Story.

I feel the itch to write. But as soon as I logged in and saw the blank page.... I had nothing to say. When I was in 5th grade I had an amazing teacher named Mrs. Flatter. She taught me to just write the same thing over and over until I knew what I wanted to say. That practice has served me well for almost 12 years now. If I write nonsense for long enough, great ideas begin to seep out on onto the page. Sounds strange.... but it works. And here we go.....
     A while back my sister-in-law introduced me to a blog post which was about the idea of story. As in what is your story? Or what story are you a part of right now? After I had Vera I thought that my big story was going to be about moving away from God, getting pregnant, and then married and the storm of chaos that ensued thereafter. I thought it was going to be a story about God redemptive power in my life. And then after we lost Asher I thought that was going to be my big story. About God's faithfulness and about his peace. But that doesn't seem to be it either. Each of my children seem to have written their own chapters in my life while at the same time penning their own stories.
     After making the startling discovery that it was O.K. to dream again I started to wonder where my story was going next. Maybe our life is going to settle down for a bit.... maybe we'll have a healthy baby girl, and I will make dinner and wash laundry and run errands, and Nolan will kiss us all and go to work. And things will settle down. But experience has taught me that in life you are either IN a storm, COMING OUT of a storm, or about to GO INTO a storm. I feel like right now we are walking out of a storm but still facing a few rain showers here and there. All of this makes me wonder what my life has in store for me. And what, at the end of my life, will my biography say.
     Will anyone read about my life and be challenged by it? Or will they shake their heads, sorry for having read such a pathetic story. I hope it will be the former. What does it take to live in such a way that it challenges others? It will mean an intentionally living with purpose. But that begs the question, what purpose?? So that is where I'm at now..... what purpose???

My Someday

So.... I've been avoiding you. Mostly because the incubation stage of my writing process was taking so dern (watch Matilda, dern IS a word) long, also because every time I would have an idea it would skitter right out of my head to make space for some other more pressing change or plan or idea. So you all have earned an update; 1) I'm not seeing the Indy Dr. anymore, I'm back with my midwife. But we are still planning a natural as possible hospital birth with (hopefully) the assistance of a Dr. here in town! Yay! No more long drive. I found out that Ball Hosp. has 1 wireless electronic fetal monitoring unit and I plan to use it.
2) Eden is growing perfectly. Her heart beat is perfect. I'm in good health, but I haven't been eating enough or healthily. Working on getting my greens and proteins again. And clearly my sleep is off (it's 4am here), but only mostly because I have to pee 492 times every single night!!!
3) I have a dream. Just call me Martin. I know that everyone has dreams. Goals you want to accomplish, a life you want to someday live, but for so very, very long I have not even allowed the prospect of someday to enter the realm of possibility. Thinking about the way things could be is so dangerous that my subconscious had protected me by not even pausing for a single second for the idea that someday I would accomplish some dreams. Because in EVERY SINGLE dream scenario a baby was missing from my arms. And if I allowed myself to dream beyond Asher's existence in my earthly world it was like I was blotting him out of my life. As if I took white-out and deleted my memory of Asher. But yesterday was different. Yesterday I spread the gardening catalog across my desk and began to plan. I didn't just plan a garden patch for this summer (like I'll have time for that this year, lol) but I was planning a for a lifetime. I let go of more of my dreams for Asher. I surrendered my dreams of hearing his laughter while he plays with his sisters. I surrendered my hopes of ever teaching him anything. I didn't do it on purpose..... and I honestly didn't even realize what I was doing until later. You don't immediately cut ties with your hopes and dreams when your future is suddenly, drastically altered. You let them loose slowly, carefully. In their place new life blooms, and new passions spring up. Or even -as it is for me- old passions that didn't have any light to shine in or air to breath now are given a second chance.
Some day I want to make and sell my own pottery. I want to sit for long hours at the wheel and throw clay until I work out all my problems. I want to make whole matching sets of hand-crafted, dishwasher and oven safe dishes. I want to sculpt pregnant bellies as gifts for, as Nolan calls them, my "hippy friends". I want to sip coffee under a weeping cherry in full bloom with my husband beside me. I want to have a large garden and a few barnyard animals. I want my own library so I can teach my children about adventuring in the pages of a good book. I will have a few bird feeders hanging in the trees and maybe even allow a cat to slink in and out of the house. I will listen to my girls play pretend with one another as their laughter peals out over the yard and through the kitchen window where I am just taking a pie out of the oven. And I will still kiss Nolan every day, but the scenery will be nicer.
It is fitting that today marks exactly 1 year and 2 months since Asher died. I can dream again. I realized just how important it is to have and nourish your dreams. There is always the possibility that a dream will be taken before it is realized, but there is no such thing as living without risk. I would love to hear about your 'someday'. What is it that stirs your soul to passion??

Eden...the garden of the LORD.

Isaiah 51:3 .....Eden, .....the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

I read this last night on my journey through Isaiah. I've taken it out of context a bit, here Isaiah is actually talking about how he will comfort and restore the Jewish people (Zion). The full verse actually reads; 
            ^"3For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody."

I've never read this verse before last night and we've had Eden picked as a name for our second daughter for a long while now. I have often, this last year, felt like captured Israel, waiting on the Lord to restore me and revive me; to come charging in to save the day and make all things in my world right again. So many times I've said, "But Lord, my son is still dead. Are you JUST going to stand there and watch? You know, YOU CAN change all of this if you want to." Because God, of course, needs reminded by me of what He can and cannot do??? Um, no. But still, why then? Why am I fighting this battle if all he has to do is speak and all my trouble will be put to rest? The best answer I have is "I-dun-no?" I do know that out of the ashes (ha! no pun intended) of the last year I have grown closer to Christ. My walk is more beside Him, instead of running ahead or struggling to catch up from behind. I know that I trust his promises more fully now and have witnessed His faithfulness in my darkness and unbelief.

So if He promises to comfort and restore Zion, which is also a promise he gives to me, then I will believe Him. And it is no coincidence that this verse holds so much meaning to me AFTER we picked out Eden's name. Beauty, joy, gladness, thanksgiving and a voice of melody (which I take to mean a heart full of praise, rather than a beautiful voice); what more could I ask for in a daughter or in my own healing??

The book of Isaiah has been such a comfort to me during my pregnancy, it's taking a long time to read it all, but that is mostly because it takes so much time to process all the gems I've found there. The whole first half of the book is about how God will lay waste to the people of Israel because of sin, but then you come to a turning point when God decides that it is time for His children to be reclaimed and ransomed. God so perfectly balances wrath and mercy, righteous hate and love, justice and grace. I almost stopped reading Isaiah in the first half because I was so confused by how my good, loving God could choose and cause the desolation of the ones he calls His children. It's because justice, wrath, and righteous hate are each 100% of God's person just as mercy, love and grace are. And, frankly, if God isn't going to exact wrath on Satan and sin, I want nothing to do with Christianity. But He is/has/will, so I do want in.

Since it is so close to Christmas, I though I'd pick a Christmas song. O Come Emmanuel is one of my favorites and it fits this theme of God rescuing and restoring so nicely.

Will and Grace

For a long time I've thinking about Will and Grace. It's not what you think. What I mean to say is Free Will and Divine Grace, not the T.V. show. That is - the freedom we have to choose and the grace God provides when our hearts become rebellious toward Him and we do something stupid, i.e. sin. Lately I have been concentrating mostly on grace, how I express it to others, and the amazing lengths God has gone to show it to me.
   Now I want to tell you a story. There was once a young girl, beautiful, smart and full of passion for the things of God. She was a leader in her church among the youth and everyone had high expectations of her. This young woman did all the right things and said all the right things to all the right people. But somewhere in the mix of the world she allowed her mind to go astray. She began thinking wrong thoughts. And soon after, during her last year of high school she met a handsome man. This man fell in love with this girl and she fell in love with him too. But because the young lady's mind was already compromised and her heart was full of rebellion, she soon began to give in to temptation. Her lust for the young man turned into fornication. She was a genius at hiding it...... lying had always been an easy specialty for her so no one need be the wiser. But the Bible is always right and it promises in Numbers 32:23 "..... be sure your sin will find you out." And so it did, the young woman became pregnant just weeks before she gradated high school. So ended a respected reputation and many other things. It is now 4 1/2 years later, and God has been so good. She married her handsome man and has a new and better relationship with Christ built on truth and trust and much grace.
     Recently the young woman heard of a leader in a nearby church who's sin has found him out also. He and his wife are going through a divorce and their are rumors of an affair. Several affairs actually on the part of this man. As far as the young woman knew this was rock solid marriage between two Godly, Christian people. But like her own past life, it has been a facade for many years.

Now I get to the juicy parts..... the young woman is me (many of you already know this) and I do actually know a man in this position but he needs not to be named. We can all think of someone with a similar story. So insert whatever name that immediately comes to mind for you.

When I heard this story I was instantly 1)Shocked, 2)Angry, 3)Judgmental. That's right, I pointed the finger with the rest. And I'm ashamed for having done so. Out of all people I should have been the first to pray for repentance and healing for this family, I should have been understanding and full of grace. How quickly I had forgotten just what God brought me back from and where he has carried me to. What this man and his family need and will continue to need is not harassment or whispers or wagging of tongues, but compassion, grace, and prayer. They need kindness and forgiveness and to be able to come to their fellow Christians, even in their brokenness and find love. My daughter has a book with a poem in it that goes like this;

Little words can mean so much
When out hearts and lives they touch
Once little word none can replace
This little word is Grace.

It means no matter what you do
God's love is reaching out for you.
So if you've been bad today
God's grace is just a prayer away.

That is the best definition of grace I have ever heard. It is not making excuses for sin. It is not ignoring it. It's not condoning sin. It is not even allowing someone to continually hurt you with their sin. It is loving the person in the midst of their sin. No matter what you do, God's love is reaching out for you.

I saw Mr. Insert Name out shopping just the other day. He didn't have a cart, so he wasn't there to grocery shop. And he was walking around sort of aimlessly it seemed. If I were going to guess.... I'd say he was lonely and bored and just needed to get out of the house. And then I thought about the likely hood of his having spent Thanksgiving alone and how he will also likely be spending Christmas alone. There is always consequence for sin. This man would hardly look me in the eye and would barely speak to me, trying as best he could to avoid me. This is the brokenness and death of sin. I told him I was praying for him, but I wonder does he understand that my prayers are for healing? For those around him to show compassion, kindness, and grace? That someone will come along side him and reassure him that God still wants him, wants a new, better, deeper relationship with him? And even wants to one day use him again? I know that when people used to tell me they were praying for me I always thought they were patronizing me. Or were asking God to make me stop sinning, to be a "good girl" again. But maybe some of them were asking God to heal my heart and bring me back into a passionate relationship with Christ. Maybe some of them were asking God to show me how captivated He is by me and how much He loves me.

I am so thankful for my Free Will to choose Grace instead of condemnation. I am thankful that God allows me to choose to show others the love He has faithfully shown me. For what is love if it is a forced love?

Critical Mass and More Change

I haven't blogged for a while for several reasons... the first being this was a hard week, the second being I (almost) single-highhandedly blew-up a perfectly good day, the third being there have been several changes in plan pertaining to this pregnancy that I wanted to get ironed out before sharing here.

Most of you are already aware that we reached the one year mark last Saturday. Saturday was November 12th, the day Asher died, he was born early the next day. Saturday was sunny, windy and basically beautiful. I didn't feel a huge sense of sadness.... in fact I was happy all day.  I wanted to be sure the day was one where we celebrated the life God gave us to love... even if it was only for a painfully short time.  This is the part where I tell you I acted like a psycho and basically ruined the whole day.  Our plan (my plan that everyone else agreed to because they love me and they love Asher) was to take sky lanterns (see Disney's Tangled - it was my idea first, they stole it) and sparklers (not my idea, I stole it from another mom who had to bury her own son 8 years ago) out to the grave site just before nightfall. I wanted to draw or write messages on the lanterns and set them off and then do the sparklers. The whole day went fine until I needed to wake Nolan up (he works nights and hadn't gotten much sleep - 2 hours- that day) to leave. I had a really hard time getting him out of bed, and then when I did it took him awhile to actually wake up and get motivated to put shoes on and get ready to leave. So we were running about 30mins behind. Well... at some point I blew a gasket and went postal on him. Like the ugly, hateful, screaming insanity you see on Jerry Springer. It was pretty close to Carrie-style ridiculousness. So here we are finally in the car and I am letting Nolan have IT and I'm not slowing down anytime soon. He tells me to take him back home but I yell back "You can WALK!" So at the next stoplight he gets out and walks home which makes my pissed meter shoot through the roof. 

By the time I make it out to Garden's of Memory I was at critical mass levels of irate. I stopped the car and got out with the intention to be calm and normal. That did not happen. Thomas (my brother) got out of my parents van and said, "Do you need help?" I yelled back "No! I need a new husband!" And then I just started ranting again. I was crying and raving and shouting. At one point I yelled at Nolan's dad..... not one of my best moments to say the least. Later that night, after I'd calmed down, Nolan and I were talking and he very sweetly said "Don't you think you overreacted?" At first that made me aggravated again, but he quickly followed with "What would have happened if you hadn't gotten mad? We'd have been late, but there would have been no fight and I'd have went with you to the cemetery." So then I cried.  I didn't want him to be right. I wanted to be right. So I pouted..... I might have a hidden 14 year old inside - maybe. But eventually I saw that he really was right and that I had a lot of apologizing to do.

Moving on to Sunday - mostly because I don't want to elaborate to you anymore how nuts I became. Sunday was actually much sadder than Saturday. Sunday was Asher's birthday. I never even got one birthday with him. Sunday at church so many amazing women knew just what I needed; prayer, hugs, sitting with me. And one young woman knew that I just really needed to be somewhere else at that time. So so asked me if I wanted to go for a drive. It was wonderful.  They knew what I needed and gave freely.

I am blessed to have so many understanding people around me. Which brings me to my next announcement. We've decided through lots of prayer and research to switch care providers. This decision doesn't have anything to do with the care I was getting with my Midwife (she's been wonderful, and I will actually be seeing her for my post-natal care), but has everything to do with the fact that we decided we wanted a hospital birth because of the availability of on-the-spot interventions should I or Eden need them. We are healthy and there is no reason to suspect we will need them. But for our own peace of mind we have decided this is what we want. I looked at several hospitals and I decided I like Methodist because of their willingness to support natural birth. So I can have the natural birth I want with the medical stuff at the ready. I still hope to one day have a home birth..... but for now this is where things stand. I would love to know many of you are praying for a smooth, wonderful birth. And for labor to begin at or just before 40wks - again, peace of mind.

February can't come soon enough.

Being Real, Pride, and Many Hands

At first I wasn't too sure about posting this..... but it's part of the journey. Last Thursday morning Nolan and I had what should have been a tiny tiff, but in my head it was HUGE. Now I can't even remember what it was about, but I do know that I cried for the hour-long drive to see my chiropractor because I was so upset. And then I put on a happy face and had my appointment, when we left I cried for the hour drive back home. This was not a once-in-a-great-while thing, this sort of ragged sorrow had been raging for about 3-4 wks, maybe longer. And I was so anxious I started to question every decision I was making and even questioning some my core beliefs..... which is just NOT like me. Once I make a decision I stick to it - good or bad.
    When I came in the door I just put on an icy frontier and went about cleaning the house as normal.... but I just started to cry again. My poor husband was so bewildered. I told him that how I looked on the outside (a crying, freaked-out mess) was how I was feeling every minute of every day on the inside. I told him I couldn't take this anymore. We decided it was time to talk to someone and ask about an antidepressant. I was able to get a prescription sent to my pharmacy for Zoloft. As far as antidepressants go it is about the only one that would work for my symptoms and be semi-ok during pregnancy. There are certain risks that go along with just about every drug and the same is true of Zoloft. I was pretty nervous about taking it, but I also knew I could NOT go on feeling the way I was feeling. Feeling crazy, and so very sad and anxious ALL THE TIME was not good for Eden. It was also really starting to hack away at the relationships with my family. So I decided to take the pills. I took them for two days and had a weird side effect. I started shaking, like the kind of shaking you do when you shiver violently from the cold - except that I wasn't cold. I couldn't sleep because of it and (after much more research on side effects) decided not to take it anymore. It took another day for the shaking to totally stop.  I started taking extra B-complex vitamins and really upped my Inositol. These measures have really helped and I feel so very much better.
   I feel/felt so ashamed about saying that I was not in a good mental place. It was hard to even admit to myself that something was truly not right upstairs and that maybe I needed help. In the past I've been the level-headed, reasonable one. I've always been so proud of keeping it all together. But maybe then I wasn't being real with those around me. Maybe it was a front..... heck, I know it was a front and I know that I got really good at fooling others into believing I had it all under control. I think I was even proud of that....  Proverbs 16:18 - "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." And so I fell, hard. Lucky for me I have many hands waiting to help me back up.

Trying to Get Lost.

If memory serves me correctly, today was my due date with Asher. Or maybe it was the 28th?? Ask my mother-in-law, she will know. She remembers every date of every thing that ever happens (it's like a super-power.) I can't remember because I don't put a lot of stock in due dates..... and so I wasn't super focused on a day as much as I was a block of time. This is when everyone around me started getting nervous....... somehow they all knew something wasn't right. But not me. I was basking in the glow of my son. I distinctly remember how very nervous Nolan, my mom, and Nolan's dad - Jim were. They had no real reason to be.... I was feeling fine, Asher was acting fine, the ultrasound I had the Monday before I had him said everything was perfect.
These last few weeks have been hard. I feel angry and sad and happy all at the same time. Having these intense emotions has caused me to start shutting down emotionally. I can detach emotionally and go into autopilot mode if I need to. However........ at some point during the week it all comes crashing down and I  am a mess for hours. Last Saturday I started to drive home from my in-laws, but instead drove way, way out into the country. I drove for almost an hour down narrow country roads trying to get as lost as possible (I cannot get lost, even when I try). I just kept driving. I kept thinking that I wanted to go somewhere that wanted me. I didn't want to be with people...... people need something from you...... and i had nothing left to give. But heaven didn't want me, if it did I'd be dead. My empty house didn't want me. I had been a wreck to be around all day and felt like my family didn't want (to be around) me. So I just kept driving. Who wants an emotionally volatile, grieving, exhausted, pregnant woman????? I wondered, and wondered: mentally and physically. The sun was to my back and it lit the dry corn and bean fields with that long, golden autumn light, which hints at the cold winter to come. I turned down every road I could turn on - purposely not looking at the road signs. Eventually I came to a tiny, old church with a small, old cemetery right next to it. At first I was going to go into the church.... but then the weather-beaten headstones of the oldest graves began to beacon me. They said, "We want you. Come see us." It's so difficult to describe..... part of me is buried in the ground with Asher. Part of me will never be satisfied with this life, always longing to go to my real home, my forever home. And part of me is in every cemetery that I pass. I know that an untold number of tears have been shed in each one. I know the sane insanity of disbelief when standing over a tombstone you picked out and paid for. I know the draw to walk near the body of the one you put in the ground.
As I walked around reading about those who had been buried I gravitated toward the back where the really old graves were. I discovered among them a sad, and terrible trio. The headstones told the story of 2 little girls and a baby boy from from the year 1834. I like the way they marked the stones back then. Nanny Cull died August 27. 1 year, 3 days. 1834. Next to her was her twin sister who died the next day. And next to her was their 12 day old brother who died one week later. So a mother gives birth to a son, 5 days later both of her twin daughters are dead, and a week after that so is her son. Three babies in the ground in less than 2 weeks. Did she loose her mind?? Did she ever have any other children?? What happened?? Who held her hand as she stood exactly where I was 177 years ago?
I left soon after my discovery. Knowing that others have stood where I was and cried and were angry too was helpful. I am not the first mother to loose her baby to an early grave, and I will not be the last. I got in my car and drove back to my in-laws..... never did get lost.