Grief & Gratitude

I have an entire blog dedicated to the practice of gratitude as you may have noticed by landing here. Granted I haven't been writing for it much these days. Gratitude is something that comes pretty easily for me, it was nearly 8 years ago I started this blog. I started it because I finally had this beautiful baby girl and I was drowning in the day to day of motherhood. Some days were really hard and I never for a moment wanted to take her life, her breath, her very being for granted. She was the baby we didn't know we would have. So it began, daily writing with a theme, a thread of gratitude. From that practice, I still can find gratitude on some pretty awful days.

The time of year where life gets weird is upon us, aka the holidays. This vague term for all the gathering, gifting, and gorging we will do between Thanksgiving and 2018. On a good year this time of year gets difficult for two reasons. The first is grief, even though most of my grief is for loved ones who left this life years ago. My fond memories of holidays spent with them tend to tug at my heart when the tiny lights start twinkling or the prayer is offered at a meal. The second is parenthood, it gets ugly this time of year. Not as the parent of a child who is excited and bouncing off the walls for six weeks, that is tolerable. It just so happens that this is one of those seasons that brings out the know it all parents. The ones who are so absolutely sure they are getting it right that they just must tell you how to do it so you can be as successful as them a parenting. Look, I don't know if I am getting a dam thing right on this odyssey of raising a small human. She is spoiled this time of year with experiences and far too many things. Although I don't think she is "spoiled" in the sense of turning bad or rotting, despite our indulgences she has a heart for others. We are dedicated to making memories with her. (See above about grief and the comfort of memory.) Add to that we are far from family and friends for all holidays... they are just kind of a bummer. If it wasn't for this kid I might do away with them all together.

As the turkey left overs begin to disappear and the season of gratitude gives way to the season of consumerism (and maybe hope) I find myself in a pretty dark place. I have loved Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember, so much so that I have long proclaimed it my favorite holiday. It doesn't require me to be a consumer of goods. I don't have to mail cards, wrap gifts, dye eggs, buy candy, erect a tree in it's honor. I can simply enjoy a meal with family and friends while basking in a heart full of gratitude. It probably helps that it is the Fall's last hurrah and I love Fall. While we were taught the history of this day all wrong and we now know that the first Thanksgiving probably wasn't all amazing warm fuzzies; we can still strive to do better, strive for the ideal that is told as fact. We can own the honest history of pilgrims and native peoples while striving to do better. It is worth striving for an ideal where the full humanity of all people is honored and celebrated.

This week though something happened that left me gasping for gratitude that was once so easy to find. If you are a regular reader you likely remember that this spring I lost a pregnancy because it was ectopic. A pregnancy that was 8 long years in the making. The one that was going to leave this pastor with an early December baby, oh the irony. Due to the early complications of things I was never given an official due date but before it was complicated google made it easy to find out when that tiny human was to join the family. Next week I was supposed to be due to give birth and this week it became very clear that I wouldn't  have the comfort of knowing a rainbow baby was on the way. Perhaps quite the delusion, I kept telling myself that as long as I was pregnant by December, I would be OK. Chances are I wouldn't have been. Fertility related grief is complex while I grieve what could have been, I grieve also the loss of fertility in general. Fertility is fleeting, it's slipping through my fingers.

It seems that the more I pray the more I get a resounding "NO!" in response. This is all well and good God and I can disagree (we have before)... I can tell God I need some space. Except that whole pastor thing means I can't avoid God even when I would like to. As we approach the dreaded Advent with birth metaphors abound, I find myself, once again, more in an ash heap sort of mood. Some days I would like to ask God what did I do to deserve this? Oddly enough I can answer this question with beautiful theological grace when I am not the one asking it, essentially the answer is nothing. I am trying to be OK with this lack of fertility. I am trying to let go and let it be. Move on, it wasn't my lot to have the big family I dreamed of. Yet, I am here to tell you I am having a hell of a hard time letting go. I have a hard time saying this month I will not ride the ridiculous roller coaster of hope that I might be lucky enough just maybe to find two lines where there is forever one.


The thing about Advent if you are a church type or Christmas if you are the purely secular participant in this season... it is so full of hope for the impossible. We believe in miracles a little extra at this time of year. In church we wait, prepare, and hope for the birth of a baby who will radically change the world. A baby as the story would have it who is born to a virgin! In the secular world we wait with anticipation for whatever it is that gives the holiday meaning for us be it family or Santa Clause. It seems like around every corner someone is waiting to push some hope down your throat. I am ready to give up on you HOPE. Why must you exist in the world so powerfully. Hope is so radical in these uncertain times and I won't make it through Advent with out preaching about it.

Our family is in transition right now. It is one that has us evaluating how much we really need things. That begs questions like is it time to let go of the baby gear? Perhaps it is but I don't know that I can do it with out some sort of ritual of grief that isn't me, a box of tissues, and wine in the basement. Today we began to put out the Christmas things and I was reminded of a Christmas season when I had an abundance of hope. 2009, L's first Christmas. I nearly gave myself an ulcer trying to find the perfect and timeless stockings for our family. Being me I wanted them to match at least a little so I would replace ours too. I bought one set but my mom didn't like them which made me question everything I had ever done. I ended up returning them when I found some adorable ones in the Disney store. The day after Christmas I went and bought a few more from the set on clearance because when the next baby came I didn't want to do this again. Every year I leave those stockings in the bottom of the tote and a part of me feels as if it is dying.

These days I am not much of a "Black Friday" shopper but I needed to get out of the house for a few hours. We went and perused the sales, it seems that in every store I had to walk past the baby section to get where I was going. L begged to look in toys r us which locally is combined with, you guessed it, babies r us. I decided to make a purchase until the line barricade forced me to walk through the baby section. I put my items down and walked out. Paul commented, is there any one not pregnant around here? I said I didn't notice because sometimes I look at the floor to cope but I could hear plenty of newborns. You can't avoid this kind of grief there is something to remind you everywhere.

This Thanksgiving week I had a very difficult time being grateful. It isn't for lack of a thousand things for which I am grateful. Seriously I look at my kid and tear up more than you will ever know because my heart explodes with gratitude. She was after all an answer to a totally different prayer, "just one God". In the place of gratitude I have wrestled with grief and perhaps a bit of greed on my part. (I debate is it greedy to want more children? For the people who so desperately want just one, probably. For the ones who keep having babies with out trying, probably not.) What I can walk away from this week with is that I don't like grief in place of gratitude. Perhaps the challenge for me this Advent is to live into both more fully.

Since it is my discipline to always offer a nugget of gratitude at the end of a blog and I am seriously struggling in that department. I feel more like the coddled toddler on the floor mid tantrum wailing, "it isn't fair! I want it!" I will offer this: today I am grateful because even though I can't make a baby, I can make one outstanding Thanksgiving dinner. Those pies are the real deal.