I grabbed my gratitude journal, the one I had been neglecting for the last few days, stuck in a funk, and, almost immediately, I put it right back.
The journal inside of a devotional explaining the importance of giving regular thanks. But in this moment all I can think is, what should I be thankful for? Mass shootings? A friend’s dad being taken too soon? Honeymoons turned nightmares? I leave the journal on my nightstand. Make a different mental list.… continue reading
I remember once, my brother asked, does it make it harder or easier?
This baby, this little one, placed in our care.
After the losses, the babies taken, the pain and grief; the now holding and swinging and swaddling…
Does it make it harder or easier?
Yes, I said.
It makes it harder, and it makes it easier. The baby stuff out, not getting dusty in dingy basement; music playing, lights shining, joy bringing. This makes it easier. A … continue reading
You only get eighteen summers.
That’s what the memes and posts tell you, remind you, warn you.
Eighteen summers with your little one.
Eighteen.
That’s it until that’s it, so cherish each one- eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…
I remember seeing the posts often last summer, scrolling and then the taunting of it all.
I saw the posts from my couch where most of my summer was spent. A catheter bag like a leash, and fresh surgery wounds healing, and what summer? … continue reading
There’s a sign in ASL. It’s the same as the sign for “scar”. But it’s done across the forehead. It’s the sign for “trauma”.
Because isn’t that where trauma lands? The deepest wounds, harshest scars. Right across the mind.
When everything happened last year, there was a distinct point when I realized it, I knew it, it was done. And I told it to my husband: “My mind broke.”
“Your mind isn’t broken,” he was quick to sweetly reassure me, … continue reading
I remember, not even very long ago, when I didn’t understand why Mother’s Day had to be flavored with sad.
When church services and Facebook feeds paused for grief and remembered loss and honored the hurting, I resisted. I didn’t understand. Why did this sadness have to invade my happy day?
But then suffering would invade my life, and death would invade my womb, and isn’t this one of the strange gifts in trials? An understanding heart?
I come to … continue reading
I had to go to the doctor last week.
It wasn’t for anything major, and for most people, that wouldn’t cause a wave, but for me it caused floods of PTSD symptoms. A panic attack at work, and hours of battling catastrophic thinking and hyperventilating, I clung to the only help I could.
Jesus.
Isn’t it Him, always only Him, the Rock that is higher than I, the hiding place I have?
A few days later, the doctor ordered blood … continue reading
I remember too clearly, last June, sitting in a John Hopkins Urology doctor’s room, a catheter strapped to my leg and fear strapped to my heart. The urologist came in, briefly glanced at the computer, and then asked me, how did this happen?
In that moment so many scenes spun through my mind. The waking up to a wet bed, the too slow recovery from emergency surgery, all the ER trips- 4 in 6 weeks. Scenes of blood all over … continue reading
You can’t capture a sunset.
Just like you can’t capture the God glimpses and the almost-breakthroughs and the intimate moments of clarity.
You can’t capture a sunset, but you try, and you take the picture but the pixels are never enough, it’s never fully there. And so sunset pictures come with disclaimers that declare it was better than this. Redder than this, deeper than this, more than this. I couldn’t capture it- the disclaimers make that clear. Because we … continue reading
The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
Sometimes doing both rather suddenly.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
It’s January. Bitter cold, and quite fitting. Memories of last January are hard to shake. The New Year had been very naively planned out and anticipated. As the month continued, plans were halted, changed, new plans laid, and then all plans shattered all in a roller coaster we never saw coming. On the last day of that previous December, something … continue reading
January. Memes and memories and marches.
January, the month of losing my first baby, of first becoming a Hope Mommy, of labor pains that contracted my soul.
It was a Saturday, the day of the March for Life, my Facebook feed a platform for the full humanity of the tiniest one.
I was 5 and 1/2 weeks pregnant.
I read about the shocking development that happens at only 4 weeks gestation, I saw the pictures and drawings and watched countless … continue reading