Category: Travelogue

Notes about the journey

I’m Not Dead Yet…

I’m Not Dead Yet…

You should definitely have read the title in your best Monty Python British accent.  I have finally returned to the keyboard a little more each week, so the plan is to get back to some modicum of regularity in blogging over the next few months.  Regular writing of any kind seems to be just as good as therapy for me, and the last two years have been too quiet for my soul.  A lot has been happening in those two years – chasing a toddler, serving in a bigger capacity as a volunteer, and still trying to juggle work, home, play, and everything else.  All of that has left me just trying to keep up.  If you’ve ever had a day when you finally went to bed and think, “Did I brush my teeth?  No?  I’m too tired to get up and do that now.  But, you know what?  Nobody died today on my watch.  It was a good day.”

If you’re a parent, whether you have one child or a dozen, you have had this day.  You have been happy that nobody died, and you’re not quite dead yet yourself – in fact, you’re feeling much better now that the house is quiet and you have a few hours to rest before you start the whole mess ‘o crazy over again.  I found myself with too many survival-mode days for a while, but little at a time, my big stress loads have been lightening, and the words are going to need a place to go.  Hello, blog!

And sorry, dear reader, if there are indeed any of you left from several years ago or if you are stumbling here accidentally from my FB page; I will probably keep a pretty loose focus for a few months as I sort out what direction to go.  My blog subtitle still holds because, as much as many people unfamiliar with this type of loss may not understand, dealing with the aftermath of miscarriage is still a pretty large hurdle in spite of having a child.  I have said before, and I still firmly believe, that a living child does not replace the child (in my case, children) that you lost.  Engelberta’s nickname holds true, and she is a bright light in my life, but I cannot ask her to eclipse the pain of loss in my life; she often does, but her only responsibilities at this point are to be a child and not pee on the couch.

So, dealing with the continued grief will find its way here, but I have also found myself in a holding pattern with several projects that I’d like to continue, especially the October 15 Pregnancy and Infant Loss Memorial Day and women’s ministry.  Much has been made of the “Mommy Wars” lately, and I think women in general could stand to build each other up instead of compare ourselves with imagined, impossible standards.  Maybe I’m still just working out my own issues in blog form as I have in the past, or maybe those niggling ideas will actual take on a more distinct form.  At any rate, I’m not dead yet, and here’s a photo of Engelberta doing her best “I’m not dead yet” while we tried to take pictures at the beach, or as I like to call it, “When Good Photo Shoots Go Bad.”

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The Miracle-Gift-Angel Baby

Not long after Engelberta was born, I realized that I had a sore spot slightly larger than Texas.  I couldn’t stand for anyone to call her an angel.  At that point, I had nine angels, and she wasn’t one of them (now I have ten, and she still isn’t one of them).  My angels are the babies who didn’t get to breathe on earth; Engelberta is a living, breathing baby that I can hold, not an ephemeral memory.  I know that all sleeping babies look like angels, but smell the southward end of a northern facing “angel.”  There are no smells like that in heaven because God promises that in heaven there will be no more suffering.

Which brings me to the other reason I obstinately refuse to call my child or anyone else’s an angel in anything other than sarcastic/ironic context: kids are kids.  They are not perfect, nor are they currently heavenly beings.  They may occasionally look cherubic; they may act in an angelic manner once in a while; we may call them angels, but they will never be angels.  In fact, biblically speaking, none of us will ever be angels, which means that the tiny souls that I lost before they could be born are also not, in fact, angels – I just don’t know what else to call them without being obnoxious.  I feel like calling children angels and princesses on a regular basis is a way of putting them on a pedestal or allowing them to stay in a world that revolves around them.  Of course the world revolves around toddlers, but they don’t get to stay there.  We need to be teaching our kids to look outside themselves – to empathize, to see the bigger picture, to serve.  Engelberta was not created to be an angel, and she did not win the genetic lottery to be a princess (she’ll just have to marry a prince…).

The other sore spot I seem to have is hearing her called a miracle.  Of course she is a miracle!  But so is EVERY child born on this planet!  Life is a miracle, and there are no gradations in the miracle of life.  I believe that there are miracles that happen all the time.  There are amazing things that are just too big for us to imagine – perfect timing saves someone from certain death in an accident; a passing stranger happens to be a doctor who performs a life-saving procedure on a kid who otherwise would have died waiting for an ambulance – huge things that only God can pull off are all around us.  There were none of those extraordinary measures involved in Engelberta’s birth – just the ordinary miracle of a new baby being born.  If you are a parent, I’m guessing that you view your child as a miracle, and you should.  You probably don’t think that my child is a greater miracle than yours, and you shouldn’t.  Mostly, I want to avoid constantly telling Engelberta that she is a miracle so there will be no pressure to live up to some crazy standard just because we had a terrible time getting her here.

So, if Engelberta is neither an angel nor a “special” miracle, how do I see her?  She is a tremendous gift.  All children are gifts, but sometimes, in some circumstances, there are parents who will always appreciate that gift just a little bit more.  I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t appreciate the gift that they were given in becoming a parent; I do know a few parents who realize just how precious and unimaginable that gift is because it can be impossible to come by.  We are the people who relish every stinking diaper and every sleepless night merely because they exist.  This doesn’t mean that I am living in a constant glow of blissful motherhood – no one glows on less than two hours of sleep – it means that even in the midst of that awful night I am thanking God that I have a reason to drink a gallon of coffee the next morning.

God had already given me the perfect gift of knowing that I could have peace and joy with him even if we never had a child.  Engelberta was a gift I didn’t see coming, like the biggest surprise party you can imagine or the best Christmas present you ever got because it was just so much more than you expected.  And she is a gift I sometimes feel guilty about because not everyone gets such a gift.  I know how much it hurts to see the family life that you’d always assumed would be yours pass you by, and I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.  I hope that you, my friend who is struggling through this season, know that you are not alone and that you are deeply loved – by me, and by a God who will hold you up and will one day take all of your hurt away.

On a Dime

I find myself unable to dwell in other people’s misery, even if it’s just a sad movie. Maybe I have had too much misery of my own, and now I am doing my best just to keep up with daily life. I find that I avoid any sad story that doesn’t directly touch my life. Friends are a different story; I celebrate and mourn and empathize with them. But I cannot make myself follow any of the sad/tragic FB pages, even if I am terribly interested in the outcome. I desperately want each and every one of those stories to have a happy ending, but I can’t invest any of my heart in them. I will pray over the situation when I see an update in a friend’s feed, but they haunt me if I linger too long.

A friend of ours lost a baby early in her pregnancy several months ago, and I cried for her like I cried for me. She was in the all too familiar position of having to rescind such good news and replace it with devastation. On a dime. Overnight. That’s how instantly her life changed, as did mine the second we heard the first bad news being delivered. At some point in our loss history, I think the bad news ceased to be life changing in the drastic, on a dime, kind of way. Loss became our story – just part of the landscape.

Now that Engelberta is here, the landscape has changed, though the possibility of a new and even more devastating type of loss hides around every corner, every “Pray for (Insert Name Here)” FB page. I’m sure every parent panics a little bit when they hear of a tragedy striking another child because it just might happen to them, too. I’m sure they respond in the usual “hug your kids a little tighter” manner and move on. I force myself to move on. I have to fight too many demons to invest serious thought or prayer in anyone I don’t know. Maybe this makes me a bad person for deliberately ignoring a need for prayer. But I just can’t handle the thought that my life could again turn on a dime.

There are stories all around me of babies who need organ transplants, babies who will die of terrible diseases, children who have been severely injured and face years of rehab. I know that these stories are statistically unlikely to happen to most children, including my own, but we’ve been statistically challenged up to this point. One story particularly haunts me. Not long ago, a little girl in our town died of heat stroke after being forgotten in the car. Her mother forgot to drop her off at daycare, and the little girl was sound asleep in her car seat when mom arrived at work. Everything about this story was familiar to me: the couple struggled through years of infertility before they finally had a beautiful baby girl. They had a family-owned business with all of the extra work and crazy hours that go with that responsibility, and one day the mom was particularly overloaded and skipped a single step in her routine.

Oh, God, how this story breaks my heart. I am this mom; I survive a lot of days on ritual autopilot, so a single skipped step will end in some sort of disaster later in the day. Fortunately, my skipped steps usually involve some sort of coffee brewing calamity or lack of deodorant or a cell phone launching from the hood of the car. But this family’s tragedy feels too close, too familiar, for me to let go. I can’t imagine how this mother feels. I can’t imagine the guilt and shame and horror she must combat every moment. Merely imagining her pain swallows me up, and I am consumed with thoughts of “What if this happened to me?” What if Engelberta died? Could I ever recover from that after everything else we’ve been through?

I know we’d survive somewhat intact, but that would be a labor of grace and faith. I keep telling God that there’s no way I could live with a hole that big in my heart. I keep turning a blind eye to the losses I don’t know personally, and I keep praying that my life is through turning on dimes for at least a little while. It hurts enough to know that someone I love is experiencing that kind of pain. That said, if you read this and need to talk, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or to anyone else who will listen and love you. Never, ever feel that just because someone has dealt with a lot that they shouldn’t be burdened with your problems. Most of the time someone who has been to hell and back is more than willing to help someone else through. For me, most days, the only thing that keeps me from breaking down is knowing that sharing my story has helped others in some small way. It’s the only thing that gives reason to the otherwise incomprehensible mess of the last several years.

Image Is Everything

I am not, nor will I ever be, a size 2. I would like to be a size 10; I have three sizes to go. I am overweight and out of shape, but I’m working on it. As an emotional eater and very busy person, that’s not an easy task. As a new mom facing down celebrity mom weight loss photos, it’s down right daunting. I know I’m never going to look like a magazine cover, but, sheesh, why can’t I melt away pounds like one? The one I really hate right now is a before and after picture floating around Facebook that shows Jessica Simpson at her heaviest (which was PREGNANT) and then slimmed down, with the tagline, “I lost 25 pounds in 5 weeks.”

This is TOTALLY unrealistic for anyone who doesn’t have a personal chef, personal trainer, personal assistant, and nothing better to do than exercise for hours and hours a day. Realistically, I can eat well and commit about 30 minutes per day to working out – if everything goes perfectly with my routine, which it never does. So, realistically, I can shape up, and I might eventually reach size 10 nirvana, but the bottom line is that my bottom line isn’t going to perk up instantly. I’m trying to make peace with that.

I am not giving myself a free pass for the bad behavior that landed me in overweight/out-of-shape territory. I am, however, looking for ways to remind myself that I am healthy and that my body is amazing just the way it is. With this body, I have completed a half-marathon, a sprint distance triathlon, and delivered a baby. That’s a pretty great list. It would be easy to beat my own drum every day because of my little list, but then I’m not likely to do the work I need to do to get back in shape. On the flip side, I’ve realized that when I’m critical of my own body, I’m usually judging everyone else’s, too.

My new experiment is to find something beautiful in each lady who crosses my path, especially when I find myself thinking something negative. I tend to be less judgmental of guys, so I largely exempt them from my thought experiment. So, when I see someone who doesn’t meet my ideal in some way, I pause to find something to appreciate. It’s also cheating to let myself off by thinking, “She has a great personality.” I find something physically attractive, no matter how small it may seem. If I happen to be in conversation with the person, like a cashier, then I try to compliment them while we’re talking (unless it’s weird, like “You have nice eyebrows” – then it’s just creepy).

I have never seen an ugly smile when offered sincerely. I have seen people more beautiful than have ever graced the covers of fashion magazines. And I have found that this thinking spreads to other areas of my life. It’s no secret that I struggle occasional with mostly mild bouts of depression. I know I’m having a rough time when I realize I am short fused and cursing like a sailor when I talk to myself. Those are also the days that I come as close as I get to road rage; it’s still really road annoyance rather than rage.

This afternoon, I was cut off in traffic twice by the same vehicle, which I found terribly obnoxious. When the other vehicle finally swerved to another lane to exit the interstate I expressed my relief as a quick, “Thank goodness!” But as I passed the car, I happened to glance at the driver, who was an older middle-aged woman who looked completely frazzled. My road annoyance disappeared, and then I felt a little guilty. This poor woman was probably following directions in an unfamiliar part of town, and the exit ramps were a little tricky. Instead of telling myself how badly this woman drove, I prayed for her to find her destination easily and to feel more calm about driving in strange territory. And then I hoped that someone would extend me the same grace next time I’m acting like an idiot. Maybe they’ll think I have nice eyebrows, too.

The Even Keel

In case you noticed the giant lapse in blog entries and wondered why, we had our little girl at the end of January. I actually went into labor on her due date, and our little Engelberta was born the next day. Also, in case you wondered, I am not going to use Engelberta’s real name here. If we are friends, then you have likely already seen her name and pictures on FB a few times. If you are Joe Public reading my blog, I hope you’ll understand that I’d like to give Engelberta some privacy since this isn’t her blog.
If you know me or my husband well, then you know that neither of us are overly excitable people; you know the type – they scream loudly on roller coasters, they squeal with delight upon seeing old friends, and they may actually jump up and down with glee. We, on the other hand, are not quite as demonstrative even though we may feel the same depth of emotion. I am the person who smiles (silently) on a roller coaster and who screams (on the inside) without making more than a little “ha!” noise. Through our whole pregnancy, people constantly asked us if we were excited, and most of them were squealing and/or jumping while asking the question. We always replied calmly that of course we were excited, while the interrogator looked dubiously at our lack of exuberance. I often felt like maybe I SHOULD be physically jumping for joy even though I was jumping, silently, on the inside. Our labor and delivery nurses kept remarking at how calm both of us were through delivery, but we kept laughing and saying, “You don’t go through everything we’ve been through and then freak out over delivering a baby.” You don’t freak out over much at all, actually.
I have realized that one gift the last five years’ events have given me is an extraordinarily even keel. Our circumstances can be all over the map, but my emotions don’t have to live on the peaks or in the valleys. Of course I feel the highs and lows, but my heart is anchored in the hope of Christ, and that gives me a solid place to stand no matter what life throws my direction. God gave us the lows of each miscarriage and the high of this successful pregnancy. The constant in every circumstance is that God gives us himself, and we have found our joy in his presence and not in our circumstances. That is freedom. That is certain knowledge that whatever happens, it is what it is, and it doesn’t define me; God does and what I do in the moment does.

A Rare Political Moment

I am surrounded by people with very strong political beliefs, as are most people in the United States. I have friends with widely varying viewpoints, and I tend to hold my opinions close to the vest with all but my closest friends. There are family members I won’t discuss politics with, either because I might truly offend them or there’s just no point in any of us wasting our breath. I would guess that almost everyone who expresses their strongly held opinion to me thinks that I mostly agree with them.

Here’s the thing: I probably don’t. I am much more centrist and libertarian than most of the people I am around, meaning I didn’t think it was the end of the world when either W or Obama got elected, and I don’t believe either of them to be the second coming of Christ. I find that most political debates focus too narrowly along party lines, as does every important national discussion. There was a recent Huffington Post op-ed that described the role that faith plays in both major parties and how that same faith puts them at polar opposites. I can’t remember the author or the title now, but the gist of the piece was that Republicans get hung up on moral programs like the pro-life agenda while Democrats get hung up on social programs like healthcare or welfare. Both are acting on an extremely narrowly interpreted faith with no room for compromise.

In the last few weeks, the national conversation has focused on gun control. I think we’re having the wrong conversation. Guns, like money, have no moral value; they are neither good nor bad, and their influence is entirely based on the person holding them. Someone who is willing to shoot and kill another person will not be stopped by more gun control laws. If legislating morality were all it would take to make mankind better, we wouldn’t need police forces, and there wouldn’t be mass shootings. Here’s how the current conversation will go: “liberals” will argue that enough is enough, and we must ban guns altogether or restrict their sales and usage to such a degree that the average law-abiding citizen will never own a gun; “conservatives” will argue that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and mass shootings wouldn’t occur if more average law-abiding citizens were armed. No guns versus more guns. Which side is right? Neither one – they are both knee-jerk reactions to a horrible tragedy. Both sides will argue, fight dirty, and blame the other side. One side may even “win” by passing a new restrictive law or repealing an old restrictive law. The media will rehash every detail released and determine that mental illness is to blame, and dozens of people along the way missed vital clues that could have prevented the tragedy. Most of the mainstream media seems to have already decided that tighter gun laws would have prevented the Newtown tragedy.

All of the focus on gun control and mental illness are smoke and mirrors hiding the real and ugly problem our culture faces: we do not value life. We do not value individuals as unique creations of God, and until we do, no law in the world will stop another tragedy from happening. There is another op-ed that I read and greatly admired. If you haven’t seen the “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” piece, Google it. The author is a mother of a teenage son who has an undetermined mental illness, and he has had violent outbursts that are increasingly harder to control. She has been seeking help, but the best suggestion given her by professional social workers and healthcare providers is to have her teenage son arrested so that he could be “in the system” and locked up or committed more easily. More horrifying than the professional suggestions to have the kid locked away were the comments from readers that her son SHOULD be locked away either in jail or a mental institution for life or medicated into oblivion. Most of the comments were rude beyond imagination. This woman was brave enough to share her story and to ask for help, for viable ways to treat her still developing teenage son either by correctly diagnosing and treating the problem or by assisting when he acts out. The public at large condemned her for advocating for her son and is willing to throw away a life that can be saved.

This is how we treat people asking for help, and then we blame the parents and anyone else in contact with a “problem child” when the child does something truly horrific. Why didn’t the parents see the signs? How could all of their teachers have missed the problem? We can’t have it both ways. Either we value each life and support those in need, or we deal with tragedy after tragedy. Either every life is valuable or none are.

The current political climate isn’t just a reflection of polar extremes in philosophies or theology – the hatred and vitriol apparent in virtually every debate demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect. There are at least three topics I avoid discussing with almost everyone because I can’t stand to hear either extreme side of the argument and because I know my opinions will not make anyone happy: healthcare, abortion, and gay marriage. As Christians, we are charged with loving one another and caring for the needs around us – to borrow from my pastor, we should be Jesus until he comes back. None of the extremes in any of these topics reflect the love of Christ.

How can anyone who thinks that the church’s job is to take care of those in need be violently opposed to a program to provide healthcare? From the other side of the argument, how can anyone who wants to accomplish such a noble task be so irresponsible that they would establish a program without reforming the system that is so bloated and corrupted that it caused most of the problem of unaffordable healthcare?

How can anyone who cares so much about being pro-life turn a blind eye to everything involved in a woman’s decision to have an abortion? Are you willing to provide childcare and post-natal support for as long as it takes for mother and child to live healthy lives? Are you willing to provide family counseling for families that are unwilling to allow adoption of the unplanned child and/or are unwilling to provide a loving and stable home situation for mother and baby? Are you willing to love the mother even if she chooses abortion? And if you have no qualms about abortion for any reason, how can you find such a waste of life acceptable in any but the most extreme situations? How does the use of abortion as a late form of birth control demonstrate anything except extreme disregard for human life and a fundamental lack of respect?

How can any Christian look me in the eye and say with a straight face that gay marriage will destroy the sanctity of marriage? I think the divorce rate among churched straight couples makes that a moot point. This argument garners about as much sympathy from me as the “Keep Christ in Christmas” hullabaloo. No law or government on earth can remove Christ from Christmas if you believe in Jesus as the savior, just as no law or government on earth can destroy the sanctity of a marriage commitment made before God.

What do we gain by constantly shouting out the extremes? I can tell you what we lose. We lose relationship, dialogue, and respect for one another. What do we lose by actually listening to one another without trying change the other party? What do we lose by occasionally compromising with the other side (a la healthcare) or by admitting we don’t really have all the answers?

If you are a careful reader, you’ll realize that I still haven’t really shared my personal view of any of the topics I presented as problematic; you may even think I’m dodging, and I guess I am to some extent. I’ll happily discuss anything I believe with anyone who is open to honest and respectful conversation. I freely admit that I have no simple answers to any of the national debates, but most of the simple answers involve the same hateful and uncompromising sound bytes that form both major party platforms. At some point, we have to learn to respect each other – to respect and love each individual life for what it is – or we will face more national tragedies, more unresolvable fiscal cliffs, and even more polarization. If you tend towards either extreme conservatism or extreme liberalism, take a long and hard look at how you react to the other side – if it’s automatic outrage or condemnation based on faith, consider that the other side feels the same way about you, and you both believe you’re doing what Jesus would do. It’s possible both sides are wrong and neither side truly represents what Jesus would do.

Adventures in Baby Shopping

Shopping for me is always some sort of adventure, either because I have inexplicable OCD issues with my buggy or because I seem to attract the most special people to assist me. For example, while shoe shopping, I asked a clerk where to find the footies you try on shoes with. She replied, “Oh, I’ll be glad to get some for you,” which she did. As she handed over the requested footies, she said, “I brought you two – just in case.” Just in case? Just in case I want to try on both shoes – at the same time? Just in case I actually have two feet? Things like this happen to me all the time, so baby shopping should be no exception, right?

Since Christmas, we’ve been able to actually set up the nursery, and over the last few weeks, I’ve been making sure that all the necessities are covered. I made my list of things we needed from each of the two big stores where we registered, compared prices and coupons, and set out to get baby girl pants and sheets and an actual mattress for the crib. So, after a rather nice expedition through Buy Buy Baby, I headed to the other store the next night armed with my registry printout and my coupons.

I wandered the aisles for a bit with my list, matching item code numbers so that I could be sure that my registry completion coupon would apply. After a few minutes perusing the crib mattress item numbers, I realized that I was being stalked by a clerk who must have just been waiting for me to look up. Apparently there was a breastfeeding class beginning, and my rotund belly made me an easy (and slow) target. “Hi, there!” Keep in mind that the same woman greeted me a few minutes before when I came in the door but was now greeting me as if she’d never seen me before. “How are you this evening? Are you here for the breastfeeding class? Were you aware we have a breastfeeding class starting in just a few minutes?” I politely declined and explained that I had already attended a class at the hospital. “Well, good for you. If you change your mind, you’re welcome to come.” Fortunately, she left me and began following the only man in the store shopping without female supervision – an odd choice, but then, you should never assume… After running down my list while still wondering if the clerk’s next stalking victim would attend the class, I was finally ready to check out.

I am a grammar fanatic, and I try to remember in public settings that the average Joe just doesn’t care. In spite of my attempts to ignore really awful or ridiculously stupid mistakes, this one still caught me off-guard. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to scan the barcode on the registry list I had printed, the checkout clerk still couldn’t pull up our registry; she tried typing in the name several times before asking, “Do you spell your name with the extra ‘s’ on the end?” There is no “s” anywhere in any part of my name, so I was a bit baffled. The clerk held out the registry list with her finger pointing at our last name with an expression that implied I was more than a bit daft for not knowing how to spell my own last name. Her finger was highlighting “WEIL’s” at the top of the page, as in our last name in all capitals with a possessive apostrophe -s combination. I managed to only say that she should type what was in all capitals and skip the apostrophe -s. “Well, there it is!”

Having handled the business of locating our registry, the clerk turned to small talk while she tried to scan my items. This started innocently enough with the standard questions about whether we were having a boy or a girl, what her name will be, and when we’re due. Then she added that her first grand baby was due in April. I congratulated her, but then the conversation took an awkward turn. “Yeah, my daughter doesn’t talk to me, so she didn’t even want to tell me if it’s a girl or boy, but she doesn’t know that I’m still friends with her best friend that she’s living with now because she moved out when she found out she was pregnant since she didn’t want to tell me about it.” How does one appropriately respond to that? “And THEN I found out that the baby daddy got busted for drugs right after he got my daughter pregnant, and THAT’s why my daughter won’t talk to me. But I don’t want to have to go see my grand baby in prison, so she BETTER get away from that guy.” By that point there was a line behind me, and I had been waiting for a total for a few minutes. I was also at a loss on how to respond; a glance behind me told me that so were the mother and daughter waiting next in line. I expressed sympathy for her plight and wondered if she really even wanted me to say anything. Either she needed to vent, and I looked friendly enough, or she was bitter enough about the situation that she told everyone she could when she had a captive audience. She finally wound up the story and gave me a total, so I again congratulated her and wished her luck mending the relationship with her daughter. The women behind me in line looked worried as they approached the register. I probably should have wished them luck, too.

As I headed out to the parking lot, I allowed myself to gloat that I had another few weeks to park in the expectant mother parking spaces near the front of the store, even though at this store the front spaces were still about a city block from the actual doors. My glory was short-lived once I realized that the only buggy corrals were in the very back of the parking lot. At least that fit with the overall absurdist tone of this particular foray into retail. See what you miss when you shop online?

Hope Deferred

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 NLT

One of my favorite people on the planet has a child who will turn five in a month or so. This friend is the type of person who makes you glad to know that God created someone like that and then blessed them with a child to carry on all their best qualities. I found out that my friend and his wife were expecting their now soon-to-be five-year-old not long after I found out about my first pregnancy, and I couldn’t have been more excited to know that we would be parents within a few months of each other. Even after we lost our baby, I loved keeping up with my friend and his baby through the old college grapevine and then through Facebook. Every picture I see of his family is a little snapshot that tells the ongoing story of his dream fulfilled. Every post about the cute things his almost five-year-old says tells me that he is the amazing dad I knew he would be, and his wife is probably one of the coolest people in the world.

A recent post about the impending birthday was both fantastic and jarring – fantastic that they are celebrating five years of life with their little one, and jarring to realize that my first baby would have been five in April. I know we’ve been deferring our hope for a while, but I tend to think of our waiting through the losses in terms of just a few years, not half a decade. We have waited and mourned through five years to reach this point. We have lived with the sick and heavy heart of hope deferred. In that time I have learned that hope deferred really does make your heart sick – no matter how healthy it was to begin with, no matter how well you cope, no matter how much you heal – and a piece of that sickness will stay with you for the rest of your earthly life.

No matter how much joy our daughter’s existence brings – it is after all our dream fulfilled – it will never erase the past or undo all the heartache. Her life is a new tree of life in our lives, both figuratively and literally, and that new joy is all the richer and deeper because of our deferred hope. I have never been a fan of the replacement baby mentality – when people have a baby immediately on the heels of a loss to replace the pregnancy or child they lost – because it isn’t a healthy way to deal with the loss. There are moments when I feel our daughter moving around or hiccuping, and I feel overwhelmed by grief that I never felt any of our other babies do the same thing. What we lost over the last five years can never be replaced on earth; what we are gaining will not erase that pain, but we will appreciate our tree of life all the more because of it.

At first glance, you might think the proverb I opened with implies that hope deferred brings sadness while a dream fulfilled replaces that sadness with joy and a tree of life. Maybe superficially that’s true, but in reality, we aren’t really wired that way. I’d rather think of the hope deferred as fertilizer for the dreams that do get fulfilled. It takes a lot of manure to make the prettiest flowers.

The Bump and I

At just over seven months pregnant, I realize that I am entering the stage of pregnancy where the second trimester glow has come to an end, and the rotund and swollen days of the home stretch are beginning. So it is with great joy that I note that I am still pretty comfortable and not very puffy. I do, however, find myself in hilarious awkward pregnant moments all the time.
Even though I haven’t seen my lap or my belly button in quite some time without the aid of a mirror, I am constantly forgetting that I have a rather large belly to account for. I can no longer perform three point turns with a buggy in grocery store aisles without also doing some goofy doh-si-doh maneuver. Bathroom stalls should come with a “cue laugh track” note in my daily script. Perhaps the funniest is the belly slap, which happens to my husband every time I try to leave the kitchen table at the office before he does. Note: the belly slap is similar to a dope slap but much more awkward for all parties involved. Stated awkwardness is magnified when the slappee is a stranger or mere acquaintance.
We have also reached the point where the number of weeks left is down to single digit range, meaning she’ll be home in a few short months. It’s easy to forget that pregnancy must end at some point, and your new tiny human is going to need a place to sleep and clothes and diapers… I have never mocked the nesting stage, and now I completely understand it. Nesting is a great stage of preparation, and every pregnancy guide will tell you to take advantage of it so you’ll be ready to bring home your baby. I’m sure that there are plenty of hormones at work and other physical explanations, but I am staring at the psychological cause of nesting every day now: it gives you the appearance of some measure of control.
The fact is you can never really be ready for the instant and radical change of adding a child to your family. Of course you know things will change, but it’s virtually impossible to prepare for that shift in your life. This is also the most useless advice that experienced parents give new parents, “Get ready, because everything is going to change.” If you’ve told me this, or if you’ve thought about telling me this, know that I stifle the urge to call you Captain Obvious. At any rate, I’m also stifling the “there’s no way I’m ready for this” panic mode whenever I think about how much will change when our baby girl arrives, so nesting will be great busy work in the interim. But even though I’m peeking over the edge of the panic precipice, as long as I slow down and breathe, I’m not that worried. We have everything we need physically, and God brought us this far – I don’t think he’s going anywhere when the bump gets her birth certificate.

Engelberta!

Naming a child is a great responsibility.  You are choosing the word that will identify your child and frame the first impression people will have with or without ever meeting the person behind the name.  And every name has a meaning, some nicer than others; in fact, a name that I love turns out to mean “heifer” and another “she who welcomes you in.”  While I’d like for my daughter to be hospitable and welcoming, by the time she’s a teenager, I think I’d be regretting that name; my husband and I both nixed that one instantly.  Perhaps as a writer and avid reader I am keenly aware that every word, therefore every name, has a meaning.  It’s one of the things I love about Old Testament Bible stories, particularly the book of Hosea; every character is named for their position in the story.  So what story are we creating by the name we choose?

Right now, it’s Engelberta.  Before anyone panics, we are not going to name our little girl Engelberta, especially given that with our last name she’ll look like a German fairy tale character on paper.  Not that our girl couldn’t pull it off, but a girl named Engelberta in the southern U.S. is not unlike the “Boy Named Sue.”  I keep calling her Engelberta anyway, though – partly because I love watching the rather horrified expressions on the faces of our friends who can’t really decide if we’re joking or not – but mostly because the name means “bright angel” in old German, which is a really nice nickname if you ask me.

We’ve had all the obligatory suggestions, including lots of cute and popular names, and we’ve ignored them all.  I have refused to share the potential list of names with anyone but my husband until we’ve made our final decision.  We won’t be waiting to the last minute and naming her at the hospital because we tend to be very literal when naming animals (Bear looks like a bear, Brook came from Brookside, Max was found in the wheel of a Nissan Maxima…), and as weird as Engelberta might sound to southern English speakers, imagine what would come of St. Vincent’s Hospital or Birmingham or Alabama…  So, we’re working on the name, but for now (and maybe always on the interwebs) Engelberta is it. 🙂