how long?

anastasia is eleven months old today. it's hard to imagine that she has lived almost a year already. but then i think about how much she knows, what a little person she is turning into, and i realize she could hardly be less than eleven big months old. it is pure joy--almost--to get to know that little person: spunky and opinionated and charming and coy and comical and busy-bodied and smiley and snuggly and so much more. almost pure joy, except for that one little part that's pure heartbreak.

as i nursed her to sleep yesterday, i met the heartbreak for the first time. she was in that drowsy place, that cozy, full-bellied-but-not-yet-all-the-way-asleep place, that ready-for-the-pacifier-and-tucking-in place. so i made the pacifier swap--success--and snuggled her for just one more minute, wrapped in her blankie, before i stood up to put her in bed. and she looked up at me with those about-to-be-a-whole-person eyes, and she gently reached out from under her blankie to touch my face. and in her drowsy eyes, i saw sadness. not baby sadness, the kind that results from a diaper change or being strapped in the car seat or being left behind by luke as he runs outside to play. not hungry sadness or too-cold-after-the-bath sadness or banged forehead sadness. this was a deep and thoughtful and questioning sadness, glimpsed there in the eyes of my almost-toddler who is much too young for that sort of look.

of course, as she reached up to touch my cheek, i doubt if she was really that kind of sad. she was drowsy and snuggly and thinking something between nursing and dreaming, for sure. but what i saw in her eyes, really, was the potential for sadness, the reality that, before i know it, she will know that kind of sad. and it shattered my heart. because, in that moment, i felt more desperate than i ever have for her to stay a baby, to keep her from knowing that kind of sad ever. and simultaneously i knew that she would know it, soon, sooner than i can get my head around. and there's nothing i can do.

it is a mama's biggest heartbreak, i think, or at least this mama's: that we cannot protect our children from pain forever. not broken arm pain or fell-off-the-scooter pain or ear infection pain; certainly, we can't protect them from that, either, and that's hard. but broken heart pain, broken world pain--that's the pain no mama wants her child to ever know. i would give anything never to have to see that wistful sad in my children's eyes ever again. but it's long past too long ago that luke learned something of that pain, and it's so very too soon that the look in anastasia's eyes will be real sadness, too.

sometimes, sometimes i can find hope in that. sometimes it can remind me that the longing i feel for my children to be free of that broken-world sadness is a reminder to long for a world that's not broken, to long for the promise we cling to of eternal life where there are no more broken arms or broken hearts. sometimes. but yesterday, this mama who would have her almost-toddler stay a baby with an intact heart could only grieve the heartbreaks that she will have to face, the heartbreaks that her big brother already has. yesterday, this mama could only cry out with the psalmist, "How long, O Lord?...How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?" (psalm 13:1&2). must my almost-toddler know that sorrow, too?

(photos by sonya ewing photography)

as for what's best

it seems to be the thing to do these days to write articles and blogposts and such about why you have chosen to feed your baby the way you do, and often, why that's the best way. consider this my two cents' worth, then, in a simply honest, not-going-to-be-helpful-if-you're-trying-to-choose-bottle-or-breast sort of way.

some background: luke was exclusively breastfed but for the occasional bottle of expressed milk, which he didn't really care for and so drank only of absolute necessity (thus very rarely). i took the advice to nurse for a year very literally, as any good legalist would, and nursed luke to sleep on his first birthday, kissed him goodnight, and without hesitation whispered that he had, in fact, just nursed for the last time. neither of us ever looked back. eliza, who was unable to eat by mouth, was fed expressed milk by feeding tube for four months, at which point she switched to some high-tech, medically necessary formula. she nursed only once in her life, her very first day, and never again had the opportunity to try. anastasia, now three months old, has been exclusively breastfed but for supplemental formula in her first week, necessary as it was to keep up her (substantial) weight until i could make enough milk to sustain her. i'm hopeful that she'll consent to a bottle or two of expressed milk on our upcoming 700-mile pilgrimage to the north, but i have my doubts.

but hear me on this: i am no member of the la leche league. i have lots of respect for those for whom "breast is best" is their life motto, but i can't get quite as excited as they do about it. nor have i ever been able to join the camp that touts all the benefits of bottle feeding--better sleep, more help from dad, etcetera--despite the fact that i often watch bottle-feeding parents and think, why am i not doing that right now? no, i can't get too worked up either way on this issue.

to me, breastfeeding is a relatively simple choice. the only prerequisite for milk production is childbirth, and it almost always happens without any intervention at all. it's free, it's easy (after the first few weeks), and it's healthy for mom and baby. it naturally makes babies sleepy, a good thing for everyone's bedtime (and thank you, but no, i'm not worried about breaking the nursing-to-sleep habit when the time comes. i figure God knew what was up when He made milk sleep-inducing, and i'll deal with the consequences of that opinion later. i never regretted it for one minute with luke). but nursing doesn't excite me. i'm not one of those moms who sheds tears over weaning, nor do i get those sweet, sappy feelings many moms describe when nursing. to be honest (and you know i always am), it's often uncomfortable, restricts my freedom considerably, is exhausting and isolating, and has the potential to cause all sorts of unpleasant problems--thrush, mastitis, and the like. it's a practical commitment for me and not much beyond that, but one i make willingly and readily and with very little hesitation.

so i don't really have a dog in this fight. if you're looking for advice about how to feed your baby, i'm not really the person to ask, and this isn't the blogpost to read.

but i do know what's best. there comes a day in every nursing baby's life (i assume--it has come in the life of both babies i've nursed, anyhow) when she is happily and obliviously chugging away and suddenly stops. she looks up at you and gives you a heart-breaking, tear-inducing, ear-to-ear grin, as if to say, "oh, you're here! i'm so glad to see you! i'm having some really great milk right now," and then gets right back to nursing. that, i can tell you, that moment is what's best. and for the pure joy of that moment, i'll take all the sleepless nights and discomfort and inconvenience i have to.

and now i have to go nurse that baby. again.

where i am and have been, in no particular order

the first part of this post is nearly six weeks old. yup, six weeks ago, i started a post and never did get to finish it. i had more thinking to do, and i got interrupted (by a baby, no doubt) and i never did get back to writing it. to be honest, i can't really remember the rest of the thinking i was going to do. chalk it up to sleep deprivation, as a friend told me today when i confessed that i sometimes find myself rocking and bouncing even while i'm in the shower. (come on, mamas. you know what i mean. you rock and bounce so much that you forget you don't need to do it while you're washing your hair...*chirp chirp*...no, come on now; i know i'm not the only one.)

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"i have to get used to the idea that she's going to change."

this was sam's comment a week or so ago when we noticed anastasia's already-improving head control and almost-certainly real attempts at smiling. she's going to change.

the fact that this idea is something that takes getting used to made me realize how thoroughly screwed up (honestly, i have a stronger word i'd rather use for it, because it makes me angry) our ideas of baby care are as a result of eliza's screwed up life. one month into anastasia's life, i'm realizing i'm still undoing and unlearning all the things that became normal for the nearly-three years eliza was our never-growing-up baby.

it took me twelve days to realize that anastasia should be sleeping on her back, like all babies should, instead of on her side, like eliza had to. she was twelve days old before it occurred to me that she was not going to have a seizure and vomit and asphyxiate, so she really could sleep on her back. twelve days. screwed up.

i still cringe when anastasia is sleeping and i hear her smack her lips or sigh, because lip-smacking and sighing were always the start of a sleep-ending seizure for eliza. of course, anastasia smacks and sighs and keeps right on sleeping, just like all babies do, unlike her sister did. but four and a half weeks in, i still can't overcome what is now a reflexive cringe. screwed up.

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see? there was more coming. you can tell, can't you? oh well. you get the point.

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i think maybe there are still a few people who check in on this blog. and maybe a few of those people aren't on facebook (gasp! can it be?). so for those few among the few, i thought i'd drop by for a quick update. there's nothing profound here, really, because i spend so much time snuggling and cooing at and "torturing" (luke's word) my baby with kisses that i don't think much. or if i do, i forget what i was thinking about because she smiles at me or giggles--hot off the presses! new tonight! giggling! love love love--or gurgles or coos or...you get the point. but here's a quick update.



anastasia is ten weeks old today. she acts so much like luke and looks so much like eliza, which, if i do say so myself, is a stellar combination. she doesn't believe in naps but sleeps like champ (most of the time) at night and wakes up smiling in the morning, with a smile that is so big it takes up her whole face and she can't really keep her eyes open anymore. this is a trick of which i will not tire, not ever. we are all three more and more smitten with her daily and have had a running contest to see which of us would solicit her first giggle (i won, just today, as i think i deserve to have, thankyouverymuch). luke cannot get enough of his sister. cannot. it is amazing and wonderful and so very dear.

there's the sappy superficial stuff. are you wondering when i'll get to the rest?

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who do you think she looks like? people will ask me. i can see from their faces that it's a relief when i say she looks like eliza. i don't think anyone wants to suggest it--as if i haven't noticed--because it might be hurtful or make me sad or something. for the most part, i'm really glad she looks like her beautiful big sister. it's the eyes, they'll go on to say. it's true; she has eliza's eyes. which makes it all the more amazing to me when she makes eye contact with me, her eyes full of curiosity and eagerness and searching searching for something to smile at or to recognize, so full compared to her big sister's eyes which never could quite look at you but past, somewhere else entirely, searching searching, i think, for something quite other. i do miss that gaze.

and i do miss eliza, somehow even more now than i have in a long time. anastasia was only a week old when i watched her sleep and wondered, who are you? you are a darling, sweet, beautiful imposter. i have a baby already. so who are you? it was a momentary, strange, but very real thing, this confusion of how anastasia fits into the arms of a mama, a family, that are already--were already--so very full. and in that same moment, i couldn't have been more in love with her, anastasia, someone so new and fresh and eager and darling and oh-so-mine. it's a strange thing this time around.



contrary to (popular?) opinion, i still like to talk about eliza. i still think of her all the time, miss her all the time, want to remember her all the time--which is not at all to the detriment of the joy i have in talking about and cooing at and obsessing over anastasia, nor to the pleasure i take in bragging on and loving on my increasingly brilliant and grown-up baby boy. as every mom who wonders if she'll love her second child as much as her first knows, the heart expands exponentially to make more room, doesn't it?

the thing about the family pictures still gets me. i've written about my thing about pictures at least once before, here. it really gets me that i'll never have a picture of my whole family together. i haven't changed any of the pictures hanging in my house yet. how do i do that? take down the pictures with eliza in them and replace them with pictures with anastasia? just add more and more pictures? i'm not sure i have the wall space for it. i want to cut and paste anastasia into the pictures i have hanging of our prior family of four...or cut and paste eliza into the new pictures i have of our current family of four. this is in an impossible dilemma. i expect it will get me forever. there's always going to be someone missing.




and i think, too, about what it will mean to anastasia to grow up in a family that has known and loved and been shaped by a big sister that she will never have known. what will that be like? she'll know her from stories and pictures. but she will never have known her. will she feel a distance from luke because he knew and loved the sister she never had the chance to love? will she feel left out of the memories, somehow? i think about that sometimes, and i wonder. i do think about it.

i've all but stopped accidentally calling anastasia by eliza's name. that is a strange and somehow sad feeling. in fact, i have more than once been talking about eliza and used anastasia's name instead. that i did not like.




and yes, anastasia wears some of eliza's clothes, the ones that haven't been incorporated into the quilt sam's mom made for us. that i like, seeing anastasia in things i remember so fondly from eliza's life. and why wouldn't i? she's wearing her big sister's clothes. that i like.

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sleep when the baby sleeps, they say, whoever they are. and as i hear the squirming through the baby monitor (i no longer cringe and expect a seizure, not most of the time anyhow), i wonder why i haven't been sleeping as the baby has been. g'night.

repost: come home

(since i can't manage to complete all the half-finished posts i have piling up these days, here's a repost of something i wrote on holy saturday two years ago. if you've been reading this blog for a while, you can ignore it; but if you've only recently started reading, you can pretend it's brand new!)

mama, i just found something that used to belong to eliza, and it makes me think about her a lot. and it makes me feel sad. it makes me think, "come home."

it's Easter Saturday, that weird, i-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it day in between Eli, Eli and He is risen. yesterday, we erected our wooden cross in the backyard; buried luke's Lambie, wrapped in a towel, in a cardboard box tomb; rolled a backyard stone in front of the box's opening. luke was sad to leave Lambie out there all by herself all night. it rained and stormed; i, too, wanted to bring her in. or at least check that she wasn't getting wet. sam went out and wrapped her in a plastic bag, just to be safe.

there's someone else i'd like to bring in from the wet dirt, too.

what did the disciples do on Easter Saturday? we can dye eggs, hunt treats, and prepare for tomorrow--He is risen, Hallelujah!--because we know tomorrow comes. all the disciples knew that saturday was that their friend, the one they thought was The One, was alone in the tomb. dead. gone. on Good Friday, we reenact the Passion, reenact the horror and absolute evil of the crucifixion; on Easter Sunday, we reenact the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise of the resurrection. what do we do with In-Between Saturday?

i'm usually in too much of a rush to get to sunday to worry too much about my theology of saturday. prepare the treats, cook and bake for a big dinner, dye eggs...friday's over, after all (whew), and sunday's coming. i can safely use saturday to get all the preparation for sunday done (because there's no church today, whew again), so sunday i can rest and rejoice.

but i'm hung up on saturday this year. i'm living in the already and not-yet. every day is In-Between Saturday. eliza is in the tomb, dead, gone, and i can't wrap her up to protect her from the storm. she doesn't need protection from the storm, after all, because we're not going to bring her back inside tomorrow, back to snuggling in bed with us, like luke will with Lambie. here's the thing: it's not friday anymore for eliza, but it's not sunday yet for me. her suffering is over; she's already in the already. and i'm stuck in the not-quite-yet.

but what if i use this In-Between Saturday to prepare for Easter Sunday? that is, how do i prepare for the feast, the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise to which eliza has gone ahead of me? the disciples mourned; they didn't know that sunday was coming. i know. i know.

i'd like to think eliza and luke might be sharing the very same thought today: Come Home. so i'm going to get ready. i'm going to clean house and tidy up and prepare for the feast. The Feast. Matthew 8:11 says that "many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." praise God.

i'm using my saturday to get ready.

thinking is tiring

i'm still doing it, but finding time to write about it? not so much. i'd rather be doing this:

but i'll be back, i promise. just give me a minute to nurse this baby. and then maybe a nap...

doing what i can't

have you ever had the feeling that someone--or Someone--planned church just for you on a particular day? the sermon today was about seeking the kingdom, i think, but that wasn't the part for me. you'll need some backstory, though, before i get to that part.

as many of you will have heard by now, anastasia has earned a new nickname: anastasia the great. here she is, in all her chubby glory, about a week ago:

luke weighed 6lbs. 9oz. when he was born at 39 weeks gestation. eliza weighed in at 6lbs. 8oz. at her 38 week birth. at this 36 week ultrasound, anastasia's estimated weight was 8lbs. 2oz. the sonographer's comment: "i hope you don't have too many newborn-size clothes!"

it was amazing and amusing for a few minutes. but of course, it would have to get more complicated than that.

in fact, anastasia is disproportionately fat around the middle. she's average sized everywhere else--head circumference, femur length, etc.--but extra large in the abdomen (something like her mother right now, as i imagine it!). it's a long story, but the gist is that babies shaped like this are at an increased risk of shoulder dystocia, that is, getting stuck halfway out during delivery.

apart from the fact that experiencing such a birth sounds horrible to me, it's also a dangerous situation for a baby. i won't go into a lot of details, but the point is, though it's a smallish risk, it's one to avoid. thus have ensued conversations about c-sections and such; i'll have to keep you posted, as nothing is decided yet.

if you know me, you'll guess i've spent the last week reading anything and everything i can about shoulder dystocia and c-sections. i know better than to just read whatever comes up on google, of course, but there's plenty of reliable information out there. and sam and i have talked and prayed and asked questions and all that jazz. i wouldn't say i've been worried, per se, but i have been preoccupied. as if i have any control at all, i'd really rather avoid any trauma this time around, thankyouverymuch. as if i have any control at all.

today at church, while our rector had plenty of good things to say to all of us about seeking the kingdom, God had some select words for me about this situation specifically. first, it was the opening hymn:

While all that borrows life from you
Is ever in your care,
And everywhere that I may be
You, God, are present there.

then it was the collect of the day:

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

and then the Gospel reading, from matthew 6, which i can't help but prefer in the king james version:

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

okay, i'm listening. i'll stop googling and start being patient. "I've done what I can, it seems, and now I have to do what I can't. Wait" (from The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver).

memorized

this afternoon, i wanted something beautiful.

i wanted to sit down with my blog and have something beautiful to write, some beautiful photograph to edit. but i had nothing to write except emails and childcare schedules, no photos to upload except some of luke's new dresser that i've needed to send to my parents since christmas--nothing beautiful whatsoever. i read some other people's beautiful words--an article, some blogs--but i had nothing of my own to say.

i'm no artist, but in those few spare moments while luke played outside with the neighbors, i wanted something of beauty.

something made me sit down at the piano keyboard, luke's birthday gift from last fall. once upon a time, i used to spend hours at the piano in my own house, preferring above all to play "fur elise" from memory. i realize now that i was a piano teacher's nightmare, always memorizing my music rather than reading it each time i played. thus my playing chugged along at a decent pace, but my sightreading was never more than marginal. (honestly, i didn't have much patience for the whole endeavor at all, preferring to participate in some sport that included the risk of death rather than learn to play an instrument whose biggest risk seemed to me to be a sprained finger.) i've been reminded of my laziness at sightreading as i have sung with our church choir these past few years--i can't even try to sing a piece of music until i've heard it at least once. music prodigy i was not, nor will i ever be.

anyhow, since luke got his keyboard, i have pecked away at "fur elise" and the few other songs still alive in my memory and my fingers. but huge parts of the song have been missing, and neither do i own the music nor would i likely be able to read one bit of it if i did. so i've never spent much time trying to get it back, for lack of patience most of all. but today, it struck me that if i could remember some more of it, surely "fur elise" would satisfy my craving for something of beauty.

it occurs to me that i might have been better off listing to it online or on cd...but i digress.

so i took advantage of luke's time outside with his buddies, and instead of putting away the laundry or cleaning up the kitchen or starting work on dinner, i pecked away at "fur elise." luke came inside once as i played, for a quick snack and a what are you playing, mom?, hoping that i was trying out some of his selections for the week. ms. kristin [his piano teacher] would be proud of you, he declared as he and his string cheese disappeared out the door again. my hunting and pecking for long-lost chords was hardly something to be proud of, i knew. but although the music was sorely lacking, even once i had re-found all the notes and strung them together relatively smoothly, i was discovering something of beauty.

because as i fought to find a chord, i could try all i wanted to match what my right and left hands were doing by ear, but i failed most every time. i could look at the keys and try to remember where my hands were supposed to go next, but that didn't work very often. what worked best was to start at the beginning over and over again and just play. each time i did that, i got a little farther in the song, sometimes without even realizing it. my thinking brain, no matter how hard it thought about what notes would sound right together or where it made sense for the next chord to land, had nothing on the physical memory in my fingers. if i could stop looking at my hands, stop thinking about the notes and just let my fingers move, they often knew where to go.

so i figured it out, note by note, thankful that luke and his buddies were so occupied by the trampoline. i can't say it was all that beautiful when i at last played it through, but it was satisfying if nothing else. it's a beautiful song, for certain, so even if my version sounded choppy and hacked, in my head i could hear it pretty well. but the beauty wasn't in the music.

the beauty was in the mystery of what my hands were up to. maybe it's because i've recently been reading a book about liturgy in the church, about the beauty in the mystery of it all, but i found the mystery of how my hands could know what to do when my head seemed to have no idea beautiful. (by the way, if you're at all of the liturgical persuasion--anglican, catholic, episcopal, or otherwise--or have maybe visited such a church and are curious what their liturgies are all about, i highly recommend mark galli's beyond smells and bells, which is the book i've been reading recently. it's highly accessible and enlightening, even to a nearly-lifetime liturgical worshiper like me.) it seems to me a beautiful thing our Creator did when he made our minds to work this way--that our hands (controlled by our minds, of course) can "know" something that our thinking, rational minds don't realize they know. muscle memory, it's called, or something like that. i call it nothing short of miraculous, mysterious, and beautiful.

it satisfied my craving for today, at least. maybe tomorrow i'll get my camera out.

warning: no profound thoughts here

that's just not how my brain is working these days. these days, i'm lost in the practical. so that's what i'll blog about. i'm not usually an unedited stream of consciousness kind of girl, but today's that kind of day. stick around if you're curious about what's up...but not if you're looking for inspiration. don't say you haven't been warned.
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my due date is six weeks away. luke was born one week early; eliza, two. is it possible that i'm down to a month until anastasia arrives? the trick is that i am a perfect combination of procrastinator and (obsessive) deadline-meeter, which means that i always leave my work until the last possible second but never fail to get it done in time. so i'm naturally inclined to spend these last weeks procrastinating--tons of church work, plenty of housework--until the very last minute. the problem is that i have no idea when said last minute will be. (thus the fact that with both of my children, i packed my hospital bag while i was already in labor.) i've decided to set myself the artificial deadline of march 1 to be "ready," whatever that means. i'm hoping i can fool myself into believing that is a legitimate deadline. and i'm well aware that i'm setting myself up to loathe every day after march 1 that i spend still pregnant. but sometimes those are just the kind of risks you have to take, i guess. i'll let you know.
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meanwhile, we're slowly starting to get our heads around what it's going to mean to have a baby in the house again. we're realizing that luke has become pretty accustomed to life as an only child of sorts, with two parents as constant conversation partners and frequent slaves. we've decided to start helping him embrace his myriad abilities to do for himself as a nearly seven-and-a-half year old. so far, this has resulted among other things in a good deal of celebration of his newly-discovered independence, a fair amount of whining, and one burned oven mitt. i'll keep you posted on this one, too.
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there's the issue of work for me, too. i loved loved loved my job when i was pregnant with luke, couldn't imagine leaving it for anything--though i was completely committed to leaving no matter what. i remember realizing about a month into my new career as a mom that i could never have dreamt of looking back. what i was doing was so much more important, so much more fulfilling, so much more challenging, so much more wonderful. this time, i find myself yet again in a job that i love and can't imagine giving up, and due to its flexibility and much less significant time commitment, i'm not planning to. i haven't--and don't expect to--quite figured out the long-term logistics for what that means, but up until recently, i've felt completely confident that i'll be able to work that out. but then i start wondering what i'm going to feel like when anastasia is here and is suddenly renewing my whole world. speaking of keeping you posted...
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the superbowl is on today, and my boys are at a boys-only party. i couldn't be more delighted. emailing, facebooking, blogging, reading, napping...so far, soooo good. and they've only been gone an hour!
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i'm remembering now why pregnancy has to last the whole nine months. if it didn't get really miserable, there's no way you'd be ready for the logical conclusion. if it ended at six or seven months, you would in no way be prepared for labor and childbirth and newborn life. but right now, right around the last month, i'm starting to remember how to be ready for all that: i'm up for just about anything that will put an end to this. ask me in a few weeks, and that "just about anything" will be a solid "anything." bring it on.

at the same time, i'm also quite sure i don't know how to be prepared for the unknown that is to come. Lord willing, anastasia will be healthy and happy and all will go well...but i know full well that this time, that's not all there is to it. there are bound to be significant emotions wrapped up in her arrival related to eliza's birth and life that sam, luke, and i cannot anticipate. i know what i don't know: what will it be like to deliver anastasia at the very same hospital where eliza spent the first ten weeks of her life, right next door to the nicu? will she look like eliza? what will it be like to bring her home right after her birth, escaping as it were that place that eliza fought for so long to escape? what will it feel like to dress her in eliza's clothes? what will it be like to have a baby girl that grows up healthily, Lord willing, unlike the big sister she never knew?

i know that i don't know the answers to those questions and many others like them. but i also know that there's lots more i don't even know to anticipate. there are questions and emotions i can't even imagine now that will no doubt come up. how can i prepare for the unknown? it feels like yet another opportunity--no, requirement--to trust in the One who does know. Lord, i believe; help my unbelief.
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this typing pause and deep breath brought to you by braxton hicks. (wow, they're rough this third time around.) which is to say nothing about the baby enduring them, who, for the record, seems to be less busy than her big brother but way stronger than her brother or sister. wow. watch out, world.
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another thing i think about a lot is being that mom. my children--the ones you'll see me with at the park or school or soccer field, anyhow--will be seven and a half years apart. sure, you're thinking, i know other families whose kids are that far apart. but think about why. there's always a story, i think; previous marriage, child out of wedlock, death of a parent or other family member, surprise pregnancy, or something else out of the ordinary. the fact is that people don't ordinarily plan to have their first child at age 25 and their second at 32. there's always a story. i'm realizing that i'll be that mom, the mom about whom people who don't know will wonder: what's the story there? she has one in middle school and one in preschool? her oldest is in college and the next isn't even in high school yet?

of course, there is a story. and if you're reading here, no doubt you know the gist of the story anyhow. but in some ways, anastasia's arrival in our family will make our story that much more transparent. there will be fewer and fewer places where i can hide from the fact that there even is a story at all (not that i do a whole lot of that anyhow!). that mom.
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next up: reading. or napping. but first I really need to get something to eat...

i would love to, if not for the baby

warning: this is going to be one of those posts for which you need to hang with me for a while. ready?

it's funny, isn't it, that i changed the motif of this blog to the wine glass thing--"some of the words i might share with you over a glass of wine"--while i was pregnant. if you know me, you know that i'm pretty careful not to drink alcohol while i'm pregnant. which says nothing about those who choose to--more power to you--i'm just a legalist like that. (and oh, how i'd savor a glass of wine right about now...but i digress.)

the fact is that from day one, being a mom changes your life. completely. but back to that in a minute.

***************

in our church staff meeting yesterday (in case you don't keep up with my comings and goings unless they're mentioned here, i have been the children's minister at our church for about seven months now and recently left my second part-time job as the marketing editor at the local community college), we were talking about discipleship. what is it? how do we do it? what does it look like for the people in our church?

if you're a churchgoer, you've probably heard the term used. but can you define it? our church recently hosted a discipleship weekend, and when someone asked me what that was, i found myself at a loss. i can tell you about Jesus' disciples, that is, his followers. but what is discipleship for us, then, practically speaking? because to say we're being like the original disciples--following Jesus--is all well and good. but what does that mean we're actually doing?

merriam-webster online defines a disciple as "one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another." that's helpful, i guess. but more practically speaking, what does that look like? at a friend's ordination service last week, the presiding bishop described the new priest's role as looking like a sheep from the front and a shepherd from behind, both following Jesus and leading others to Him at once. there's something to that, too. but what both of those definitions miss is the overwhelming commitment of discipleship. when Jesus describes to His disciples what it means to follow Him, there's no question that it's a radical commitment. to paraphrase, take up your cross and follow me (luke 9:23), let the dead bury the dead (luke 9:60) sell all you have (mark 10:21), if anyone does not hate his family, he cannot be my disciple (luke 14:26) etcetera--this is not an easy or half-hearted calling in the least. it's no small deal to become a disciple. so as i've thought about what it means to be a modern disciple in the context of our church staff's discussion, i've had all those pieces of the puzzle in mind.

*************

and this is where the mom thing comes in. i know that if you've ever been a mom--and perhaps even if you've ever been married to one or even just had a mom of your own--you've guessed the connection by now. there is no other role in life that i can think to compare discipleship to in terms of the degree of commitment (and nothing sacrilegious or child-worshipy beyond that, please note) than that of being a mom. from the moment your child is conceived, your entire life revolves around that child--and it will, in many ways, forever. from making you forgo that first glass of wine to changing what you like to eat, what smells you enjoy, how you sleep, what you think about (and how clearly you are able to think), that child takes over your life immediately, even before you get to meet him or her. and then once s/he arrives? your entire life is dominated by that child's needs. all day long, and all night long. from feedings and diapers to carpools and rehearsals to relationships and decisions to long-distance phone calls and friendship, you will not sleep or wake without your child in mind ever again. even if you lose that child, the round-the-clock awareness of being his or her mother will never change.

(this is different for dads, i suspect. i don't know, i guess, and i also don't know whether i'm overstepping to apply it to all moms, either. but i suppose that since this is my blog, if i'm ever going to overstep anywhere, this is the place to do it.)

anyhow, the point is that being a mom doesn't just consume your life, and not for a little while. it becomes your life. and although there may be fleeting moments when you think you'd like to escape it, the reality is that you cannot imagine ever going back to your life before your child. and really, you don't want to.

*************

in my head, which is always searching for the right metaphor with which to understand and explain something, that model of absorption by a relationship--of utter abandonment to a person without any limitations whatsoever--can be the only metaphor sufficient to describe what discipleship ought to look like. there's no looking back, no questioning whether it's right, no doubt that you would without hesitation do absolutely anything for this person. and everything you do is with this person in mind, always.

as a mom, i know that to be a tall order. and perhaps, as a metaphor with all its concomitant limitations, it's not all that helpful in a practical way after all to address the question our church staff was asking: how do we do it? at least it's not practical in a programming sense--what events will we schedule, or to what will we invite people? but if we want to talk about what discipleship really ought to look like, i think it's helpful at least as an image. and maybe it is the thing to which we ought to be inviting people: total, radical, and joyful abandonment, with no strings attached.

what you can learn from stories you have never liked

over the past several years, it has become our tradition to give luke the gift of a special family outing for christmas. i'm not sure how it started, really. probably accidentally. but it is meaningful in so many ways to us now. for one thing, it's hard to compete with what awaits luke on our annual christmas pilgrimage to our "homeland," aka syracuse, new york: mountains of snow, all of his grandparents and all their requisite indulgences, dozens of cousins, doting aunts and uncles galore, big black poodles...what more could a boy ask for, really? his same-old, same-old parents--with their limited budget, inability to conjure up snow on demand, and dog-less-and-local-family-less life--can hardly compete. and so, instead of trying, we decided several years ago to invent something new.

we celebrate what we call our "family christmas" in north carolina the day before we pack up the car and head north. luke looks forward to finding out first thing in the morning what the day holds; this year, it was tickets to see the voyage of the dawn treader in 3d, followed by dinner out at an italian restaurant. it was, as is always the case with our family christmas outings, a fun time together and a special treat.

the movie choice this year was all sam, though. while luke and sam love the chronicles of narnia (along with the rest of the world, as far as i can tell), i have never been able to get into them. (insert here the collective gasp of most everyone reading this post, for whom the narnia books have either been life-changing or childhood favorites or both or something else ridiculously significant.) i like to read most anything, but fantasy has never been a category i've been able to get into. i'll confess that i have started the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe more than once and have never finished it. if you know me and my ocd-ish inability to leave a book unfinished, you'll know how significant that is. anyhow, i had no argument with sam's choice: of course, this would be a perfect choice for luke. and i'd be glad to tag along despite my shameful lack of knowledge of narnia.

anyhow, that's an unnecessary amount of rambling to get to the point. the movie was great fun, although my boys tell me that it departed from the book in lots of really significant ways. for my part, i'm almost convinced to pick the books up again and give them another try. although i'm not all that good at entering into the fantasy, the allegory intrigues me enough that i think i'll give it go. but all this background is to lead up to this, perhaps my favorite line from the movie (which luke and sam tell me is not from the book, unfortunately): "i spent too long wanting what was taken from me and not what was given." it's king caspian who says this, and it doesn't really matter why, not insofar as this blogpost is concerned, anyhow. but the line was striking to me in many ways.

i won't go into all of them here, but suffice it to say that sam and i spend (and have spent recently) a significant amount of time wanting what was taken from us. but how much do we focus on what is given to us? i think of luke and my recent ramblings about my wishes for my mothering of him; of anastasia and her busy life inside me, soon to be outside; of my family and friends; of my work and the people i am privileged to serve and serve with there...i could go on and on. caspian goes on to say that he has been given people and that's what he must focus on as their king. similarly, i have been given people whom i am meant to serve--my family, my community--and i cannot be so wrapped up in wanting what i have lost that i fail to focus on what i have been given to do.

caspian won't forget his father, of course, nor do i plan to forget wishing eliza were still here. but the line stuck with me, is all, and made me eager to adjust my focus, at least sometimes. what amazing gifts and callings i have been given, and i'm glad for the reminder not to lose sight of them.

(and now that christmas eve has nearly become christmas morning, i'll quote another favorite movie line, this from forrest gump: "and that's all i have to say about that." at least for tonight.)

label-maker

don't let this define you, he said.

i think i may have mentioned here before (darned if i can find where) that, as has anyone who has been through a significant loss, i heard some comments that were less than helpful after eliza died. i knew that all of them were shared with the best of intentions, and so for the most part in each case i was able to receive the good intention and ignore the foolish vehicle for its delivery. but these words didn't roll off my back so easily. don't let this define you. thankfully, they were offered in the context of a conversation in which it was appropriate for me to push back--and so i did. i had completely forgotten that conversation until i recently heard the same words offered to a friend who had just been diagnosed with cancer: don't let this define you.

before i explain my pushback, i should explain that i understand the good intention behind the words. for my friend with cancer and for me in my loss, the intention (i believe) was the same: don't cease living because of suffering, don't give up on all you know and are because a bad thing has happened, don't lose your identity because of this new label you wear: cancer patient, grieving mother. i am grateful for those good intentions.

but what i said to the friend who offered me these words was this: i believe that losing eliza is intended to define me. not in the sense that i should always and ever be only a grieving mother; those of you who know me well know that was never a risk for me. but in the sense that in some inexplicable, providential way, this was intended for me and is meant to change me. death is evil--don't get me wrong--and was never what God intended for us. but "we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose" (romans 8:28). even evil things He can and does use for our good.

i know that losing eliza has changed me, which is not to say that i wouldn't give it all back if i didn't have to lose her after all. but since that is not mine to decide, i will decide what i can, which in this case is to be grateful for those changes and the way that her life and death were intended to define me. if i believe in a God who is God of the whole universe and of every single hair on eliza's head, a God who is all good and wants the best for me and eliza always, a God who is completely in control, then somehow or another, God is in everything i experience, be it joyful or painful. He allows the painful things...or something equally hard to swallow: one way or another, He is in them. and they are meant to define me. what has resulted from the trial of losing eliza was meant for me, and God is all over it. He has defined (in the sense of creating) me through losing eliza, and that is--somehow, and the Lord only knows how--good. in one sense, my friend was right: i shouldn't be defined by losing eliza in the sense that i might become nothing but a grieving mother. but in quite another and perhaps more important sense, i know that i needed to let losing eliza define me. this suffering is mine and i am God's, and through this as through everything i experience, He is making me into what he has intended for me from the beginning of time.

let Him define you--that's my advice, i guess--even when the vehicle for the defining feels more like painful re-fining.

turn, turn, turn

it's time to be sad again, he said, kneeling by the bed in the dark. we had been arguing, i think--and who knows about what, as is almost always the case with those things--and i suppose i had gone to bed, seeing no other way to put an end to it. it's time to be sad again, here in the dark.

it seems to me that for the most part, we resist cycles. we artificially heat and light the annual dark, cold seasons; we medicate monthly bad moods; we travel to warm places when it's cold and cool places when it's hot; we starve and exercise and surgically rearrange bodies that mature into sagging or stretching or drooping. we strive for equilibrium in our emotions, our environments, our habits. we don't want change, cyclical or otherwise.

but resist as we may, we live in a world dominated by cycles. if you go to school with luke, you'll probably learn about the water cycle. there's the cycle of time: resist as we may, whether we get out of bed or not, morning will follow night, every night, for as long as the Lord sees fit to perpetuate that cycle. the seasons are cyclical, of course, as are the holidays that appear in them. for many people, emotions are cyclical, affected by light or weather or hormones or other indeterminate factors. this is part of why i appreciate the liturgical church year, as i think i've mentioned before. ordinary time is always followed by something extra-ordinary, green followed by purple, red leading to white. (if that's all foreign to you, here's a decent, brief explanation of what i'm talking about.) try as we may to celebrate christmas in july, like luke with his interminable whistling this summer, that's not the time for it, and christmas will not come then.

i'd prefer to resist the cycle of sadness, too. i'd prefer to call out in the dark, no! it's not the time to be sad. i won't be told when to be sad! i won't let the calendar dictate what this sunday will look like for me--or any other day, for that matter. last year, as december 12 approached, sam and i were convinced that it would be a day like any other. it was clear when 9:15am arrived that day that we were completely wrong.

i'd prefer it if this were not "the time to be sad." i'd prefer to preserve advent and christmas as times of joyful waiting and leave the sad for some more convenient time--or never. but the fact is that i have no choice but to submit to the darkness when it arrives. unlike in my modern, electrified house--in which i can flip a few switches and pretend that this cold, dark night is in fact a warm, sunny day--i cannot turn a dark emotional season into a bright one. there are dark seasons that cannot so easily be turned on or off. and maybe there are times to be sad.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. (ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

(go ahead, sing it. you know you want to. i am. turn, turn, turn.)

what ecclesiastes 3 goes on to say is that God "has made everything beautiful in its time" (v11). the fact that everything has its season--birth and death, planting and reaping, weeping and laughing, casting away and gathering in, seeking and losing--is no accident. the cycle of seasons is made beautiful in its time. i have to believe that we're built for submitting to those cycles (inasmuch as they're healthy, of course, in which i do not at all mean to ignore the fact that in our brokenness, those cycles can be broken, too). put simply, if it is time to be sad, i'd do well to listen to that, to submit to it, to learn in it, to grow through it.

and in kneeling in the dark, recognizing that it is time to be sad again, i will all the more appreciate the light, the morning that follows night every time in its turn.

grieving gratefully

grief doesn't go away. and today i figured out another reason i'm glad it doesn't.

in the past, i've been glad it doesn't go away for some reasons about which i have some questions regarding their health value. i've been glad to hang onto it as a last remaining tangible bit of eliza. i've been loathe to let it go because it felt like all i had left. like losing my pain about eliza's death is somehow "getting over it" in a way that means having lost her more completely than before. that's real and true and far from unique to me, i know. i'm not sure, however, how healthy it is. but today i figured out another reason i'm glad to still grieve having lost eliza, and i think this one is much healthier.

last night, sam and i were talking about what we have done with our grief--or perhaps more accurately, what it has done to and for us. i had a few thoughts on the spot. i think i've developed a different type of compassion. i've learned something about how to show up for people. i understand myself and my own needs better. i know suffering in a way i never knew before, and i'm able to share that with others. i have become more transparent for sure, as evidenced by some of what i post here. none of this is meant to sound like i have it all nailed, of course. but God has used my grief to teach me some things, is all, and i think those things have clarified for me who i am and what He has for me to do.

but the part of that conversation that really broke me was when i talked about what i wish my grief had done for me. this is the really raw, hard part: i wish it had made me a better mother. if anything, i'm afraid it has done the opposite. i wish that in losing eliza i had learned to be more grateful for luke. i wish my selfish impatience with his seven-year-old-ness--his slowness to make his bed in the morning, his lies about whether or not he has brushed his teeth, his failure to unpack his backpack after school despite repeated requests, his constant arguing with any parental directive at all--i wish my grief could cause me to see past my impatience with these childish failures and allow me to be grateful that he is here, and he is seven, and he is healthy, and he will someday (deo volente) be eight. why is all my eternal perspective and compassion for others and yadda yadda yadda completely lost on my child? why is it that while most of my life seems to benefit from the good parts of my grief, luke gets only the exhausted, impatient, fragile part?

it was as i sat waiting for luke in the carpool line today that i realized this is the great mercy in the persistence of grief: it is not finished changing me. if it were gone, if i were over it, then its failure to make me a better mother would be over and done with. but the fact that i still grieve, the fact that this week is painful and life-changing still and all over again, means that my grief is not done with me. it means that i can still look forward to the changes it is effecting and will effect in my life. and i can pray that growth as a mother will be one of those changes.

the alpha and omega

this week, as our church staff sat down together for morning prayer, one of the other staff members mentioned how satisfying it was to begin on page one. if you've ever used the book of common prayer, you'll know that the scriptures with which morning prayer open are determined by the season; and if you pay attention to the liturgical calendar, you'll know that advent is the beginning of the year. thus the opening scriptures for advent are on the first page of the morning prayer rite.

i had just been thinking the same thing when the other staff member mentioned his appreciation for starting on page one. i had chalked my page-one satisfaction up to my ocd-ish need to have things complete, start to finish, and added it to my list of obsessions with patterns; my absolute inability to leave a book unfinished, even a bad one; and my refusal to start watching a movie from anywhere but the beginning, even one i've seen before. but i got to thinking, of course, about advent being the start of the year.

i have heard one friend of mine quote another mutual friend (though i've never heard him say it directly) as having said in defense of liturgy that if the church doesn't tell us what time it is, the world will. (having acquired this brilliant quotation by hearsay, i'll feel free to interpret it at will.) if the church doesn't tell us that christmas comes at the end of four weeks of waiting, the world will tell us it begins on halloween. if the church doesn't tell us that easter comes only after long weeks of penitence and self-examination, the world will send us bunnies and colorful eggs right on the heels of our valentines.

but do i really think of advent as the start of the year?

for me, advent feels more like it's about endings than beginnings. this next couple of weeks is a time of waiting to recognize for a second year the anniversary of eliza's death, this year smack on gaudete sunday (more on that here). then i wait a couple more weeks for yet another christmas when i won't hang her stocking along with the rest of ours (or will i? i can't remember what i decided last year). then after christmas, i'm yet again waiting, this time for eliza's birthday, just a few short weeks after epiphany.

that seems all wrong. i'm supposed to start the year in this waiting anticipating beginnings, not dwelling on endings. or am i?

the thing is that beginnings and endings don't need to be all that different after all. (here i'm tempted to bust into singing "the circle of life." but of course i won't.) because what is the point of an ending but to begin something new? of course, the prime example here for me is the knowledge that the end of eliza's broken, painful, earthly life was the beginning of her eternal, heavenly, whole one. the advent of her real life, so to speak. then there's the whole seed analogy--that something has to die in order for something new to grow--repeated in too many trite sympathy expressions for me to bear repeating it. but how is it for me that this season of waiting to remember endings can be about starting the year afresh?

because in my pain, which i will not deny at this time of year any more than any other, i can be brought to my knees afresh. i can bathe in fresh gratitude for the gift that is christmas--and the many, many other gifts in my life for which i forget to be thankful. i can start over precisely because of my brokenness and suffering, because i've already been driven to my knees in my wrestling with endings. what better place to start the year than on my knees, keenly aware of my need for what is offered to me anew yet again?

(and here i'll rejoice in living in the south where i can avoid yet another requisite trite image of a world that is a clean slate, bathed in snow just in time for starting over at christmas. but do with that what you will.)

spoiler alert

if you're reading along in the all saints advent devotional daily, don't read this post--you'll get to it on december 6. (if you're not reading the devotional, you can! and should, i might add. you can download it free right here.)

for the past several years, i've written a short reflection for our church's advent devotional and have then shared that reflection here. on this first sunday of advent, here's my contribution from this year.



An Advent reflection about suffering?

In a recent conversation with some friends about the question of suffering—why? whence? and those sorts of things—I started thinking about the suffering of the younger son in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. Superficially, we understand what happened to him, and we’re right there with Jesus: the son makes a bad choice, and so he suffers humiliation and starvation as consequences. That’s tidy, and it fits with our sense of justice just fine. Right on, Jesus. A good lesson for children, even: respect your parents or else. See what happened to him? Jesus said so! But is the prodigal son’s suffering really about judgment? Plenty of people make bad choices and don’t suffer for them. So why does the son in Jesus’ parable suffer?

I suspect the answer is in the result. Until the prodigal son suffers and is overwhelmed by his circumstances, he does not realize what he has forsaken, what he is lacking. His suffering illuminates for him his need and sends him searching for the only thing he knows that can meet that need.

It’s a terrible thing to say to someone who is suffering, so please don’t. But all the same, I think it’s true: God allows us to suffer because he wants us to recognize our need. If someone had said that to me in certain painful periods of my life, I would have been tempted to hit him. But now, outside that suffering, I can recognize its truth. When we suffer, really suffer, we are driven to desperation. And sometimes it’s only in our desperation that we can recognize what we’re really desperate for. Unless our situation is really bad, we’re pretty sure we can handle it ourselves, solve it ourselves, recover from it ourselves. But when things are really bad? We recognize what we are not, and what we need most of all: God.

I’m sorry, you’re probably thinking, but what does this have to do with Advent?

For me, the joyful waiting of Advent is inextricably linked with the suffering-filled waiting for death. In Advent 2008, two days before Gaudete (joy? really?) Sunday, my nearly three-year-old daughter Eliza died. She had spent her life evading a death sentence of an illness, had spent the weeks since Thanksgiving (thanks? really?) waiting to lose her life-long battle. On December 12, 2008, I experienced an unbearable weight of suffering that could drive me nowhere else but to my Father, the one whose birth into a world of suffering I was to celebrate in only a matter of days. Christmas that year was not about gifts—I barely managed to purchase any and have no idea what I received—or carols or feasts or family. It was about a baby I had lost and a Baby who had come to Earth to be my only hope in that loss. It was about being driven by my overwhelming suffering to the only One who could meet my need, from starvation home to my Father. My Father who was about to become the Son, the Answer to a question I was only just being forced to realize I needed to ask.

Last Advent and this, too, remain inextricably linked with pain and sorrow and suffering and grief for me. The challenge is whether or not I’ll remember to let that suffering drive me Home into the arms of the long-awaited Baby whose birth—and certain return—is the antidote to all that pain. Will I be reminded in my need, like the prodigal son, that the only cure for my starvation is found in my Father’s house? Will I be driven Home?

the best laid plans, part 2

the questionnaire the nurse handed me read something like this:

is this your first pregnancy? no
if no, what number? four
how many living children do you have? one

(listen here.)
This is not how it should be
This is not how it could be
But this is how it is
And our God is in control

This is not how it will be
When we finally will see
We'll see with our own eyes
He was always in control

And we'll sing holy, holy, holy is our God
And we will finally really understand what it means
So we'll sing holy, holy, holy is our God
While we're waiting for that day

This is not where we planned to be
When we started this journey
But this is where we are
And our God is in control

Though this first taste is bitter
There will be sweetness forever
When we finally taste and see
That our God is in control

this is not how i would have planned it. if you had told me ten years ago that i would, in 2010, be pregnant for the fourth time, i would probably have told you that i wasn’t sure i wanted that many children. how small our minds are.

i don’t like being pregnant. not one minute of it. i am not a particularly sick pregnant person; i don’t gain record amounts of weight or experience dramatic swelling or unbearable back pain or any of the other stories people tell. but i dislike it all the same.

i think what i dislike most about it is the sense that something—quite literally, someone—else is in control of my body. don’t usually eat breakfast? too bad. you’ll now wake up ravenous even before sunrise. like to keep busy? too bad. you’ll now be forced to pause for a nap every afternoon, no matter how uneventful your morning has been. enjoy chicken or avocadoes? too bad. you will now be repulsed by them or any number of other quite ordinary things—and will develop equally extraordinary cravings. and if none of these things that will happen in just the first few weeks is enough to turn you off to the whole experiment, just wait until junior gets to swimming around in there. alien possession? i think so.

i don’t like to be out of control. and if i live with any kind of illusion that i am in control, pregnancy provides ample reminders that i am, in fact, almost entirely out of my own control most of the time. i’m just not always as aware of it. when i am pregnant, i take prenatal vitamins. i eat healthfully, as much as i can stand it, and i stay away from alcohol and even over-the-counter drugs. every time, that’s what i do. the first time, this resulted in a healthy, brilliant little boy. the second time, a little girl with more congenital defects than one body could handle—including a brain full of holes—who wouldn’t live to be three years old. the third time, a miscarriage at 7 weeks gestation. and this fourth time? well, that’s just it: though i will follow all the same healthy pregnancy rules yet again, i have no control over what that will mean for my child.

have i mentioned how much i dislike being pregnant? but even as i am frustrated yet again this time around at the lack of control, i am learning to be grateful. because despite what i may imagine, i really don’t have any more control over the rest of my life than i do over this period of my life or over the little life growing inside me, either. just as i would never have planned four pregnancies and their varied outcomes or lemonade-cravings or waffle aversions, so would i never have planned so many other things in my life, either. work in a church? live in the south? be a minivan-driving soccer mom? be overweight, out of shape, and completely disconnected from any athletic activity? have a yard full of weeds? never.

it's funny, though; despite the fact that i'd much rather it be otherwise, the struggle isn't to find a way to gain more control. take more vitamins? eat fewer food additives? drink more water? not really. the struggle is to give up more, to rest more in being out of control. “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world”--john 16:33. overcome the whole world? really? since i can't do that, i figure i'm better off in the hands of Someone who already has done it. and i'll take joy in the promise that there will be sweetness forever.

the best laid plans

you know how it goes. i had some ideas about what i'd blog about when i finally got around to it, a grand scheme for a photojournalistic-style post about what i've been doing these months i've been absent. today was to be the day. the day after thanksgiving, luke and sam off running around doing who-knows-what sport, trying to burn off the stir craziness that comes with a day off from school. after hosting the big meal last night, i was promised this day off to catch up on photo editing and writing and to reinvent this space. things conspire, don't they, to set awry those best laid plans? as my ancient desktop computer--which hasn't been turned on in a month, probably--seems to be suffering from the lingering tryptophan in the air, the photos just aren't happening today despite the hour i've already spent just to download them from my memory card. another day...

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for today, though, i do have a story. i want to tell you about a little girl with whom i have fallen in love.

her name is anastasia. i haven't ever met her. (have you never fallen in love with someone you've never met?) so i can't tell you what she looks like, really, since i don't know. what color her hair is, what color her eyes are, whether she's chubby or skinny--i don't know. i don't know much about her personality, either, whether she's funny or spunky or shy or precocious or mischievious. i don't know her favorite color (but mustn't it be purple or pink, like most every little girl?) or her favorite animal or what she likes to eat or what she likes to play.

how do you fall in love with a stranger? well, this little girl is hardly a stranger to me. i do have a couple of photographs of her, of which this is the best, i think:



here's hoping my computer is feeling up to the task of sharing lots more pictures sometime around st. patrick's day.

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there's a story, of course. isn't there always? (here's the backstory, in case you haven't read it or heard it before, to the saga that is baby-naming for sam and me.) what i didn't relate in that post, but which those of you have known me for a while already know, is that not only can't sam and i agree on names, but we also can't agree on when to agree on a name. sam has a thing about waiting until the baby has already arrived. suffice it to say i don't have that same thing.

ahem. to the story.

since our in-utero moniker for our previous children, zeph, had died along with the baby whose ex-utero name we would never know, we needed a new nickname immediately for our newest addition once we found out about his/her existence. it so happened that we started this conversation one evening after having hosted a high school bible study in which the mysterious character of melchizedek showed up. so there it was, of course: melchizidek, or mel for short, since we didn't yet know whether we were having a boy or a girl.

meanwhile, nearly two years ago (!), not long after eliza died, sam had a dream that we had another baby girl. her name was anastasia. (he'll tell you he doesn't remember this dream, mind you, but he's very glad i do.) it seemed an appropriate dream for a greek-speaking father who had just lost his daughter, as the name anastasia comes from the greek word for "resurrection." and anastasia was a name we had considered for eliza but had scrapped since we didn't really like any of the nicknames associated with it.

a couple of months ago, then, when we found out this baby was a girl--having gladly called our baby mel in order to stall until the ultrasound to even begin the doomed-to-be-difficult conversation of finding a name for our newest addition--i made a passing joke about how we could just skip the name books altogether and name the baby anastasia. sam replied astonishingly in the affirmative: you don't ignore a vision like that (even one you don't remember). yes. she is anastasia.

i waited a week or so, certain he would have had second thoughts or another idea, and then asked him whether he was ready to start pulling out the name books.

oh, no. i've already been telling people: she's anastasia.

and so it was done. at 18 weeks gestation, our little girl had a name. our little person--a person's a person, no matter how small--was no longer mel.

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but luke, my first tiny love, has to show up in this naming story, too, of course:

luke came with us to the ultrasound during which we found out the baby was a girl. he was absolutely mesmerized by all that he got to see--a tiny beating heart, tiny kidneys, tiny perfect spine. when the sonographer announced that the baby was a girl, as you can imagine (and which is a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother day), sam and i had some difficult mixed reactions. enter luke to save the moment. his immediate reaction: "well, i guess melchizidek is out, then!" and thank goodness for that.

meanwhile, sam has been insisting that anastasia will not have a nickname. we each have reasons we're not fond of the usual choices: stacy, anna, annie. (a friend told me that anya is a common russian diminutive for anastasia, and i love it. so i'm working on sam.) luke, of course, has overheard all these conversations. recently, he declared to me suddenly, "but she has to have a nickname!" when i inquired as to why, he responded, "i can't even spell anastasia!"

so we rectified that problem.

on comebacks

winston churchill is credited with having said, "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack."

i have more to say, more of the same new thoughts all over again at which to whack away. i'll be back friday. for real. to stay.

when i'm not working...

...which i usually am, i'm not blogging either. so what am i doing? not taking many pictures, i'm afraid. but here's a taste:

day trip to the coast, for four hours of nonstop swimming

a fan divided: durham bulls vs. syracuse chiefs. he decided to dress for both (bulls hat, chiefs shirt) but was secretly rooting for the bulls, who shut out the chiefs 5-0--and rightly so, on wool e. bull's birthday!

and that was just this weekend! can't beat summer.

college makes you think

that's what it's supposed to do, right? good news, mom and dad: not only have i finally used my ten years of french study, but i am now thinking things directly related to college. your gazillion-dollar investment has in fact paid off, so you can rest easier now.

last week, sam and i took luke to visit our alma mater, hamilton college (that's the chapel up there in that photograph, incidentally, worth noting for being the location of sam's and my wedding; for being a historically significant building, built in 1827 and thought to be the only remaining example of an early three-story church in america; and for having a quill atop its cupola, symbolizing the college's commitment to teaching the art of communication, which will matter to my story in a little bit, if you'll stick with me). we introduced luke to coaches and professors, showed him dorms and dining halls, told him stories (only the ones appropriate for six-year-olds, mind you!) and highlights. when i pointed out the building where most of my english classes were held, luke was incredulous. "you didn't learn english until college?" i explained that studying english in college meant reading lots of good books and talking about them. to which explanation he even more incredulously declared, "i want to go to a college where all you do is read books all day!"

which got me thinking--you knew it would--about the power of retrospection. luke is right, after all. it is pretty amazing, when i think about it, that i spent four years of my life consumed by nothing other than reading books and diving. that's it. those were my jobs. reading, writing, and being in the water. don't i consider those my hobbies now, hobbies i struggle to cram in between so many other jobs, hobbies i would choose to do above all else? i vaguely remember college being stressful, but i can't for the life of me figure out how it could have been, looking at it from here.

and if you're a mom of more than one child, you've likely thought similar things in retrospect about life with your first baby. when luke was born, i quit work and stayed home. as a newborn, luke slept, ate, cried, slept, ate, and slept some more. my job was to do those things with him. and that was it. i vaguely remember thinking that his newborn weeks were most certainly the hardest i had ever endured. two years later, when eliza was born, i looked back at luke's newborn life and wondered what on earth was so hard about it.

hindsight is 20/20, or so they say.

this train of thinking can take me in two different directions, the first of which is somewhat dangerous, i think. if i can look back at all these different phases of my life and say that if i knew then what i know now, i would never have thought they were hard, then looking forward can be very intimidating. for if what seems hard now will soon seem easy in comparison to what i will be experiencing, what can possibly be to come? it's a fearful thought. i do not think i would have liked to have known, when i was stressed out by an english paper, that i ought to just appreciate how simple life really was because in a few years i would have to endure the loss of my daughter. similarly, i would not have wanted someone to tell me, when i sat up at night grudgingly nursing luke, that i would soon spend three years straight sitting up at night "nursing" his dying little sister. hindsight is 20/20, maybe, but foresight is not always desirable.

but the other direction i can go with these thoughts is toward gratitude. if i can look back at college and be grateful for having spent four years doing things i now know to be among my greatest loves, if i can look back at luke's newborn weeks and be thankful for the hours i spent as his one-and-only and he mine, why can't i start thinking now about the things i'll look back on about today and be grateful for them now, instead of waiting for hindsight to kick in? wouldn't i have enjoyed college even more if i had remembered to be thankful for the gift of four years of nourishment of mind and body? wouldn't i have loved luke's newborn weeks much more if i had remembered to be grateful for his healthy needs and my ability to meet them?

this is my challenge to myself, then, and i invite you to join me, too. what will i one day thank God for about my life right now? i'm going to thank Him for it today instead.