I think I have mentioned before that I am not a patient person; limbo is not a good place for me.  I think we humans are hardwired to avoid uncertainty – I am, at least.  Today’s blood work is yet another mixed bag that adds up to wait another two days and re-test.  My hcg level was 109 today, which is double from the 54 on Thursday.  Double sounds good, except that was a four-day span instead two or three, so I really should have been closer to 150.  109 is low, so we have to check it again on Wednesday.  Did I mention I’m not a patient person?

If the physical details are too much, skip this paragraph.  The physical side without the hcg numbers is still a mixed, though mostly bad news, bag.  I have continued to be crampy, and I have been bleeding off and on since Saturday early morning.  It has not been very heavy, so it doesn’t signify an unavoidable miscarriage.  However, it is not generally harmless spotting, which is pinkish or brownish; this is definitely bleeding.  I certainly do not feel very good physically.

This is a terribly frustrating place to be: we still have no idea what’s really happening, I’m still bleeding, and I’m still pregnant.  I know I rarely do things the easy way, but it would be nice to have a clear yes or no, which I have only had for the first two days out of the last week.  The way my body felt Saturday, I was sure this pregnancy would not last the weekend, yet here we are.  I have no idea what to think except that things cannot continue the way they are.  Pray that the bleeding will stop for the rest of the pregnancy if it is going to continue.  I can deal with the pain of cramping, but the fear that goes with bleeding and spotting is not easily conquered.  I know it can be “normal” to spot and/or bleed, but normal isn’t really part of our pregnancy vocabulary, and I can’t handle for much longer the constant fear that the bleeding is causing.

Before you feel tempted to barrage me with instructions to keep hoping and believing – stop.  I know that, it doesn’t help for you to say that, and what I really need are prayers and thinking-of-yous.  I am frustrated and sad and angry at this situation; I have not given up hope or faith in God.  I appreciate more than you can ever know how much you all have supported me, and every comment has bolstered me in some way.  I fully trust that God is working here, and some of the beautiful things you all have said and done are the constant proof of his work that I am clinging to right now.  Whatever happens in the next few days, I know that this baby and I are loved more than I ever imagined and that God is in control, even when I have no idea what he’s doing.  I also know that he has provided for all my needs so far and that he will continue to do so; let’s just pray that doesn’t involve any more bleeding or much more waiting.

I was preparing to give everyone a great update about our blood work Thursday.  The hcg level went up from 17 to 54, which is more than double and the first time my hcg level has ever done what it is supposed to do.  We will have another recheck on Monday, and we have a follow up appointment with the doctor August 1.  If everything goes well, we should be able to see something, even if we can’t see the heartbeat yet, on the ultrasound.  I have done well with the shots, much to the surprise of everyone who knows how I react to blood.  My mother Blessed is very proud.

I had some slight cramping Thursday with some very light spotting, so I put myself on light duty and loafed it for a few days.  By early this morning, however, the cramping became more frequent, and I started bleeding. It is light bleeding, but bleeding that is not spotting at this point is a sign of threatened miscarriage.  While it was only light spotting and cramping, I could convince myself that it is a normal symptom in early pregnancy; I could push the fear and pessimism away.  Now I hate myself for feeling like I’m giving up – there’s a chance that the bleeding will stop altogether, and the blood work on Monday will be perfect. I hope every time I check and the bleeding tapers, and I hope every time I have a few minutes or hours without cramping that it’s still a possibility.  But it is a new and crushing blow every time I cramp up and every time I find more bleeding as long as I hold onto that hope.

I feel so numb right now that it feels like I am sitting outside myself as I type within eyesight of the Buy Buy Baby coupon I kept to celebrate our good test results on Thursday. I had planned to go buy something for the baby with it after we got another good result Monday.  I wish I could cry and scream and sob right now because that would at least release the terror and the tension of the last few days, but my body seems to be waiting.  Waiting for what, I’m not sure – the pain, the blood, the ability to cry, the frustration and angst that necessarily accompany this experience? Maybe my body is giving my mind a chance to catch up, a chance to realize what emotions I should be feeling even as my body feels them.  Maybe God is giving me a respite between the bouts so that I have time to adjust from terror to raw pain.  Maybe I am just too tired to be able to process it right now, but I feel as the earth before God spoke over the waters – dark and void and formless.  Maybe I am over exaggerating a harmless pregnancy episode. I don’t think so, but anything is possible.  It feels as if I will know one way or the other before Monday, but we’ll at least know what the hcg numbers are doing then.  Until Monday, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and wait to see what happens.

I know that there are a few people that I should have contacted directly – I hope you will forgive me for not being able to rehash this several times over the phone.  I don’t really have the heart for it today.

I got a spa gift card for my birthday, which is a great gift for me.  I love getting massages, but I rarely make myself an appointment without some kind of prompting, like a gift card.  Realizing that the card expired a week sooner than I thought, I called the Monday afternoon that it expired to get an appointment and was told I could just show up whenever I wanted.  That’s a little unusual but maybe not completely weird if it’s a new place or if they’re just not that busy on Mondays.

I arrived at the spa in the mall to find two very sweet girls tending the store front, and I reported the gist of my earlier phone call to Moon (yes, Moon – she is the proprietor and sole scheduler).  The girl who appeared to be in charge took my gift card, looked it over, and said, “Okay, I give you neck and back massage, okay?”  Okay by me, so I nodded vigorously.  The girl directed me to a room in the back corner of the spa and told me to wait and she will bring me a towel.  Since I never learned the girl’s name, I have decided to call her “Bob,” as it fits with the absurdity of the proceedings to follow.  The massage room I found myself in was sparsely  equipped and contained an undraped massage table.  Bob returned with the promised towel and instructed me to take off my top and lie down with the towel covering me.  I began pondering the logistics of a single towel versus the amount of naked table and naked skin that must be covered, but I nodded my understanding to Bob anyway.  I determined that wrapping my top in the towel in the same way I would when stepping out of the shower was the best course of coverage, leaving the opening to the side so that Bob could fairly easily move it to the side for the massage, and leaving only my face and arms unprotected against the bare vinyl.

Bob seemed somewhat disgruntled to discover my towel wrapping work, but she recovered quickly and signaled the second girl to come in behind her.  “Excuse me, would you mind if my friend watches me give massage to you; she is learning how to give massage and help on Saturdays.”  If I wasn’t already sure that this was going to be a hilarious experience, Bob’s question made me sure this would be a singular moment in my life.  I managed to reply that it would be fine with me, and Bob got underway, first dousing me with baby oil and then rubbing my back in such a manner that a muppet might have been more effective.  If you have ever been to a nice spa, you are enveloped in quiet, soothing music and aromatic scents of essential oils; here there was only the sound of pinball and video games across the way and the smell of baby oil and possibly cold cream that got rubbed onto my back – I couldn’t decide if I smelled more like my nine-month-old niece or my grandmother.  Bob grunted and sighed with her efforts, alternately standing on tiptoe to push limply on my back in random spots and doing deep knee bends as she released the “pressure” and let her arms slide back to a ready position.

And then it happened – karate chops!  I had to start taking deep breaths and holding them so I wouldn’t actually laugh out loud; Bob was too serious and trying too hard for me to laugh at her attempts.  After a few awkward moments of karate chopping, Bob broke out the Mr. Happy massager and began running it lightly up and down my back, which had the effect of tickling more than massaging my already tight shoulder and neck muscles.  At some point, Bob leaned over to put her face directly in front of my face and whispered, “Is my pressure okay?”  I nodded, and she peered into my face again and whispered, “Which is better, my hands or this [indicating Mr. Happy]?”  I told her it really didn’t matter, so she should do whichever was better for her.  Bob replied, “Okay.  I do both, and we will do hot towel massage, too.”  I heard some whispering in a foreign langauge before Bob told me that her friend was going to prepare the hot towels.  A few seconds later, I heard running water and the distinct sound of a microwave starting up, and I began to think, “Great, they are going to steam all of the skin off my back.”  Not even karate chops could alleviate my gnawing fear of being burned by sweet but clueless massueses.

Bob’s friend returned with the towels and there is more furious whispering before Bob pressed a tiny corner of the towel against my back and asked, “Is too hot?  I think maybe is too hot.  Maybe we wait a minute.”  I agreed with Bob, given that I couldn’t have handled the towels without pot holders based on the tiny bit that touched me.  At last, the towels were just the right temperature, and Bob laid them over my back and repeated the random grunting and pushing process.  The towels quickly cooled, so the friend was sent to reheat them while I wondered how badly I might be burned on the second attempt.  Fortunately the towels were just right, and Bob proceeded to use the towel itself to push on my back, which was surprisingly the most massage-like thing she had done.  I realized after a few short moments, however, that Bob was only using one towel, and she had left the other one lying on my rear end, which was still wearing pants that were quickly developing an awkwardly placed wet spot.  She did eventually move the towel, but I was already planning mall exit strategies that could hide my backside or snappy one-liners to explain that I had not peed myself.

Bob finally finished off with more baby oil and a final round of karate chops, and she leaned over one last time towards my face to whisper, “You all done now.  You have good time?”  Bob smiled expectantly and flashed me two thumbs up, so of course I told her I had a good time.  I did have a good time, a nice back rub, and a story I cannot repeat without laughing until I cry.

If you have more than two friends on Facebook, at least one of them will post something about dreading the upcoming week and wishing it were Friday already.  Or maybe they regret that the weekend has come to a close and will not return for another five days.  Or maybe they wish that the particular circumstance they’re dealing with would just go away.  We’ve all wished for time to warp to satisfy our desires: we could just skip work and go straight to the weekend fun, and we could skip through the unpleasant bits.  I’ve seen a quotation that floats around the web at least once a month: Life should come with a fast forward button for bad times and a pause button for good times – or something to that effect.  I used to have the same desire.  My life would be so much easier/better if I could just skip the tough days.

Then I realized that I would be skipping through virtually every day for the last four years.  I would be skipping the trials that strengthened my faith and my knowledge of who I am.  I would be skipping the very things that make all of the good moments really great and enjoyable.  If I fast-forwarded every bad moment, I would not have the strength or courage that God taught me in the process of just surviving the last four years.  I would not be thriving now; I would still be floundering and bitter and angry.  Given that I am still all of those things to a much lesser degree now, I cannot imagine how miserable I would be if I hadn’t learned to accept the crap and cope with it.  I don’t always cope gracefully, and I know anyone who knows me well has witnessed a meltdown of some variety as a result.  I have had to learn that coping isn’t just moving forward physically; it means that I have to move forward emotionally and spiritually as well.

I can keep moving through the daily routine without actually progressing on any other level – that’s not really accepting the situation and dealing with it; that’s only survival and avoidance.  I have learned to ask myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”  Generally speaking, the worst isn’t really all that bad, especially when compared to what we’ve been through with so many miscarriages.  I also have every confidence that no matter what the worst case scenario is, God is there with me, and he has given me the ability to deal with anything.  We humans tend to think of the consequences of the worst case scenario being some form of instant death.  Maybe there really is some dark abyss that will open up under my feet and swallow me whole if I admit that I have a problem.  You never can be too careful when dealing with theoretical chasms.

Our church recently had Vacation Bible School, and we performed a musical for family night.  I played the teacher, and there were four students who played students on a mission trip.  There was one scene where every one of us missed a major line, and I improvised a few lines to get us back on track.  When we got off stage after that scene, the kids were rattled and scared they would mess up the next scene.  I made them stop and huddle up and asked them, “What was the worst that could happen?”  Short of falling off the stage, we had just experienced the worst that could happen, so asked them, “Okay, did anybody die?”  No one could say they died as a result of missing their lines.  “Alright, nobody’s dead, and we can’t fix the last scene, so we will just have to keep moving and get the next scene right.”  And we did, mostly.

In my life, there are six little grave markers in my heart where the worst case scenario did happen: somebody died, and it wasn’t me.  I’m not dead, and I can’t change the last scene, so I just have to try my hardest in the next scene.  Sometimes the next scene isn’t a comedy or romance.  If you know plotting, sometimes the next scene is falling action with far more conflict than I’d like.  But I know I won’t be the character I’m supposed to be in the final act without experiencing every moment each scene in my life has to offer.  Every moment is an opportunity for me to “practice what I preach” and find the abiding joy and peace of Christ in the midst of pain and frustration and love and laughter.  I have yet to make the most of every moment, but I am not going to wish any more of my life away.  We have no guarantees that tomorrow will be better than today; we have no guarantees that our existential circumstances will improve; we have only the promise of “I Am” that God in is every moment if we will but search for him.  Fair warning to my FB friends: I will not be liking your status if it involves dreading another workday or waiting impatiently for the weekend.  I challenge you instead to find at least one thing every day that made you smile.  Some days, I feel like I’m only smiling at something ridiculous my dogs do, but it provides at least one moment in the day that I wasn’t thinking about how bad my day was.  That’s something to build on until most of your days really aren’t as bad as you think they are.  Some days are as bad as you think they are, and you will desperately need a moment of pure joy to cling to.  Those times of pure joy make me glad I can live in the moment instead of wishing for something else; the more I stop to notice them, the more I can observe the pain without falling into the abyss.

It’s all over the news today that yet another woman gave birth to a large number of multiples – this time sextuplets.  I am somewhat frustrated by this story for a number of reasons, and none of them have anything to do with my own miscarriages.  In fact, because of my history, I am far more likely to be sympathetic to someone trying desperately to have children.  I will say, though, that there has to be a line; I am not for having children at any cost.  I will never condemn anyone’s motivation for choosing to have a lot of children at one time, but I think this story provides a lot of weighty issues anyone dealing with fertility issues must contend with.

The article I read this morning was short on details, and I honestly wasn’t interested enough in this family to watch the press conference video attached to the article I read.  The details that were provided were that the babies were delivered at 27 weeks, and that the multiples were the result of fertility treatments.  Very generally speaking (and not very scientifically speaking), sextuplets only happen if a large number of embryos are implanted via IVF or through the use of a drug like clomid that increases egg production, which might cause multiple eggs to be released and fertilized at one time.  From my research, very few doctors are going to implant more than a few embryos at one time because of the risks involved in carrying multiples; obviously pre-term labor is an issue, but gestational diabetes and preeclampsia are significant risks to the mother’s life as well.

I would secretly (okay, maybe not so secretly) love to have twins.  My personal grocery store prophetess thinks that God should bless me with twins to make up for our losses, but that’s a whole other post about entitlement thinking…  As badly as I want to have children, and as badly as I would love to have twins, I would never consider allowing a doctor to implant more than two or three embryos if we did IVF.  Our fertility specialist has a one more/one less policy, meaning that after they review your case and suggest a procedure for IVF, you as the patient can choose to implant one more or one less embryo than they recommend, and they usually recommend one or two.  Our bodies are just not built to sustain these crazy pregnancies of quintuplets and sextuplets and septuplets.  So, without considering the possible medical problems you are setting up for the babies, you are first and foremost putting your life in extreme danger.  As an overweight person, I cannot throw too many stones here, but you can’t deliver healthy babies if your body fails before they can be safely delivered.

The risk involved for the babies is even greater since they are almost always delivered extremely early.  Although modern medical science can do amazing things, and there are gazillions of miracle babies who survive pre-term delivery, there are always extreme risks: lung development, brain damage and a host of growth and developmental problems.  I cannot imagine willingly choosing those risks for my children.  These newest sextuplets were delivered at 27 weeks, so while they are certainly medically viable, they are all on ventilators and “continue to be at very high risk for complications.”  In all likelihood, they will be in critical care for weeks, if not months.  I really do not understand why someone would willingly and somewhat intentionally put a child through such an experience.  There is no way that a doctor implants a large number of embryos or puts someone on clomid without explaining the risks involved, so this family did not go into any fertility treatment blind.

On the other hand, one of the comments on the article left by a member of the general public implied that the woman was irresponsible for not aborting some of the embryos once it became obvious that six of them had implanted.  I could never do that, either, so if I somehow ended up with six implanted embryos, I would not be able to choose to end any of their lives.  If this woman was taking clomid or something like it and accidentally ended up with six babies, I would not have aborted any of them, either.

The bottom line for me is that once you decide to be a parent, which is a conscious decision if you are undertaking fertility treatments, you must begin to think like a responsible parent about your prospective children.  How could you knowingly risk their lives BEFORE day one?  As a parent with no living children, I could not ever allow my desire to give birth to my own child overtake the health and well-being of any prospective children.  There are too many children extant who need good and loving homes for me to be so selfish.  This woman already has a 16 (or 18 – I wasn’t paying enough attention) month old, so she had a child of her own.  Understand very clearly that I am NOT saying that she should have been content with just one child if she and her husband wanted more than one child.  I know that nothing can replace the experience of carrying your child and delivering your child.  However, if my options were to endanger my own life and risk six babies having serious health problems their entire lives or to not have any children at all, I would choose no children.  Again, there are too many kids out there who need homes for me to justify that on any level, which means, yes, at some not-too-distant point we will make the decision to stop trying and adopt if we continue our current trajectory.

The last thing that bugs me is the press coverage, not that there is press coverage (Who doesn’t want to hear about sextuplets these days??  Uggh!), but that the parents so readily participate in it.  Another illustrious commenter suggested that this family can now star in their own TLC reality show.  I’m sure that the Gosselins and the Duggars only have their children’s best interests at heart by participating in reality shows that put their lives on display and make them part of the media circus; surely they must be putting the salaries towards college educations and activities that will enrich their children’s lives.  Something must be worth allowing the media to document and the whole world to watch virtually every moment of their children’s lives.  Imagine having ALL (or most) of your awkward growing years be public property.  I for one was horrified if the dog stared at me when I hit puberty; I could not have survived in the Gosselin/Duggar reality world.  All of my cute and awkward moments made for a great photo montage at our rehearsal dinner, but I was old enough to appreciate those moments and not be horrifically embarrassed about having photographic proof that I not infrequently wore underwear on my head (seriously – nothing covers hair rollers better than bloomers 🙂 ).  I love that I am able to share the lives of my friends who blog about their families, and some people might consider that an invasion of a child’s life; the scale of what is shared is wholly different and filtered by people who love them rather than film crew editors.  While I’m sure the reality parents have considered whether or not their children want to participate, I still sincerely question the motives of any parent who puts their child on display in such a public and prolonged manner.  Given the number of child actors who have serious issues stemming from growing up in the public eye, I wonder what we as a society are doing to this generation of reality kids.  I personally can’t watch most reality programming; much of it is staged to be melodramatic, and I get enough reality dealing with my own life.  The few reality shows I watch are So You Think You Can Dance and Project Runway; I have enough trouble keeping up with my own family and friends to start investing time in the lives of people I haven’t met and really don’t care about.  I don’t even watch American Idol; it’s just not my thing.  I can’t and won’t judge the content of the Gosselin’s and Duggar’s shows, but if you do watch them, what do you think?  Is what you’re seeing really in the best interests of those children?  If it’s not, is it really in your best interest to continue to watch it?  We all rubberneck to watch a train wreck, but should we?  What do you think about the frequency of such high multiple births and the attention that gets focused on them?  I am now stepping off my soapbox and handing it over to you. 😉

I know I’m a little late for Cinco de Mayo, but the Mexican holiday is a special day for me and my husband: it’s our anniversary, and this year was our tenth anniversary.  So I thought you all should know what a great man I married.  I have not always (and still do not often enough) recognize how wonderful he really is or how much I love him.  He is smart and funny and kind, and he works hard to be a good provider.

My husband is big and strong – physically, emotionally, spiritually.  In spite of the turmoil of the last four years, he has been a rock.  Admittedly, I sometimes resented that, but I wouldn’t have made it through it without him and his strength.  He has loved me through all the pain, the depression, and the sometimes utter crazy that my emotional life has been, and he has accepted me for what I am even when I know he would’ve prefered to walk away.  We have had some extraordinarily difficult moments, and I know we both considered the option of moving on, but I also know we both know now that it would have been a mistake.  I truly cannot imagine my life without him in it, and I can’t wait for the next decade of Cinco de Mayos so that we can be even better together.

My husband is not Mr. Romantic, but he is generous and gentle beyond measure; he is a solid refuge on which to build a life together.  God has given me an amazing gift: my lover, my partner, my friend, my leader, my home.  All the flowers and chocolates and mixed tapes in the world fade in comparison to that certain knowledge.  There is no romantic gesture that could top the feeling that when I see him, I am home and I am loved.

Marriage is hard work, and I have made his job harder more than once.  In spite of (or maybe because of) that I am sure our foundation is strong enough to stand if we keep doing the work.  I know that we have a lot more of life ahead of us, but in ten short years it feels like we have weathered the worst of it and come out stronger on the other side.  I don’t mean that there aren’t worse things than miscarriage and rough patches that we may have to face in the future, but we met ththose things at our weakest and grew together through them.  As long as we keep growing together, there is nothing that we can’t handle together in faith.

So, I hope you will not shoot me for posting about you, dear.  I am always your Bookdork (a name lovingly conferred upon me in college that stuck like glue), and I love you mostest!

Perhaps you are a kinder person than I, but I often have moments where I just can’t help thinking, “Any idiot can fill in the blank.”  Most recently this led to fit of pique after watching a clip from a reality game show in which a woman was trying to win her car back from repossession if she could answer three out of five questions correctly.  She was standing in her front yard with a toddler in a playpen while she tried unsuccessfully to recall which founding father discovered electricity by flying a kite in a storm, which might have been the most difficult question she was asked.  After deciding against Uncle Sam, she settled on Bill Clinton as her final answer.  The only thing more painful to watch was her listing of countries (Dallas) and nixing states (France, Canada…) in an effort to divine the word “Tapan” instead of Japan as the country in which kimonos are a traditional garment.  The clip is pretty funny, but it is devastatingly sad to me that someone could think Uncle Sam was not only a real person but also a founding father.  I get the same feeling watching “Jaywalking” clips on Leno.

In that moment, I was thinking, “Look, she has a child that she is responsible for raising and educating.  Any idiot can have a baby, so what’s wrong with me?”  And that “what’s wrong with me” has both physical and spiritual connotations, questioning both my body and the wisdom of God’s plan.  Of course, in asking the question of God, especially with an “any idiot” introduction, I realize that I am being judgmental and certainly not loving my neighbor as myself, thereby making a moot point of my complaint to God. 🙂

I know I would not be a perfect mother, but it is terribly frustrating to watch someone like this ignorant woman and not compare myself to her.  I know better, but I can’t stop the fleeting feeling that there must be something wrong with me; I can’t stop feeling that the gift of motherhood can be earned if I just get my crap together.  Seeing this clip makes me feel like I must be a horrible person if God can’t entrust me with a tiny person to mold, yet this woman who can’t remember first grade history or geography is worthy.  It is not a worthiness issue, and I know it – I just have a hard time accepting that in my weaker moments.  I know there is a reason for this season in my life, although I don’t understand it, and I want to wholeheartedly proclaim with Job that I will accept both good and bad from God’s hand as equally valuable gifts.  I have learned that I am stronger than I knew I could be, and I have new depths of empathy and compassion that have come from just surviving so far.  Now if I can just ignore the idiots and accept them as great entertainment…

Here’s the link to the clip, in case you want to watch it.  I’m not sure I inserted it correctly, so you may have to copy and paste it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq3-PycEXHk

I have a problem saying no – and delegating.  And, just like everyone else, I have too much to do and too little time to accomplish all that I’d like to do.  So, I have a new mantra when it all becomes more than a little overwhelming: “Just do the work.”  I also try repeating said mantra when it’s a job I hate, like house cleaning.  I am a horrible housekeeper; I read Proverbs 31 and think, “There’s no way my husband will call me blessed if I don’t dust this month.”  Yes, I said month.  I’m getting better, but in true procrastinator/perfectionist style I avoid doing something I know I don’t like and don’t have time to do well.  Housekeeping chores fall into this category more often than not.

While lack of time is a small factor in why I don’t do everything I want to and should do, there are some other major factors involved, namely, depression and a major lack of will power.  On the days that I would rather sleep or avoid people altogether, it is tremendously hard to find motivation not to give in to the depression.  Why bother moving at all if it’s just going to be a hard day?  Just do the work.  If I can do one thing, however small, then I can regain some control over the self-pity.  Some days, scooping the cat litter box is my only major accomplishment.  I can now claim that with great pride; in spite of feeling like I could totally drop out of my life, I managed to check something off the list.  I can just do the work and let the feelings straighten out later.  For me, depression is very much an emotional reaction to stress and grief, and I feel more comfortable now knowing that it will pass.  I am finally starting to recognize when I am reacting emotionally and not rationally and giving myself time and space to vent before I try to tackle the problem.  Sometimes I wonder if it would have been a quicker journey through the grief if I had asked for medication for depression.  There was a fairly extended period (over a month) when I was depressed and could not work or function normally sometime after the fourth miscarriage.  I think if that were to happen again, I would try medication and counseling instead of just counseling and boot-strapping.  On the other hand, when I consider medication as an option now, I know I’m just trying to shortcut the process to avoid dealing with my feelings.  At any rate, when dealing with the occasional mild depression, just doing the work can lift the fog enough to get moving again.

Self-discipline is my other major malfunction.  I am really bad at sticking to it, whatever it is.  Sometimes this is a function of depression and my perfectionist streak, but mostly it’s that I’m really bad at following through with something I don’t want to do.  This also means I’m really bad at sticking with the things I want to do because I’m usually playing catch-up with work or housework that I put off doing, causing an overall breakdown of time management.  This is where just doing the work keeps me from feeling completely overwhelmed.  If I do a little bit at a time, then I don’t feel panicked when I take a break to write or crochet or dig up snakes in the yard (yet another reason to avoid weeding…).  I’m a work in progress.  Eventually, I’ll be perfect, but then it won’t matter to me because I’ll be in heaven, doing the work of the saints – praising God and knowing as I am known.

Mother’s Day has not been the easiest holiday for me to cope with for the last few years, which is one reason I waited to write about it this year.  I also didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade.  As uncomfortable as I sometimes feel about Mother’s Day, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel the same way because my situation is radically different from theirs.  Much as I struggle with the day, it’s not fair to not honor the great moms out there, especially the ones that I love and adore.  I have two friends who are new moms to adopted children; I have several friends and my sister-in-law who are new moms to babies born in the last year; and I have friends who are expecting new additions to their families this Mother’s Day.  And don’t forget my own mom, Blessed (I stood up to type that, so that you can say I have risen up to call you “blessed” :)).  These women should be celebrated!

For the last three or four years, I have manufactured a reason to avoid church on Mother’s Day so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the social awkwardness I feel in that situation.  It’s hard to sit in a service and listen to praises of the moms who are present – the instructions to “Give your mom a break today,” and the special gifts like flowers and books that are sometimes given out are difficult to navigate.  What should I do when they ask all of the mothers to stand so everyone can applaud them?  What should I do if someone tries to hand me a flower after church?  What if they do baby dedication on Mother’s Day again?  What if I can’t stop crying and embarrass myself?  Clearly, I have issues with Jesus’s command not to worry. 😉  But aside from that, my weirdness about the situation is not a reason to call off Mother’s Day for everyone, so I simply kept myself out of the situation.

Thankfully, this year was different.  I’m not sure exactly why, but I was not afraid this year.  In general, I finally feel like a whole person again; plus, I cried all the way through a sermon about a month ago, and the world didn’t end.  No one looked at me like a crazy person; no one stood up and pointed at me bawling like an idiot in the choir loft.  In short, if I can’t stop crying, I now know I will not be embarrassed.  So last week, I felt secure in the knowledge that there were people who knew my story and loved me, and that was a tremendous Mother’s Day gift for me.

I had already decided before church that I would participate as a mom, and anyone who didn’t understand could just wonder about it or ask me about it.  But I know in my heart that I am a mother with six beautiful babies waiting for me in heaven, and I think that counts enough to stand up and be counted on Mother’s Day.  One person told me Happy Mother’s Day because she just knew that, “One day, you’ll be a mom.”  My mother-in-law got it right, though, with a straight up Happy Mother’s Day.  It is time for me to proud that my children are in the presence of God instead of feeling ashamed of my failure to be a real mom.  I am a real mom who loves her children and misses them dearly.  I wonder what they do every day, and I worry that they don’t know how much they mean to me.

After a sweet friend helped me confirm it last night, I have decided I will probably answer everyone who asks that I do have six children in heaven.  If nothing else, it opens a door to share why I believe that, and, more than anything else, it confirms their presence in my life.  Maybe it will help people to recognize that there are a lot more grieving moms out there who can’t share their stories.  Everyone deals with miscarriage differently, but everyone who experiences it grieves for their lost child in some way.  I don’t know that acknowledging that in the same way we acknowledge mothers on Mother’s Day would be appropriate.  Who wants to cheer or clap for something so horrible?  But maybe we could offer a moment of silence or some other gentle and loving acknowledgement of the mothers in our presence who have lost children.  That’s just my two cents – what do you all think?