happens that doesn’t make sense, like when a baby dies, it’s so hard to find God’s hand in the chaos. As one personally caught in the chaos now, it doesn’t make sense to me and it probably never will, but I know in Whom I have believed and I know He’s greater still than the darkness and chaos we are stumbling through. When we can’t see God through the darkness, we know that He is still there. We have seen Him in the kindness of strangers, the love of friends and family, and the peace that wraps around our hearts in the hospital when we should be falling apart. We have seen the hand of God speaking Scripture to our hearts at just the right time, bringing tasks to our minds at just the right time, and giving us sleep when we just can’t handle one more sleepless night. We have also seen the love of God through our beautiful daughter, Adelaide, who bounds into the house for her daily visits and runs straight to our arms without taking her coat off at the door. [Adelaide is our “pi baby” since she was born on 3/14.] We saw the beauty of God in the tiny perfect body of our princess, Hannah. Her heart and lungs may not have been functional enough to sustain her on this earth, but she was perfectly made without one blemish or stain, just the way God wanted her. She was not “deformed”; she was perfect.

Life doesn’t make sense right now, but it would make a whole lot less sense if we didn’t have Jesus carrying us through this time of the deepest grief and sorrow I believe a person can know – the loss of a child. It is comforting to know that my all-powerful God felt the same deep sorrow, but His was even greater. He gave up His only Son. He didn’t have an Adelaide to run into His arms and comfort Him when He cried. The difference is that Nathan and I didn’t choose for this to happen to Hannah, but God chose to allow His son to die because of His immeasurable love for us. How can we just ignore that love or turn away because we say we don’t or can’t believe in God because of the pain that has happened in our lives? If I chose to give up the life-sustaining heart of my only healthy and living child, Adelaide, to give it to someone else to save their life, and then they turned away from me or spit in my face or cursed my name or failed to thank, adore, and honor me, it would crush me and anger me beyond imagination. But so many of us, myself included, do this to God every day by the way we live and the times we forget to honor Him with our lives, and the sins we commit.

People ask me how I can keep such a strong faith during this time of grief. Honestly, there are moments where I am weak and I lose my faith and question God’s goodness and His existence, moments where I cry out and all I hear is the reverberating echo of my wails. But then there are moments like right now where I think about how I’ve seen God’s hand in this time, and my faith is stronger than ever before in my life because of this experience of my child’s death.

This post came to you courtesy of a nightmare that I awoke from at 6:45am. I told my mom not to bring Addie for a visit yesterday because I was such a mess all day, and I think this dream was from missing her. I dreamed that I was chasing Adelaide through the halls of a school while I was crying because Hannah died. She ran away from me because she was afraid of my tears. I ran into the lunchroom where several grief counselors were having lunch, and one bald, decaying-toothed, beady-eyed fat man asked me how I could be so selfish to chase my child and force her to be with me while I was such a crying mess. He said that I needed to protect Addie from my grief. He was covering his face with his plate of food, so I told him to look me in the eye and say it, and he wouldn’t, so I knocked his plate out of his hand, spit in his face, swore at him and woke up covered with sweat and tears streaming down my face.

The more I think about this dream, the more I think the man is the voice of Satan that I have been hearing during this time. I’ve been thinking that I need to protect Adelaide (and everyone else) from seeing me a crying mess, unshowered for days and not getting out of my chair. But maybe she needs to see me no matter what state I’m in. It’s been so difficult from a practical standpoint to care for Addie with my health issues and having to run off to the emergency room 6 times in the past 3 weeks since Hannah was born, 4 hospitalizations, one surgery in addition to the c-section, hematology appointments, OB appointments, ultrasound scans of my blood clot, a 3-hour appointment at the wound clinic, etc. My mom has been keeping Addie at night and most of the day so that we can take care of me without first having to arrange childcare or drag her to the ER with us, so we can make phone calls (so many calls to KU, insurance, doctors, ministers, vet, etc!!) and memorial service arrangements, and so we can sleep in in the mornings when we have sleepless nights. Maybe I just need to show her that I’m crying when she does visit. Maybe I just need to hold my darling in my arms. The trouble is she’s 2 years and 9 months old and she won’t sit still for long, so I take what I can get and she watches a lot of Elmo on the iPad so I can hold her long enough to get some quality snuggles in.

Hannah Hedgehog

“Excuse me; I have a question,” I said as I approached the three Children’s Mercy gift store volunteers/employees behind the checkout counter.  One kind lady stepped forward to hear my question. Fighting back tears, I explained, “Our daughter died here almost exactly one year ago from a heart condition, and her name was Hannah.  We’d like to buy this stuffed hedgehog since it has hearts on it and its name is Hannah Hedgehog, but I don’t see a Children’s Mercy shirt on it like the shirts on the other heart stuffed animals with the same print. Could we please get a shirt for this one?”

The kind woman smiled and started to take the shirt off of a teddy bear to put onto the hedgehog.  “I don’t see why not,” she said as her coworker stepped forward. I’m not sure how much of my question she heard, but she appeared to have been listening.

“Those shirts aren’t for the hedgehogs. They’re only for the Hope bear,” she said coldly.

“Oh, well could we buy a little shirt to put on the hedgehog then?” I asked, continuing to hold back the tears.

“No, they aren’t sold separately,” said Cold Woman.

“Oh,” I said as the tears began to escape, “well, just forget it then. We won’t get anything. We can buy the hedgehog online for $10 cheaper anyway.” Cold Woman turned away with what seemed like a smug look as I rushed out of the gift shop, my poor husband following me closely behind.

When I was out in the hallway, I burst into tears. “The first lady really wanted to help us,” he said. “I could tell by the way she looked at me, and she wouldn’t let go of the hedgehog as I was going to put it back on the shelf, and she looked at me right in the eyes.”

Nathan and I started to leave the hospital, but we sat in the lobby so I could calm down before we went to the car. As we sat there, I thought how much I really wanted THAT Hannah Hedgehog with a shirt from THAT hospital where my baby died, to purchase for HER birthday.  Being the kind soul that he is, even though he hates conflict, he went back to the gift shop to try to talk Cold Woman into giving him the shirt for the hedgehog.  I knew he’d succeed because he just has a way with women (just kidding). I knew he’d succeed because he has a way of nicely getting his point across, and a way of discerning the intentions of other people, and he already knew that the first woman wanted to help us.

So he went back down the long hallway to the gift shop and was gone for quite a long time, maybe 10 or 15 minutes.  He said when he went back to the gift shop that Cold Woman didn’t really help, but the other two women were helping him look around the gift shop for something with a Children’s Mercy logo that might work, like a lapel pin or a headband or scarf, but he knew that none of those would be the right thing.

I’m not sure exactly how he finally got the shirt, but he came out with the hedgehog in one hand and the tiny shirt in another hand.  He said that the shirts weren’t for the hedgehogs because the women said they wouldn’t fit over the hedgehog’s head and neck.  They told him to find someone who sews and have them take the shirt apart at the seams and then re-sew it onto the hedgehog, but that sounded like more trouble to both of us than it was worth.

As I thought about solutions for how to pin the shirt onto the stuffed animal, my problem-solver husband said, “Wait a minute. I think it will fit if we just work together to get it. Here, you hold her head (as he stuffed the head into a tiny ball in his big hands) while I put the shirt on.” Suddenly we had our Hannah Hedgehog with the Children’s Mercy shirt, just as I had wanted in the first place. He was so happy that he found a solution that he went back down the hall a third time to show the ladies that the shirt does fit and show them how he did it, in case they wanted to put shirts on all the heart animals.

My guess is that the Cold Woman (or someone) was in charge of getting the shirts on the heart stuffed animals, and she discovered that she couldn’t get the shirt over the Hedgehog’s head by herself, so she gave up and said the shirts were only for the teddy bears. I think what bothered me was that it was such a small request that had the potential to make me so happy, and we were initially met with such insensitivity and black-and-white thinking that shut down the request, with no willingness to think outside of the box to help us (from Cold Woman).

The old saying says, “Where there is a will, there’s a way,” but sometimes you have to be willing to let go of the way things are supposed to be and work with someone else to develop ideas that get you to the way things are meant to be. I’m so thankful that my husband was willing to go back to find a way. He gave Hannah (and me) the best birthday present for her one year birthday in Heaven.

One Year Gone

One year gone and still I weep;
My empty arms are missing you.
Lonely sorrows run so deep
I cannot see the beauty view.
Winter’s chill lies in my bones
Whispering you should be here.
On my bed my spirit groans
Instead of spreading Christmas cheer.
Grief sounds an echo in my soul;
How can I keep from weeping?
When others forget your memory cold,
I’ll wrap it for my keeping.
You were here for just three days.
Not long enough, my love.
I wasn’t ready, in my haze,
For the angels to carry you above.
I hope when all my life is done
And I get to Heaven’s gate,
Sorrow forgot, the victory won,
After Jesus, I’ll behold your sweet face.

I’m not a poet like my husband, but I wanted to write a poem for Hannah. Her earthly birthday was December 10th, and her Heavenly birthday was December 13th. We went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast while our friend Erika cleaned our house for us, and then we went to Hobby Lobby to buy some balloons for her party. We had a small party with about 10 friends and family attending. We had requested no children because we didn’t want the chaos that kids exude to alter the pensive mood of the evening, and I know that prevented several people from attending. However, several of those who have truly walked this journey by our side this year were able to attend.

We had a simple cake made by our friend, Sherry, and it was beautiful in its simplicity.  After waiting for everyone to arrive, we went outside and released some white and pink balloons that had LED lights inside of them. I’ve never done a nighttime balloon release, but it was beautiful. Nathan played “Come to Jesus” on his phone, just like he had for Hannah before she died. Adelaide exclaimed as she saw the balloons rising higher, “They’re going to Heaven!” Nothing extravagant, which fit with the brevity and simplicity of her life.  Sometimes it’s easy to distract ourselves from experiencing an event with going overboard with the decorations and planning.  Well, we did all that we were capable of doing at the time, and it was enough. We also placed the picture albums out for people to look through. I haven’t been able to attempt the task of printing all 1,000+ photos for our parents (or even for us), but I had printed some of my favorites and put them in a book.

Nathan and I went to Kansas City to stay for Friday and Saturday nights. It was nice to get away. We didn’t do much except relax and we had a date night at the Country Club Plaza on Saturday.  We had some credit card points built up which we used to pay for the hotel, so it was overall an inexpensive but much-needed getaway. Adelaide stayed the weekend with my mother, with a few hours of supplemental help from Nathan’s parents and our good friend, Erika, and we had a reprieve from parenting to remember our babies in Heaven. I don’t think I would’ve had the time to write a poem if we hadn’t had some time away.

Several friends sent cards to let us know they were thinking of us, and our friend, Ashley, sent some beautiful flowers (thank you all!). My friends Carly and Grace had babies on Hannah’s birthday, and I felt mixed emotions about that, both jealousy and relief.

As we traveled home from Kansas City on the anniversary of the day she died, it was rainy and gloomy, and we remembered that the weather was very similar last year on the day that she died.  I hope every December 13th is gloomy for as long as I live, or at least for awhile. When the actual time of her death came at 5:57pm, I laid alone in my bed, hugging my weighted Hannah bear from Molly Bears, and I cried. Nathan didn’t understand the significance of being with me at the actual time since he had just spent all weekend with me, so he had gone ahead to his bowling league.  My friend Christene, always attentive to details, texted me shortly before that time, so at least someone was remembering with me. It’s hard for me to cry around other people, so at least I got a good cry in.

Now that one year has passed, people will expect me to move on, and I’m not ready. I doubt anyone will send a card next year. Maybe a few will type a facebook message or a sentence on my wall. People will think we’re weird if we continue to host a party every year. I can tell by the readership on my blog that many people don’t read my story anymore. I used to have 100+ regular readers and now each post gets about 50-60 views. I don’t write for the numbers, but I do think the numbers speak to how many people think I should still be talking about this grief journey, and how many don’t.

Adelaide wanted to wear her pink tutu for Hannah’s party, and she was excited that she got to blow out the candle for Hannah.  She still talks about her every day as familiarly as if her sister were here with her. I’m glad she loves Hannah as much as we do, and I’m glad that both Nathan and I desire to maintain Hannah’s memory in our family. Not all couples who face the loss of a child are on the same page about that.

Panera Ponderings

On the day before Hannah‘s scheduled birth last year, I ran around town like a crazy lady, trying to get everything done. I knew I’d be in no shape to be running errands for quite awhile after a c-section.  I went to about 5 houses for Selling With Friends (back when I actually cared about SWF), including one house near the funeral home where we had a small service in January 2014 for our baby, Peter, who was born at home at just 13 weeks. Since I was out there, I stopped at the funeral home because they had written us a letter saying that they had an ornament that we could take to honor our loved one.  I spoke with the person who had helped us with Peter’s service, and I told her I would have a baby the next day.  She said I could take an ornament for our other miscarried baby, Elijah. I couldn’t decide between 3, so she just let me have all 3. They had tons of ornaments, and she said not everyone would be by to pick up theirs.  The ornaments were small crystal angels holding different objects, and the 3 I chose were holding a candle, a harp, and a heart.  I didn’t see the heart angel at first, but right before I stopped looking, I saw it as if it were staring at me.  It was so pretty, and I told myself that this one would be for this new baby who was helping to heal my broken heart, just as Adelaide did after Elijah.

I didn’t realize until this past weekend when we (forced ourselves to decorate for Adelaide’s sake and) pulled out the angel ornaments, how ironic that ornament choice had been.  I had no idea what was coming, though I had had a sense of foreboding leading up to her birth.  My doctors and everyone else tried to reassure me that everything was fine and I was just over-reacting to my anxiety about the surgery. One person in our pregnancy & infant loss support group gave me a hug and said, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.” I wanted to believe her, but no one can promise that except God, and I hadn’t heard that from him.  I think a mother’s heart can sometimes sense that something is wrong, even if she can’t explain what the problem is. That’s why in most cases when a mother takes her child to the doctor, s/he needs to really listen.  The doctor isn’t there to explain away the mother’s fears and make her feel crazier than she already does. The doctor should be there to partner with her to try to figure out the answers.

I have felt lost and spacey for several days now. I catch myself staring off into space. As I sit here at Panera writing, after enjoying my free lunch that the manager comp’d because their computer system was down when I ordered, not knowing what to say next, the manager just came over to the table right next to me with a big box filled with toys. I heard her tell one of her workers that the toys are for their donation to Children’s Mercy Hospital, and I couldn’t help but look over and smile. They have Barbie dolls, coloring books, and many other toys. I asked her why Panera donates to CMH instead of a local hospital like Stormont, and she said that one of the administrators for the KC/Topeka Panera franchise had a child at CMH and now collects toys from employees and customers to donate each Christmas. I shared with her about Hannah and why I am at Panera today, and how I think it’s great that they’re doing this toy drive.

God is in the details, and He cares about the details. He weaves them together in each person’s life like an intricately crafted tapestry.  Even when our lives seem totally out of control, they’re still in His hands. The responsibility we have is to maintain vulnerable hearts ready to see them.  I could have become upset that in an empty restaurant, the manager was coming over next to me and distracting me, interrupting my “me time.” If I hadn’t already been here to write and think about Hannah, I could have packed up my things and left instead of thinking about how her Children’s Mercy box reminded me of my pain.

But instead I recognized God’s hand, held a conversation with her, and shared with her about my church (because they get donations from Panera each Thursday).  She spoke briefly about the loss of her own child, and how sometimes it’s hard to be a manager and receive the brunt of people’s anger.  She shared how people will yell and scream at her in the mornings when their coffee machine breaks and there is no coffee available for a time.  We both agreed that most of those people have other deeper issues going on in their lives that they perhaps aren’t healthily dealing with, and the coffee is just the catalyst that makes it all come spewing out. She said she tries to remember that when she encounters those people.

So how have you been gracious to someone today? Or how have you not been gracious? We need to remember every day, not just during the Christmas season, that people are hurting and we need to show them love and grace. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll give you a free, warm chocolate chip cookie in return! 🙂

Nothing to say

Got a bluetooth keyboard on Black Friday and it came today. I figured it might help me write more if I don’t have to boot up the computer every time. I must say it’s pretty sweet, and I wish I had bought one sooner to pair with my smart phone. I remember spending 90 minutes at a time pecking out updates about Hannah from my phone, when it could have taken me 10 minutes with a keyboard.  And I only had to listen to my husband yell at me for 10 minutes because of the $30 I spent “unnecessarily!” We won’t go into the necessity of owning Season 8 of Random Show. 😉

This post isn’t going to say much. Hannah would have turned 1 year old a week from tomorrow, and I’m a hot mess. That’s about it. My friend, Amanda, asked me tonight if I had been writing lately, and I said no. I told her I only write every couple of weeks now, but I didn’t tell her it’s because I don’t feel like I have anything to say anymore. And even if I did have something to say, no one would want to listen. People expect you to move on. 

I was doing some online computer training for work this week, and one of the sessions was about bereavement.  I skimmed it since it wasn’t new info for me, but one part upset me. It said if the person is still focused on the death of the loved one after one year, then they are experiencing abnormal and unhealthy grief.  They should be back to normal functioning by one year after. Of course, this same course also spoke of the antiquated Kubler-Ross grief model as the definition of grief, so I tried to take it with a grain of salt, but it still offended me that even a HOSPICE, whose business is death and bereavement, thinks that a bereaved person should be back to normal after one year. 

Or maybe grieving your own child looks different than the typical bereaved person that a hospicec sees (the child, spouse, or grandchild of the deceased). All I know is that I’ve never met a bereaved parent who has “moved on” by the one-year mark (or even the 2 or 3 year mark), and it is “trainings” like the one I did that perpetuates why I’m afraid of next week. After Hannah’s one-year birthday, people will really expect me to be “over it,” and when I’m not the’ll call me “abornmal” or “unhealthy.” Poo poo on them. How can they judge me like that when they haven’t even walked 5 minutes in my shoes? 

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for tonight. 

The Only Thing Certain is Death

My mom’s brother, Uncle Ron, passed away last week and his funeral is tomorrow. This is part of why I’ve been having a hard time today, though certainly there is a lot more going on as well. Here’s a picture of him holding Baby Me that my cousin sent to me when she was going through pictures in September. Ron’s wife, Aunt Mary, died only 2.5 months ago. I think he died from a broken heart, even though the doctors said it was a faulty heart valve that they couldn’t operate on because he was too weak from a string of recent illnesses.

I remember when I was a little girl and he used crutches because of the polio virus he contracted at the age of 18.  He would always poke at me with one of his crutches and make a duck sound with his mouth. It scared me when I was really little, but then I got used to it. I think he liked to get me to shriek and run away. He was such a tease and loved little kids. He also always carried lemon drops with him wherever he went, and he’s the reason I love lemon drops.

The old saying from Benjamin Franklin that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” is actually incorrect because taxes are not a certainty for you if you’re among the poorest of the poor. The only thing certain for every person in this world is death. I had typed “birth and death,” but then I remembered all of the babies who aren’t given the opportunity to be born, either by abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth or other reasons.  I had to miss working today because I work in hospice and I just couldn’t face more death today when the grief of missing Hannah and Uncle Ron is so strong.

I also heard the official word today on the “death” of what has been my biggest, most stable music therapy contract for the past 6 years.  If anyone has a money tree they could shake our way, let me know. We also found out we owe $1,700 for Nathan’s tuition ASAP, and last week we forked over $815 to fix the car. The other car has a check engine light on as well but we can’t afford anything else so we’ve just been hoping the light goes away. All of this during the most expensive season of the year – Christmas. Every year we say we won’t buy presents for anyone, but this may be the first year we really should follow through with that. Guess that means I’ll have to make stuff and be crafty and such, but even that costs money to buy supplies.

I saw a couple of friends post something on Facebook today that said, “A negative mind will never give you a positive life,” and it made me really angry.  It implied to me that the reason for all this SHIT in my life is that I don’t think positively enough. That’s as bad as some Christians who say that God didn’t heal someone because you didn’t pray hard enough. Circumstances beyond your control have nothing to do with positive thinking, and I wish people would just learn that sometimes things are just shitty. And also, if I kept a positive mind with all of the negative I’ve experienced, that wouldn’t be very true to my feelings.  “My baby died almost a year ago, I just lost a job, we’re poor as dirt, we can’t afford Christmas AGAIN this year, my aunt and uncle died within 3 months of each other, my husband works overnights and I never see him anymore, and I’m so depressed I can’t even keep up with laundry and dishes, but everything’s going to turn out great in the end and let’s just think positively and it will all be well!” What a fake way of thinking that doesn’t honor the pain! And what a way to get kicked in the teeth by someone who is grieving and hurting so badly.

 

Beauty From Pain in Every Season

When the death of a close loved one occurs, it can make you question everything that was once valued in your life.  Things to which you once afforded time, energy and money can seem no longer a valid means of spending those precious and limited possessions, whereas things to which you never gave a second thought can become of paramount importance.  There develops a paradigm shift in the wake of the storm.  The tectonic plates shift and your life no longer looks the same.  You may be an expert at making the exterior appear the same as before to those with whom you only have a cursory relationship, but nothing will ever be the same again.

I met a woman today at the American Music Therapy conference named Dr. Joy Berger, who is a hospice music therapist, chaplain, and author of a book called Composing Life Out of Loss.  I haven’t read the book, but I had a long conversation with her about my work in hospice, and I shared in a general way about the death of our baby, Hannah, and the struggles I’ve faced emotionally continuing to work in hospice since her death.  She asked how I am able to survive emotionally in this line of work, and I said it’s very difficult and emotionally draining, but I just have to separate myself from my patients.  If I didn’t do that, there’s no way I could function in my job.  I think I also focus on the details to help me through the work.  Instead of focusing on the big picture, I have to focus on the next song I’m going to play, the next town I’m going to drive to, etc.  That probably compromises my effectiveness as a therapist right now, but I’m doing what I can amidst my family’s challenging financial situation with my husband’s nearly 6-month unemployment.

One thing Dr. Berger stated in our conversation that she mentions in her book was how life is like seasons, a metaphor I’ve heard often before.  It reminded me of Nichole Nordeman’s song, Every Season.  It has been one of my favorite songs since I first heard her sing it at Wheaton College in 2000, and it makes me cry every time I hear it.  The words about winter say, “Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter.  You are winter.”  God opens doors for life to enter, even in death.  I trust that somehow after all the dust of the traumatic part of my grief settles, there will exist new life, a sprig poking through the ashes.

Nordeman’s verse about spring says, “And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced, teaching us to breathe.  And what was frozen through is newly purposed, turning all things green.”  Right now it feels like everything is still brown and frozen, dead for the winter.  My loss is still so fresh; it hasn’t even been a year. The words say that the new things that surface do so bravely, teaching us to breathe.  I hope the new things that emerge in my life like a phoenix from the ashes will teach me to breathe, and turn all things green, bringing new life to others.

Every Season
By Nichole Nordeman

Every evening sky, an invitation
To trace the patterned stars
And early in July, a celebration
For freedom that is ours

And I notice You in children’s games
In those who watch them from the shade
Every drop of sun is full of fun and wonder
You are summer

And even when the trees have just surrendered
To the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in late September
And sending us inside

Still I notice You when change begins
And I am braced for colder winds
I will offer thanks for what has been and what’s to come
You are autumn

And everything in time and under Heaven
Finally falls asleep
Wrapped in blankets white, all creation
Shivers underneath

And still I notice You when branches crack
And in my breath on frosted glass
Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter
You are winter

And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
And what was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green

So it is with You and how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be as You are re-creating me
Summer, autumn, winter, spring

Well, I was going to end the blog post there, but then another song came to mind based on the last one, called Beauty From Pain by Superchick.  Ironically, I’m at a music therapy conference and I first heard this song at my music therapy internship in 2007.  I remember being in the “intern closet” (that they called an office) on the eating disorders unit before a group I was leading, and I was going through some of the CDs we had access to, and one of them was Superchick’s album by the same title.  I hadn’t really listened to any of their songs prior to that, but I fell in love with that song and the promise it discusses of God bringing beauty from our pain.  The one line I disagree with is toward the end where it says, “After all this has passed, I still will remain. After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain.”  I believe that after we live through a trauma, the same person does not remain, but a new person with new life and new perspectives on life.  I believe there can be beauty in the midst of sorrow, while your heart is still lying shattered on the floor and tears still flow from your heart down your face.  I also believe that we never get “past” the death of a loved one, but we just learn to walk forward in the (often dim) light of a new reality.

You may be walking through dark times of pain, whether that’s the death of a child, spouse or other close loved one, navigating the painful waters of adultery and divorce, business failure and bankruptcy, or physical injury, abuse, etc.  I encourage to to hold onto He Whom you can’t see, and even though it won’t be today, someday He will bring beauty from pain.  There will be a dawn, and you’ll hope again.

Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40: 28-31).  I always read that passage as a tired college student, and I liked it.  But when I read it from the perspective of a worn out, weary, bereaved mother, it brings new meaning.  I hear it saying that God will not grow weary like I am, wanting to give up. In fact, He gives strength to those who are ready to give up and he increases His power, even in the middle of my weakness. My strength will be renewed through my hope in God, and I will soar like an eagle, run without weariness (figuratively of course, if you know me)  😉 and walk without fainting. The key is to maintain our hope in the Lord.

Life will not always be dark for you or for me, believer. There is coming a day when all will be right and good and perfect in Heaven, but there is also coming a day in most of our lives when life on earth will be beautiful again. Even if your circumstances never change, your heart attitude toward them can change, and you will begin to see the beauty from the pain. And by the way, it’s ok to have pain, hope and beauty entwined together. The presence of one does not preclude the existence of the others. Just look at the cross. There was a whole lot of pain and a whole lot of hope commingling that day.

Beauty From Pain
By Superchick

The lights go out all around me
One last candle to keep out the night
And then the darkness surrounds me
I know I’m alive but I feel like I’ve died
And all that’s left is to accept that it’s over
My dreams ran like sand through the fists that I made
I try to keep warm but I just grow colder
I feel like I’m slipping away

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain
Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again
And there’ll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

My whole world is the pain inside me
The best I can do is just get through the day
When life before is only a memory
I’ll wonder why God lets me walk through this place
And though I can’t understand why this happened
I know that I will when I look back someday
And see how you’ve brought beauty from ashes
And made me as gold purified through these flames

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain
Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again
And there’ll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Here I am at the end of me (at the end of me)
Tryin’ to hold to what I can’t see (to what I can’t see)
I forgot how to hope
This night’s been so long
I cling to Your promise
There will be a dawn

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain
Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again
And there’ll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Surviving the Holidays Grief Support Group

Today we went to Children’s Mercy in Kansas City for a grief support group meeting on the topic of surviving the holidays.  Apparently they meet every 2 or 3 months, but this was the first time we had gone.  There were about 13 couples present.  We got there half an hour late for the 2-hour group because a certain husband of mine turned off BOTH of my alarms and didn’t bother to set one himself, so we didn’t wake up until our little toddler alarm clock woke us up.  I’m glad we still went, even though we were late.  We missed most of the stories, but one of the ones we did hear was of a couple whose baby also had TAPVR, just like Hannah.  Their story was similar to ours in that they had no idea anything was wrong until their baby girl was born and the oxygen sensors revealed a low oxygen saturation level.  I wanted to stay and talk to the couple afterwards, but we had to leave immediately after so Nathan could get back in time for work.  (For those who don’t know, his 5-month period of unemployment has now ended with his new job as a mall security officer.) I’ve never met anyone else whose baby died of TAPVR, so I’m disappointed that we couldn’t talk to them.

One of the ladies in the group talked about being glad that her friends and family can’t understand what she has been through.  She thanks God every day that they can’t understand, and I am also thankful that most of my friends can’t understand the agony of being a bereaved parent. Just this week I had some well-meaning friends tell me that in order to get through the holidays, I need to ask my counselor for tips on getting through the holidays, and I need to be thankful for Adelaide and focus on her joy to take my mind off of losing Hannah.  They just don’t understand, and I’m so glad. However, I didn’t really need advice. I just needed someone to hear me when I say how much I’m dreading the holidays this year.  The people in the group today nodded their heads and agreed that they are also dreading the holidays without their children.

There was a mix of parents whose children died several years ago, and those who died this year.  One of the couples whose baby died about 6 years ago said that it helps her to incorporate her child’s memory into their celebrations by writing in a journal to him, finding an ornament or small gift to purchase in his memory, and including a stocking with his name on it.

Another woman said that we need to celebrate our children, and if it makes someone else uncomfortable, then that is their problem, not ours.  You can’t control how your grief makes someone else feel, and just because expressing your grief makes someone else uncomfortable does not mean you should keep it bottled up.  Your child makes a difference in the lives of others, even when you don’t know how.  I know Hannah’s life has made a difference in several people’s lives, even if I’m not sure how.  It makes me feel good that her life mattered to someone besides us. This week we met with Dr. Lay, who was Hannah’s cardiologist at Children’s Mercy.  She remembered us well, even recognizing us with a smile and a wave as she passed by us in the hallway before the appointment.  She remembered the details of the day she and I first met in the tiny room and she spoke her first words to me that Hannah wasn’t going to live.  She remembered that she barely had a voice that day, a detail which I had forgotten. She told us she has a 3-year-old “threenager,” just like our Adelaide.  She remembered Addie’s interactions with her sister and how excited she was to meet her for the first time.

Psalm 139:16 says, “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” One of the ladies in the support group said she believes that God has all of our days numbered before we are even born, so our death will come when it is supposed to come, and it reminded me of this verse.  That belief is biblical. God has all of our days numbered.  He knew Hannah would live three days.

One couple asked the group when you know it’s time to try having another child after your child has died.  Nathan shared how he wanted to protect me from any more pain, so in the first months after Hannah died, he said he didn’t want any more children. He said that he saw the pain in my eyes when he told me, and our friend, Heidi Faith, told him that saying no to any more children is a loss in itself because you’re saying no to future children and the joy that they could bring you. It was her comment that gradually opened his heart’s door to wanting another child. I answered the man’s question by saying something that came to me about 2 years ago. There was a woman in our support group who had had about 8 miscarriages and kept trying for a baby even though she had no living children. Nathan asked me after group one night why I thought she kept opening herself up for more pain, and I said that I thought when your heart gets to the point that it wants to open itself to the possibility of more love, more than it wants to protect itself from pain, then you’re ready to try again.

One woman shared that people usually give you about a year to grieve, and then they expect you to “get past it and be fine.” Her loss was 10 years ago, and she said you never “get past it.” You always think about your baby and wish they were here again, and with every major milestone, you grieve that they are not here. I think that’s why I’m dreading the holidays and Hannah’s one-year anniversary on December 10th.  Some people will expect me to magically be fine after the year mark. They will move on. The few who still talk about Hannah and ask me how I’m doing will stop asking.  I don’t want to be “over” her, nor will I ever be.

One man said he thinks a lot of people just want to move on with their lives and be comfortable.  I spoke up and said that we, the bereaved, need to be careful not to judge the motivations of others. Yes, some are calloused and just want to ignore our pain and be comfortable. But most people who really care for us don’t mention our babies, not because they’ve forgotten or want to ignore it, but because they don’t want to bring up the subject and hurt us.  It’s the reason I never brought up my nephews’ deaths with my sister and sister-in-law. I thought of them a lot, but I never wanted to be the one to bring up a painful subject and hurt them.  People’s intentions usually are good. They just don’t realize that we’re already thinking about them all the time anyway, so mentioning them is usually like a fresh breeze of permission to grieve, speak freely, and be ourselves.  I feel like I have to walk around in life now with a lid on my sorrow, and it’s so refreshing to know that others still think about my babies, too.

Thoughts on Anger and Faith

I’m in a ladies’ small group that meets once per month. There were a lot of people there (about 12 or so) last week, so the time ran out before I could speak of my prayer requests. A couple of days after the meeting, I wrote my prayer requests on the secret facebook group. I asked for prayer for several areas of my life: my husband and his employment situation (he has been unemployed since June), our marriage (it’s really hard to live as two people who are depressed and grieving), our broken hearts after our infant daughter died last December, our struggling finances, our house, and my stressful job.  I said that life continues to feel like it’s caving in on us, and that nothing is going right.  We just want a period of peace and blessings and are so tired of hurting, struggling and having so much stress in our lives. 

First let me say that I’m pretty sure my husband and I both are dealing with some form of PTSD after the traumatic death of our daughter, as well as depression.  Although I’m working on it, it’s nearly impossible some days for me to see the positive in much of anything.  Second, I’d like to acknowledge that I know God is not a genie whose prayer lamp you rub and get good things out of it. Maybe my statement of desiring a period of peace and blessings seemed like I was wanting a genie response.  I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant I am so tired of being so bogged down with all of the shit that I just want things to go right for once.  I want God to take some of the stress away and be able to live life and focus on healing my heart. You can’t heal very well when stressors continue to compound your grief and exacerbate your broken heart.  I daresay much of our stress would be alleviated if my husband could just find a decent paying job. We wouldn’t be needing to sell our house. I wouldn’t need to stay in an unhealthy work environment. We wouldn’t have to worry each month about how we’re going to pay all our bills.  We wouldn’t fight about spending $10 on something frivolous. Third, let me say that I’ve grown up in the church, attended a Christian college, and currently attend a Bible Study Fellowship, Christian moms group, take my daughter to Awana, attend church weekly, etc.  I’m not at all saying that attendance in these things determines faith, but I do think that if one had no faith in Jesus, one would not take all the time and energy to attend all of these things.

So one of my friends texted me yesterday and basically said God had awoken her early that morning with a strong sense to pray for me, but she didn’t know how to help or what to pray. She heard God tell her to help me know who He is and how He works.  That is great. I want to learn more about God and how He works for the rest of my life, because there’s so much to Him that one can never learn it all. I know I’ll spend the rest of my life learning. I would’ve been fine if it weren’t for the last part of her text which said “I know He wants to comfort you, turn this tragedy into a testimony, and love you. But honestly I think you don’t have faith in Him.”

The way I read the text was her saying that she thinks I don’t have faith in God.  Maybe she didn’t mean it that way. We have yet to talk things through in person due to our schedules this weekend, and everyone knows how easily tone and meaning can be misunderstood in a text or email. However, when I read those words, my heart jumped to my throat and I felt like a trusted friend had smacked me upside the head out of left field with a 15-pound frozen turkey. I felt shocked, hurt, misunderstood and judged. She doesn’t know my heart like I thought she did. She doesn’t know all the hours I’ve spent crying in my bed to God, reading the Bible to see what I’m missing, wondering what I’m not “getting” that God has to keep allowing tragic circumstances in my life to teach me.  She must have seen the anger and the hurt in my tone as I was writing the prayer requests, and determined that I don’t have faith in God.  Many Christians believe if a person had faith in God, she would not be “misdirecting” her anger and bitterness at God.

I think that anger is a perfectly normal feeling to have after the death of a child. Not everyone experiences it or allows themselves to experience it directed at God, but many do, and there is nothing questionable about their faith because of that.  The Bible says in Job 1:21 that “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.”  So if God gave us Elijah and Peter and Hannah, He also took them away for reasons that we may never know.  I know they were never “mine,” and they were always His, but that still doesn’t take away my anger. My heart was set on getting to take care of them on earth, and that opportunity was cut short, not once but 3 times.  So if you tell me that God didn’t cause my babies to go away from my arms, I would have to disagree with you because God has the authority over life and death.  Satan may be the gatekeeper of death, but God still has the ultimate authority over it.

In Matthew 17, a man begs Jesus to heal his epileptic son after the disciples were unable to heal him. When the disciples ask Jesus why they couldn’t heal the boy, Jesus says (Mt. 17:20), “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” So if the disciples, who saw Jesus with their own eyes and the miracles He did, had faith smaller than a mustard seed (since they couldn’t move the mountains and found things impossible, like healing the boy), what must the faith of most of us today look like? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to move a mountain with my command (and I’ve actually tried).  I personally have told many “mountains” to move in my life, but they remain in the same place.  However, when I ask for the collective faith of my friends and family to pray for the mountain to be moved, that is when things start to change.

I disagree with my friend who said that I don’t have faith, but I would agree that my faith has miles to grow, nor would I say I have a “giant” faith.  I think it would be arrogant for anyone to say that they have their faith all figured out, and watch out if you think that way because you’re likely in for some testing moments with your faith.  I think it’s a miracle that I have any faith at all after everything I’ve been through in life.  With every trial, it usually eventually gets stronger, though the big storms usually beat it nearly to obliteration before it grows back stronger. Since I was a teenager, many people have commented that God must have huge things in store for me or else Satan would not be trying so fiercely to turn me away from God.

I didn’t write this post to throw my friend under the bus or berate her, or get nasty comments about her (so please don’t think or write any). I know her heart meant to encourage me, because she really is a kindhearted person who wants to help others.  I love her and her servant heart, and I’ve learned many things from our friendship.  We are all sinners and sometimes our best intentions still come across the wrong way.  I choose to listen to her heart and not her words, even though her words did hurt me.

I wrote this post to tell you readers that just because someone has anger at God does not mean they don’t have faith. If I’m mad at my husband, it’s actually good if I express it to him (even though my methods aren’t always good) rather than turning away and never speaking to him again.  I think it’s the same with God.  Some people who are angry with God express that, and others just turn away and never come back.  I’m the former.  If you see other Christians who fall in that category, just be careful not to judge or look down on them as bitter or faithless when you pray for them. That’s all I’m asking. Only God can judge the faith or heart of a person, not you. Your job is to pray and speak as God directs you. Let God worry about their hearts. He’s the only one who can change a heart anyway.

Note: I found the image featured in this blog at the following address: classicchinny. wordpress. com

Grace Sufficient to Survive Any Test

Warning: This is probably going to be a pretty negative post, so if you just want to feel good and positive afterwards, you probably shouldn’t read it. I know some of my friends “only choose to surround themselves with light and positivity.” Their choice, I suppose. I choose to surround myself with actual real life with the hope of an eternal perspective and love for others in the midst of their pain, which actually, when you think of it, is how Jesus chose to live as well. To really love someone, even when they don’t have much “positive energy,” you must choose to accept them not only for who they have been and for who they are now, but also for the person you believe they will one day be.

Lately I feel lost in a deep, dark valley, and I can’t see my way out.  I’ve become very angry and depressed in my mind and spirit, though many who don’t know me well would never guess it from my everyday interactions and jokes, or those who rarely see me.  I feel trapped in my life, and many days I just lie in bed wishing I had the courage to escape to Heaven.  So many things weigh me down these days.  To begin with, I’ve always been a rather “negative thinker” as my friend Carly put it the other day, or “practical thinker” as I like to put it. I suppose that kind of “stinkin’ thinkin'” runs in my family.  It’s hard to change things ingrained in you since childhood, but I’ve been trying to change.  I know the research shows how positive thinking is good for your health, and “practical” thinking not-so-much.  However, no amount of “positive thinking” can change the facts when life just plain sucks.

My husband has been unemployed since June, and before that he was underemployed since he went back to school in the fall of 2009.  He quit his better paying part-time job in May 2013 due to back pain and was unemployed for over a year until he found a lesser-paying job in August 2014.  He has been in school since 2009, with the exception of the 2014-2015 school year which he took off due to the death of our daughter.  When he started school, we expected the “worst case scenario” timeline to be that he would be done by 2012 or 2013 at the very latest, since he already had an associate’s degree. Then hit after hit came in our marriage – miscarriage #1 in 2011, child #2 born with seizures and in the NICU for a week in 2012, debilitating back pain from 2010-2013 and then back surgery in 2013, 3 weeks after his surgery was miscarriage #2, long periods of unemployment or underemployment for both of us, depression for both of us, lots of anxiety for me (especially regarding finances)…and then our full-term baby girl died at 3 days old in December of 2014.  Since he started school, we are six years down the road and $50,000 more in debt from his school loans, and he has no degree to show for it because he just doesn’t know what to do with his life right now, nor do I with mine. I’ve even thought about changing career paths altogether even though I have a master’s degree in music therapy, because I never expected it to be this hard to earn a livable income.  Well, I expected it to be hard, but I also expected to have a husband with a steady career when I began grad school, so I figured that would balance the challenges of being self-employed, and I certainly didn’t expect life to be as hard as it has been for us.

This past year has been horrible, but we don’t really realize just how much trauma we’ve endured until we sit down to think about it (or write about it) all at once. Our marriage, with the exception of the first year or two, has been one heartbreaking trauma after another.  We both say it’s a miracle that we are still together.  God has preserved our marriage, and we thank Him for that.  I don’t want to give anyone the impression that our marriage is healthy or fine, because it is neither. We have a long way to go to repair the damage to our marriage that has been done from all the traumatic events, but we do know that we are both committed to seeing each other through this time to greener pastures.  When you live each day just trying to survive and breathe the next moment, a lot of things get neglected in your life.  We are trying to get back to a healthy marriage.

For those who pray for us, please pray that God will restore our marriage, and that He will restore the joy in each of our hearts.  We both used to be joy-filled people, but grief has stolen that from us.  We would also like to ask for God’s blessings and His favor, particularly emotionally and financially, after such a long season of drought. We are ready to come out of the wilderness.  However, when you’ve been in the wilderness for so long, it’s hard to believe that anything good will ever happen again. You start to live by bracing yourself for the next trauma. You live in fear of what might happen next, always on edge.  I suppose this is what PTSD victims feel like, waiting for the next bad thing to happen.  It’s not a healthy way to live, and we both long to be healthy again in all aspects of our lives.

When I was at Wheaton College, Michael Card did a Christmas concert 2 or 3 different years, and he asked students to be his backup choir and orchestra.  I loved his music even before those opportunities. As part of his Christmas visits, he also did performances in chapel. I remember hearing his song, In the Wilderness, during one of those chapel performances. It’s from his CD called An Invitation to Awe.  The song penetrated my heart as I sat in the balcony of the chapel hearing it for the first time.  The painful purpose and promise of the wilderness is that God will give grace sufficient to survive any test, not that He will protect us from the tests.  We have found this to be true in our marriage.  2 Corinthians 12:9 expresses this well: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” I don’t feel like the power of Christ rests upon me, because all I feel is weak – especially lately, but I trust that somewhere along the line people will see the power of Christ despite my weaknesses. You may not have had the same trauma or tests in your life that I’ve had in mine, but I know that sooner or later everyone faces trials of many kinds.  If your time hasn’t come yet, it will someday.  How do you respond when trials come? Do you avoid them and pretend all is well with your “positive thinking”? I think God is more glorified when we admit that life is hard, but God is good.

In the Wilderness
By Michael Card

In the wilderness
In the wilderness
He calls His sons and daughters
To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient
To survive any test
And that’s the painful purpose
Of the wilderness

In the wilderness we wander
In the wilderness we weep
In the wasteland of our wanting
Where the darkness seems so deep

We search for the beginning
For an exodus to hold
We find that those who follow Him
Must often walk alone

In the wilderness
In the wilderness
He calls His sons and daughters
To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient
To survive any test
And that’s the painful purpose
Of the wilderness

In the wilderness we’re wondering
For a way to understand
In the wilderness there’s not a way
For the ways become a man

And the man’s become the exodus
The way to holy ground
Wandering in the wilderness
Is the best way to be found

In the wilderness
In the wilderness
He calls His sons and daughters
In the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient
To survive any test
And that’s the painful purpose
Of the wilderness

Groaning and growing
Amidst the desert days
The windy winter wilderness
Can blow the self away

In the wilderness
In the wilderness
He calls His sons and daughters
To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient
To survive any test
And that’s the painful purpose
Of the wilderness

And that’s the painful promise
Of the wilderness

Adelaide’s Baby Sister

Adelaide, our 3.5-year-old daughter, has many nicknames: Addie, Addie Grace, Adelaide Grace with the little pretty face, Tonto (because she’s always running and Tonto had a fast horse? I’m not sure where I got that one. I’ve never even seen the Lone Ranger.), sweet cheeks, baby girl, Adduh (her southern name), Bella, Tiny Dancer (her nickname from the womb because she was always moving), Beautiful Ballerine (which she calls herself instead of a ballerina), pretty princess, and many more. Many times she only truly responds if I sternly call her by her full given name. What is it with toddlers and ignoring their mothers unless they know they’re in trouble, anyway? Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a wall – or a running wall, rather.

She often asks to “nuggle” at bedtime.  I used to think it was a bedtime procrastination technique (and sometimes it really is), but it’s just her way of winding down and it’s my one opportunity of the day to truly have her attention because she’s lying (relatively) still in her bed, inches from my face.  She usually asks to talk about Hannah, and I’m almost always glad to oblige. Sometimes it’s difficult to talk about Hannah when I’m in a hurry or too exhausted to feel the sadness, but tonight I was ready.  I realized that Adelaide is the only person in my life who daily asks me to talk about Hannah, and I hoped that this bedtime trend will continue for a long time in the future.  It’s a gift to be able to talk about Hannah with my 3-year-old, who won’t say anything trite or “well meaning” or hurtful.  She is so innocent; she just wants to remember her sister.  I think she likes me to talk about Hannah because she doesn’t want to forget.

I usually start by asking what she wants me to specifically say about Hannah, and she usually says, “Talk about when Hannah was borned and her heart.”  Adelaide has been very interested in the body lately, with help from Grandma biology tutor who shows her the body book whenever she’s at her house. She is fascinated by teeth, and the way the heart pumps blood to the rest of the body. I think Grandma skips over the reproductive pages, because Addie never asks about those parts. 😉 Tonight I said, “When Hannah was born, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her at first.  They saw her purple hands and they knew her heart wasn’t pumping enough blood and oxygen to her body.  She went on a special machine that helped her heart pump the blood. The doctors decided that they couldn’t fix Hannah’s heart.  She was very sick.  The only one who could fix Hannah’s heart was Jesus, so that’s why she had to go to Heaven, so Jesus could fix her heart and make her all better. Hannah loved you very much, Addie, and she thought you were such a good big sister. What do you remember about Hannah? Do you remember rocking her in the chair?” Her – “Yes, I rocked her in the blue chair.” Me – “Do you remember singing to Hannah?” Her – “Yes, Jesus loves me this I know…”

I think her toddler way of working out her grief is to talk about her sister and remember her, and to hear the story over and over again.  I feel so sorry for the toddlers who grieve and who are silenced when they try to talk about it, because that’s their way of trying to work out and understand what happened.  The only time I’ve ever silenced Addie is when she starts talking about it with total strangers at the grocery store (for example), because there are appropriate times and inappropriate times to talk about our grief, and I’m trying to teach her that.

Tonight she put her arms around my neck as we laid with our faces inches from one another, talking about her baby sister. She said something, “Mommy, I just want to hold you in my arms and protect you.” I hope she doesn’t grow up with this feeling that she needs to protect me. No child should have the weight of that responsibility when they are young.  She has faced more weighty things in her first 3.5 years than most people experience in their entire childhood.  I hope she was just mimicking what she sometimes sees us do to her (hold her like a baby in our arms and say we want to protect her).

When I thought about Adelaide’s nicknames and that most of them developed after she started talking and developing her unique personality, I realized that I won’t ever have the opportunity to develop cute little nicknames for Hannah. I won’t ever know here on earth what her personality would’ve been, but I will know when I get to Heaven.

Then We Shall See Face to Face

September 11th was my Aunt Mary’s funeral, and also the day that my husband’s grandmother went to Heaven.  I loved both these women, but I wouldn’t say that I was extremely emotionally attached to either one.  My aunt had had dementia for the past several years and I rarely got to see her in the past 5 years or so, and Nathan’s grandmother was always kind to me, but it’s just different when you meet a grandma at age 28 versus when you’re born.  Still it was a day of sadness and gladness, all at the same time.  I was sad for my cousins, my uncle, for Nathan and his family.  Yet both of these women were Christians and went securely to Heaven.

My Aunt Barbara was at Aunt Mary’s funeral, and she hugged me outside of the bathroom after the funeral.  She said, “I imagine this is difficult for you.”  I started to cry, and I awkwardly said, “Yes. When old people die, it’s as it should be.  Friends and family come to celebrate and remember the life of the one who died.  They say, ‘She had a good and long life.'”  When a baby dies, no one knows what to do or say. It’s not as it should be.  Family doesn’t prioritize coming to the funeral because it’s too much distance and inconvenience for someone they never met.  Honestly the hardest part of Aunt Mary and Grandma Kipp’s funerals was seeing how many family members came from across the country to show their love and support.  For Hannah’s funeral, we had one family member from each side of the family attend – Uncle Tim from my dad’s side came down from Iowa, cousin Brenda from my mom’s side drove over from Kansas City, and Aunt Brenda, who lives in Topeka, from Nathan’s family.  The absence of family members spoke to me that my baby’s brief life was not important enough to merit traveling inconveniences.  I know that’s not what people’s intent was, but that was the result.  And don’t worry, I’m not harboring big scary feelings against family members. I’m just saying I was hurt by the lack of family who attended, and some didn’t even acknowledge that Hannah had lived and died.

I don’t even know who was at Hannah’s service otherwise, as the funeral home didn’t do a very good job of getting people to sign the guest book since there were 4 entrances to the sanctuary, and the book was only at one or two entrances.  I know there were many people there who didn’t sign it, so I’ll never know exactly who was there and who wasn’t.  Some would say that it doesn’t matter who wasn’t there, but only who was there.  But it matters to me.  My baby was important.  So if you ever have a family member whose child dies, and you didn’t know the child very well but you knew the parents well, it would most likely mean the world to that family member if you made the trek to the funeral because chances are not many other family members will travel far for the funeral of a child.  They will never forget that you came, and they will always appreciate the love you showed to them in their darkest hour.

I looked through pictures of Hannah again today, which I hadn’t done for quite awhile.  The ones that make me cry the most are of Adelaide with that look of sheer excitement in her eyes, ready to meet her little sister, and the ones of her holding her dead sister in her arms, rocking her and cooing to her and singing to her.  Of course she still doesn’t understand where her sister is. She knows that Hannah is in Heaven, but she still asks if she can go to Heaven to play with Hannah.  We try to explain that Heaven is someplace you can’t come back from, but she doesn’t get it.  She thinks you get to Heaven through the hospital, so sometimes when we pass the hospital, she’ll still ask if she can go in and see Hannah.

I wish I could jump ahead 20 years and skip all of the heartache of now.  Thanks to those of you who still read.  I often don’t know what to say, so that’s why I don’t write much anymore.  People expect me to be “all better” by now, but I’m not.  I’m still broken and just trying every day to survive.

I took this picture this morning at church. It’s a stained glass depiction of Jesus ascending into Heaven, and the light around His face was glorious this morning – probably the brightest I’ve ever seen it.  I thought of Hannah, Elijah, Peter, Conner, Barnabus, Aunt Mary, Grandma Kipp, Aunt Nita, Uncle Lyle, my grandparents, and all the other loved ones who have gone to Heaven, and what a beautiful sight they get to see all the time.  1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  If you think something is beautiful here, just wait til you get to Heaven.  The magnitude of difference is beyond our earthly comprehension. 

Every Life Matters

When Adelaide was 9 months old, she spent a lot of time in pajamas with footies.

She smiled almost all the time, except when she was sick (which she was quite a bit due to recurrent ear infections for which she later had successful surgery). Actually, she smiled a lot even when she was sick, because she was just a happy baby and loved to make people smile.

She loved snuggling with Daddy more than Mommy,

and she looked at Santa Claus with distrust and tears.

She made her first art project

and had her first Christmas (where she loved eating the wrapping paper more than playing with the presents).

She loved hanging upside down and was starting to pull up on the couch, toys, etc.

She loved our dog,

eating solid foods,

her ducky pacifier,

helping Mommy cook,

music,

friends,

and just about everyone she met (and she’s still that way except for the pacifier and now loves the presents more than the wrapping paper).

Sometimes when I’m missing Hannah, I look back to the pictures of what Adelaide was like at the age Hannah would be now, if she had lived a healthy life.  Tomorrow Hannah would have turned 9 months old.  She would be into everything. She would be making people smile and talking up a storm.  Instead, on Sunday we’ll be going back to Children’s Mercy to the remembrance service to honor her life and the lives of the other children who have died there in the past year.

It’s bittersweet for any mother to look back on baby photos of her child, to know that the time has flown and she’ll never get it back again.  But I think it’s even more bittersweet for me to look at Adelaide’s baby pictures because I look back on all that I missed with Hannah, and I realize that I might never get that gift again.  It’s not that I took it for granted when Adelaide was a baby.  It’s just that my heart aches to experience it all again with Hannah, but I’ll never be able to.

Many people seem to have forgotten that my baby lived, and that she mattered.  They forget how much I think of her even now, 9 months later.  They don’t realize that I still cry myself to sleep sometimes, or that I have days where I’m so sad I can’t even get dressed.  They don’t know that there is not one single day that passes where I don’t think of my babies who aren’t in my arms.  When they see me smiling, people passing in church who haven’t seen me since before Hannah died say, “Things are good for you, right?”  Colleagues I haven’t seen in years who aren’t on Facebook write me random emails that say, “I trust all is well with you.” Professional supervisors schedule me to work on significant days without realizing that it would have been the anniversary of Hannah’s death, and I don’t have the heart to tell them because I know they’d feel badly for not remembering.  New people I meet don’t know a huge part of my story because it’s hard to know how to work in that my babies died when I’m just getting to know someone.

There’s the life I live on the inside with my grief, and the life I maintain on the outside for the sake of surviving and paying the bills.  I’m not sure if the two worlds will ever be reconciled again. I’m not sure if there is ever a time when I’ll feel free to be honest in all situations.  In my daily life I feel obligated to protect people from the heaviness of my story, and to protect myself from the potentially hurtful things people would say in response.  Maybe one day life will feel congruent again, but for now it just feels like one big Dada painting that few “everyday” people really understand, want to understand, or see as beautiful.

One thing that I already knew, but Hannah’s life has taught me in a much more personal way, is that every life matters.  On Facebook lately there have been pictures going around that say things like black lives matter, white lives matter, gay lives matter, police lives matter, etc. Every time I see one of those pictures, I just want to scream, “ALL LIVES MATTER!” From the womb to the death bed, regardless of choices or abilities or skin color, all lives matter because God’s breath of life gives them value.  So today as I was thinking about Hannah, I wrote a little poem to go along with it.  You (and I) will have to forgive the imperfect text lineup since I edited it on my phone. 😉

Every life matters, no matter how big, no matter how rich, no matter how tall.
Every life matters, no matter how brief, how silent or small.
Every life matters, no matter its choices, its color or call.
Every life matters, for God made us all.

Facebook Schmacebook

Before my babies died, I used to spend a lot of mental and emotional energy and time following my Facebook friends, keeping a count of how many friends I had, pouring over the list when the numbers differed, figuring out who was no longer my friend, etc. I took it personally every time they chose to “unfriend.” I cried. I had pity parties. Sometimes I even asked them about it and begged to be friends again. Some would say it was “accidental,” while a few other jerky ones laid out all the reasons they hated my guts and were better off without me on FB. It was quite sad that my sense of self worth was dependent on my FB friends number, but I try not to judge my former self. She had so many wounds from childhood bullying, rejection from cliques, etc, that it wasn’t surprising to me that she would waste that time worrying about what others thought of her.

Grief has a way of un-shallowing and un-selfishing you on the one hand, while on the other hand reducing your world to only yourself. You have great compassion for others in a way you never did before, while at the same time you think only of yourself, your loved one, and your pain for a time. Since my babies have died, I occasionally still notice if someone is no longer friends with me when I think of them and go to check out their page to see what has been going on, but I am not (usually) hurt by it. I think there have only been two times I’ve been hurt since Hannah died, and even then I reminded myself that they’ve got their own reasons. 

Some people are shallow and selfish, incapable of empathy or sympathy for any significant struggles. Big emotions are scary for some so they avoid them at all costs. Some have selfishly convinced themselves to wrap up in a bubble, shutting out all who are not “positive energy” in their lives (boy are they missing out on some blessings from people when they choose that!). Some want to simplify their life and include only close friends who actually interact with them regularly (but due to lack of time to personally connect with 700 FB friends while grieving, raising an active child, investing in my marriage/church/daily life, keeping up with 4 jobs/Bible study/Moms group/Dave Ramsey class, counseling appointments, and oh yeah-sleep, etc, I unfortunately don’t actually have that time to personally connect with Joe Schmo from high school whom I haven’t seen for 15-ok lets be honest-20 years), combined with FB algorithms deciding who I should and shouldn’t interact with, I don’t make that cut when they slash friends).  Some feel good about themselves by cutting FB friends because they feel like they have at least some power and control in their lives. Some have trouble conceiving and took all their pregnant friends off because it was a reminder of their pain. Some quit Facebook altogether because they realized it was ruling their lives (I wish I had that strength to quit my addiction) or for other reasons.  Some are so depressed that they think no one loves them, including their erroneous assumption about me, so they unfriend. Sometimes (and probably usually) their decision wasn’t about ill feelings toward me, but about their own insecurities or struggle.  

Facebook is such a fake world. Really, it’s worse than middle school and high school. I’ve decided to be real when I’m on there and not worry about it when I’m not, and I try my hardest to let the rest go. People are funny and messy and we are called to love them anyway, just like Jesus. 

Anger Mismanagement

I think the pervasive feeling I’ve been experiencing lately is irritability, well really anger, but neither of those emotions are very accepted in the (mostly Christian) circles I frequent, nor in my marriage or family life.  If you go by the definition in the image above where it is aroused by a wrong, I think anger is to be expected when a child dies. It’s wrong. Wrong has happened. My child was not supposed to die.  It was not “God’s will,” though I had an acquaintance try to tell me that death is now God’s will after the Fall. Death is wrong, especially the death of a child. Today on something totally unrelated to Hannah, I expressed some frustration or discouragement and a friend told me that I needed to keep a positive attitude because the way I think governs the things that come to pass in my life.  This may be true for some things, but how does one keep a positive attitude when so much shit has happened in her life, and especially how does one keep a positive attitude the day after a big fight with her husband about the dishes?  I find it difficult to think positively on a normal basis, and damn near impossible to think positively when I’m already angry underneath the niceties.

I started a new job this week.  Although I’ll follow a fellow music therapist’s advice and not make any public complaints about the job itself (it’s perfect! just like every job in the world!), I will say that this week has been very hard for me.  Emotionally I don’t think I’m ready to work in hospice again so soon after my baby died, but our family really needs the money as my husband is still looking for a job.  And then there’s the baby.  One of the office workers regularly brings her newborn baby into work with her.  Yesterday I had to read the already-exciting manual on blood-borne pathogens, bed bugs, and other very exciting things that held my attention readily (can you sense the sarcasm?), and I had to battle my concentration even more by blocking out the coos and tiny sneezes and cries from across the room.  At one point I sat with my back facing the employee, staring at the computer screen with tears streaming down my face.  There was nowhere else to go to avoid the baby, as the office is quite small and the only free computer was in that room.

I expressed my anger about the situation to my husband, the one person who is supposed to support me in these crazy feelings, and he responded that I should have compassion for her and show her grace because I don’t know why she has to bring her baby to work. Maybe her husband works full time and she can’t afford daycare.  All I wanted was an “I’m sorry, honey. That sucks.” and he had to go and tell me to be the bigger person. NO! I WILL NOT BE THE BIGGER PERSON!  I WILL BLOG ABOUT THIS! 😉

So I suppose his response angered me (and I’m just now realizing this because, like I’ve said before, I just don’t take the time to process things much unless I can write about them) enough that I was testy when I walked in the door after reading about the bed bugs, HIPAA and communicable diseases for 3 hours.  He had watched Adelaide all day, and before I left in the morning I had asked him to do one household task for the day – unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher, and load it up with dirty ones to run the cycle.  When I walked in the door at 5:15, he rushed in the kitchen to do the task (he is the procrastination king – the “free spirit” of the two of us), and I was a little less than kind and gracious in response (ok, a lot).  So of course we had a big fight about the dishes, but it was really about the way I felt unsupported earlier with the baby incident, and how I feel stressed out that I have four part-time jobs and he isn’t working, and yet I still have to do most of the housework… And of course he followed his usual conflict pattern and hasn’t spoken two words to me today, trying to make me guess why he’s upset with me.  And of course I’ve played into his game and haven’t spoken back to him.  I’m so tired of the destruction that my anger (and his) yields, but I don’t know how to not be angry. I pray. I breathe. I take baths. My babies are still dead. I’m still angry.  I’m hoping it’s “just a phase.” In the interim I’ll do my best to smile and keep a positive attitude for the sake of society and my marriage like everyone wants me to do, but I’ll be seething underneath. Hugs are welcome if I know you well, and if I don’t look too irate when you see me. Prayers are appreciated. A job offer for my husband would be heavenly. And anyone willing to host a Norwex party in the next month or two would be GREATLY appreciated.

Note: The image in this blog is called Anger by Perpetual Studios and was found at http://myburningeyes.deviantart.com/art/Anger-70316722

Shower the People You Love With Love

Today was a difficult day for me emotionally. I had a mini mental breakdown this afternoon, complete with crying, obscenities, slamming dishes and beating my husband’s chest (Though not super hard. Don’t worry, he won’t have bruises.) as he listened and said, “You’re right, honey. This sucks.” I’ve felt really out of control sometimes lately due to some uncontrollable circumstances, and feeling out of control tends to make my anxiety worse.  Of course, as I’ve learned, none of us are in control of ANYTHING in our lives.  Only God can allow or disallow blessings or pain.  Many people are very adept at giving the impression that they have everything under control. In fact, they’re so good at it that they even convince themselves that they have it all under control. They think that people who don’t have their lives under control (especially financially) are irresponsible, lazy, unmotivated, etc.

We are very poor financially and have struggled since 2009 when my husband went back to school, then had back issues and back surgery, and now has struggled with finding a good job for 2 years.  I was laid off from my (pretty decent) job a year ago and haven’t worked much since.  By worldly standards, we are poor, unmotivated, irresponsible, lazy, etc.  But people on the outside looking in don’t know our sorrow, our struggle to find career satisfaction and direction in the midst of grief, and that some days we are valiant just for getting out of bed and getting dressed. People on the outside don’t know our God has worked through countless people in the past 6 years, providing a random anonymous $500 in cash to pick up in the church office, right when we need it.  God sent a random $1,000 cashier’s check in the mail right we we needed it.  In the past year he has provided for us with many people, known and unknown to us, donating to a Go Fund Me account, with KU giving more than it should have back to us in tuition refund, with our tax refund sustaining us.  God did that for us in the midst of our sorrow, and I am so thankful for his provision.

I know how God has provided, and yet I have fear for the future when I think of my husband’s $17,000 retirement fund at age 35 with no current job, zero retirement fund for me at age 36 with only a part-time job…I don’t know how to think and prepare for the future when I’m doing well to just get out of bed, so I just try not to think about the future much.  The problem is, neither does my husband.  And we know that burying our heads in the sand won’t make the clock stop ticking, but we don’t know how to prepare for the future when we can still hardly even prepare for the day ahead of us.  All that is certain is this moment. I could be dead by the time I finish writing this blog (and I know some of you think you’ll be dead by the time you finish reading all the words). 😉  I know the “responsible” thing to do would be to take the bull by the horns and fix all of this, but things don’t tend to go my way when I try to take control.  Not to mention that when I think of the future and our lack of preparedness for it, I feel ill and anxious, which is counterproductive to preparing for the future.  It’s a cycle, this anxiety. Today has been a tough day with it.

Then I went to my Bible study this evening.  I’ve been meeting with these ladies since about May, but haven’t really told much of my story until tonight.  One of the discussion questions was, “What do you think your friends would say is a big part of your story?” I said that sorrow would be a big part of my story. I told about my babies, how I have one here and 3 in Heaven, including 2 miscarriages and Hannah, who was full-term last December but died at 3 days old.  I know one of the ladies who I don’t know very well was just trying to clarify, but since I have been so emotional today, it was very hurtful to me.  She said, “So you just have one daughter then?”  I tried not to be nasty, even though I felt like screaming at her, but I said something like, “No, I have 2 daughters and 2 sons, but 3 are in Heaven and one is here.” Another woman reminded me that my story is not over yet, and God is going to use it to move in mighty ways for years to come, and even ways that I will never know about.  I hope when my life here is done, that people will define my story with perseverance through suffering, beauty rising from the ashes of pain, continued faith after the faith-shattering sorrow, and encouragement to others despite feeling so discouraged in my own heart.

Afterwards, my friend Kendall came up to me and said she had been praying for me frequently since Hannah died. She asked what is appropriate to say or not say to someone whose baby has died.  I appreciated her question so much because it was so honest and vulnerable.  I said there aren’t really any “right” words to say that will make the pain go away, and she acknowledged that she wanted so badly to be able to say or do something to make the pain go away.  But instead she has prayed quietly for me for months, not often commenting on what I write.  So I had been unaware that she even had me on her radar until tonight.  I responded to her question by saying that, at least for me, I appreciate the “I’m thinking about you” comments, because at least it acknowledges that the person is thinking of me. It is the people who are totally silent and never acknowledge our pain who can be the most hurtful. For me, the silence hurts more than the foot-in-mouth comments, because at least the hurtful comments show me that the person is trying to understand, is thinking/praying for me, etc.  The silence just shows me uncaring indifference.

I shared with Kendall that we had friends who used to be close friends, who haven’t even spoken to us since our first miscarriage.  For a long time, that was really hurtful to me, but now I’m thankful that those people aren’t in our lives anymore because it has allowed space and time for so many wonderful people to join us since we started this sorrowful journey.  The conversations about politics, movies, guns, refinancing, shopping, dogs and sports have been replaced with conversations about Heaven, Jesus, how to get through a hard day, new support groups or ministries for grieving parents, how to gracefully respond to people who can’t understand you, and communal tears and laughter, which is where we need to be now. I don’t think the old friends would be capable of having the conversations we need today because they (thankfully) haven’t had the experiences with sorrow that we have had. It doesn’t mean they are bad people at all. I still love them very much.  Grief has a way of redefining friendships.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who, while they can’t understand our pain, have been there for us the best they could.  The people who ask how we’re doing and actually stick around to hear the answer, expletives and all, are brave.  The ones who come up to me and give a hug instead of walking the other way pretending they don’t see me, are kind.  The ones who weep with me when I can’t help but mourn, are Jesus.

My friend at Bible study gave an example which I had forgotten about.  I had been praying for her, against loneliness which I knew she had been struggling with recently.  I prayed a lot for her, but rarely did I reach out to let her know that I was praying for her, because I was afraid it would A) remind her that she was lonely, B) make her think that I thought she was just a sad and lonely person so that’s why I was praying for her loneliness (which I do not think!), C) maybe my prayers weren’t effective, and D) it made me feel awkward to talk about her dark spot because I wouldn’t know what to say if she started saying really sad things to me about it.  So really it was selfish that I hadn’t been reaching out to her, even though I SAID it was for her sake.  Anyway, one night I decided to text her to just ask how her loneliness had been lately, and to let her know that I could get together that week. She said she was going out of town, so I didn’t think any more of it. In fact, I forgot I had texted her until she brought it up tonight and said how much that one little text had meant to her and had made her day.

I think Satan keeps us from supporting one another in times of need by governing our thoughts with fear, busyness and selfishness.  Why don’t we reach out to that person who crosses our minds? Oh, we might say something that would hurt them.  We’re too busy. We don’t have enough time to hear how they’re really doing. They might say something awkward, so better to just not tell them we’re thinking about them. The next time God brings someone to your mind, do more than pray for them.  Tell them you care. Reach out. Ask them to coffee (or “beer” for you men. Nathan pointed out that men don’t usually ask each other to coffee.). Drop a card in the mail. Send a text. Give a call. Ask for a hug. Don’t let radio silence dampen the strength of your love in the life of a loved one. There might only be today. They (or you) might be gone tomorrow.  Grief can get awfully lonely, especially after about 6 months after the death when most people stop reaching out.  It’s nice to know that people still remember you and love you.  James Taylor had it right when he wrote Shower the People You Love With Love. 

My Journey Is My Own

Thankfully, I usually can’t remember who says the stupid things.  This morning we had a group meeting at Faith’s Lodge, a retreat center in upper Wisconsin for families whose children have died, and the subject of stupid things people say came up.  The leader talked about how our society expects people to “get over” a loss quickly in the age of microwaves, internet and instant gratification.  I think that people forget that some things, like grief, can’t be rushed, and the more we try to rush these things, the more we screw them up. It’s kind of like cooking a gourmet meal. If you rush it, it’s going to get burned or be undercooked. The group conversation reminded me of one comment someone made to me even before Hannah had been gone 6 months.  As I said, I usually don’t remember who makes the stupid comments, but this one stood out to me because the person works in hospice and should’ve known better.  Probably around May, the person made a Facebook comment after a particularly emotionally-laden blog to the effect of “Have you thought that maybe you are getting stuck in your grief?” As far as I know, this person has never faced any significant loss in life except grandparents, yet works every day with people who walk the grief journey and considers him or herself to be an expert on grief because of that work.  I have learned that no matter how much training in death and dying one has, unless one has stumbled down the road personally, one can never come close to understanding what it’s like.  Just because you (thankfully) can’t know what it’s like, though, does not mean you can’t listen to us tell you what it’s like.  And even after one stumbles the road, one must remember that each person’s grief journey is unique and may be totally different in nature.  No one is an “expert” on anyone else’s grief except his or her own.

So when my friend implied that I was stuck in my grief, it took me aback initially.  Since the person works in hospice, I thought maybe they were right.  Maybe I was stuck.  Then I realized it hadn’t even yet been 6 months, and their implication that I was stuck in grief was ridiculous, ignorant and not realistic.  After that I was mad that the person, who hasn’t even seen me in years, was making a judgment about my journey based solely on what they read on my blog that they had no business making.  Rather than holding onto the anger, I chose to forgive and reminded myself that the goal behind the comment had been to be helpful.  I had put the comment out of my mind until our group meeting today, and I started thinking about why this person would have thought I was stuck in my grief, perceiving that I was not able to move forward.

From what I can tell, I have been more transparent about my grief journey via this blog than most people choose to be or are able to be.  Most don’t talk about their pain. Some grieve silently behind their closed doors and put on a happy face in public because it’s just easier that way, less vulnerable.  To others looking in, this silence or lack of expression means they are “over it” and have “moved on” when that is not the case at all.  Anyone whose child has died will tell you that they think about their child(ren) every day for the first year or two, and then after that maybe not every day, but very frequently.  Even if they never talk about their child with you, they still miss him or her.  Another thing to remember is that many people don’t share their deepest feelings with anyone, or maybe just their closest and most trusted friends or family members.  So if your acquaintance from church says she is fine when you ask how she’s doing after her baby died, it doesn’t mean she’s fine, it just means she doesn’t have the energy to unpack how she’s really doing with you in the church lobby 5 minutes before the service. We need to learn better timing to ask the hard questions if we are really interested in knowing the answers.  And if we don’t want to know the answers, we shouldn’t ask the questions. 

However, we should still acknowledge their pain by saying, “I’m thinking of you a lot” or “I’m praying for you,” because no acknowledgement at all is often more hurtful than the stupid comments.  People hear talk about the “stupid things” people say, and then they become afraid to say anything at all for fear of saying one of the stupid things. Please know that even though people say stupid things, I’m also quick to forgive and I won’t hold it against you.  I’d rather have you say something stupid to me than not say anything at all. That’s even more hurtful, and a lot of bereaved parents I have talked to say the same thing. If you’re in doubt about whether you should say something, it probably means you shouldn’t.  But did you know you have two ears and most likely, they work great for listening with?  That is the biggest way you can help someone who is grieving – by listening patiently without judgment or advice.  That’s really hard to do, so if you are able to do that, congratulations because you have a God-given talent!  It takes a lot of energy to bite your tongue and just listen.  By the way, those “how are you” questions are not appropriate to ask in passing.  They are appropriate to ask if you have 2 or 3 hours of focused time to sit and listen to the real answers.  Not many people have the patience or time to set aside to wait for the real answers, and we the bereaved know this.  Therefore, we usually don’t share the inner depths of our journey except with a select few, so please don’t be offended if that isn’t you.

Because our society expects things instantly, when someone is “still” grieving 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 years later, we say their grief is unhealthy or “stuck.”  Who are we to judge that?  We haven’t stumbled in their shoes.  My personal opinion is that if the person is able to function relatively well in daily life (i.e., hold a job, attend activities, go to the grocery store), then they are not stuck, even if they spend 2 hours per day crying.  If it has been 5 or 10 years and the person is still unable to get off the couch on a daily basis due to the grief, that would probably merit professional intervention.  To my knowledge, this is rare, though.  However, even then we have to be careful not to judge this person.  We want to help them, but their journey is still their own.  The more compounded and complicated a person’s grief is, the longer it’s going to take them to move into a new normal, and the more patience and care they will require from others. 

The Sara Groves song, This Journey Is My Own by Sara Groves, came to my mind as I was forming this blog, and I think the words fit nicely with what I’ve been talking about.

When I stand before the Lord, I’ll be standing alone
This journey is my own
Still I want man’s advice, and I need man’s approval
This journey is my own

Why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
What does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life

So much of what I do is to make a good impression
This journey is my own
And so much of what I say is to make myself look better
But this journey is my own

And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life

And I have never felt relief like I feel it right now
This journey is my own
Cuz trying to please the world, it was breaking me down
It was breaking me down

And now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Cuz I know this journey is my own

And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life
And you can live for someone else, and it will only bring you pain
I can’t even judge myself, only the Lord can say, ‘Well done.’

Oh, this journey is my own

Trying to please the world will break you down.  Trying to “move on” because a hospice worker tells you you’re stuck in grief is a high price to pay if it makes you disloyal to your own journey.  You can live for someone else and it will only bring you pain.  I can’t even judge myself. Only the Lord can say, “Well done.”  This journey is my own.  When I stand before the Lord, I’ll be standing alone.  I’m trying my best to honor my God, my children, and my journey of grief by taking it one day at a time, and by being transparent to the best of my ability, even though it’s scary.  I want Jesus to tell me “Well done” in the end. I want Him to see that I’ve invested the grief journey talents He has given me, and yielded beauty from the pain.  I want Him to do that through me.  I want the beauty, and I’ve come to understand that beauty can coexist with pain.

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Nathan’s Seizure

One of the scariest things happened on Friday – I witnessed my husband having a seizure right in front of me.  On the day after his sinus surgery, he complained of being dizzy when he stood up and went to the kitchen to do his nasal rinse.  He sat down at the kitchen table and I saw that he was sweating profusely and looked pale. I didn’t want him to pass out at the table.  He made it over to the recliner and as soon as he sat down, his body became rigid and he flopped back in the chair.  I told him to sit up because he was supposed to remain upright as much as possible to alleviate pressure.  He didn’t hear me, and instead his body started convulsing. His arms and legs were rigid and twitching.

It happened for about 20-30 seconds.  It seemed like he stopped breathing because at the end of the episode, he gasped a very large, loud breath and opened his eyes.  I called his name but all he did was stare at me with yellowish eyes.  He looked dead with his eyes open, and he didn’t respond for several seconds.  I started frantically yelling his name as I stared into his ashen grey face blankly staring back at me.  I didn’t know what to do, so I called 911.

As I had never experienced calling 911 for a potential life-threatening emergency (except on movies), I didn’t know that I was supposed to state my emergency first, so I blurted out our address first and was practically yelling at the poor man on the other end of the phone when he said, “Let me transfer you to EMS.”  I guess that when you call 911 they have someone who answers and decides whether it goes to EMS, fire, police, etc.  I could barely hear the EMS person when he transferred the call, so I have no idea what that person was telling me, but I just kept repeating our address and that my husband had a seizure of some kind and was unresponsive. He was probably staring at me unresponsively for 3-5 minutes, which is the amount of time it took for the ambulance and fire truck to arrive.  By the time they got in the house, he was responding again, but I insisted that they take him to the hospital in the ambulance because I didn’t know if it was going to happen again while I was driving him.

They told me I had to drive separately in my car, so I grabbed Adelaide and was driving down the street before they even had him in the ambulance.  I beat them to the hospital by about 15-20 minutes (they got him settled in a room and got the IV started before they let us back), so I sat numbly in the waiting room with Adelaide bouncing around the room because it was her naptime.  She was already in her pajamas. I hadn’t showered yet because we had been at the hospital until 2:30am the night before and I had only had about 5 hours of sleep. I had thrown on the clothes I was wearing the night before when I left the house.  I was a hot mess.  The security guard reprimanded me for not keeping my child under control, but I couldn’t parent very well in that moment because I was trying to communicate with his parents, my mom, and put a plea on facebook for prayers.  Thankfully, my mom dropped her afternoon plans and came to get Addie and take her for a nap. We didn’t get home until 6:15pm.

Ultimately the doctor said it was probably a seizure related to the anesthesia, or a seizure-like “reset” his body did in response to swallowing too much blood. The CT scan was clear. They gave him fluids and sent us home.  He’ll see a neurologist this week to follow-up and make sure it was nothing more serious.  Thank you to those of you who were praying for him that day.

I’m concerned for Adelaide, who also witnessed the seizure and saw me freaking out.  On our drive to the hospital, she became whiny and kept asking if we could go to Heaven to play with Hannah. When I told her no, that we can’t go to Heaven until we die, she started screaming and said, “But I want to play with Hannah!”  Then today she sat at the top of the basement stairs as I did laundry, and she said, “Mommy, can we die today so we can go to Heaven to see Hannah?” I tried to explain that she probably won’t die until she is very old, like her grandparents (not that they’re that old, but they’re the oldest people she knows), so she will have to wait a very long time to see Hannah again.  It’s so hard to explain death and Heaven to a 3-year-old, especially when they are concepts that you yourself don’t even fully understand. A friend pointed out on facebook that she was probably whining because she was scared and didn’t know how to express it, which was probably very true.

I realized that just because I’ve had a “shit-ton” of pain in my life already does not make me immune from further pain like the early death of my husband.  It reminded me that he won’t necessarily live to be an old man, and I’m also not guaranteed to live to be an old woman, but it also reminded me that I’m going through the worst pain imaginable (for me) already with God’s help, so certainly He would help me through my husband dying. Thankfully that was not the case on Friday, but it very well could have been for all I knew.  None of us have a guarantee on lifespan or quality of life, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that everything will be alright, either by ignoring the possibility or by trying to control our lives.  The goodness of God is not dependent upon the quality of our lives.  If that were the case, God would have ceased to exist after the Black Plague, or the Holocaust, or any of the countless horrors that happen to individuals in this world on a daily basis.

What pain do you have today?  Do you know that God is who He says he is, even when your circumstances don’t seem to line up with His promises? Do you know that He is still good, and that He loves you? I’m still struggling with that truth, but just because I struggle to believe it doesn’t make it any less true.  You may not believe my middle name is Ann, but just because you don’t believe something about me does not make it untrue.  God’s Truth does not require our belief to define it.  Will you choose to trust God, even when you can’t wrap your heart and mind around His goodness? I’m choosing that today.

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Today’s Thoughts: Worry, Reaching Out, and Hope

Yesterday was a full day, with a marital counseling appointment, a career counseling appointment for Nathan, a job interview for me, and getting together with 8 other ladies for our monthly IF: Table small group meeting.  The counseling appointments were good and informative.  The job interview was successful, with an “unofficial” full-time job offer starting the end of August, pending my criminal background checks and drug screen, of course. 😉 I have mixed feelings about working again, especially full-time.  I wanted to spend time with Adelaide since she will be going off to kindergarten in 2 years (Sniff sniff!!), so we aren’t going to do preschool this year for that reason.  However, it will be good to have a steady income again because Nathan has been unemployed since June.  He’s still looking, but lately he’s been considering going back to school again to finish. He only had 9 classes left in his meteorology degree, but he is hoping that he could complete a degree at Washburn University in about the same amount of time as he had left at KU.  I keep thinking that maybe the reason God hasn’t given him a job after applying for almost 3 months is that he should finish school this year.  And then the job fell into my lap…

The IF: Table group was good.  The discussion questions had to do with whether we are worriers or not, and whether we can be flexible or not.  I said that I generally am a planner and like to know what’s going to happen, but then since Hannah died, I’ve been less of a worrier about the little things, but more of a worrier about the important things.  I’m not as worried anymore about what people think of me or what I have to wear, but I’ve been really worried about Adelaide or Nathan dying.  We really need God to protect us from any more tragedies for awhile. I think we’ve been through enough in the past 4 years to last us awhile – 2 miscarriages, one full-term baby dying, Nathan’s back surgery, Adelaide’s NICU hospitalization, etc. I think the next big thing will be my dad dying, as he has only about 10% kidney functioning and is on dialysis 3 times per week now.  I’ve been trying to visit him more often than I was, but I think it will be harder to visit once I start working again.

One of the ladies in the IF group recently experienced the death of her father, and she said she doesn’t let herself fall apart because she has to be strong for her mother and her children.  She said she has the ability to put things aside and not think about them rather than feeling them, so she hasn’t allowed herself to feel the grief of her father’s death yet.  I realized that I sort of do the same thing.  It’s how I can work with hospice patients.  It’s an emotional survival technique, and it’s not necessarily healthy.  I felt the grief of Hannah early on, but then I went into a numb phase that hasn’t really ended.  I haven’t cried for awhile now.  The last time I really “lost it” was the day after Mother’s Day, and I was a basket case the entire day.  There are so many dates that are hard for me that if I lost it every time, I’d always be unable to function, lying in bed all day long in my pajamas, my hair and teeth unbrushed.  The 10th of each month is hard because it’s the day Hannah would’ve been one month older.  This month she would’ve been sitting up and maybe starting to crawl, and definitely grinning at everyone she met.  January 9th was when I miscarried Peter. February 21st my nephew died. February 28th my other nephew died, and we also found out Elijah had no heartbeat. March 4th I miscarried Elijah. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Pretty much any holiday where the incompleteness of my family is amplified, including family gatherings.  July 16th Peter would have been due. September 30th, Elijah would have been due.  December 10th Hannah was born. December 13th she died.

My brain hasn’t been functioning as well lately. I’m always tired. Thoughts come and go more than they used to. I have to work really hard to think of words and compose a seamless blog post.  That’s part of the reason I’ve been writing less. I’ve been taking naps during nap time and going to bed early instead of writing.  But also I feel like I don’t have much to say these days that would benefit anyone.  And then there’s the whole relationship issue I talked about last week.

A woman I’ve never met emailed me in the middle of the night.  Her baby died on Nathan’s birthday (July 10th) from TAPVR, which is the same heart condition Hannah had.  A friend of hers had advised her to read my blog.  When I saw the email sometime in the middle of the night on my phone (when I checked to see what time it was), I didn’t open it because I didn’t want to be unable to get back to sleep.  My initial thought was that someone was sending me hate mail for the abortion post I wrote recently.  This morning when I read her email, my heart broke to hear that another mother is going through a similar journey.  I told her about our pregnancy and infant loss support group, and invited her to meet for coffee sometime if she wishes.  It sucks that there’s nothing that can make the pain less intense except time.  I wish there was something I could say or do to make her pain less. I’m sure many of you feel that way about me.  It’s a little more awkward when you don’t know the person before their loss and you’re not sure how they would handle a random invitation to coffee, but that’s about the only thing I know how to do – listen to her tell her story.

I hope each reader will put down your cell phone a little more and ignore your children a little less.  I hope you sit down to color with your children a little more often and stick them in front of the TV a little less.  I hope you do the kind thing that comes to mind rather than brushing it off and bite your tongue a little more when you have advice for someone.  I hope you listen a little more and speak a little less.  But mostly I hope that you hug your loved ones a little closer because of my story.  I hope you know that each moment with your baby could be your last, and rather than living in fear with this possibility, that it will make you treasure each moment to its fullest instead.  I hope reading the parts of my grief journey that I’ve chosen to share on this blog will help you live life with more fullness, love, and appreciation for beauty.  In the end, life is hard but it is infinitely beautiful, and there is always a beautiful Phoenix that rises from the ashes, somewhere down the road.

Where has the summer gone?

This has been a whirlwind summer. We had lots of fun in Chicago at the end of May with our good friends, Matt & Erica.  Then 2 weeks later we went to South Dakota for CFO camp.  After that we were home for almost a month, but somehow that month flew by before we headed back to western Nebraska for the memorable wedding on July 18th of our friends, Carissa and T.J. Marler (complete with a tornado warning and 200 people smashed into Carissa’s parents’ basement).  This past weekend my cousin, James, was married to his lovely bride, Lauren, in Fulton, Missouri.  Now we are home for a couple of weeks before heading to Wisconsin for a week at Faith’s Lodge.  With all the traveling, I’ve spent more energy being with people at the events than blogging, but this also means I haven’t spent much time processing how I’m feeling.

I think I’m just going along trying not to have a humongous breakdown.  As a child I learned the not-so-healthy coping technique of dissociation, where I would check out of reality when things got too stressful and go to my own little world.  It helped me to feel more calm when things around me were chaotic.  I think you could say I have a “high-functioning” case of PTSD.  My thinking is often disjointed. I forget things very easily (and for that reason can’t even think of giving up my smart phone with all of its reminders!).  I have panic attacks sometimes.  It often takes my daughter several tries to get me to hear her when she’s calling my name, as I’m deep in thought.  This could all be caused by several different factors, including heredity, the traumatic brain injury I suffered in 2003, the effects on my body of 4 pregnancies in 4 years, grief, inconsistent nutrition, etc. I’m trying the best I can, but some days are harder than others.

Today I feel very anxious, mostly because we just got back from the Missouri wedding and I have many things to do, and our house is chaotic. Whenever there are multiple things out of place in our home, then it raises my anxiety level.  However, when I think about tackling the mess by myself, the anxiety gets even worse.  This is compounded by the fact that my husband is a poor sleeper, and therefore I don’t get good sleep.  Last night I was in bed for 8 hours and 40 minutes, but my Fitbit only registered 7 hours and 15 minutes of actual sleep.  Last night he scared me out of a sound sleep by smacking me hard on the chest because he thought I was his pillow.  😀 Pretty funny now, but not at the time.

Well, I guess I will take advantage of the remaining nap time and attempt to make some order from the chaos in my home.  Thank you to those of you who have been more intentional about reaching out to me this past week, and thank you for continuing to pray for us.  Even though I don’t say as much anymore, I still appreciate your prayers, phone calls, texts, coffee dates, facebook messages, etc.  We have some days where we are really struggling, and other days where we are doing OK.  As time marches on, the OK days slowly become more frequent.  I look forward to the day when we will have GOOD days, and more good days than bad.  Grief is such a long, lonely, tiring, inescapable road.

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Blog Info Moving Forward

After much thought, I’ve decided to make certain personal posts more private, like a journal.  Some of you have a password from earlier this spring.  This password will be different, meant only for me, so please don’t ask for this password if your other one doesn’t work on a post (I’m not very good at saying no).  For awhile I thought no harm would come from sharing all of my thoughts with the internet, because certainly no one would intentionally make a grieving mother’s pain worse by making rude comments.  This hasn’t happened to me (for the most part) yet, but I’ve heard of other bloggers to whom it has happened, and I’m going to try to be more careful moving forward.  There are some truly cruel people in this world, and probably some of them read this blog.  If you really want to know how I’m doing, please give me a call, text, email (not so good at returning emails though) or ask me to coffee or dinner.  I promise I won’t bite.

I’m tired of people reading this blog but never talking to me personally. I’m tired of the lack of relationship.  When Hannah first died, people were calling left and right and asking me to get together, and I miss that interaction with people.  I miss the friends coming over to sit on my couch and cry with me, or give me a hug.  If you live far away, you can still call or text or message me on facebook. I do the best with returning texts, honestly.  I feel very lonely and like people are avoiding personal interactions with me.  And then I realized that I have been facilitating this by giving them all the info they want on the blog. Why would someone call me when they already know how I’m doing?  My best friend Mical told me this weekend that several people have asked her how I am (don’t worry, she wouldn’t give me names), but she tells them to call me if they really want to know, and yet no one calls, except Mical.

Don’t assume that my lack of sharing means I’m fine now.  In fact, I’m very much still struggling with many different things.  It just means I’m being more careful with what I share in this public forum.  Again, if you want a real update, please contact me.  We’ll see how this goes. If I have 25 people wanting personal updates every day, I may think of something else, but for now, this is the plan.

Abortion Video

I’m part of a Facebook group for moms that has about 3,000 members in it, from many different backgrounds.  My friend, Sarah, added me to it after Adelaide was born, and it was very helpful in the beginning stages of motherhood.  I still visit the group occasionally, but much of it doesn’t apply to me right now because it’s all questions about nursing, diapering, crying infants, etc.  Today I visited the page and saw a post from a mom with a picture of her 3-week-old baby sleeping on her chest. She said basically that this was the second day of her baby needing to be held constantly, and at least one of them was happy about it (and it wasn’t her, based on her facial expression in the picture).  I just wanted to scream, “BE HAPPY YOU HAVE YOUR HEALTHY BABY TO CUDDLE ON YOUR CHEST! OR AT LEAST GET A BABY CARRIER AND STOP COMPLAINING THAT YOU CAN’T GET ANYTHING DONE!” but of course I didn’t say anything.

I have a really hard time reading complaints about motherhood since Hannah died.  I would do anything to have the sleepless nights, the sore nipples, the clothes that don’t fit because the weight is falling off too quickly, the baby who won’t stop crying unless she’s held…It should have been my life for the past 7 months, but instead I’ve had funeral arrangements, counseling sessions, and sleepless nights spent crying my heart out to keep my empty arms and anxious heart busy.

Last night I couldn’t sleep because I read a Desiring God post and a Matt Walsh post about a new video that was released yesterday (July 14). It made me physically ill to watch the video because my emotions were so elevated.  It was extremely hard for me to watch the video, which is an edited version of a 2-hour undercover interview with a Planned Parenthood “doctor,” wherein she discusses the sale of aborted fetal parts. I looked up the video on Snopes and it said the validity is undetermined, but that the video could have been edited to make it seem like she was talking about the black market sale of body parts, when actually she is discussing the cost for transportation of the “specimens” to research labs.  Either way, it’s sickening to me.  Using aborted body parts for research is equivalent to the “research” the Nazis did on the innocent genocide victims.  I use the word innocent, because neither the Nazi victims nor the abortion victims (the unborn children) had any choice in the harm that was done to them.

I used doctor in quotes above because doctors are called to uphold the Hippocratic oath in their practice.  Part of the original oath says, “With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.  Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.”  Hippocrates believed a pregnant woman had a child inside of her that was not to be destroyed? What? The father of modern medicine (or at least that’s how I think of him) thought this way? Someone please tell me how aborting a baby upholds this section of the Hippocratic oath.  What? You can’t explain the discrepancy? Oh, well that’s because there is no reconciling the ugly abortion industry (hint: industries make MONEY) to the doctors’ responsibility to heal and protect their patients, including the babies in utero.  Maybe that’s why there was a new Hippocratic oath written in 1964 – doctors could no longer take the traditional Hippocratic oath and reconcile the revolutionary direction their field was taking toward a culture of death and destruction by abortion, assisted suicide, and the like.  Maybe that’s why neither are mentioned in the reformed oath.

“But today’s physicians take the modern Hippocratic Oath as re-written by Louis Lasagna in 1964, and it doesn’t say anything against abortion, assisted suicide, nor does it promise to do no harm,” you may say.  I’m no medical history expert, but from the brief internet research I’ve done on Dr. Lasagna, it appears that he was supportive of physician-assisted suicide and probably abortion as well.  As for me, I’d rather have a doctor caring for me who adheres to the promise to do no harm per the original Hippocratic Oath written sometime around 400 B.C. which has been the standard of medical ethics for over 2,000 years, rather than a doctor who hasn’t promised to do no harm to me per the Lasagna Oath written in 1964, which has been in practice for 51 years.  1964 was the year after The Society for Human Abortion was established in San Francisco and challenged the law by openly providing information on abortion and contraception. It was the year after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and our country was in the midst of social revolution (which I’m not saying was all bad – don’t get me wrong).  It was the decade of the destruction of traditional morality and propriety, masked as “peace, love, drugs and rock and roll.”  Of course it would be the decade that doctors struck the condemnation of abortion and assisted suicide from their professional oath.  “Freedom” that directly opposes God’s standards of goodness and holiness is no freedom at all, but it imprisons hearts and minds under the guise of freedom. That’s how Satan craftily deceives – he makes the lie look like the freedom. I’m sure I don’t have to remind many of you with the story of Adam and Eve and how Satan tricked them into pursuing “freedom” to be like God, but really he was trapping them and their offspring into a life of sin…

Having three babies die and a fourth come dangerously close to death has made me even more pro-life than I was before. I know several of my friends will vehemently disagree with me on this and say it is the woman’s choice to kill her baby, because it is housed within her body.  If I lose friendships over this blog post, then those friendships were certainly not true friendships in the first place, because a true friend would love and respect me despite the different beliefs I hold, however strong and emotionally tied.  If you decide to never read another thing I have to say, I hope and pray that your calloused heart will someday be softened to the pure love of God which encompasses all living beings, including and especially all children, no matter how new to existence.  Everything in the core of my being tells me that abortion is murder, and murder is wrong, wrong, wrong. If pro-abortion people were truly honest with themselves, they would hear their own souls echo that protestation against the atrocity, too.  It’s just that some people have been told and have propagated the lies for so long, that they shut out the ethical voice of God deep down inside and justify the murders of millions of innocents. That certainly has to be how Hitler and his henchmen justified their heinousness – the propaganda blinded their hearts and the hearts of many German citizens who supported the Nazi party.

As I mourn my babies being taken from me out of my control, I also mourn the lives of millions of babies whose lives were taken from them out of their control.  My mourning of the former has intensified my mourning of the latter.  With that, I will try to sleep, but I’m sure sleep won’t easily come tonight.  So instead I will pray.  I believe the power of God can end our nation’s atrocities against the unborn children, but I’m so weary of waiting for that day. Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!

Daniel Tiger

Trying to blog while watching a movie with Nathan doesn’t work out so well. Short one tonihgt. Even spelled tonight wrong. Woke up after only 6 hours of sleep.  Nathan and I take turns having trouble sleeping.  Lately it’s been my turn.  Got Addie ready and turned on Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood. Within 5 minutes, I was crying. It was the episode where DT gets a new baby sister, Margaret.  She was giggling and smiling at him, holding DT’s hand.  Crying ensued. Addie asked if I missed Hannah. Yes. I realized my real cry sounds like her fake cry. Wasn’t sure what to think about that. She uses it when she wants to talk about Hannah.

I think of so many ideas to blog about while I’m lying sleepless in bed and then I can’t remember them when it comes down to writing.  So I’ll just leave this one as is – disjointed and half-assed. Nathan and I both tried to think of a synonym for half-assed, and we couldn’t think of anything. 😉

Whom do you seek to please?

This is one of those blog posts that’s really long, but if you stick with it to the end, I hope you’ll be blessed by reading.

As a long-time people pleaser, it’s hard for me to not take things personally (and not be depressed) when I think about the friendships that have dissipated in recent years.  Whether it was my fault or not, I still have blamed myself when lines of communication cease.  I have to remind myself that some relationships are just for a season, and others are lifelong, but it certainly makes me sad when the ones I thought were my closest lifelong friends turn away from me. It’s so very hurtful, and usually they give no explanation. They just stop calling, stop visiting, stop commenting on things I post on facebook, etc.  I saw a post on facebook the other day that said the relationships that last 7 years or longer are going to last a lifetime. If only that were true.  Many of the friends who have broken my heart were my friends for way more than 7 years.  One of my friends, when I asked her what I had done to deserve no communication for the past 3 years and her removing me from facebook (when we used to see each other at least once every month or two), said, “I am simply exhausted emotionally from my own circumstances, of which you are not a part. I barely know how to deal with myself, let alone others! Please don’t think everything is always about you. We ALL struggle, and we all are in the process of working things out.”

After a few messages back and forth, we arranged to meet together, and then she had to cancel at the last minute because she had “too many things to do.”  We talked about rescheduling our meeting after that, and I wrote the last message in April 2014 asking her to let me know when a good time would be for her.  She never wrote back and hasn’t contacted me again since. She said she had no rift with me and still considered me a friend, but friends don’t treat each other that way, at least not in my definition.  I was going to try to be even more vague than this in case she would read this blog and suddenly be offended that I’m speaking so harshly about her, but then I realized that she probably doesn’t read my blog anyway, or at least she never comments on anything I write.  I know she has gone through a lot of emotional turmoil in recent years. I was there with her for some of it, crying with her, listening to her talk and cry things out. THAT is what friends do.  I wish her health, happiness and peace.  If that means she cannot support me as a friend, then I’m glad there are others who do.

Another friend I had since middle school, and she took offense to something I said in an honest moment on facebook a couple of years ago, calling me judgmental and defriending me, and she hasn’t spoken to me since.  One of our mutual friends recently asked about that friendship. When I told her we still haven’t spoken, the mutual friend commented on how ironic it was that the rogue friend was displaying judgment by calling me judgmental (and a few other names).  It was a pretty immature friendship if she allowed one comment I made about a random stranger to dissipate our friendship, even after I apologized for the comment.  Obviously I’m not super hurt by that “break up,” since I only devoted one paragraph to it. 😉

Another friend I had since high school stopped talking to me a month after our first miscarriage.  We had been very good friends, seeing each other 2-3 times per week when we lived 3 blocks from each other.  She was my go-to shopping buddy, my confidant, the one I could bitch to about anything and know she’d still love me, the one who would do doggie playdates and bake cookies and talk about home decor and website building and pretty much anything (except God), but we never shared a deeper spiritual connection since she wasn’t a Christian.  We never prayed together, which was something I was longing for in a best friend. I tried sharing my faith in Jesus with her on several occasions with the hopes that we could finally connect spiritually, but it never seemed to go the way I thought it would, and it usually ended awkwardly with her asking me not to talk about God. For awhile before she “broke up” with me, I had been sensing God telling me I needed to have a Christian as my closest girlfriend, someone with whom I could connect on the most important level. However, at the time, I didn’t have many options for that kind of friendship in Topeka (besides my friend Mical from college, who lives 500 miles away in western Nebraska).

So my miscarriage happened and then she had a hysterectomy about 3 weeks later due to some other health issues.  She invited Nathan and me to her “goodbye uterus” party, complete with a uterus shaped pinata (which I didn’t know she would have, and if I had known the insensitive nature of the party I wouldn’t have gone).  Nathan and I sat forlornly across the room from the “festivities” only 3 weeks after our miscarriage, but we went to show her support as our friend.  When she was in the hospital, I thought I felt God telling me I needed to stop by and show her my support (hospitals and surgery can be so scary!), but it was clear she didn’t want me there once I showed up.  After that I never saw her again.  She never returned my periodic texts and calls, and after 4 months of wondering what I had done to deserve this treatment, she sent her husband with a handwritten note that basically said she didn’t think our friendship was healthy and she was cutting ties and expected me to respect her wishes to never speak to her again (which I have respectfully done).  She never said exactly why she didn’t want to be friends anymore, but I suspect the lack of spiritual and moral common ground had a big something to do with it.  We disagreed about nearly every major moral issue (gay marriage, abortion, military/war issues, gun ownership, assisted suicide, etc). I was on the phone when her husband dropped the note off, so I couldn’t even speak to him to ask her how she was doing after her surgery, and whether the surgery fixed her issues.

I mourned the death of that friendship right alongside the death of my first baby. It was so hard to not have her there to support me through the hardest part of my life to that point, but it forced me to rely on God (once I got past my anger toward him) more than I would have if she had still been in my life. She was the closest friend I’d had for the longest period of time in my life, predating the college friendships I still maintain.  I still believe in my heart that she will get to know Jesus before she dies.  I want so badly to have a restored relationship with her in Heaven someday.  I still stalk her sometimes on Google, and I know that she is employed in Topeka, so hopefully that means her physical pain has gotten better because it prevented her from working at all for a long time.  I still pray for her when God brings her to mind, and I hope that she is a happier and more thankful person than when I knew her.  We kind of fed on each other’s negativity, so in that regard, it really is good that the relationship ended.  It’s just been awkward when I’ve seen her parents in public a couple of times.  Her mother looked at me like I was the devil when I saw her at the eye doctor’s office last fall, and it was really hard not to defend myself to her for fear of what lies my friend may have told her, but I just smiled and waved as I kept minding my own business.

People who don’t know Jesus need to know His love, even when they are the ones who have wronged you.  Thankfully, I never have had to face the former friend yet.  I think enough time has gone by that I would show her grace and forgiveness, but it wasn’t until recently that I felt that way about her.  Overall, I just have a sense of sadness for her.  She deals with her problems without God, and I can’t imagine going through as much as she has without God.  She’s missing out on so much, and she doesn’t even know it.  If I didn’t have the hope of Heaven, my life would be much darker than it is now!

Well, this is one of those posts that I had no idea it would go the direction that it did when I sat down to write.  I started by thinking about my church solo this morning. I sang “He Shall Feed His Flock” and “O Divine Redeemer.”  I was pretty worried about my voice before I sang (long story short, I screamed bloody murder at a mouse on Thursday, and was afraid my voice hadn’t healed…I didn’t sleep well last night – 5 hrs – so had to drink coffee, which isn’t good for the voice…I had only practiced the songs about 2 times, even though I knew them previously…I hadn’t warmed up at all before arriving at 9am to rehearse with the accompanist…etc).  It wasn’t an optimal singing morning, as described in parentheses above.  However, the performance of the 2 songs, especially of O Divine Redeemer, was the best and most emotionally connected performance I have given in a very long time, if I do say so myself. 😉 Probably 40 people came up to me after the service and gave compliments, but the best one came from Gordon McQuere, the former dean of the Washburn University music department, who said it was the best performance he has ever heard me sing.

I’m not saying this to toot my horn, but to show how my people-pleasing tendencies pervade my life, both bad and good.  I prayed afterwards and asked God to forgive me for relying on what other people say of me to boost my emotions (and also for getting so downtrodden when other people hurt me).  The sermon by Rev. Neil Weatherhogg was about pride, and I realized that being a people-pleaser is really about pride.  You think that you are good (or bad) enough to merit the praise (or chastisement) of other people, when really your worth comes from who GOD says you are. If pride is putting the self in the place where God should be, then this does fit the definition.  If you are a Christian, you are one of God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, called by God to be righteous, pure, and blameless, to share His love with others.  You are not who other people say you are, good or bad.  It only matters who God says you are.

The opinions of the world are like shifting sand, as we have seen in the news recently, but the opinions of God never falter.  If you live to please others, you will never fully succeed because someone is always going to be displeased. (I’m sure for as many people who complimented my singing, there were just as many others who thought it was too loud, not good enough diction, shaky high notes, etc.)  However, if you live to please God according to how He says in the Bible to live, you will succeed because God never changes.  He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So, if you’re honest with yourself, whom do you live to please?  Do you live to please God or others? I already told you my tendency, and that I’m praying for God to help me change.  If you can honestly say that you live to please God alone, then you’re probably one of the few on earth who lives that way. Good for you, and please start teaching a class so the rest of us can all learn from you how to be God pleasers instead of people pleasers. 😉  By the way, pleasing God doesn’t mean displeasing people, but sometimes it does.  You can please others and still please God. It’s all about your focus and motivation for the things you do and say.  And now I’ve said please and pleasing way too many times in one paragraph and the word is starting to not make sense, so I’ll end for the night with a Bible passage that goes along these lines. Read it, too. It’s way more important than any of the 2400 words I’ve said heretofore. 😀

1 Peter 3:8-17  |||  Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. ⁹ Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. ¹⁰ For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; ¹¹ let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.  ¹² For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.  But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”  ¹³ Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? ¹⁴ But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, ¹⁵ but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶ having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷ For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

Back in the High “Light” Again

Today I got my hair cut and highlighted for the first time since January 2014.  I decided to get it chopped short and dyed red right after Peter died.  One of my friends chastised me for doing such a drastic thing with my hair so soon after the death of my baby.  She said that I was punishing my body when I needed to be kind to it, but I did the hair anyway.  I was pretty mad at her for telling me what to do (or not do) with my hair.  It was the one thing I could control about my body at the time.  After Hannah died, I wanted to do the same thing but decided to wait.  I wanted to wait this time until I could do my hair, not out of anger towards my body, but because I wanted to enhance the way I looked and pamper myself.  I’ve been wanting to go blonde this summer (since blondes have all the fun, right?), so I found a Groupon deal for full highlights for $65 with Teri at Affinity Salon.  By the way, she said that Groupon takes about half of that $65 as a fee, so she said if I could give her a referral for a highlight, she would give that person as well as me 50% off both of our appointments. That way, she doesn’t have to pay the 50% fee to Groupon, and she still gets a new referral. I was really pleased with the job that Teri did, so let me know if you’d like her info, and then be sure to tell her that I referred you! $65 for full highlights, cut, and style is a GREAT deal (usually $130).

The appointment took 4.5 hours because she took care to make the highlights look seamless and blend in with my natural color, and she took the time to style my hair at the end.  I’m not very good at small talk, nor do I like it, so I was pretty quiet after the first hour of small talk. I was glad she didn’t force the small talk, as I would have felt really awkward.  This meant, however, since I couldn’t bend my head down to look at my phone much, that I was left to think for about 3 hours as she worked. That’s a lot of thinking.  Most of the time I was thinking things like, “Wow. I’m closing my eyes and no one is talking.” and “I’m sitting here and no one is climbing on me.” and “Silence really is golden.”  Other times I was thinking about my babies, my husband, my job, and my future.

I thought about the conversation I had this morning with my church choir director.  In his kind way, he was trying to discern how reliable my attendance as soloist and alto section leader would be in the upcoming year because it hasn’t been the most reliable this spring.  I didn’t go back to singing until the end of February (I think), then missed a Sunday in March due to a baptism, missed two Sundays in April due to being in Nebraska with Mical, missed Mother’s Day because it was Mother’s Day and very difficult emotionally, missed several Thursday rehearsals in those months because our only support group is on Thursdays, and then missed two Sundays in June so we could go to CFO camp. I’ve probably been absent more than I’ve been present since Hannah died, and Kevin has been so understanding and patient with me.  I don’t think I would have received so much grace from anyone else.

I’m still so fragile, even though I look more put together these days. I wear makeup more. I bought some new clothes this spring. I’m exercising some, though I have miles to go with the weight loss.  I’m trying to be as kind to myself as other people have been to me, and that is difficult for me. I’ve always been the hardest on myself.  If I have time to myself, I usually clean the house or organize something rather than just taking time for me, but lately I’ve been doing more things for myself, like reading a book, writing this blog, and making sure to get a daily shower.  I feel so selfish doing things for my own enjoyment, but it’s about damn time I started treating myself kindly.  Myself and I have been through a LOT in this life, and if I’m not going to be kind to her, I can’t expect anyone else to be. I’m learning that it’s not selfish to take care of myself.  It’s like when the airline flight attendants tell you in the emergency info to secure your own mask before securing the masks of those around you.  I’m learning, and I don’t always succeed.  And my husband doesn’t always understand (he bemoaned the 4.5 hour appointment today), but I think he knows I’m trying to be better to myself so I can be better for my family.

No one is perfect, including me, but I’m trying to be a better person every day than I was the day before. I’m determined to not let this loss, this grief, and this broken heart make me bitter for life. If I allow that to happen, then Satan really will have won.  I will use this pain to be a light in our dark world, to show others that the Light of Love always wins over the darkness of suffering.

As a true child of the 80’s, the song that comes to mind tonight is Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life Again.” You used to be the best to make life be life to me.  And I hope that you’re still out there and you’re like you used to be. We’ll have ourselves a time and we’ll dance ’til the morning sun. And we’ll let the good times come in and we won’t stop ’til we’re done. We’ll be back in the high life again.  All the doors I closed one time will open up again.  We’ll be back in the high life again.  All the eyes that watched us once will smile and take us in.  I know he’s probably talking to a former lover, but I thought of God.  He used to be the best to make life be life to me, and I hope that He’s still out there and that He’s like He used to be.  I know He is.  And I know that good times will come again.  All the doors that closed one time will open up again.  The doors of my heart will open again one day.  I’m just not sure when. For now they need to be the way they are, broken and hurting, and it’s OK to embrace the pain while it’s upon you. It’s OK to be sad and grieving and unable to see the light of day. If you keep embracing it and holding on, eventually one day you will see the light and you will know that life will be beautiful again…someday. See how it ties this blog post together? Highlites, being kind to myself, high life of Christ…Anyway, I thought the song fit, so there you go. 😉

Nathan’s Birthday

My husband, Nathan, turned 35 today.  I’ve known him since he was 22, and have known him as my beloved since he was 27.  He always teases me for being “the older woman” (by 14 months).  He’s my cute, funny, sensitive, caring, loving, intelligent, artistic, family-prioritizing man, and I’m very thankful for him.

My mom watched our daughter last night so we could spend some time together (and time to sleep in today!!). Last night we ate dinner together and then watched Jurassic World, and today we slept in and then went to Kansas City.  Our first stop was at Fantastic Blooms to pick up the floral preservation items we ordered last spring, because the order was ready and we don’t make it to KC very often. I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but I’ll try to do that soon.  As we were leaving, Clint, the owner, said how sorry he was for our loss. He said they see flowers from 150 infant funerals each week from all across the country, and it particularly breaks their hearts to do those jobs.

We went to see another movie that Nathan wanted to see called San Andreas [spoiler alert for those who may go to see the movie, though it was pretty predictable as apocalyptic movies go].  Without spoiling too much of it (hopefully), there was a scene in the middle of the movie where I was sobbing so loud that I was glad there were only 3 other people in the theater.  The two main characters, Ray and Emma, are a married couple about to get a divorce.  They end up together trying to rescue their daughter, Blake, from an obliterated San Francisco after the worst earthquake on record separates the San Andreas fault.  As they are trying to get to San Francisco, Ray and Emma talk about their other daughter who had drowned in a rafting accident a few years before.  Her death had destroyed their marriage and their family.  Ray mentions her name (Olivia?) for the first time since she died, and starts to open up to Emma, but then quickly shuts down again to be strong. She encourages him to keep talking to her, and he begins to cry, saying he blames himself for her death since it was his idea to go rafting that day.

I thought that blame and false guilt do nothing but destroy, as they are not from God, but so many of the people I know who have had children die, have dealt with these demons.  I have had my moments of blaming myself for the deaths of our babies. If only I hadn’t been so sick…If only I had eaten healthier instead of choking down whatever would stay down…If only I had exercised more and been healthier…If only I hadn’t taken Zofran…If only I didn’t have this blood clotting disorder…If only I had prayed more…These thoughts are not from God. Pretty much any “if only” statement is not from God. These statements aren’t life-giving. I know who sends them to my brain, and his name is Satan. He is the king of death, and he may have destroyed the lives of my 3 babies, but I refuse to let him destroy my marriage as well, and my relationship with my living child. It’s funny how one can think all of these things during one scene of a movie.

There was one part of the movie that really bothered me, toward the end.  Blake gets trapped in a building as it fills with water, and she goes unconscious as she drowns. Ray, refusing to allow a second daughter to drown before his eyes, rips open the barrier that had prevented him from reaching her, grabs her body and gets her up to a higher level of the building to start resuscitation. Emma crashes a boat through the thick glass of the building, and Ray gets Blake’s body up on the boat, where he continues CPR.  He was probably doing CPR for 3-5 minutes, after Blake had been unconscious underwater for at least 2-3 minutes.  He continues to work on her while Blake drives the boat a safe distance away from the collapsing skyscrapers.  He nearly gives up out of exhaustion, then decides to keep going with CPR because he is determined not to let this daughter die.  Suddenly, Blake starts coughing, spits up a little water, and then sits up, says “I love you” to her parents, and is perfectly fine.

This made me mad that Hollywood depicts a character who has gone without oxygen for so long as “just fine” once she is revived.  I know it’s “just Hollywood,” but really? Whatever happened to the arts reflecting life? With a few exceptions, Hollywood just depicts the happily ever after, which isn’t real life for most people.  In real life, Blake would have probably had brain damage and other issues with her body.  It made me think of Hannah, who would have had brain damage because of 18 hours she lived before ECMO, with her oxygen stats in the 40’s and 50’s.  One of the doctors or nurses (or maybe it was that weird Santa Claus chaplain?) at Children’s Mercy actually had the gall to say to me, “It’s better this way that she didn’t have to suffer. She wouldn’t have had a good quality of life with as long as she had compromised oxygen levels.” This may be true, but you should NEVER say that to a grieving parent!

Nathan said his birthday was pretty tough for him emotionally, and he thought of Hannah several times throughout the day.  I’m glad we could spend the day together.  He’s having a party on Tuesday to watch the All Star baseball game, and so far only 2 people have said they’re coming, so I think he’s feeling pretty down about the lack of people committing to join him.  He really needs friends right now.  As much as I’ve been feeling lonely and abandoned, he feels even more that way because most men are so unwilling to go through the difficult, cavernous passages with other men.  Please pray for him, that God will bless him with some more deep friendships, as he only has about 2 close friends.  Also, he got his first interview call from a potential employer today, only to find out that they only pay $8 per hour (or about $16,000 per year, before taxes), so he decided to keep looking since that’s not a livable wage for our family. Please pray for his job search, and for encouragement in that regard. I love him so much, and it’s so hard to see him so sad.

Today was also hard because it would have been the day our Peter was born (last year), and it was the due date for a friend’s baby that was miscarried last fall.  She was feeling sad and irritable all day. It’s so hard to see the people you love hurting, and not be able to do or say anything to help them.  Maybe that’s why most friends fall by the wayside in the throws of grief.  People don’t like to see others hurting and feel helpless, and they really don’t like to be around during the depression and irritability stage.  It’s the really brave souls who stick by someone’s side, even after they’ve been snapped at by the grieving one.  Today our friend Erika dropped a card in our mailbox to let us know she was praying for us. It’s so nice to know that people are still wrestling with God on our behalf, when everyone else seems to have gone on with their own lives as usual.  We have not been forgotten by the ones who really matter in our lives, and I’m thankful for that. I try very hard to remember that when the ones who have left us sting my heart.

Date Night

I’m watching Elmo make waffles with goat cheese and tomatoes on Jimmy Fallon’s show tonight. Maybe it’s because I’m tired and distracted by a furry red Sesame Street character, but I really don’t think I have anything to say tonight.  We went on our first real date in quite some time tonight – Red Robin and then watching Jurassic World. Fun. I started to remember what it was like when we were dating, and why I fell in love with this guy. He’s cute, funny, chivalrous, and kind. We need to do weekly dates. I think that would be really good for our marriage. It’s just that the free babysitters (ahem grandparents) are either too tired or busy to watch Adelaide that often in addition to watching her for work days, appointments, support groups, etc.

I guess since there’s not much to say, I’ll just stop saying it and get back to my date. He’s currently watching some growling video on his computer.

Day of Play

Adelaide and I had two play dates today, after not having had any play dates for about 2 months.  My friend, Katherine, had us over to her house so Addie and Charlotte could play together before Katherine delivers their third baby (any day now!).  They enjoyed playing dress-up, locking the 3-legged dog in the play house, lopping on the dogs, and chasing each other around.  The girls fluctuated between fighting and laughing. As I called out the window to Katherine, I said, “I just realized I probably won’t see you again before the baby arrives, so…GOOD LUCK!”  In that split second, I wasn’t sure whether I would pray for her.  After all, my prayers didn’t produce the happy, desirable result with Hannah, so I didn’t want to jinx Katherine by praying for her.  As I drove away, I thought, “What if that’s the last time I see her? What if she dies?” I associate childbirth with horrible tragedies now, and I hate that.

Then after Adelaide’s (short) nap, we had my friend, La Manda, and her two beautiful girls over for another play date. The same pattern of fighting and laughing ensued. La Manda said her husband calls it “Baby Bipolar,” which is spot on.  They took turns bossing each other, grabbing things away from each other, and yelling, alternating with hugs, smiles, and sharing the trampoline together.

This evening I met with two of my friends from the church moms group, Jill and Jessica D, and we had a really nice dinner.  It was nice to have adult conversation without having to say, “Just a minute. Mommy’s talking. Please don’t interrupt.” every five seconds.  We talked about the June service project some of the moms did by cooking dinner for the residents of the Ronald McDonald House in Topeka.  I had decided not to attend that event because I was afraid it would be too hard to be at a RMH for the first time since Hannah died.  I never actually stayed at the RMH in Kansas City due to my health issues that kept me in the hospital every night we were there, but I spent plenty of frantic trips back and forth in a wheelchair to the car to go to the ER…I pumped there…I ate breakfast there, took a shower, put on my makeup to go spend my daughter’s dying day with her. RMH was a frantic blur, and I didn’t want to have a breakdown while trying to help at the Topeka RMH.  I had informed Jessica of this in an email prior to the event, and she apologized to me tonight if she had offended me by choosing this as the service project. I wasn’t sure why she was apologizing, as there was no need, so I just said I’m not very easily offended. I should have asked her this tonight, but I didn’t think of it til just now, but I’m wondering if some people interpret the expression of my grief and sadness, and my sticking up for what I need (as in explaining why I was choosing not to do the RMH project) as me being offended.  I hope not. I thought it was great they were doing that project, and that Jessica was sensitive to me. I just couldn’t be a part of it this time.

Tonight I ordered some photo prints online and was looking through old pictures. I came across the pictures we took when we found out we were pregnant for the first time, the pregnancy that would end at 10 weeks with miscarriage. I saw the picture we took with the pregnancy test, our faces filled with excitement and wonder, innocence and hope.  I realized it was one of only two pictures I have where I felt truly excited to be pregnant. In all the rest of the pictures I have in all the rest of my pregnancies, there is an element of fear behind the eyes.  If miscarriage robbed me of my innocence, infant death robbed me of my hope and faith, and I’m still trying to figure out how to take them back.

So kind of a random day, woven by the theme of play. Yet another one where I didn’t feel like I had anything to say except a play-by-play of my day, which was pretty uneventful, un-poetic, and un-insightful, except for getting to see 4 good friends (and mediate several dozen toddler squabbles).

I’ll end with the pictures I mentioned above.

Short and not very sweet tonight

Been in a funky mood all day.  Can’t think of anything to say. Feelings getting in the way. I miss my babies all the time. They, along with my sweet living child, pervade nearly every thought and every pause throughout my day.  Rather than try to write an eloquent blog, I’ll just talk about the awesome deal I got tonight at Walmart. I went out to get milk after Addie went to bed, and as I walked into Walmart, there was a group of Slip N Slides and Kiddie pools listed for $2.50 each (75% off). I asked the manager about it, and he said that an employee labeled them wrong but that he would give me that price on all that I wanted to buy. He said I lucked out because he was feeling nice tonight. So I got 3 pools (neither of the grandparents have one) and 2 slip & slides and a huge thing of sunscreen (on clearance for $3) for $16.  So that’s about the only good thing that happened to me today.  Everything else I would say would just be crabby, so I’m going to try to go to sleep instead.

The provision of God.

Do you know how we have been financially surviving this year? Some people have been wondering. My husband had a full-time job that paid $9 per hour, until about 3 weeks ago. Now he’s unemployed. Between my 3 jobs, I earn about $600 per month.  Our bare bones expenses are around $2,500 per month.  You do the math.  It doesn’t balance out, except for God’s grace and kindness to us through other people.

First it was the Go Fund Me account with friends, family, and strangers contributing a very generous amount to help with funeral, medical, and living expenses.  Three friends had the same idea while Hannah was still alive, and came together to organize that for us (thank you Laura, Katie and Mical!!). That allowed Nathan to take almost 3 months off of work to take care of me while I was still healing physically, and after he went back to work, it supplemented to help pay the bills since I still couldn’t work.  Other friends and family also sent us money directly during that time so that we could receive the entire amount and not have to pay the 9% website fee.

In February, a friend approached me and said she thought we’d be a good candidate for a local philanthropic grant.  It was right about that time we had just learned we needed to do a car repair sooner than later.  We decided to apply to see if they would help pay for our vehicle repairs that were needed, and the grant was approved for $1,800 of the $2,700 repair.  Thank you, God, and the kind-hearted people of the board.

In March, we were blessed with a significant tax refund. It was hard for me to know that a large portion of it was because Hannah lived 3 days outside my womb, but we had two babies born in 2014 and Peter didn’t “count” in the government’s eyes.

In May, we called KU to see why we hadn’t received any refund for Nathan’s fall classes (we had been told we would receive a portion back).  We had just paid the $3,200 bill in March and had used up the last of our savings to pay it right before we received the tax return. The woman I spoke with was a Christian and explained that we had to submit a separate appeal to receive any refund. When I told her part of our story, she prayed with me and encouraged me to apply for the request. She said, “It never hurts to ask.”  I applied on Nathan’s behalf since he was so depressed at the time, and we received $4,900 back in a refund. I’m not sure how that happened since we only paid $3,200, but both of us thanked God and didn’t ask any questions.

Nathan quit his job 3 weeks ago and is looking for a new one fervently (If anyone has any “contacts” who could hook him up with a well-paying job with good benefits, please let us know! Otherwise, please pray for him!). His security job was just becoming too much with office politics, no air conditioning in the squelching summer heat, and a manipulative supervisor.  I still have my music therapy contract but we are down to $600 per month and living off the remaining part of the KU money and tax return, which is quickly disappearing.

God is so good. Even though I have my moments of doubt and anger, when I look back on how He has been providing for us this year, at just the perfect times, I can’t deny that He cares for us.  I’m starting to get worried lately with Nathan unemployed and me underemployed, but I know He will continue to care for us.  Please pray for us, and especially for direction for Nathan.  He is applying for anything and everything that would support our family, and he hasn’t even received an interview yet. I applied for a job last week and am waiting for a call to do a second interview this week.  It’s pretty discouraging to him.  I’m praying for God’s direction, guidance, and encouragement to him during this time, and also that God will show him what his passions are in life. When you’re depressed and grieving, it’s so hard to know which end is up and where your true enjoyment lies. Sometimes when I’m feeling snarky, I tease him that if there were a job with good pay and benefits that involved movies, beer, baseball, food, and family, he would be all set.

Please join me in praying for Nathan, and for God’s continued provision for us financially. Thank you to God and to all of you who have been so kind and generous to us.  I have thought about writing thank you notes MANY times, but every time I start to think about writing 300+ significant and individualized thank you notes (more than just the 3 sentences that gets automatically tossed in the trash), I get overwhelmed with emotion and the sheer magnitude of such a project.  I hope that everyone who has helped us knows that we so very much appreciate the help you have given, both financially and with your time, food, gifts, etc.  We would be in an even more desperate situation if we didn’t have you helping us, so thank you.  By the way, all of this was posted with my husband’s permission, in case you were wondering. 😉

Love Is All You Need

It’s really hard to write every single day.  There are so many reasons that get in the way.  Lately for me the main obstacle has been my mood and the feeling that I don’t have much to say that is of interest, but I’m trying to persevere anyway.  One thing I’ve noticed is that most of my readers read between 10pm and 11pm, so if I don’t post by 10 or 10:30, not as many people see it.  Since I’m writing daily, I have fewer words in my brain to get out, so my posts are shorter, and thus I have more readers. 😉 It’s not that I’m writing for the numbers, but I’ve been paying attention to the numbers out of interest.  I’ve had 10,947 views since the blog started in January, with 4,694 visitors for 89 posts (this makes 90), or an average of 123 views per post from 53 visitors, if I’m doing the math right. I should probably have thrown out the one post that threatened to go viral and got 800 views in about 2 hours, but I’m too tired to adjust the math.

This morning at church, the pastor talked about how all you need is love and he preached on 1 Corinthians 13. He started out by having the congregation sing the chorus to the Beatles song, All You Need Is Love. I’m not a very good aural learner, so I couldn’t tell you all the points of the sermon, but the main part I took away was from verse 13: So now faith, hope and love abide; but the greatest of these is love. The pastor said (more eloquently than this) that love is the greatest of the three because it is the only one that endures for all eternity.  We possess faith on Earth because we are looking forward to Heaven, but once we get to Heaven, we won’t need faith anymore because we will see God with our own eyes.  We possess hope of Heaven here on Earth, but when we get to Heaven, hope will also pass away because eternity will be our present reality. We possess love here on Earth, and that love will still exist in Heaven but will be made complete and perfect, lacking nothing. It will be the only one of the three that will exist in Heaven; therefore, it is the greatest.

After church we went to my mom’s house for lunch to celebrate Independence Day a day late.  Nathan and Adelaide stayed at her house to take naps while I went home to get some cleaning done without interruption (it’s amazing what I can do when I’m by myself with no interruptions!).  I was driving my mom’s rental car so that they would have a carseat for Adelaide when Mom took them home after naps. My mom rarely listens to the radio while she drives, and when she does, she listens to the classical station.  I didn’t notice until a few minutes into the drive that the radio was turned off. I was thinking about the sermon.  Suddenly I thought, “It’s awfully quiet in here with my thoughts.  I should turn on the radio,” so I did.  I noticed it was set to 99.3 (so I knew my mom hadn’t been listening to the radio) and literally the first song that played was All You Need Is Love. It was one of those times that I felt God speaking to me. Some people call them coincidences, but they are really God speaking to us.

I started crying as I thought about Hannah and how much I loved her.  The only thing that will be the same in Heaven when I get to see her again, is my love for her.  I loved her here, and I will love her there even more.  She was sick here, but she isn’t sick there.  She couldn’t move here, but there she is playing and happy.  I hold onto faith and hope that I will see her again, but when I get there, that hope will be my reality.  I’m praying that God will heal my broken faith, because lately I’ve been realizing that I’m looking forward to seeing my children in Heaven more than I am looking forward to seeing Him, and I know that’s unbalanced.  I want my heart to yearn to see God more than anything, but you can’t exactly force your heart to feel something it doesn’t, so I’m praying instead that God will renew that desire to see God.

Adelaide came up to me unsolicited twice today and once to Nathan, and she said, “Can I talk to you? Hannah was born, and she was sick.  I think she would be scared of the firecrackers. Hannah is happy in Heaven with Jesus.” I can always tell when she wants to talk about Hannah because she starts out with, “Can I talk to you?”

Not sure how to end this blog except I’ll include a picture of my husband with our daughter at the Daddy Daughter Dance. It was their first dance together, and I just gush every time I see the pictures. He is such a good daddy to all of our babies, and I’m so thankful for him.  I have heard of so many husbands who ignore the pain of miscarriage and never bring it up again, but he isn’t like that. He is true to his feelings and his harsh reality, and to mine. Thank you, God, for giving me Nathan to stumble through life with.

Assume the Best

My friend Libby and I were talking, and she said she thinks she’s too trusting of people.  She wants to find the good in them so badly, that she often ends up getting hurt.  Ever since Hannah died, I keep thinking how everyone is going through something, and we need to give others grace because we never know what they’re going through to make them act so horribly. It’s like the story Stephen Covey wrote in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People of the man who was riding the train and letting his children run rampant.  One of the children was screaming, one was throwing things, etc. Mr. Covey, who was sitting next to the man, finally chided him about not keeping his children under control, and he apologized and told her he just didn’t have the energy to manage them since they were going home from the hospital where his wife just died.  Mr. Covey’s attitude went immediately from annoyance to compassion, as well it should.  Why do we have to wait until we know someone is going through a horrible tragedy before we show them grace, though? Why can’t we immediately assume they need it? We should assume the best about people until they prove otherwise, even if that means getting hurt sometimes.

Last night I was surrounded by mostly strangers at a 4th of July party.  I knew my husband, daughter, brother-in-law, the hosts, and one other person, and then there were about 40 people I had never seen before.  Those of you who know me, know how reserved I have always been at meeting new people.  I used to be scared of people being overt jerks to me (I was bullied quite a bit in elementary and middle school), but now I’m hesitant to meet new people because I’m scared of the insensitive things that they think are helpful to say once the “small talk” gets going.  You know, the getting-to-know-you talk that includes asking how many children a person has. I always hated small talk before, but especially now, so last night I kept to myself most of the night.  Speaking of that question, why can’t people just ask, “Do you have any children here?” (which works especially well if it’s an event where children are present), instead of “Is this your only child?” or “How many children do you have?” or “Do you have other children?”

Adelaide was pretty scared of the fireworks, and she kept running back and forth between the swingset and me.  I think having tubes in her ears makes the sounds amplified.  Adelaide nearly caused several collisions and repeatedly shrieked or screamed every time the fireworks went off.  I probably coddled her more than I should have, but I was kind of enjoying her need for my protection since she’s usually Miss Independence of late.  I wasn’t going to tell her to be quiet because she has the right to scream if she’s scared. Suddenly I looked across and saw a couple staring at us, and the woman was glaring as she whispered to her husband.  I thought she must be telling him that I need to keep a better reign on my child, but I just tried to smile back at her.  She can think what she wants to about me, but I’m going to enjoy my child and help her not feel scared.  She may be the only child I ever get to enjoy.

What thoughts do you automatically think about others? When you catch yourself having a particularly negative or judgmental thought run through your mind, please remind yourself that you never know what someone else is going through, and we just need to give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume the best.

No blog tonight

Thanks to our pyrotechnical neighbors and being alone with my scaredy cat daughter, and even more scaredy cat dog, I won’t have time to blog tonight.  I’m going to enjoy the snuggles and remember that this is only once a year (except in our hood when it’s 2 weeks out of the year). 😉

Random thoughts that normally I wouldn’t blog about, but I’m trying to write every day.

Today was so-so.  Not as horrible as two days ago, and not as good as yesterday.  It could have been a great day, but I went to bed too late last night, then had trouble falling asleep, and so this morning I was really dragging.  Tonight I’m going to bed sooner than 1:30am! I don’t know why I procrastinate going to sleep. Maybe it’s because I can’t even have repose in my dreams.  The other night I dreamed that we were sharing a hotel room with a woman whose baby would have been the same age as Hannah, almost down to the day.  Every time her baby cried, I wanted to feed it, but the woman grabbed her baby away from me.  Last night I had some nightmare, but I don’t remember what it was about.

Tonight we went to our pregnancy and infant loss support group. Nathan hadn’t attended since March, and I hadn’t been since May.  We talked about our feelings about the possibility of a future pregnancy.  Someone asked if I had thought about how to deal with the morning sickness, and ways to combat the anxiety I will certainly have throughout the whole pregnancy.  I said I haven’t thought that far ahead.  The leader suggested that Hannah’s condition may be an isolated incident, so to try to put myself in the frame of mind that a future baby would survive and be healthy, to think positively, and to enjoy the pregnancy as much as possible.  However, I’m not sure how to think that way.  I tried to think that way with Hannah, despite many days and nights of that dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach.  You can’t just decide to think yourself out of anxiety, especially after you’ve been through as much as we have.

Well, that’s about it, I suppose.  Not much happened today.  I’m going to bed early with hopes of getting up early to get a good start on my day tomorrow.  Let’s hope our dog survives this week with all the firecrackers. She’s currently hiding under the bed – or as much under the bed as she can get her 45-pound body.

Today was a better day

I made the choice to get fully ready for my day as soon as I got up. Usually I lay in bed for a few minutes checking my phone when I first wake up, but today I headed straight for the shower, where I shaved my legs, applied conditioner to my hair (which I often skip when I’m in a hurry), and scrubbed down the shower walls with my Norwex scrub mitt (took about a minute to clean the whole shower because I didn’t have to worry about splashing water everywhere since I was already in the shower, and I didn’t have to worry about any harsh chemicals on my body since the Norwex blue diamond wash is made from enzymes…this is one task I ALWAYS procrastinate, so I felt very accomplished already and I just got out of bed!).  I got out of the shower, got dressed (including shoes), brushed my teeth, and decided to put on makeup and do my hair up, to see if it would help my mood today.

I proceeded to get my daughter ready and then started a load of laundry.  By 9am, we were both ready for the day, so I decided to run a couple of errands.  Getting out of the house helped. This house reminds me of my loss all the time – the chair where I slept for 6 months because I couldn’t get comfortable in the bed, the kitchen sink where I told Nathan about our first miscarriage, the bathroom where we painted my belly like a pumpkin, the couch where Adelaide pressed my belly button and gave me hugs and talked to her Baby Tummy…I know you can’t run away from your grief, but I do think that getting out of this house would help both my husband’s and my depression issues, so since we can’t sell it right now, I need to try to get out of it at least once a day.  This requires some creativity since it’s so hot and going places where it’s cool often involves spending money, which we need to conserve.

In the afternoon, I received a call from the HR department for my potential employer.  She asked if I could do an interview right then (in retrospect, I should’ve scheduled something so I’d have time to think beforehand), so since I wasn’t involved with anything at the moment, I agreed to the interview.  She asked what I think my strengths and weaknesses are, what I would contribute to the team, my definition of teamwork, etc.  I find it difficult to think on my feet and answer in a verbally eloquent manner, so as I stumbled over my words, I admitted that I’m not the strongest at interviews.  But as one of my strengths, I said that I’m a good listener.  In team meetings or group situations, I don’t usually take center stage or speak out much, but when I do speak up, usually people listen to what I have to say.  She said she knew exactly what I was talking about.  At the end of the interview, she said she would forward my application on to the regional office and would likely be receiving a call for a second interview sometime next week.

This evening, I got together for coffee with a friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year.  We had the most honest conversation we have probably ever had, and she told me things about her struggle with her husband that I had never known before but had suspected. I was so glad she felt comfortable enough with me to share those things.  As she talked, I thought about the “before grief” me who would have felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know what to say to comfort her, or would have been afraid to say the wrong thing, so I would have steered the conversation away from the awkwardness and kept it on superficial topics.  But the “in the midst of grief” me sat there nodding, thanking God for the depth of this friendship even after a year, asking more deep questions without fear of prying, and knowing that God knew what she needed, even if I didn’t.  She spoke about something that the church sees as faux pas and one of the ultimate sins for Christians.  She said her pastor had told her that it was not acceptable ever and God hates this particular action. Then she asked me what I thought.

I agreed that the Bible says God hates this thing, but also that the Bible says God hates ALL sin, and all sins separate us from God.  All people sin, even Christians.  And God forgives all who come to him with a repentant heart, including Christians.  He continues to forgive, even when we mess up. Does this give her an excuse to commit the sin, knowing that God will forgive her? No, but God knows her heart and how she is suffering, and I really believe that if she can’t stand the situation any longer, God would forgive her for getting out of it in whatever way she has to.  There can be forgiveness and healing, both from God and from the church. It’s just that sometimes you have to search for the right church to find the unconditional forgiveness and love.

So it was overall a good day, and definitely not as bad as yesterday.  There’s a verse in the Bible that says God’s mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness is great (Lamentations 3:23).  I’ve often found this to be true with my depression. If there is one particularly horrible day, the next day is usually better, or at least not equally as torturous.  The day started with my decision to get ready immediately upon getting up in the morning, so I hope I will have the strength to do so every morning now, even when I feel like lying in bed.

More sadness

Sadness.  All day.  I watched the news in the morning, as well as 2pm, 5pm, 5:30, 6:00, and 10:00. You know, unless something drastic happens in a day, the stories are the same at all the newscasts, and it’s actually pretty boring. I watch the news when I’m depressed, and today was a big news watching day for me.  Watching the news makes me sad because there are soooo many tragic things happening in the world, especially lately.  Maybe I watch it because it matches my existing mood.  Or maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.  Or maybe because it gives me a global perspective when mine is so self-focused, and it reminds me that there are always people worse off than me.

I bemoaned again today how unfair our situation is. As I ran my errands this morning, I saw countless pregnant ladies and new babies, and it reminded me of my empty arms. All four of my pregnancies have been extremely difficult for me, with morning (aka “all the time the whole pregnancy”) sickness, urinary retention/catheterization/ER visits, mood swings, aches/pains/cramps/poor sleep, anxiety through the roof without medication, etc.  I “did my time” with Hannah, but I endured for the promise of the new life to join our family.  But then she didn’t come home with us; she went to the morgue for an autopsy instead.  I endured all of that crap for nothing (my poor husband endured a lot, too), and I’m really mad and heartbroken about it all.  We were robbed, and it’s not fair.  Not only is our daughter not here, but we went through all of that pain for no reward, no “happily ever after.”

I applied for a hospice music therapy job this week, and I just realized that the potential employer will probably Google me. Once they see all the articles (Hannah’s obituary, the Go Fund Me account, this blog), I’m sure my chances for being hired will be dashed. Why would anyone want to hire someone in the throws of grief?  And yet I have felt called by God to apply, and hopeful that finding a job would help me feel more purpose (and staying busy would hopefully prevent me from thinking about my grief all the time), not to mention the much-needed income.  Part of me doesn’t want to work until Adelaide is in school, because this may be my only chance to enjoy my child, and she only has 2 more years before she goes to kindergarten (Shh! Don’t think about it!), and I want to be with her as much as I can, even if I’m not a stellar parent due to the grief.  I feel so torn about applying for the job – I think I’ll be glad and struggle, whether I got the job or not.

Nathan is also job searching to find more of a “satisfying career path” than doing security for Home Depot provides for him, not to mention the lack of benefits it gives.  Please pray for him as he searches.  He said tonight that he feels a bit aimless in the whole job search.  So many of the “good jobs” require a bachelor’s degree, which for him is still currently on hold and may never be completed.  Both of us feel aimless, unanchored, dejected, and in limbo. It’s a very disconcerting feeling.  We need a lot of help still. We need more friends to surround us like they did after Hannah died, but everyone has gone back to their own busy lives. We sometimes need meals and have been eating out a LOT because of my lack of planning, lack of energy, and depression.  We need your prayers, even if we aren’t sure that God will hear them.  We need miracles and God’s favor in our lives.

Thank you to those who continue to read, and thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Maybe just start inviting us to your parties, dinner dates, coffee dates, etc. It’s always good to experience and feel the love and prayers from your friends firsthand. It does a lot to help with the hopeless feelings to know that people want you around.

Counseling Goals

Today my husband and I saw a new therapist for the first time.  It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with our previous therapist. In fact, we liked her a lot as a person.  We just felt like we didn’t really connect on a spiritual level at all with her. We asked her to pray with us once and she said she doesn’t pray out loud for people, but she’d be glad to give us hugs.  The new therapist is a Christian and also has a history of helping people with traumatic events in their lives.  She said it sounds like Satan has been kicking our butts, and asked what we were going to do about it.  I for one am too depressed to do much of anything about it.  It doesn’t seem that prayer helps with anything when you’ve prayed your hardest, most earnest prayers for God to spare your babies, and he hasn’t responded the way you hoped…

Anyway, in the paperwork she gave us to fill out, she has a graphic of a circle with 8 different areas (physical, emotional, financial, fun, marriage, family, spiritual, friends) that we’re supposed to rank from 0 to 5, with 0 being the worst ever, and 5 being perfect. I rated 4 of the areas at 0, 2 at a 1, and 2 at a 2.  At the bottom of the page it asks you to list two small things beside each area that you could do to increase satisfaction in that area.  I had a hard time thinking of ideas for some of the areas, but one of the ideas I had to help increase emotional satisfaction was to write 15-30 minutes every day no matter what, even when I don’t feel like I have anything monumental to say, like today.  (So those of you who read every post, send me a text by 10pm if you don’t see a post from that day.) It’s hard to have fun when you’re depressed and you don’t have many friends wanting to hang out with you, so I didn’t write anything down for the fun category yet.  If anyone thinks of something that I would think is fun that doesn’t involve spending any money, let me know.  🙂

So I suppose I don’t have anything else to say except I guess that old saying is true – the only way out is up.  Things have to get better from here, right? Those of you who pray for us, thank you for praying and please keep praying every day. You can be our bridge when we’re too broken to do any praying.

7 years of wedded bliss…

NATHAN’S GIFT TO ME

My husband, Nathan, and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on Sunday, June 21st, by staying at a Residence Inn in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on our way home from Camps Farthest Out.  Our 3-year-old daughter, Adelaide, was with us, and we all went downtown to see the falls, and then went back to the hotel to swim.  Adelaide likes swimming, but she’s also terrified to let go of us.  We found ourselves going back and forth between encouraging her independence, and enjoying her dependence on us as she paddled around the pool.  She won’t always need us like she does now, and we enjoy (almost) every minute of it while we have it.

I woke up that morning and took Adelaide to breakfast while Nathan slept some more. He had been up late preparing his gift to me (see below).  When I got back to the room, he asked if I had noticed my gift (which I hadn’t in my morning stupor).  He had reworded the song by Journey called “Don’t Stop Believin'” to reflect our own journey. We used to listen to Journey a lot when we were dating, and we have memories of listening to the band under the stars in his convertible on a country road, on his front porch swing, and just about any romantic location in Topeka.  He said after he had rewritten the words, he began to worry about the legal ramifications, so he wrote to the Steve Perry fan club to tell them our story.  I assured him that he was fine, especially since he doesn’t plan to use the gift for his own financial gain. I decided to share his email here.

Dear FanAsylum,

I know that your website states that you don’t forward any messages to Steve Perry at this time, but I beg you to read my story and reconsider.  At the very least, perhaps just be open to receive the wishes of a man to bless his wife of seven very hard years of marriage with the song “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which, according to my very little and limited research, Steve Perry still owns the rights to.

A typical story has an introduction with a quick hook to grip the attention of the reader, the body of the story in which it builds anticipation toward the climax, the “big reveal,” a conclusion, and perhaps a cliffhanger if the author has plans for potential sequels for future books in the series.  My story isn’t a typical story, at least not in my eyes.  And it’s entirely plausible that, perhaps after reading it, may not be typical in yours either.  One can hope.  But in order for this message to even be read, I feel I must tell you first the meat of my story while supplementing it with the potatoes as we continue on.

My wife has been pregnant four times in the last four years, but three of our children did not survive.

It is difficult to even begin to think of where to start telling my story.  I suppose I should mention that my name is Nathan Cochrane and my wife’s name is Elizabeth, both from Topeka, KS.  We grew up with our families living only a mile apart, attending the same high school, but never once crossing paths until 2002 when she was 23 and I was 22.  Through a mutual friend, we would meet, but dreams of ever becoming a couple were nonexistent as she was dating someone at the time and I had to fend off my own insatiable suitors.  We began a casual friendship though and we would spend three months hanging out together with her boyfriend and this mutual friend who seemed to believe that she and I would become an item.  When I shared with this mutual friend that that would never happen, she didn’t want to be around me anymore; thus breaking the casual friendship between Elizabeth and I.

Fast-forward five years when in 2007 Elizabeth and I would have a chance encounter on Facebook through another mutual friend.  We began a casual conversation through emails and Facebook not remembering how we knew each other but getting the sense that we were familiar to each other.  After a day or two of online “stalking,” Elizabeth realized how we knew each other and it became apparent that we both made a good enough impression on the other to remember quite fondly the three months we spent as fast friends.  Future conversations between us became very natural and relaxed, and within six months we were engaged to be married.  We said our vows exactly one year to the day of our first date, on June 21, 2008.  As it happens, today is our seventh anniversary.

Elizabeth was diagnosed in 2003 with a blood-clotting disorder known as Factor Five Liden.  When the two of us finally felt ready to start having children in 2010, it was still uncertain that she could even conceive children.  Her younger sister has the same condition also, passed down from their father.  Her mother had fertility issues of her own and it wasn’t until nine or ten years into their marriage that Elizabeth was born.  We were apprehensive and nervous but excited when in January of 2011 we found out she was pregnant.

Because of the blood disorder, we wanted to get a sonogram right away.  We were fortunate to get one at 5-1/2 weeks, which I’ve heard is quite rare to get so early into the pregnancy.  Even at that stage of development, my wife and I could see our child’s tiny heart beating on the monitor.  We cried with joy at the little life beginning to grow inside her.  Little did I know that that would be the only time I would “see” my child alive.

Just six weeks after that initial appointment, my wife went in for her usual check-up and the sonogram technician couldn’t find a heartbeat.  We were devastated, feeling like our hearts had been ripped out of our chests.  We mourned heavily the first week after we heard the news, so much so that I got a severe case of pneumonia.  Despite both of us growing up in the Christian church, the tragic loss took its toll on our marriage and shook our faith almost to the point of disbelief.  We named him Elijah not knowing the sex of the baby since it was so early.  We spent four months in deep despair and anger toward God and we didn’t think anything would bring us out of death’s grip on our lives.

Then we were blessed with our daughter, Adelaide Grace, born March 14, 2012.  She was beautiful.  Perfect.  Everything that parents wish for their children.  But the dream of an easy child-birthing experience was dashed yet again when Addie showed signs of seizures within just 24 hours of being born.  She was rushed to the NICU where she would spend the first six days of her life being monitored and tested and checked over by the team of doctors and neonatal nurses and neurosurgeons all trying to figure out the cause of her sudden decline in health.  Through the tests they determined it was a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage, which was the better diagnosis between meningitis as it was more easily treatable without negative long-term effects.  She was put on medication for the first couple months of her life to which she has shown no further signs of seizures and is a very normal, healthy, carefree, stubborn, independent three year old.

Last year would prove to be a much bigger test of our faith than anything we could have ever imagined.  Even through Elizabeth’s bout of kidney stones and multiple blood clots, my 8-year battle with chronic back pain due to disc degeneration which ultimately lead to surgery in 2013, and severe depression for us both through all of that, none of it prepared us for what 2014 had in store.

Our third child, Peter Ashton, died just 13 weeks into gestation for reasons we are still unsure of.  We suspected that it had something to do with Elizabeth’s blood condition but the doctors couldn’t find any conclusive evidence to support such a claim.  We couldn’t afford any kind of genetic testing and weren’t promised that it would even give us a definitive answer to the cause of either of the miscarriages.  It would be yet another loss that we were just supposed to accept.

Our fourth child, Hannah Ruth-Ann, spent 39 weeks in my wife’s womb with no indication that any serious issues were present.  All sonograms came back normal and she measured right on schedule at every appointment.  It wasn’t until she was delivered via cesarean section on December 10, 2014 that it was apparent something was very seriously wrong.  We waited until the delivery to find out the sex as we wanted to be surprised, since life didn’t seem to warrant many happy surprises for us at that time.  Hannah’s oxygen levels were far from the normal range, and nothing the doctors tried were working to raise them.  Hannah would be transported to a heart specialist hospital, Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, where we received the fatal diagnosis of Pulmonary Vein Atresia.  We got to spend three days with our beautiful daughter and our families before we said goodbye to her on December 13.

Despite all of our hardship, we still place our faith in God to keep us together year after year.  I have heard it said that the divorce rate amongst bereaved parents is higher; whether that is scientifically  true or not, I can only speculate.  But we haven’t had just one child die.  We’ve had three.  How much harder is it for us to endure and stay together and not let these tragedies destroy us?  That is why every anniversary is significant and is cause for celebration, if only to recognize that we survived one more year.

I have been giving my wife traditional anniversary gifts.  For our first year, I learned how to make a variety of origami flowers along with strawberries and placed them around our hotel room with an actual bottle of champagne to toast with.  For our second year, I bought her a cotton bathrobe.  And so it went.  This year, I was trying in vain to think of a wool gift for her.  Several friends reminded me that copper was an alternative choice for a traditional gift to which they recommended to me gluing pennies to a sheet of paper with an accompanying poem as a physical representation of our marriage.  I took it one step further.

I used seven pennies specific to the years of significance in our lives together, with the addition of three extra pennies that help to fill in our story.  The poem I used was Journey’s song “Don’t Stop Believin'” to which I reworded some of the lyrics in order to tell OUR journey.  This is how I set it up:

OUR Journey

1979 (Elizabeth’s birth year) – “Just a small town girl livin’ in a lonely world, took a midnight drive goin’ anywhere.”

1980 (my birth year) – “Just a city boy born and raised in south Topeka, took a midnight drive goin’ anywhere.”

7 Years

2002 (the year we first met) – “A friend in a mutual space needed two sports players to replace.”

2007 (the year we reconnected and I proposed) – “For a smile they can share the night, it goes on and on and on and on.”

2008 (the year we were married) – “Strangers united thinkin’ that they had a clue, their spirits searching their whole lives.  Streetlight people livin’ just to find emotion hidin’ somewhere in the night.”

2009 (making it one year as husband and wife) – “Workin’ hard through our first year not wanting to admit we’re scared”

2011 (the loss of Elijah) – “Payin’ everything to roll the dice with our first child.”

2012 (the birth of Adelaide) – “Some will win.”

2014 (the losses of Peter Ashton and Hannah Ruth-Ann) – “Some will lose.”

2015 (present day and the future) – “Some were born to sing the blues.  Oh, the movie never ends.  It goes on and on and on and on…..”

but DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’

I suppose the reason why I felt the need to get this story to Steve Perry is first and foremost to ask permission to use such liberties with his song as a gift for my wife.  While you may be thinking that its use is for personal and not professional reasons to sell my version for a profit or whatever legal ramifications may arise from it, it still is a small concern as my wife has a blog that she’s been sharing her grief story for months since Hannah died.  And before word got around to her readers as to what I did for her–and heaven forbid the story went viral–I’d want to protect myself in making sure you and/or Steve Perry are told.

But secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I want my story to arrive to the inbox and heart of Steve Perry to offer the most sincerest of thank you’s for putting together one of the greatest rock/pop songs ever to grace the ears of Journey fans and music fans across the globe.  For writing a song in 1981 that can speak so personally and profoundly 34 years after the fact to a man in his mid-30’s who often feels like there is little hope to hold on to, but can be spoken to through a song that changes his life and his perspective from having been tested beyond his limits if only to remind him to keep on believing.  Thank you.  Thank you for blessing me with this song that I can use to speak volumes of healing and love to my wife whom I care for so deeply.

Even if this message doesn’t get to Steve Perry, perhaps my story has touched you in a way that makes you realize how special you are and how precious life is.

Thank you again.

God bless you,

Nathan Cochrane

MY GIFT TO NATHAN

He knew that I had bought a rather expensive gift for him, so that’s probably why he went the more sentimental route over the expensive route, but he had no idea what I had bought for him.  As we drove home from Sioux Falls, I told him that we had to make a stop when we got into town. I gave him the address and he was confused until the moment it was being revealed.  When we pulled into the driveway of the artist’s house, I instructed Nathan to close his eyes while I figured out how to proceed, and Nathan dutifully complied, thankfully.  Michael Mize and I hadn’t worked out how to do “the big reveal,” so we quickly worked out a plan while Nathan’s eyes were closed.  Michael went back into his house for the surprise.

Nathan and Adelaide rang the doorbell and Michael invited us into his home, to his basement art studio, where “the big reveal” happened.  Nathan said he didn’t realize at first that the painting had been commissioned just for him.  He initially thought we were at someone’s house to buy a cat. Then when he realized we were at Michael’s house, he thought I had arranged for Michael to give Nathan some sage artistic advice.  Then when he saw the painting, he thought I had just bought one of Michael’s prints for him. Then he realized the painting had been made specifically for him for Father’s Day and he thought that was soooo cool. He said it was the greatest gift he had ever received in his life.  Michael didn’t know this when he chose it, but the passage of Scripture that he based the painting on was one of the passages that Nathan read on the night he dedicated his life to Jesus in July of 2004.

Michael Mize wrote the following about the painting:

“I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” – Luke 15:18-20

I recently had the privilege of being commissioned to create a painting as a Father’s Day present for a brother in Christ who has, along with his wife, endured unimaginable hardships in their short seven years of marriage. In addition to their beautiful and energetic young daughter, this couple also has three children already in Heaven with the Lord. Losing a child can be, perhaps, the most difficult obstacle for a marriage to overcome. To have that burden tripled is a level of grief I am completely incapable of comprehending. And yet in spite of that pain, this couple has not only endured together, but they have kept their eyes fixed squarely on the Lord. They have fought their way past the unanswerable question of “why” and simply allowed God to continue to lead them through their unique story. They are a living testament of faith in action. They are a textbook example of what it means to draw your strength from the Lord Jesus.

I was immediately excited when I was contacted about creating a painting for the husband as a surprise gift for him. After knocking around a few ideas, my wife actually suggested the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15. This teaching story told by Jesus paints such a beautiful picture of the unrelenting love shown to us by God the Father. Despite our constant failures and shortcomings, he always eagerly runs to meet us and embrace us in his strong and forgiving arms.

I wanted the painting to evoke that unique feeling of safety found only in the arms of a father, and so I exaggerated their size, allowing the arms to overwhelm the figure of the son. I enjoyed as well that these enormous arms create an image that is suggestive of cradling an infant. No matter how old your child gets, every parent is well familiar with the feeling of always seeing them as your little baby. I also wanted to embellish the father’s robe and ring as details mentioned in the gospel account. The lost son receives the father’s best robe, a ring, and shoes as gifts from his father.

In addition to adding details from the scriptural text, I wanted to add a few details to personalize the painting for the husband who was receiving the painting as a gift. For example, a photograph of his actual wedding band was used to paint the ring in the painting. Most importantly though, are the footprints. There is one footprint on the chest of the father to represent their daughter that they currently have with them. And three footprints in the starry sky to symbolize their children that are already at home in Heaven. The images of the footprints are the actual prints taken from one of their children who was only here on earth for a precious few days.

This painting was an absolute joy and honor to create. It flowed out of me almost effortlessly, that is to say, I encountered no complications while working on it. (The artists out there can attest to the fact that those kinds of work are often few and far between.) I am left with a very satisfying feeling of having been privileged to play a small part in the story of their family. I was blessed by being able to make this painting for them, and I pray that it will be a blessing to them for years to come. I thank God for this opportunity, and for this family.

“The Love of the Father”
Acrylic on Canvas
14” x 18”

I teased Nathan that 7 years is the amount of time an indentured servant was tied to his master in the Bible, but I feel like we’ve been tied to hard times for most of our 7 years, and we both are ready for the blessings of God to come in the next 7 and beyond. We hope our story won’t be called 12 Years a Slave or something (like the movie). Please pray for God’s favor to be poured out in our lives. We are ready for it. We both need reprieve from hard times so badly, for our emotional health, and for the health of our marriage and our faith.

Camps Farthest Out (CFO)

At Camps Farthest Out (CFO) last week in South Dakota, we had a night of prayer on Wednesday night. This was after the hike to Mount Baldy on Wednesday afternoon. The youth prepared a blessing service and we wrote letters to God. On one side of the paper, you’re supposed to tell God whatever is on your mind, and on the other side you write what you hear Him saying to you. Then you seal it up in a self-addressed envelope and the camp leaders mail it to you at some random time during the year. In my letter to God, I expressed my anger and sadness, and how I don’t think He really loves me, even though I know He loves other people. If He really loved me, then all this pain wouldn’t be happening in my life – abuse, bullying, father “issues,” division in my family, my parents’ divorce, health issues, car accidents, broken heart, miscarriages, the death of our infant, financial poverty, job losses, “church hurt”… He would protect me from some of these things if He really loved me. I basically asked God to show His favor on us in the coming year, and if life continues to be hard despite my prayers, I will stop praying altogether because my prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. God is not a vending machine, I know, but He’s also not supposed to be a garbage dump, yielding only horrible things.

I periodically wept as I wrote my letter to God. I don’t want to turn away from him, but I also don’t want to continue with so many painful things happening. Groups of people came over to surround me and pray for me. As I continued writing, I heard it begin to rain. The intensity increased until it was hailing and thundering so loud I couldn’t block it out anymore. The roof started leaking. The thunder was so loud that I could feel it shaking the building. Our daughter was up in our cabin with some friends keeping an ear on her through a baby monitor, but Nathan and I started to feel uneasy about her being up there all by herself during such a great storm. We didn’t want her to wake up and be scared that we weren’t there. He ran to the car to get our umbrella and we hurried back to the room as we jumped over streams of water rushing down the hilly road, only to find her peacefully sleeping through it all. We were drenched from head to toe, despite the umbrella. If I hadn’t been so worried about my daughter, I would have felt the power of God through that storm more. It was one of the most powerful storms I’ve ever experienced.  We found out later that tornadoes had touched down within 50-100 miles of where we were, and we saw extensive wind damage as we drove across South Dakota toward home.

The next day during a time of prayer, my friend Kristy prayed that God wouldn’t let me turn away from Him, and that He would show me how much He loves me. On Friday, we broke into small groups and prayed for the world, and then each group carried one person to the big cross in the middle of the field. My group decided to carry me, which made me nervous since I weigh a lot more than I’d like to. The leader asked each person who was carried to the cross what the experience represented to them, and I answered that it reminded me how so many people have been praying for us during this intense time of grief.

One of the men in my group thanked me for letting them carry me. He said it was a blessing to him. I never realized that carrying someone to the cross could be a blessing for someone else. I only thought of it as a burden, and I never have been one to want to burden anyone. That’s why I try to do everything by myself in life. But there comes a point where you literally can’t do it yourself and you have to rely on others to carry you through, kind of like my hike to Mount Baldy. I’m at that point now spiritually. I can’t do it anymore. Believing in God has meant too much pain. I trusted Him with Elijah and he died. I trusted Him with Adelaide and she almost died at birth and spent a week in NICU with seizures. I trusted Him with Peter and he died. I trusted Him again with Hannah and she died. I can’t trust Him right now, so I’m going to rely on others to trust Him for me for a time.

Nathan had gone back to our room to get the papers for the activity we were going to lead in creative drama on Friday, but he fell asleep in the room for 3 hours instead. As I paced the room where Creative Drama would be held in 5 minutes, thinking of what to do as a “plan B,” the one person in camp whom I had been avoiding all week came and sat down for creative drama group. She is a nice person, but her baby girl was born just 9 days after Hannah. The baby started cooing and making noises like a 6-month-old, and I realized this baby was 6 months old on that day. People wanted to hold her, so she was passed around, grinning and gurgling. Then she got hungry and fussy. I probably could have handled leading creative drama on my own with a spur-of-the-moment Plan B, but as soon as the baby came into the picture, I couldn’t. I started crying and left the room as panic set in. I couldn’t think of anything except Hannah. I ran into my friend, Mical, who had said she would help me with drama if Nathan didn’t come back in time. She said not to worry about it and that she would lead the first part of drama. She led the group in acting out the story of Elijah when he made fire come down from Heaven, then killed all the prophets of Baal, then ran from Jezebel’s wrath for doing so. He ran into the desert where God provided sustenance and shelter for him. God led him to a mountain and sent a storm, an earthquake and a fire, but Elijah didn’t hear God’s voice in any of these things. He heard the voice of God in a small whisper.

Mical asked the group to discuss the story, and we had a good discussion about how God provides for us, even when we don’t understand what’s happening. Sometimes we don’t hear God’s voice in the big ways, but in the still, small voice. We talked about the previous cross activity and how being carried to the cross can represent borrowing faith from our friends. When we don’t have faith, we can borrow from others for a time, like Bebo Norman’s song “Borrow Mine.” I’m going to have to do that, I think, because I don’t have enough faith right now to make sense of anything. One of the people in the group said that we all feel alone in our faith sometimes. We all feel like God doesn’t really love us as an individual. He doesn’t really love me. But sometimes He loves us anyway, even when we can’t feel it and don’t believe it. Our beliefs and feelings don’t define the love of God.

It was obvious to me that God orchestrated everything about last Friday morning at camp, from Nathan falling asleep unintentionally, to being carried to the cross, to not having Plan A for drama and scampering to think of Plan B as the baby I’d been avoiding walked in the door, to Mical being there to lead the drama group, and the discussion lasting the entire time so that I wouldn’t have to lead anything as I wept.

Mical held my hand during drama as I cried. I’m so thankful for her. Drama would have flopped without her. The baby was making noises and then started crying as she was getting ready to nurse. It was a really rough time for me. Mical and I talked afterwards and she said she misses Hannah a lot, and she never even got to meet her, so she knows I miss her way more than that since I carried her for 9 months and gave birth to her. And it’s only been 6 months since Hannah died. And we’ve had two other babies die in the past 4 years. She said whenever there is a huge trauma in someone’s life, she thinks that person usually has to wait at least 10 years before they can make sense of it all or see God’s hand in the storm, or even talk about it. I thought how we’ve had trauma after trauma in the past 4 years with our babies, job losses, college troubles, financial woes, Nathan’s back pain and surgery, etc, and it will probably take me more than 10 years to emerge from the fog. It’s a miracle that I’m not in a mental hospital right now with everything I’ve gone through.

When I got back to our room after lunch on Friday, I listened to a voicemail from the genetic counselor at Children’s Mercy saying that the research team had agreed to take Hannah on for their (free!) comprehensive genetic study. We are so happy about this and thankful to those of you who prayed for this. Now please pray that the study won’t drag out over months and that we could have some answers sooner rather than later. She said it usually takes an average of 4-6 months to get the results. I feel like a hypocrite, saying I’m not sure if God hears my prayers but then asking for prayer in the next breath. However, I never said that God doesn’t hear OTHER people’s prayers. 😉

Anxiety

Lately I’ve been so anxious over what horrible thing will happen next.  When your life has been one tragedy after another, you start to expect the horrid. When will it happen? Who will be taken next? Will it be my husband? My beautiful daughter? My mother? My father? My best friend? Will it be unexpected again, shockingly sudden, or will it drag out for months and years? At night I can’t breathe sometimes. It feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest while I lie in bed, trying to squeeze the life out of me.  My heart races because the physical body is programmed for survival, but my mind longs for death.  I don’t want to suffer anymore.  I usually manage to fall asleep with essential oils (or Xanax if they don’t work), but then I wake up several times per night and I always feel exhausted when I wake up, even if I’ve gotten enough hours of sleep, and even if I haven’t taken any medications to help me sleep.  Coffee has become my regular morning assistant.

I started reading about the symptoms of PTSD and realized that I could be dealing with aspects of that.  In less than 5 years I have dealt with caring for a very ill husband for almost 2 years with his back pain (and then thankfully surgery helped him), two miscarriages, an infant who had seizures at birth and almost died, another infant who had undetected heart problems and died at 3 days old, financial poverty and stress, multiple job losses, etc.  I’m not sure why the struggle couldn’t be spread out a little more, either by time or to other people, but the result has meant severe anxiety for me.  I think I would be a lot worse off if I weren’t already on an anti-depressant, and if I had grown up in a home thinking alcohol was an acceptable way to manage stress (which, thankfully, I did not).  Although the unpredictability of substance abuse is not an added complication in my life, I do deal with stress and emotions with food, and it is a struggle especially lately. I can’t lose weight because I’m so anxious and dealing the only way I know how – with chocolate.

It really bothers me when Christians imply that anxiety is an issue of faith.   “God tells us not to worry. It is a sin to worry,” they say.  “We need to have more faith to get through hard times,” they say.  “God knows every hair on your head and he cares for every need of the sparrow, so certainly he will protect you through this.”  I come from a long line of worriers, anxiety-laden women and men, who all have had strong faith in God, and yet they’ve struggled.  Quoting Scripture to a person with such an obvious genetically inherited illness does nothing more than to add guilt to the worry. Great. I’m anxious about this problem, and now I feel guilty about being anxious, and that guilt makes me anxious.

First of all, anxiety is different than worry because anxiety is like worry on crack, and it’s not a choice. You can’t just turn it off. Prayer doesn’t fix it, nor am I experiencing it because I don’t have enough faith.  I don’t choose to feel or think this way.  I don’t always know why I’m anxious – it’s GENERALIZED anxiety disorder, not specific anxiety disorder. Sometimes it’s so bad and I feel so overwhelmed with everything in my head that I feel paralyzed and I don’t know where to start. I’m not being lazy or apathetic. I’m not crazy; I have a mental illness.  I don’t need your petty reassurances that “everything will be ok;” I need your compassion and companionship.

What if we, instead of quoting Scriptures at people, recognized that they are struggling and did things to help them feel better? If the person likes physical touch, could we give them a hug, hold their hand or rub their back? If spending time with people would help the person, could we invite them to coffee to talk out their anxiety or help them clean their house while you chat? If writing helps calm their anxiety, could we offer to take care of their children while they take a few hours to sort their thoughts? If they like music, could we help them make a CD of music that they think is calming or relaxing? Jesus did quote Scriptures, but I don’t recall any instances of him doing this to individuals who were hurting.  Please correct me if you can think of passages where he quoted Scripture as a means of consolation to a hurting individual. He usually quoted Scriptures to the scribes and pharisees, to large groups of people and the disciples during moments of teaching, and to the devil when Jesus was being tempted.  To the hurting individuals, he gave his love and compassion, his time, his companionship, and his healing touch.  Let’s follow his lead, shall we?

Mount Baldy

Before I began the journey, I thought it would be easy. Three miles round trip, they told me. I’ve done strenuous hikes before and have even climbed a mountain in the Adirondacks (15 years ago), so I can handle this. I walk an average of 3-4 miles per day now, so I should be fine. Older people in worse shape than me have gone, and my husband even went in the midst of his back pain days (I don’t know how he did it!), so I can do this. I tried to go to Mount Baldy about 4 years ago, but I turned back at the first part of the hike because I fell in the stream when left to cross it by myself, and I didn’t want to hike with wet feet. This time, our leaders helped us all cross safely and stay dry. We walked a ways and I thought, “See? This is fine! I can do it.” The terrain was gradually uphill and I felt fine. The younger and/or more fit people made their way to the front of the line, and I eventually ended up at the back of the line, huffing and puffing, but I was determined to not turn back. I forgot to bring my asthma inhaler to camp, and the steeper the trail became, the more I was struggling to breathe. My face turned beet red and I couldn’t exhale without wheezing. At one point I felt like I was going to faint or my knees would buckle beneath me and send me careening off the side of the trail to the deep valley below. People kept looking back at me, making sure I was ok. I smiled and gave the thumbs up; I was determined to make it. If I could make it through giving birth and the grief of losing children, then certainly I could do this.

Our group consisted of about 15 people with two leaders, and the fit ones sped ahead of us. After a certain distance, they would stop and rest, waiting for me, my husband, one of our guides and his wife, and another woman who was about as in shape as me. As soon as we came in view, they would start hiking again, which meant I didn’t rest for more than a minute for about the first 45 minutes of the hike. Finally, I told everyone with me when I needed to rest, and they allowed me to rest for as long as I needed. Having adequate times of rest allowed me to carry on with renewed determination. You have to be your own advocate along the journey; you have to know what you need in each moment, because no one else can know your needs unless you make them known. Sometimes you don’t even know what you need, and that’s when those close to you need to step in and take care of you. In my case, my husband would instruct me to stop and rest when he could tell I was particularly struggling. I felt bad resting because I knew I was holding the faster people back from their journey. However, each person in the group was on the same path, so my resting was not deterring them from their ultimate destination. The only thing I was probably deterring was their pride and competitiveness, and forcing them to exercise patience.

Our leader, Jesse, said that he had done this hike as a child and really struggled with it due to his asthma, so he understood the struggle and that it was not an easy hike. Because he had struggled himself, he had compassion on me and the other person who was struggling. He took the role of encourager and patient guide. He never once told me to hurry up or that I should turn back. He told me he thought I could do it. My husband, Nathan, hiked right behind me or in front of me the whole way, holding tree branches back for me, sitting on logs to make them easier for me to climb over, and holding my hand to pull me along at several points. He made sure I was ok and was my protector, provider, and strength. Kathy was my equal, going through the struggle alongside me. She gave me knowingly pained looks between breathless gulps for air, and she rested when I did. I was glad to have someone experiencing it with me because it helped me feel not alone. Jesse’s wife, April, walked behind me and took pictures of nature as she hiked. She didn’t say much, but she commented how much she was enjoying hiking at a pace to be able to take pictures.

Eventually, the faster members of the group decided to go ahead and not wait for us anymore. They made it to the top and were on their way back down before we even got to the base of the summit. One of the teenage boys shouted to us, “This hike is so easy!” as he jumped down a huge rock. I felt discouraged and ashamed that I was so out of shape compared to him and the others. Then I remembered what my body has gone through with 4 pregnancies in 4 years and 4 months spent healing from my c-section, with that only healing up 2 months ago, and I thought how great an accomplishment it was that I could make it to the top of a mountain so soon after I could barely walk or climb stairs only a few months before. When we are more in shape than others, it’s not kind or compassionate to shout out how easy our walk is to them as we leap ahead. Kindness and compassion walk with you, holding your hand as you stumble along, shouting encouragements instead of prideful statements to you to keep you going. Humility and coming alongside a person does a much better job of encouraging than pride from afar does any day.

When we caught up to the fork in the path where the faster ones were waiting, Jesse said the path got a lot steeper and more difficult from here on, and that we were about halfway to the top. He said any of us were free to turn back if we wanted to. I contemplated it for a moment because I was panting and miserable, but I didn’t come this far with this much duress to just see a bunch of trees and the rocks in my path that I was trying to navigate. I said I thought I could make it further, with their help, and they agreed to help me. At some points as the rocks became steeper and bigger, Jesse and Nathan were both pulling me up the rocks, after I asked for their help. When I called out their names individually and asked for their hands or asked them where I should place my feet, they were more than willing to help. It helped to have them there to bear some of the burden of climbing. I know for certain that I couldn’t have done it if I were alone. When we can’t go any further, we have to rely on our family and friends to lift us up further on our path. However, when we are struggling, we sometimes have to ask for specific help from specific people in order to get our needs met, because people are hesitant to offer help since they don’t want to insult you by offering help when it isn’t needed. This is so hard to do, especially if a person is dealing with depression at all.

We made it to the base of the summit with only rocks to climb now and no earthy terrain. The first huge rock had a small tree trunk shooting straight up from it. It was as if God had placed that tree there to help people over that part of the rocks. I don’t think any of us could have climbed that part without help from the tree or another person. After Jesse climbed up that first huge rock, he turned around to help me up. He and Nathan told me where to put my feet, and then I had to do the actual work of lifting my body upwards. We shimmied between two rocks and then over to another patch of rocks. Suddenly I was on the sheer rock of the mountain. I laid there, panting, as I contemplated whether it was wise to continue by scaling the smooth rocks with few footholds at a 45-degree angle (or more). I tried unsuccessfully when my shoe started to fall off, and fear finally overcame me, not allowing me to go any further, lest I clumsily slip and fall with nothing to catch me except rocks that were 40-50 feet below. I decided to listen to the voice of reason for the sake of my family. The other reason I didn’t decide to go further is that, because it was so dangerous, no one was really able to help me and I would have had to do the most dangerous and difficult part on my own when my energy was already drained from the hike. I think this is analogous to my grief journey these past few months. I’m currently in the deepest, darkest, most spiritually dangerous point thus far (anger and depression), but I’m weary from the past months and years and I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to do the work on my own. I just want to quit. I want everything to be OK again, suddenly, miraculously, but I know that’s not how it works.

I told Nathan that I think I could have made that last part of the journey if it had been the only part, or if it had been at the beginning when my legs weren’t already burning with pain, but because it came at the end, I was unable to complete it. Nathan decided to go with the others to the higher point, and he promised to take pictures for me. Just then, two other hikers from the faster group were coming down, and they helped me get off of the part of the rocks I was clinging to, back to the flatter base rocks to wait for Nathan, Jesse and April to come down. Mark and Jessica decided to hike back to camp and not wait for Jesse to guide them. They asked me if I wanted to come with them, but I stayed to wait for my husband. We found out later that they got lost on the way back and hiked about 4 miles out of their way, arriving back to camp an hour after we did, so I was really glad that I didn’t go with them! Sometimes we are fit enough to make the journey, and we think we know the way, but we need to wait for our Guide to lead us so we don’t get lost. Spiritual fitness means nothing without God’s wisdom guiding the way.

After Mark and Jessica left, I was alone on the rocks for about 20-30 minutes waiting. I’m not sure if I have ever been alone without anything to distract me (ahem, toddler), surrounded by such beauty, or at least it has been a very long time. The clouds were beautiful, juxtaposed against the bright blue sky. In the distance I could see the peaks of other mountains. The pine trees made the hills and valleys look black (hence the Black Hills). I waited and rested, and eventually my face returned to a normal color along with my breathing. I no longer felt like I was going to die. As soon as Mark and Jessica left, the sun came out from behind the clouds and I realized there was no shade around me, and I was too afraid to risk climbing down the rocks alone. I also realized about this time that Nathan had taken my cell phone up the mountain with him, so I didn’t have any way to call for help if anything happened, besides yelling. With the medications I take, I’m not supposed to be in the sun a lot, so I prayed for a place to find shade. I looked over and realized that there was a small crag in the face of the cliff that had a tiny bit of shade, and I went and sat there to wait for the rest of the time. This meant that I was out of view when Nathan, Jesse and April came back down, and I think that freaked Nathan out a little to not see me where I should have been. Sometimes the very impossible, towering things in our lives can end up being our shelter and repose.

Because I was so slow, we didn’t have a lot of time at the top to take it all in. The view from the rock base where I waited was still spectacular. Part of me felt like I had gone all this way and failed, but Jesse encouraged me that I had still made it to the top of Mount Baldy, “just not the very tippy top.” I thought how the very highest of heights is reserved for those who are fit and ready. With rock climbing, that means physical fitness (and bravery). With spiritual things, that means spiritual fitness through prayer, Bible reading, and time spent thinking about godly things.

I’ve been at a point lately where I am not sure if God exists, or if He does, whether He loves me. Certainly if He loved me, all of these bad things wouldn’t keep happening in my life. I’ve thought about turning away from God because it feels like He has turned away from me. Then this morning, my friend Kristy, who I haven’t really talked to in-depth this week, prayed that God will show me how much He loves me. She said that none of this has happened because of a lack of love from God, or anything I did wrong, and she prayed that God wouldn’t let me turn away from Him. I’m not sure how she knew what I’ve been thinking, unless maybe she gathered that from reading my blog, or maybe God told her. I started crying because her prayer spoke exactly to what I’ve been struggling with lately.

This morning Adelaide was talking to some older camp friends about Hannah. One of them was hearing for the first time about her death. We showed them pictures. She said, “Oh that’s a shame that such a beautiful baby died. My mother lost a baby and she went insane…” I kind of stopped listening at that point and walked away from the conversation, but I still heard snippets of it. The lady went on to say how her mother dealt with her grief with alcohol, and the other lady asked if her mother had been saved, and the first lady said something like, “I’m not sure since she had the alcohol addiction.” The conversation basically seemed to imply that one can’t be a Christian and an alcoholic. “Why not?!” I wanted to shout. “You and I are both Christians and chocoholics!” Why is one thing any different just because it’s socially acceptable? You can certainly be a Christian and an alcoholic, but I’m finding that on days when I’m walking closer to God, He helps me overcome the chocolate urges more, as I’m sure is the case for alcoholics as well. The closer they get to God and the more control they allow Him to have in their lives, the easier their addiction is to manage.

Coming down the mountain was much easier than going up, but it was still hard. I was sad to leave the beautiful view behind. My legs were shaking with pain, so although I could go faster, it was more painful. When we got back to camp after 3 hours, my feet immediately started cramping up from all of the stress they had been under. It reminded me how we need to pray for people after they have been in a “spiritual high place,” because they are more susceptible to attacks from the enemy when they return. Has someone just returned from a mission trip? Pray for them! Has someone just come home from church camp? Pray for them! Has someone just finished writing a book or recording a CD of truths about God? Pray for them! The enemy doesn’t want us to share the beauty and majesty of God, so he inflicts us with pain and other road blocks to distract us from telling about it.

I told God how angry I was with Him last night and He didn’t strike me dead. I don’t know how to balance the anger I have toward God with the thankfulness I have toward Him. I know He is real and there. Who can hike a mountain or look into the eyes of a child without knowing in her heart that God is real? I’m just don’t know if He is good and if He really loves me, because it seems like His favor has not been on me for quite some time now.

Crossroads of Faith

I’m not sure why I always feel like I don’t have anything to say, and then I sit down to write and things come pouring out.  Some people are verbal processors, and I process through writing, so if I don’t have or make time to write, I usually don’t know how I’m feeling.

This week my family and I are in South Dakota at Black Hills CFO camp, which is part of a larger Christian family camping organization called Camps Farthest Out throughout the United States and the world.  It’s a camp focused on going “farther out” in your faith in Jesus, and focuses on taking in God’s word and creatively expressing what God is showing you through writing, drama, music, conversation, movement, etc.

I know at least half of the people here at camp, but I’m not sure if all of them know the recent part of our story when our baby, Hannah, died in December at 3 days old. I know for certain that some people have been following what I write and praying for us. It’s those people who come up to me and just give me hugs without words, and I really appreciate that because there are no words that can make things better.

On our way to camp, we stopped and stayed with some friends along the way. When we went to church with them last Sunday, a person I don’t know very well but had heard about Hannah came up to us after the service and said, “Are things still really hard?” Nathan was standing beside me and neither of us really knew how to answer that, so we just sort of looked at her while she looked down and stammered, “Um, I mean, well of course things are still hard. Your baby died.” Nathan reminded me afterwards that she meant well, but it’s hard for me to not be hurt by questions like that. I have to remember to show people grace, but sometimes I’m just mad that I have to be in that position in the first place.

WE are the ones who are going through the darkest valley, and yet we have to be gracious and compassionate to those who are trying to show love, however awkwardly.  My first thought is that it’s just not fair and we shouldn’t have to be kind to the people who say dumb things, but then my second thought is that’s exactly what Jesus had to do. Even on the cross when the soldiers were casting lots for his clothes and the people were mocking him, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

When I told the speaker at camp, Steve Galilley, that Nathan and I might not try again for any more children, because I’m not sure I could handle going through grief like this again, he said, “That would be a travesty because you would be closing the door on the passions God has put inside you, to love all the children he gives you, including any future children.”  He said we have to have faith, and I said we did have faith when Hannah was born, and she still died. He said we will be able to minister to people who are hurting deeply, like few other people are able to do.  People will know we’ve gone through the darkest valley, and they will turn to us with their pain.  I said this wasn’t the path I ever wanted, and he said none of us get to choose our path.

There are way too many babies at camp this week. I can’t avoid them. There’s a 6-month-old little girl who smiles at me whenever I feel brave enough to look at her. There’s a 7- or 8-month-old boy who was diagnosed with potentially fatal kidney issues in utero and now is fine.  There’s a 9- or 10-month-old boy who was born with heart problems and has survived numerous heart surgeries and this morning was pushing up on all fours and trying to crawl. Why do their children get to live and mine don’t? Does God love my friends more than me? Do they have more faith than me? God said He could move mountains with faith as big as a mustard seed, and I know for sure I have that much…so why didn’t He move my mountain?

Steve asked if I have wrestled with God and fought him on these questions, yelled at Him and gotten angry. I said I can’t because that’s disrespectful and you’re not supposed to yell at God so I’d rather just not talk to Him at all. Steve said that is disrespectful to cut God out of your life.

So I’m at a crossroads of faith. For those who pray for me, please pray for resolution with all of the hard questions. God has His hand on me and He won’t let me go, but I’m so angry with him for all the pain in my life.