Parenting & Pastoring through a Pandemic

I have been feeling unproductive lately. Honestly, like I am failing as a parent and a pastor. My to do lists do not get shorter but I feel like I am working nonstop. I have seen some inspirational internet quotes about how we cannot gauge productivity in the same way. How we can’t do it all. How we are being asked to do the impossible. So I decided to take notes about the day, I am starting at about 11 am.

Despite my stress and exhaustion, you should know how profoundly grateful I am that I still have my full time job, that I work with people who understand I can’t come into the office all day. Today, every day, forever, I am grateful for my child, an answered prayer and it is that deep sense of gratitude for her very life that propels me to another day. I know so many who long to have a child to interrupt them all day long.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Day ?? of at home learning while pastoring

We had a better start then yesterday when the Chromebook was lost (again) and while I showered I was informed the internet wasn’t working. RESTART THE COMPUTER!!!!!

I was trying to write my sermon when I was confronted with breaking news, “It’s art day and we have to go make dough right now!”

I may have audibly groaned at that point. Don’t get me wrong my kiddo and I are all about at home art projects and science experiments even when there is in person learning. I am confident that she will rock this project. It is just that once a week it is art day and on art day huge messes happen. My dining room table has been covered in recycling to do a found items sculpture (which turned out amazing), I have moved furniture to help create a reinterpretation of an art piece. Art day is SO much work and my kiddo LOVES it! I am exhausted by it.

Imagine her reaction when I replied: “You need to finish your other work first.”

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It’s an hour later, I stand up to go to the bathroom. No sooner does my bottom hit the toilet there is pounding on the door.

“How long are you going to take in there?”

“Uh, as long as it takes to get the job done.”

This continues every two seconds for what I am sure is a lifetime. Finally, I ask, “What do you need?”

“I finished my writing assignment on personification. I want to read it to you.”

“Ok, when I am finished.”

You all, I ended up in the bathroom, trying to do what we do in the bathroom, listening to a freshly written poem about a personified jaguar, through the bathroom door. Then I was quizzed to make sure I was listening.

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Another twenty minutes passes, I have some good tunes on, I am trying to find my sermon writing groove.

How can there be so many emails and texts I need to respond too?!?

“Mom, did you hear that big thump?”

“No”

“Both pets heard it and they ran off. What could it have been?”

In my head: Listen Nancy Drew, I don’t know what it was, I didn’t hear it, and I am not solving mysteries today.

“Well they are doing road work outside.”

“But I didn’t see any big trucks outside.”

“It can echo.”

She carries the cat, who is protesting loudly, back down the stairs, as she comforts her from the scary noise.

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Tomorrow is my day “off”. I really want to get these sermon notes started so I am not working on my day off, again.

I remember I have phone calls to return and I need to go to the church to check the mail.

I look at my to do list for the week, I still haven’t emailed out the liturgy for this weekend. Did I finish it?

I also need to edit the music for Sunday in to one playable file.

I look at the bottom of the list, where I have written two projects that I haven’t had time for but thought I might during this time because surely things would slowdown. I laugh out loud to myself.

“I don’t want to write responses they are so stupid.”

“We aren’t doing art until it’s all done.”

“UGGHHHHH!”

Where was, I? This is the sixth Sunday of Easter right? No wait it is the fifth.

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How is it two hours past lunch time already… I better get us fed.

I venture downstairs and I make the mistake of asking the kid how she’s doing on her work. “I’m done with all that mom!”

Into the kitchen I go. Time to make lunch appear. I see the side of a carton of eggs and for a moment I think somehow, magically there is take out in my fridge. I pull out some stuff leftover from taco night. My kid decides she wants just rice and cheese. I mean I watched the entire Hunger Games series with her last week, I no longer have parenting standards. Fine I concede but eat some of the watermelon in the fridge too. She goes to get the watermelon and vinegar has spilled on the lid. The world did not end, but it came close.

Did I get all the copyright things straight for Sunday?

I make myself a taco bowl and she’s already done with her lunch. I turn around to discover she has tied a string to the dog’s collar because it is hilarious when the cat chases the string/dog. She has not encountered another child in person in 8 weeks.  This morning I told her she was like a compressed spring ready to explode with cabin fever. I see this for the next hour. I turned on the TV during lunch and there is a news story I want to listen to. Instead I read the graphics as I get a play by play of the cat playing with the string that is now not tied to the dog. I am pretty sure for the duration of my taco bowl, she didn’t breathe, she just said words in my direction.

She goes outside with the dog. I decide to make a quick fruit salad. As I come up from picking some bad grapes out of the fruit drawer, I rail my head into the handle of the freezer. I can’t believe I have done this again, how do I not just have a permanent bruise on my skull? I make random noises to ease the pain.

Kid comes in from outside and I discover she took the cat outside again, which she isn’t supposed to do. She proceeds to tell me all about how when the cat goes outside, she is particularly and exclusively intrigued by the FedEx truck. I get a play by play of the what happened when the FedEx truck passed by and learn the cat does not do this for UPS or Amazon trucks.

I wonder do animals ever achieve sainthood? I think our pets should.

She realizes at this point that I am getting frustrated and apologizes. I tell her to go get some energy out.

I am met with mom it’s time to make the dough.

Let me go out to get the mail and then go upstairs to type some notes. Then we can make the dough.

The sun feels fabulous as I get the mail. Did I mention our mailbox lived on a road construction island for the past several weeks? This week the workers moved it and we actually get the mail again. I notice at that point I haven’t put the new mulch around the rose bushes yet and the creeping phlox still isn’t creeping and the lawn needs to be mowed if it will just stay sunny long enough to dry it out.

Did anyone call the insurance company about what guidelines we have when we return to worship in person? How will people react if we have to wear masks? What technology do I need for Sunday? What if we can’t sing together in worship when we return? I am really grieving not having the preschool the rest of this year. What can I do for the teachers and students?

I drop the mail, clean my hands and come upstairs to type these notes. Now I am going back down to make the dough. I have already been warned it’s not as easy as is looks in the instruction video and tears were flowing in another house this morning.

It is now nearly 3pm. Pray for me. I am about to make dough when all I can think about is sermon notes and pastoral care phone calls that aren’t finished.

Wait there is an urgent email…

An hour and a half later I have pretty much mixed the dough, fought the dough, and used a shot glass to help hold up the structure. Then we are to microwave it at ten second intervals, of course it sort of melts as it sets.

After washing my hands three times, most of the smurf blue is gone. I notice this dark spot on my face in the mirror, crud I forgot the special cream for that again. This spot has been with me for years, I have had it checked out by a doctor, it never really bothered me until I was looking at my face on camera all the time, I am so tired of my own face.

Oh look an email stating she hasn’t turned in any of her phys. ed lessons. She literally dances along to videos… I guess I will have to figure out what’s happening there later.

Did I mention on Monday the governor declared the kids will not go back to school buildings this year? Or that on Wednesday the school district sent out the calendar for next year. We have an extra week of summer break because Labor Day falls late. I wonder again if there will be summer camps and if so will I feel safe sending her. If not how will I juggle work and her high energy with no school work to focus on?

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I sit back down at my desk again where two windows overlook our yard aka the swamp because it has rained so much it is mostly one giant puddle. The cat curls up nearby. I see the dog laying in the mud, again. Then I see my kid literally in a pile on the patio. Oh my God, she has passed out. I open the window and she springs up instantly. I ask are you ok? “Yeah I am just sunning myself.”

Will I ever get to preside at the funeral for the dearly departed who left us two months ago?

It is 4:20 pm, I have finally begun to push through my to do list. If I want to honor my boundaries, I have 40 minutes left to work today, plus a brief zoom call tonight. I still have four pastoral care phone calls I wanted to make, it won’t happen, I won’t be the pastor I want to be today. I just remembered it’s Mother’s Day this weekend and I need to choose a prayer that include all sorts of mothers. I haven’t emailed out the liturgy yet or written the sermon or edited the music or found the prop for the time with children. I have a second church I work with sometimes that I need to check in on with something.

Tomorrow is my day off. There will be no lessons tomorrow because it’s field day… oh my goodness we never chose our field day activities. I didn’t take out anything for dinner.

I need to remember to look in the mirror before the zoom call.

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No wonder I can’t get anything done. I have been a stay at home mom and a full-time working mom. I have never been a full time stay at home and full-time working mom at the same time. Probably because it is impossible! I know I am not alone in this all my mom friends have been keeping me company on this journey. I have several strings of text messages full of our laments, our tears, our frustration, our desire to drink wine at noon, and our small victories. (Maybe Dads have similar thing going on?) I am exhausted and overwhelmed, and I have one ten-year-old child. I cannot imagine what this would be like for parents with toddlers and preschoolers. At least at some point in the day my kid is outside sunning herself like a cat.

I think a good number of us feel like absolute failures right now. We get short with our families easier than we want to. We drop the ball on something at work. For those who suddenly had to move all their work online we had to learn an entirely new way to be in the world and make our contributions. Pastors are now doing pastoral care with out any contact and its heart breaking and frustrating and energy draining because we can’t read body language. We have become fulltime one-person production companies to make worship happen. We are learning the nuance of copy right law. Loosing sleep over church finances, no matter what our budgets and giving levels are. We are working on regular church administrative matters and learning how to keep people safe when we can gather again. Prior to this my contract was for 48 hours a week, I worked that easily if not more. Since COVID-19 I work significantly more especially those first few weeks as there was so much to get up and running. Part of that is the new demands on my time both at work and at home, which both take place in my house now. Yet no matter how many times I have been interrupted today. No matter how many weird dreams kept me up last night. No matter what pastoral care situations arise. I have to “go live” on Sunday morning with something to say about God and God’s word. That pressure is always there but in times like these it feels a little bigger. What is God calling me to preach to help people make it through another week of this?

No wonder I am exhausted!

Something has got to give.

So I am wondering fellow parents pastoring through a pandemic can we give ourselves permission to breathe a little. I struggled with it a lot until I read my own notes about this day. My house looks like Taz from looney toons went through. I am pretty sure several of my kid’s friends have seen my bras on the laundry pile via video chat. During Holy Week, there were days no schoolwork got done until the evening. There are more of those days in our future. There have been days where I just let it go and went outside for a while.

I am enough, I am doing enough.

You are enough, You are doing enough.

As pastors and parents there are just some things we aren’t going to be called to and that is alright. I said earlier this week, I am working to accept there are just somethings I am not equipped for.

Tonight as I push the laundry pile aside and sit on the couch with a glass of wine exhausted and stressed, waiting for the tears that just won’t come, I will toast to you, because you are killing it!

Here is a relaxing picture from last summer, may you find peace.

The Stroller

When we were going through our things in preparation to move from South Dakota to New Jersey I faced the monumental task of sorting the baby items. I had saved them for 8 years at that point in the hope of using them again, but if you follow along here, you know that thus far that dream has not become reality. I sobbed in the basement as we pulled them all out of their moving boxes and built them to make sure that all the parts were there. I got rid of entire bins of baby clothes, a small child's lifetime worth. The next day I gave nearly all the baby gear to one of the movers. I kept the small stroller and the pack n play because we often have young visitors. It was so very hard to let go of that stuff, just thinking about it now makes me a little sad.

A few weeks ago one of my nephews and one of my nieces spent the day with us. The niece happens to be a baby and after church we pulled out the stroller and headed to the aquarium. The big kids ran ahead to pet sharks and stingrays while I stayed further back with a sleeping baby in the stroller. It had a bag hanging off the handles and was covered in a mountain of winter coats. With the exception of the sleeping baby, it was chaos on wheels. As I watched the big kids I was overwhelmed with grief that hit me like a sucker punch. I feel so at home pushing a stroller, it is almost as natural as breathing. Yet, my stroller pushing days are long gone. I saw for a moment the life I spent 20 years dreaming of, a family with a gaggle of children. There in the middle of the aquarium I felt the hot sting of tears welling up in my eyes. You cannot start bawling in the middle of the aquarium Rebecca! So I swallowed the tears saving them for later and I suppose this Monday morning is later.

The sadness I felt was complex. There was that moment of remembering we, for a short time, were going to have a baby about the same age, the grief of loss is real and ever present. There was the grief for the life I imagined, the one I am slowly starting to let go of, it sounds so much easier than it is. There was the grief of infertility wrapping it all together into one messy emotional package. A package that sneaks up on me in the oddest of places. Sometimes I wonder, should I live to be 80, will the grief ever hurt any less when it shows up? Will it ever stop catching in my throat unexpectedly?

Do I want it to? I mean mostly I do but this has been a very real and difficult part of my life. It has for better or worse shaped me. It has influenced how I parent. It has changed our marriage. I thought about this at the end of March as my Timehop app brought back the photos of all those positive pregnancy tests, progressively getting darker lines, day by day. Those early days when we had just a tiny bit of cautious hope. When blood work and ultrasounds were a part of our weekly routine. Two years ago already, how can that be? This year I discovered a way to block old memories from Timehop, but it only works on posts from social media, the only way for me to avoid being punched with those photos is to delete them from my phone or avoid all my other memories for the months of March-May. I can't bring myself to delete those silly pictures. They pop up every few days at this time of year. The truth is though I don't need the photos to remind me that as we drove to a St. Patrick's Day parade, I told Paul I was scared because we had just had an IUI and I was cramping too soon. When I had that first barely there line and the one all four people I shared it with could see the next day. I remember the Earth Hour sleep over that night waiting desperately for my blood work to come back. Watching my child dance at a glow party, wondering what it would be like for her to have a sibling, feeling the oddly familiar tiredness of the first trimester.  Waking up on a cold gym floor at 2 am to check my online medical chart. I knew my progesterone level was too low. Stopping at Target, standing by bicycle helmets and getting the phone call, a chemical pregnancy we would have to wait it out. A week later the phone call that said surprisingly my numbers were now on track. Several weeks later as I ate lunch with friends who were also riding the fertility roller coaster and I got the panicked you have to come back now phone call. Finding the "mass" that was at one point a pregnancy. Making quick decisions. The unbearable pain that followed. The weeks of watching numbers mercilessly. Deciding I couldn't take it anymore and giving up part of my reproductive system.

It was traumatic, I have hesitated to name it as such.  Yet here I am two years later writing about it again. It is as if this blog has become a place for only one thing, my adventures in navigating infertility/fertility. Nearly ten years ago I began this blog as a new mother a new mother that was tired and stressed but who remembered how much she longed for that baby in her tired arms. So at the end of each long day I sat down and I wrote what I was grateful for, because I never wanted to take for granted the living breathing baby in my arms. So as I embrace the grief or at the very least try to live with it... I am reminded of how grateful I am for that sweet baby who is quickly becoming a tween. I am grateful for the moments behind a stroller filled with a sleeping baby, even if they come like a sucker punch. I am grateful for all the kids I get to love and share life with. I am grateful for the handful of brave women who show me understanding and grace and remind me to love myself enough to allow myself to grieve every day that I need to.

Focus

It is the Thursday (my Friday) evening before I take some time off of work. I am in a frenzy trying to write a sermon and prepare slides for an hour long presentation. The presentation needs to include a semester's worth of history, I sit flip flopping between what is most important. Grey's Anatomy premiers in an hour and a half, I was hoping to be done before then. I still haven't gotten dinner on the table. All that stands between me and a much needed vacation are these projects and Sunday.

Yet as I sit here I cannot focus. My mind is swirling with memories of every time he touched me. The cold shivers down my spine and the way my throat closed leaving me voiceless. For years I told myself, it was just a generational difference, or a cultural difference. Even though he was twice my age he just simply didn't know better. I made excuses, for him. Then came the comments about my body, disguised as compliments. It took me mentioning it to a therapist before I understood what I was experiencing was in fact sexual harassment. A lot of time has passed since it first happened, I felt helpless, I should have fought through my throat closing and stopped it then and there.

This is the first time news stories have made me on edge and made my feelings swirl with my own baggage. As I watch Dr. Ford face all this backlash, I have nothing but compassion and admiration for her. Today she did what I still have not been able to do, she brought her story into the light. I feel some sort of small solidarity with her, even though our experiences were vastly different. My harasser was beloved and held in high esteem in the community we shared. I was in my early thirties, well beyond my teenage years. I tried to address the situation when it started to get to me but I had very few people who would listen to me. I am so very grateful for the ones who did in fact listen and share my outrage. It was the ones who could have helped that chose reputation and wrote me off as sensitive that bothered me. Actually, it still bothers me.

I have been gone from that community for quite awhile now. It was a down right relief to leave and for a long time I have felt like it was all behind me. Yet, here I sit raw with emotion, unable to watch the live coverage of a special hearing. I am angry, I am sad, I am trying to figure out how I can lend my voice to the larger conversation in a way that makes the world a place where my daughter doesn't have to learn how to strategically carry a large bag and place it over her thighs. As I watch people defend a perfect stranger because it was a long time ago, I want to vomit. I am years removed and I can tell you my very mild experience has left me scared and scarred.

Today I am grateful for those initial people who listened and believed me. I am grateful for women who are brave enough to speak up, even face unimaginable threats. I am grateful for the male friends on social media who have spoken up to be clear they believe survivors. I am praying I won't be so caught up in noticing those who didn't speak up.

Cold Feet

A few months before I was set to marry Paul, I had some pretty cold feet. My mind swarmed with questions, it all felt so permanent and as much as I loved him, forever is well infinite. That was almost 14 years ago, we did in fact get married. It is not always amazing because we are humans, but it is often amazing. Big life changes always put me a little on edge, some more than others. I can remember the end of pregnancy and feeling like I would never be ready to take care of a baby, even though I had been taking care of other people's babies for years.

In the past seven years we have made three major moves. While moving always makes me a little anxious those big moves didn't give me cold feet. In January, I was down right excited to be moving back to our home state. We are getting ready to move again just a few months later, we currently live in temporary housing. We opted for a short term lease when we  moved with intentions of buying our first home eventually.

We started the long process of buying our first home a few weeks ago. There is a part of me that is very excited about getting to paint the walls colors of my own choosing. I get excited about having our own yard. This process is not for the faint of heart, it is a roller coaster. I have settled on we aren't even saying we bought a house until closing day when we have the keys in our hands. It makes a lot of sense financially to buy a house, we can build equity, and do all those responsible sounding things. I don't mind being responsible, I have been fairly responsible most of my life. There were probably points in my life where I have been too responsible.

The process is in a lull right now, we are doing a ton of waiting, waiting has given me time to think about what it all means. One of the challenges has been to find a home that is big enough but not too big. I have been adamant that if we buy a home bigger than we need that we must find ways to use that home to serve others. I have also been pretty firm on not buying at the top of our budget because I want to live my life, I do not want to be controlled by home ownership.

Last year at this time we were departing on an epic summer road trip! I told Paul last week, I kind of wish we were taking another epic trip and not wrapped up in this process. We have joked about calling off the whole thing and buying an RV to live in. The thing is my entire life, if the toilet broke and we couldn't fix it ourselves we just called someone and it got fixed, the cost included in our rent. We never had to worry about the roof, the furnace, the plumbing.

Thinking about it all gives me cold feet, ice cold bare foot in the South Dakota winter, cold feet. In about three minutes Elsa is going to be singing up in here. I want to run in the other direction. This is so long term! Can we really afford this? Are we ready? Will we still be able to take awesome road trips? What if my whole life becomes about taking care of a house?

Then I overheard a conversation about how "young" people want so much more today. I chuckled to myself because there I was dreading home ownership and worried about what was too big. Also most of us can't afford what the generation before us did. We are lucky if we can buy a car let alone a condo. Its funny because it seems like people a generation or two older than myself who know we are doing this are more excited than I am. There was a time in my life when I longed to be able to do this home buying thing and now I stand on the threshold lacking enthusiasm.

Lest I sound like I am complaining about an opportunity not everyone gets, allow me expand a bit. I am super anxious about all this and I know that will pass. Perhaps 14 years from now and half way through our mortgage payments I will be full of joy or at least satisfaction. If I set all that aside, I wonder about the theology of home ownership. How will this allow me to serve others more fully? How will it hold me back? Jesus wandered and never had a permanent home. Can I reconcile that if I say I follow Jesus? (Of course he wouldn't have even had my current apartment.)  What do I do with all that stuff Scripture has to say about sharing with others. How can I celebrate my own ability to do this big thing, own a home, while others struggle to feed their own children? It wasn't all that long ago I struggled to feed my own child, with a SNAP card. It wasn't that long ago I lost the respect of people I cared about because my family benefited from the Affordable Care Act while I was a student. It was just a few years ago I didn't know how we were going to pay the rent each month, every month it felt as if it might be the month we had to separate our family in two states just to survive.

At this point at least a few of you are thinking, you pulled yourself out of that place. That is not true, it was through the ordinary miracle of community that we made it through. It had very little to do with us as individuals and nothing at all to do with the proverbial "boot straps" we hear about pulling on. For months we survived because a variety of people with whom we shared community volunteered to help us. People offered to open their homes to us. People paid our rent while I job searched for my first call. They cared for our child and pets when I went on interviews all over the country. It's not to say we didn't do anything to get to this place, it's that we didn't get here all on our own. We had help, a ton of help, help that many people do not have access to.

Now that I am in a more stable place, how do I use these gifts to help others? I fear perhaps that when I hold that key in my hand, when the walls are painted the colors of my own choosing, I might forget where it was I came from. That I will fail to see with fresh eyes those who need help finding their boots. It can be almost paralyzing at times if not overwhelming.

Today I am grateful for all the opportunity, the community, the life, the highs and lows that I get to experience. May God use me to serve the beloved community as they have served me.

Josephine

It has been a year since I had surgery to remove my Fallopian tube along with what was an ectopic pregnancy. It was a decision I made after chemotherapy injections proved adverse and ineffective in removing my pain. Willingly giving up a piece of your reproductive anatomy when you have spent years testing and trying to make it all work is no small decision. I would have done anything for relief, I would have done anything to put this experience behind me. I woke up from surgery and my road to physical recovery was well underway.

Emotional recovery is trickier than physical recovery. I have been deep in grief this year, a grief that is unlike any of the others I have experienced. I am grieving for something so complex it is hard to name. It is a grief that is not welcomed into conversations, no one calls to see how you are doing, people get uncomfortable when you bring it up. I have often felt left alone to deal with the complexities of it all. The first part is trying to figure out what exactly I lost. When I talk about this, I say I lost a pregnancy, not a baby. I say this because there was never a heartbeat, never an embryo, just hormones, placenta, and blood clots. (I saw the images from my surgery.) There is also a strong sense of defeat when after 8 years you finally see that second line appear only to have your heart broken. The last two years of that 8 involved many tests and interventions. Getting to that little second line took hours of testing, hours of the least sexy sex you could ever imagine, and money so much money.

For much of this year I knew I was sad and angry, this grief often feels like it has broken me. I could not put my finger on it and mostly I went it alone (this is not advisable). A few weeks ago I found myself on a retreat, life slowed down enough in those sacred days that I was able to let myself really feel the grief. As the week came to a close, I found myself in a worship service for healing. I sat and asked leaders for prayer for all the brokenness, those were the only words I could muster. My hands held, my head anointed with oil, tears longing to spring forth, I accepted the prayers offered for me. I returned to my seat in the worship circle. I closed my eyes and even though I don't believe in God being geographically "up", I tilted my head back as if looking at the sky.

I let the slow silent tears stream down my face. I remembered early on in the pregnancy when we fluctuated between viable and not viable. As a means of coping we named this situation growing inside me embryo Jo because it could be Joseph or Josephine. In that moment, I let myself see her, she was Josephine. I saw a girl, with my nose and dark hair. I saw Paul's hazel eyes and lighter skin. I watched her grow up, a free spirit but quiet. She loved people and colored pencils. I watched her loved by her sister, running through the same field in Vermont. I saw her and I loved her.

Then I imagined her with my sister in law, Donna, in "heaven". I saw D hold an infant Jo, I know she would love her. Then I saw the rest of my departed family gather. My dad came first, my Grammy, Tim, my Pop-pop, even my dead dogs showed up. I took Jo and I put her in a baptism gown. I blessed her and I handed her to my dad. I saw my dad holding my baby. I saw him as her grandpa. He smiled and it was as if I could feel in the very fiber of my being, his heart leaping with joy. In that moment I don't know who I longed to hold more, in that tender space I allowed myself to remember how very much I miss him. Perhaps this is a survival skill, the pain could easily consume me, swallow me whole, burn me up, it is not meager. Then walking up behind him I saw his best friend, my Uncle Doc, who died recently. He said. "Isn't it great?"

In that moment all the grief that breaks me was present together and there was in that togetherness a sacred joy and the peace which surpasses understanding. I knew that if anyone could take care of my could-have-been-baby, it was these people who loved me far to briefly on this side of life. I can trust them until I can be there, wrapped in the arms of my dad and Jo can finally feel mine. Eventually, I saw Jesus there too. The peace that was there renewed my belief that one day I will know peace again too. Not everyday will feel so heavy as it does now. I wish I could have photographed this transcendent moment with more than my words.

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The next day, I wrote about all this in my journal, and for the first time I ugly cried because I knew what I lost. I lost a potential baby, something the science of a placenta will never quell in my heart. I have felt much lighter since this experience, I have in some ways found a new peace.

I have debated for nearly 6 weeks if I would share this story with anyone aside from those closest to me. It is so unlike anything else I have ever experienced. I wrestled for awhile with what to call this: a dream, a visualization, a vision. I have let go of calling it anything other than a gift.

People ask me what I think heaven is like all the time, it comes with the job. I don't know what heaven will be like. I do not know if indeed I will get to see these beautiful souls again. Sometimes I imagine heaven to be entirely different. When I reflect on these tender sacred moments, I wouldn't mind if heaven included this community and togetherness.

Today I am grateful for the space in worship to focus on my own healing. I am grateful for all the love I have known and will know in this life. I am grateful for this gift that has made grief more bearable. I am grateful for all the women who find themselves being brave in the face of infertility and unimaginable loss, especially the ones who have walked with me and whom I get to walk with. When I started this blog, it was to remind myself that though parenting was hard, I wanted to remain grateful for my LG everyday and I am profoundly grateful for her. Even in this moment as she yells from her room about how silly it is to have to put her laundry away. Especially at 3am when she crawls into my bed and I feel her breath on my face, its never promise, but always a gift.
 

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.

Tired Grace

I seriously don't have time to write this blog. I am so behind on everything, I feel pressure every waking minute to be productive. It has been one hell of a week, well two really. So in the Saturday night chaos that is my life I share with you a photo of my current dining room table.

The pink flamingo table cover is left over from a birthday party three weeks ago that wasn't supposed to even happen in our house. It was supposed to happen at the pool but it was 68 degrees so we threw together an at home beach bash in 12 hours. The cards in the background are screaming at me that the thank you cards from said birthday should have gone out a week ago.

I digress, my open computer and books are all about finishing up tomorrow's sermon which has been pushed to the back burner all week while I was taking care of things like the church wifi, visits, printers etc. There was also an eclipse and the first day of school this week. It has been chaos. The various stacks of books are for different projects I am working on. Researching the reformation for a sermon series, journals, writing projects, books for bulletin prep, some work on a project to further my professional life, work for two organizations I volunteer with (and love) that are getting into the swing of things for the Fall, and that pager for my "side hustle".  I am carrying that thing all weekend because I missed last weekend when I was home for a funeral. It turns out fertility treatment is expensive and that side hustle is helping me pay off some bills. My calendar full to the brim for the next two weeks. Head phones to block out the sounds of all that is happening around me. Bills with newsletter notes on them.

All of this is on my dining room table because somewhere in the shuffle my desk disappeared and I didn't have time to both work and clean today. Let's take a minute to talk about how far behind I am on housework, on Friday I had to rewash the load I started on Monday, there is enough dust in here to declare us a bio hazard, I have some big organizing projects I intended to slowly work on and I am two weeks behind on my schedule that seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess I will move them further into the Fall.

Y'all I am so overwhelmed by all this. I was sitting here angry as all get out at myself that it is Saturday and I spent most of the day on my computer catching up on all the behind work for my full time gig. I wanted to clean up around here and hang out with my family. This is super important right now because my kiddo's biggest concern about back to school was not getting enough family time. It is festival week where we live and I only went down there with her twice. She and Paul have been going with out me to enjoy things while I catch up. Later I know I will hear about this. I will try to explain mommy has to work so we have a place to live while fighting off tears. Most of this stress is because I gave up a week to travel for a death in the family, it was time well spent. When you are the pastor and the only staff person, no one covers any of your work when you are gone, so I am doing two weeks worth of work in one week. Honestly, I had a few hours set aside yesterday afternoon to do some of this work, I dragged it all outside on a nice afternoon (on my day off). As soon as my backside hit the seat, I was interrupted by a conversation that proved to be nothing but hurtful. I should have known better.

My hormones went haywire this week too which has made me achy and tired. It is really hard to have stamina when this happens. Chances are I may have lost another pregnancy in the last two weeks but I'll never know for sure. Last week was emotional with being home with my family who I miss so much, steeped in grief, and seeing a few friends. To hug the people you love after years time is beautiful and happy and sad all at once. To stand with your siblings as they lay to rest their sibling from their dad's side of the family is tremendously heart breaking. I have all sorts of big feelings going on.

Then I learned my Uncle Doc was in hospice care and he died later that day. Having just gotten back from home, I can't turn around and do the trip again. This grief is a new kind of grief. My Uncle Doc was actually not my Uncle, he isn't even related to me, and his name isn't Doc. He was my dad's best friend and my "godfather". My dad didn't call a single person by their real name, and hence Doc. Uncle Doc worked hard these last 18 years to keep my dad alive in spirit. He kept in touch with me sporadically. I visited him when I was in the area. Mostly he would tell me stories about my dad that made him real for me. I don't have too many of my own. In some ways it stirs that grief up all over again because who will tell me the stories now? At our wedding, my Uncle Doc stood in for my dad in the father daughter dance. He must have asked me a thousand times what the name of that song was. Holes in the Floor of Heaven just in case you want to know. It is a lot to process.

The week has held, stress, grief, hormones, the first day of school, the local festival, two jobs, three pets, a kid, a house, a husband, and all that other stuff listed above. (I haven't even mentioned the news cycles and the state of the world). As I sat here at my dining room table mad at myself for not having gotten some of this work done earlier in the week so I could enjoy the day... I started reflecting on all that has happened this week. All the balls I did not drop. How tired I am. The thought occurred to me, well of course I am tired! That is where we get to the point of this whole blog, if I were talking to a friend or congregation member and they had a week or two like this I would tell them they were nuts for even trying to do half of it. I would tell them have grace, the mess will still be there. I really suck at having grace for myself. Maybe just this one time, I can allow myself a little grace. It has been a rough week.

This week I am grateful for my tired grace and knowing this is all only temporary.