9/27/2011

Due date: 09/27/2011 is typed neatly in white block letters at the top of a grainy ultrasound picture of what looks to me like a lima bean with a heartbeat, now tucked away in a blue Rubbermaid container in the basement of our condo building. The baby box, we call it. It also holds the pregnancy test confirming our second pregnancy, which I added to the box on October 1, 2011 as I was miscarrying that second one. And the journal I started for the third baby in March, trying to be defiantly hopeful, that's in there, too. Should is a tricky word, but I can't help thinking that I "should" be counting baby kicks as I near the third baby's early December due date.

Of course I'm not and these days sneak up on me, dates that won't let me forget just yet, dates that always surprise me with how urgently they demand that I acknowledge them. That I observe and remember those tiny hearts that beat, even for a few days.

But how do you honor something that barely was?

As usual, I don't know, really, but it feels important to acknowledge what those little heartbeats gave me: a chance to be brave for someone else, to learn that I am seen, to feel loved in the deepest, darkest places I didn't even know I had.

I will honor these days and the hearts that beat, barely and remarkably, and my own heart by not swallowing any tears that need to be cried today.

By speaking kind, life-affirming words today - to other people and to myself. I may not have children to hold but I can bring life into the world, I can nurture the life around and within me. I have not birthed life, but I can breathe it, I can speak it. No one calls me mother, but I can mother today, I can protect, I can love without reservation or condition.

By breaking bread, by feasting, with friends who held our tears and our anger and our confusion. I can offer my thanks for them and I can celebrate that should our hearts break again, we will not be alone.

By taking a walk in the fresh air, rejoicing that I'm here, that I survived, that I got up off the floor, that it didn't kill me. I can inhale and exhale deeply and exult that it doesn't hurt to breathe anymore.

By kissing my man, full on the mouth, sloppy and loud and in wonder that we're making it, that I feel more and better loved, that I know him deeper, that I am more deeply known.

Each sad anniversary represents a no from God, a reminder that despite my pleading, I did not get what I asked for.  But, and this is one big, glorious but, I can hear more clearly His resounding Yes over my life.

I can remember today how I am changed, how three times over a mother and then not has carved itself on my soul and I can marvel at what effective companions Sorrow and Suffering can be.

I think I'm a little bit harder and a lot quicker to cry. More cynical maybe, but more fiercely convinced of the necessity of hope. Marked by sadness but what I'm starting to think is also joy. Less patient with superficiality, but more patient with the excruciatingly slow work of God. More broken, for sure, but desperately hoping I am in greater communion with the One broken for me.

I can commit to this: I will walk this out.  I will walk. this. out.  I will go all the way through. I will learn everything I can learn. I will not choose avoidance or distraction or indifference. I will hope even when I'm scared. I will not be ashamed of the shattering of my heart any more than I would be of the shattering of a bone. I will believe that miscarriage is not the last word for my life. I will hope because I know that the end is good, and this is not the end.

I started writing this, choking back sobs that came from a heart broken and now I'm crying because it's so good and maybe your heart has to break open for the light to get in?

I never got to hold them, but, man, am I grateful that those hearts and tiny, unfinished bodies existed, even for the short time they did.

I am grateful and I can't even believe it. It's a gift. It's all a gift.

In remembrance of babies I barely knew, I can say thank you today.

This is what it means to be held, how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive.

On Autumn and Hope

Becca and I diagnosed ourselves with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder (RSAD) one particularly harsh summer during grad school. (For those just tuning in, Becca is my Ethel Mertz; the Louise to my Thelma; my exception (see He's Just Not That Into You)). Seasonal Affective Disorder, commonly, is when you get sad and depressed during the winter from the cold and lack of sunlight. Becca and I get sad and depressed during the summer. It's just too damn hot and humid in this swamp that passes for the nation's capital. You can't breathe and there's no hope for girls with thick, curly hair and all that sun is devastating to my alabaster skin.

So maybe it's just the turning of the season, but this year the cooler, humidity-free air seems to be carrying healing straight to my summer-dry soul.

The decadence of my first salted caramel mocha after months of unsweetened iced green tea.

A cardigan and a scarf thrown over the same outfit I've worn two dozen times this summer, making me feel disproportionately more competent and together.

Cool mornings to walk and pray and breathe and cool evenings to sit outside with good friends and sleeping with the windows open.

I try to remember to say a blessing on each healing moment. Bless you, chill in the air at 5am. Bless you, butternut squash. Bless you, apples to pick this weekend. Bless you, mountains in the distance that I couldn't see through summer's haze. Because when I do, I remember how these things are blessing me.

All this delicious autumnness seems to be fortifying my soul, wrapping my sad heart in a cozy sweater, making me brave, tempting me to hope. I hear whispers in the trees with leaves just beginning to think about turning, "it's time."

And so I bought prenatal vitamins and have actually taken them 5 days straight.

And even though it made me shake, I picked up the phone and made an appointment and my friends (bless them) threw me a parade, raining words down on me like confetti, celebrating the obscene amount of courage that one small act required of me, rebuking me for feeling stupid about that.

Summer is giving way to fall, like it always does and like sometime in mid-July I always fear it never will. As it does, I remember a universal truth, as true of my heart as it is of the seasons:  this too shall pass. This season of mourning and emptiness will not last. Joy will come, like the fall probably, in fits and starts and with a random heat wave in early October, but it will come. Indeed it appears to be on its way.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot                      (Kenyon College in the Fall)

Happy Birthday, Todd!

A couple of years ago, on Todd's 31st birthday, I created a list of 31 things I love about him. I read it again this morning and yep, all still true (even the little Ashland shorts). This man I get to love turns 33 today, and specifically in the light of what I've learned about him during these last two hard years, I'd like to add to the list.

32. Never, not one time, not in the deepest places of grief, or when the very air between us crackled with helpless rage, has Todd communicated to me with words or actions or looks that he blames me for our pregnancy losses. Grieving together has not been easy. We have failed each other. He fights his temptation to withdraw while I desperately try not to lash out. We have tried avoidance, circling carefully around each other, hoping just to avoid brushing up against the raw places. We have moved closer, using our bodies and our words to cover the wounds, pressing hard to stop the bleeding. The ebbs and flows of this dance have been painful and beautiful. But every time he glimpses me bowed low from carrying this shame of a body broken, this certainty that he finds fault with me, these trembling "if you had known, would you have married me?" fears, he lifts my chin, looks at me straight with those blue-grey eyes, and tells me again: there is no shame here.

33. Grief can suffocate. It can feel oppressive and hot and damp. It can make the four walls of our home and our marriage and my heart feel like they are closing in on me. And always, always, always, Todd offers spaciousness. One of my favorite images of salvation is from Psalm 18, God bringing me into a spacious place, a wide-open field as The Message describes it. In C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, Aslan summons the children to follow him "further up and further in" and the deeper they go into his new world, the wider it becomes. In all the ways marriage is a dim reflection of God's covenant with us, this may be the clearest understanding marriage to Todd has given me of what God is like. Todd creates, around us, and around everybody he loves, a wide-open space. He makes room. There has been room in our marriage for me to grow up, to discover my passions, to try new things, to engage new ideas, to become (or to be becoming) more fully alive. In this last year and a half, he has created so much room for me to heal, to process, to shake my tiny fists at the heavens. He never forces answers on me or rushes me through the hard parts. Maybe most importantly, he never sets himself up to be the source of my hope or healing. Todd points me to Jesus. Sometimes just by stepping out of the way when I try to make him the center. If that's not reason enough to love a man, you know?

Happy birthday, beloved. Here's to another year of further up and further in.