Two Years

The first Sunday School lesson I remember at Charity was about the Ebenezer stone.  Tara talked about what the stone represented and how it seemed not to be a tiny stone, but actually a big rock or boulder.  She told us how it was placed to serve as a reminder of the Lord’s deliverance.  She encouraged us to think of some times that God had delivered us and helped us through a dark time.  She passed out little stones for us to take with us. As I held mine, I thought about the miscarriage I had suffered through the previous month while my husband was a continent away and I’d slept over at my mama’s for support. I thought about my Nanny’s battle with cancer and the wreck that nearly claimed my cousin Brooke’s life when we were 19.  I took that little stone home and put it in my kitchen window.  I’ve looked at it probably a hundred times since that Sunday morning, and I looked at it a good, long time this morning while I was fixing Layla’s breakfast.

My firstborn should’ve been two years old this weekend.  We should have been planning a birthday party to outdo his first birthday party and scolding Nanny for buying too many presents.   I should know what it feels like to run my fingers through sweaty blonde toddler hair after he’s been playing outside with his daddy.  The terrible twos should be wreaking havoc on my house and my nerves.  Two years ago, that’s exactly how I envisioned this weekend would be. Two years and I still don’t understand why things didn’t happen the way we’d imagined them. 

What I do know is that life moved on from that hollow gut, abject misery that was September of 2013.   Slowly but surely the fog lifted.  I kept getting up and getting dressed and getting loved on by my husband and family and friends and one Saturday (I can’t remember which one but I know it was after the 27^th one at least) I stopped counting the weeks since his delivery.   My blogger friend/baby loss mom/ idol Brooke said she cried every day for an entire year after her baby, Eliza, died.  That wasn’t the case for me.  Oh, I cried plenty, mostly on the beautiful back roads to and from West Rowan High School. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sad for a year because I was, it was just that I was so busy with good things.  Good things that did not replace Levi, but softened my sadness and slowly began to replace my mourning with dancing. 

Fourteen months after I delivered Levi, I delivered Layla.  With one glaring exception, my delivery experiences were very similar.  I was induced early on Tuesday morning with Layla.  Dr. Bower delivered them both, Levi at 12:10PM and Layla at 12:16PM.  Skip was on one side and Megan was on the other for both deliveries and Mom was standing just behind Megan crying both times. Oddly enough, I remember a lot more about Levi’s delivery than I do Layla’s.  Maybe it’s because the only memories I have of Levi took place in that delivery room, and Layla makes new, lasting impressions on my memory (and my heart) every single day.  Maybe it’s because Levi’s delivery was my first experience; I’m not sure.  I’m grateful that, given the circumstances, my experience was as positive as it could be. 

And I am more than grateful for the opportunity to be Levi’s sister’s mama.  I don’t imagine that he would’ve been much like Layla.  I don’t know that I would be the same kind of mama I am to her if he hadn’t come first.  I realized a few months ago that I’d only prayed one prayer for Layla since she’s been born.  Every night before I laid her down in her crib, I held her close and I prayed to God that she would out live us.  And that was it.  For the first months of her life, the only request I made on her behalf was not really on her behalf at all, but a totally selfish petition.   While I was pregnant with Levi, I envisioned so many things for his life- what he’d enjoy, who he would act like.  Those things were hard to let go of when we couldn’t bring him home, so I spent my entire pregnancy with Layla trying not to do that and just praying she would survive.   And although I now have many hope and dreams and visions for her life, outliving me still seems like a pretty big priority, which I suppose is normal for all mamas and not just baby loss mamas like me.

For a while after we lost Levi, one of the things that made me the saddest was the feeling that I was forever going to be known as a baby loss mom.  I didn’t feel guilty or responsible for what happened, I just didn’t want to be pitied everywhere I went.  Two years later, I don’t think I am. What I hope I am for those that know me best is an Ebenezer stone of sorts. The Lord delivered us from the darkest days of our lives and put a new song in our hearts.  He loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, and you all know how much I love new clothes.   I hope I never forget to give Him praise for all He’s done for me. 

No Such Thing as Coincidence

I went to Joyce Meyer this weekend with the girls. We had a great time.  I like Joyce, but I LOVE my girlfriends.  We stayed up way past my bedtime, ate way more than we should have, and laughed a whole lot. 

One thing Joyce said that struck me in particular was this: there’s no such thing as luck.  There are no coincidences with God.  Everything that happens in our lives happens because God ordains it.  This made me think: if there’s not such thing as luck, then I have to surmise that there’s no such thing as “unluck” either.  Lately, I’ve felt pretty unlucky, especially when I start to compare myself to others around me.  But, if I’m going to stop believing in luck, then I have to stop believing in its nasty alter ego, too.

Allow me to share a bit about our last three Life Group (Sunday School) lessons.  A little over three weeks ago, I posted a blog about waiting.  I posted it on a Friday.  (My teacher does not have Face.book and does not read this blog.)  On Sunday, she taught a lesson on waiting.  It was like she had read my blog, knew my heart, and had planned that lesson just for me.  I sat there taking notes just in awe of the way God chose to speak to me about my situation. 

Last week, our lesson was about making the place you are your mission field.  Tara (our leader) did not know at the time, but that Sunday in service, we had a missionary speaker.  Her lesson tied in with his lesson like they’d been collaborating for weeks. 

Probably the most “freaky coincidence” happened this morning.  Back Story: on our way home from the conference, we spent the whole ride discussing our role as Godly wives and the various struggles that we face in our marriages.  I feel the need to stress that this was NOT a husband bashing session and that our conversation was encouraging and God honoring.  We decided that Tara (who was not with us) needed to plan a lesson on marriage and cover the topics we were discussing.  We went so far as to say that we needed to separate into two groups so the men could talk about manly things and women could speak more freely about women things.    We decided that it’d be most beneficial if we broke into gender groups sometime, so we could speak candidly and feel more comfortable than we would in mixed company. 

Fast-forward to this morning when our lesson began and Tara started talking about guarding our tongues, especially as women.  She quickly got to the heart of the conversation we had on the van ride home.  The girls on the van started eyeing each other with accusatory glances.  When she divided the room with men on one side and women on the other, we were convinced someone had “snitched”!  After the lesson ended, we told Tara about our discussion in the van.  Turns out, Tara had planned the lesson for the week before but changed her topic last minute to the mission field lesson.  Several of the girls from the trip had not been in class the week before.  Had she done the lesson then, half of us would’ve missed it entirely. 

The timing of the lessons the last few weeks has just emphasized to me what Joyce said at the conference.  There really aren’t coincidences in the lives of God’s children.  Nor are there mistakes, and as unlucky as I feel sometimes, I still have a lot of hope.  If God is orchestrating the details of my Sunday School lesson to speak to my heart, I know he’s got everything else working for my good, too!     

Waiting

I’ve never really considered myself overly impatient, but no one has ever accused me of being overly patient either.  I hate to wait in line at the grocery store.  If there’s an option to self-check, I’ll go that route every time, even though experience has taught me that sometimes it actually takes more time to go it alone than it does to wait in line for the cashier to do her job.  I hate sitting in traffic so much so that I’ll go another, longer way just to keep moving and avoid the feeling of waiting.  Just today I gave a short story test to my freshmen and I thought I would die of boredom waiting on the last kid to finish so we could move on to new stuff. 

I’ve always heard to never pray for patience.  People say that with this ominous insinuation that if you do, you’ll be doomed to wait on something FOREVER.  Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that someone else must have prayed for patience for me.  That’s the only explanation for this eternal season of waiting I find myself in.  We tried/waited nine months to conceive Levi. We waited nearly nine more for his arrival only to find out that a whole other kind of excruciating, eternal waiting would be our fate.  We’ve been trying/waiting almost six months more to conceive another baby, and some days (like today) it seems like we really will be waiting on this forever. 

Like I said earlier, I do not enjoy waiting.  I like to take action.  The time I spend bagging my groceries doesn’t bother me nearly as much as standing there watching someone else doing it.  I don’t mind the extra gas spent rerouting myself home because I am still on the move.  I’ve tackled the last few months of TTC with the same attitude.  I’ve read everything I could find about fertility.  I bought a basal body temperature thermometer.  I’ve used ovulation predictor kits.  I’ve sacrificed sleep for… you know.  And I’m still not pregnant. I’ve eaten a healthy diet, gotten a good amount of exercise, and added regular servings of  “fertility boosting” foods into my diet.  And I am still not pregnant.  I am still waiting on it to be “our month.”  I can’t even let myself think about if and when our month should come and hopefully bring with it nine more months of waiting. 

When I am honest with myself, not only do I not like waiting, I do not like not having control over the situation.  There are so few things in life that I have absolutely no control over (right honey?) and this arduous task of trying to start a family has shown me that this is one thing that I cannot plan and execute for us no matter how hard I try.  I know that God’s got this.  I know that waiting time isn’t wasted.  I know that good things work together for those who love the Lord.  I know the refiner’s fine is purifying me.  I know all that and I believe all that.  I also know that waiting is HARD and I am utterly sick of it.  And some days (like today) it just makes me feel better to whine about it for a bit.

Better late than Never

I said I was going to write about resolutions right after New Year’s, but I never got around to it-until now.  I love resolutions, so I set a few each year.  I ask Skip every year to set some with me and he just flat out refuses.  I am so very goal oriented that having an excuse to reflect and set new goals is just exciting to me.  What I realized this year, however, is that I could not remember even one resolution from last year (except to lose weight, which has been a daily resolution of mind since around 1990).  This is partly why I want to share them (even three weeks late).  At least next year I can look back at this and see how I did.   I set five goals really doable goals: 1) get up before school for quiet time reading and praying 2) memorize a verse a week 3) be intentional-especially in my interaction with those who are grieving 4) eat cleaner/healthier foods 5) get pregnant. 

So far, I’ve had no luck with numbers one and five.  I want so badly to get up before school to spend some quiet time reading and in prayer, but I just can’t  won’t make it a priority.  I’ve been getting it in after school or before bed most days, and I even enlisted a friend for accountability after our pastor suggested we do so in a sermon recently.  So, it’s not a total fail, but it’s not something I feel like I’ve got a handle on yet either.  As far as pregnancy goes, yes, we’ve tried “that.”  Whatever “that” you’re tempted to suggest, we’ve tried it.  I think a few guys actually read some of these posts, so I won’t go into detail with all we’ve tried.  Let’s just say my husband is a trooper!  In all seriousness, if you’d add this one to your prayer list, we’d be grateful.

Numbers two and three have been a real source of joy for me.  I’ve chosen verses that really speak to my circumstances right now and memorizing them has come fairly easy.  I put them on our fridge, in my bathroom, and on my file cabinet at school.  So far, I’ve memorized Psalm 9:10, Proverbs 31: 25-26, and Isaiah 40:28-29.  Funny enough, memorizing the verses has helped me with being intentional.  I’ve been able to share these verses with a few people who I thought could use them for various reasons. 

Just this week, Skip and I got serious about improving our eating habits.  I have been trying to lose the baby weight for a while now and was very successful before the holidays.  After Christmas, I had to re-lose a few pounds and just when I got those off, we went to Disney, so this week was our week to jump in with both feet.  Skip has been complaining about needing to lose a few pounds for a while, and I am still up about ten pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.  I got really interested in Dr. Oz’s two week plan, but did not think it sounded realistic for Skip.  No meat and no grain (other than a ½ cup of rice which Skip does not enjoy) sounded too restrictive and I didn’t think he’d stick with it.  So, we’re following a lot of Dr. Oz’s suggestions and the Weight Watcher “kick start” plan.  We’re eating very little sugar and processed foods and lots of fruit and veggies.  Skip has been swamped with work and church stuff this week, but he’s really gotten into the plan.  He’s lost 6lbs already and says he feels better already.  The more I read, the more I know that we need to cut the crap out of our diet.  I don’t ever want to be so strict that I can’t indulge (in coffee. and creamer. every morning.), but I do want to make better choices and be less stupid when it comes to what I put in my mouth. 

All in all, the resolutions are going well. Second semester started today, and I even set some goals for my new classes.  Having goals to work towards gives me something to focus on and keeps my mind busy.  It makes me feel more like my old self, and that’s good, too.   

2013

2013 was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life.  It was the first full year that Skip worked for himself.  The business made great progress and we paid all our bills and acquired no debt.  We found out in January that we were going to have a baby.  Cue the ecstasy that was the next 37 weeks and 3 days.   Mom retired and we spent even more time together than we used to.  Bonus points: most of this time was spent poolside!  For the second time in my life, I became a part of a small group of Godly women who encourage my walk with the Lord and make me laugh until I almost pee my pants.  I started teaching online (along with still teaching at WRHS) and got to do fun things with the extra income like buy a mattress and book a long weekend in Orlando.  All these things made 2013 the best, obvy (which is teenage/hispter slang for obviously)!

Then came September 6^th.  Some would say we lost it all.  I’d be tempted to agree.  I’ve been guilty of saying “everything changed.”  I play these little mind games with myself where I ask questions that are impossible to answer honestly and then try to force myself to answer them.  One of those questions has been “would I willingly go through it again if I knew the outcome would still be the same?”  Would I decorate a nursery and make sub plans and pick out a name if I knew that it would end in death and I would never meet my baby on this side of heaven?  The thing with impossible (torture) questions is just that- they’re impossible.  But, since I’m being forced (by me!) to answer, I’d have to [guess] yes.  I cannot say that the good of 2013 outweighed the bad, because, no one in their right mind (and I still think I am!) would say that.  What I can say is this: there was good in 2013.  There was even good after September 7^th.  There has been good because of September 7^th.  Not everything changed.  The biggest change was the worst of my life, but not everything changed. 

Am I glad that 2013 is over?  Yes and no.  As blogger “friend” of mine pointed out, 2013 will forever be the only year that included Levi.  2013 will forever be the year of my first pregnancy.  I experienced a love I’d only heard about in 2013.  I felt an outpouring of support that I never could’ve imagined.  2013 will forever be the year I became a mom.  So yeah, I’m mostly glad it’s over, but I’ll hold tight to it all of my days.

And, you guys, it feels mushy and idealistic to admit, but I am SO hopeful for 2014.  I hope that it will come out of nowhere and trump 2013 in a big way.  I hope that this blog will be filled with words that make us all cry tears of joy.  I hope that I’ll keep my resolutions (more on those later-stay tuned!) and that 2014 will be one for the history books. 

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him,

on those whose hope is in his unfailing love.

Psalm 33:18