I'm remembering today another reason why I had quit blogging. When I'm frustrated about work, I can't blog about it. That would be stupid.
And yet those thoughts that eat at me are usually what I let spill out onto the blog.
I must stop. An unpublishable draft has already been written and rejected for this evening.
"Underdog," by Spoon is tonight's song.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
It Has Begun
My school year has officially started. I have now been back to work for two days. So far, so good.
Yesterday was fun. Our librarian and technology person (her title is "ITS," whatever that stands for) set us up on our very own Amazing Race, like the TV show. It was a technology race. We were assigned teams and sent all over the school to do various tasks with various educational web-based resources like Google Earth, and Animoto, and other multimedia programs like Audacity. We have all these tools available, but we don't always know how to use them in the classroom. The two awesome ladies in charge of this race had very specific instructions at each station. At the end of each task was a matrix code that had to be scanned with a smart phone to reveal the next task. My team was awesome. It was me and our two lovely theater teachers. We won!! It was great!
The afternoon was spent in a fine arts team meeting. Not quite as exciting as the Amazing Race, but it was all stuff we had to get through.
Today we started in a fine arts meeting again. There was more we had to discuss and we had some time to get our websites in order and things like that. Then we got to do some team building in the afternoon. Our team activity was to rent a party barge and go play in the lake. That was really nice. We all decided it would be a "no photo zone" so that we could all feel comfortable in swim suits. There was a slide on the boat from the upper deck into the water.
I have been swimming three times this week, all for very long periods of 3 hours or more. I am more tan than I have ever been in my adult life. As a kid I was very dark every summer, back before mothers really worried about UV protection. My girls are also getting pretty tan, even though they've been wearing SPF 50. They have been swimming every day this week. I think they're growing gills.
I still haven't recovered from the fatigue of Waterpark Wednesday. I just haven't gone to bed early enough. And I don't get to sleep in tomorrow. I have a meeting I must attend... All I want to do is sleep in. It will have to wait until next Saturday. *Sigh*
This evening, since dinner, I've been a busy little bee, working on my lesson plan template in Excel, going through the school calendar and marking all the early release days, and school holidays so that hopefully I won't fall behind in turning in my plans. I guess I should consider that a goal for the year: to be more diligent with lesson plan writing, filling in more details than just the songs to be rehearsed. It will make the other goals I have already set a little easier by making me write down the choral examples I will play every week, and the sight-reading games I will have the students play with my rhythm cards.
Today we had music playing on the party barge all day. What would you expect from the fine arts team? Before all that, though, I had Michael Buble's song, "I Just Haven't Met You Yet," stuck in my head. I mentioned that to the fine arts folks I was waiting with as we gathered to take off for our outing, and one of them pulled out an iPhone and played it for me. It was a very satisfying moment! That song makes me feel happy. :o)
Yesterday was fun. Our librarian and technology person (her title is "ITS," whatever that stands for) set us up on our very own Amazing Race, like the TV show. It was a technology race. We were assigned teams and sent all over the school to do various tasks with various educational web-based resources like Google Earth, and Animoto, and other multimedia programs like Audacity. We have all these tools available, but we don't always know how to use them in the classroom. The two awesome ladies in charge of this race had very specific instructions at each station. At the end of each task was a matrix code that had to be scanned with a smart phone to reveal the next task. My team was awesome. It was me and our two lovely theater teachers. We won!! It was great!
The afternoon was spent in a fine arts team meeting. Not quite as exciting as the Amazing Race, but it was all stuff we had to get through.
Today we started in a fine arts meeting again. There was more we had to discuss and we had some time to get our websites in order and things like that. Then we got to do some team building in the afternoon. Our team activity was to rent a party barge and go play in the lake. That was really nice. We all decided it would be a "no photo zone" so that we could all feel comfortable in swim suits. There was a slide on the boat from the upper deck into the water.
I have been swimming three times this week, all for very long periods of 3 hours or more. I am more tan than I have ever been in my adult life. As a kid I was very dark every summer, back before mothers really worried about UV protection. My girls are also getting pretty tan, even though they've been wearing SPF 50. They have been swimming every day this week. I think they're growing gills.
I still haven't recovered from the fatigue of Waterpark Wednesday. I just haven't gone to bed early enough. And I don't get to sleep in tomorrow. I have a meeting I must attend... All I want to do is sleep in. It will have to wait until next Saturday. *Sigh*
This evening, since dinner, I've been a busy little bee, working on my lesson plan template in Excel, going through the school calendar and marking all the early release days, and school holidays so that hopefully I won't fall behind in turning in my plans. I guess I should consider that a goal for the year: to be more diligent with lesson plan writing, filling in more details than just the songs to be rehearsed. It will make the other goals I have already set a little easier by making me write down the choral examples I will play every week, and the sight-reading games I will have the students play with my rhythm cards.
Today we had music playing on the party barge all day. What would you expect from the fine arts team? Before all that, though, I had Michael Buble's song, "I Just Haven't Met You Yet," stuck in my head. I mentioned that to the fine arts folks I was waiting with as we gathered to take off for our outing, and one of them pulled out an iPhone and played it for me. It was a very satisfying moment! That song makes me feel happy. :o)
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Waterpark FUN
I took the girls today. I was alone with the girls. I locked my car key in the car. Didn't realize that had happened until I was thinking about it after our first ride. And then we were already in line for the second ride when I realized I really didn't remember where the key was at all... Uh oh.
After that ride, we had to go back to our stuff on the table and look through it. I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't there, and I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to tell where it was when I got to the car that I was pretty freaked out. Sure enough, there it was, in the ignition.
In case you didn't know, frazzled mommies make mistakes.
I did such a good job this morning of packing food for the three of us, getting our clean clothes ready so we'd have something dry to wear home, once we found a parking spot (and a good one at that!) getting the girls out of the car with all that stuff I had packed. I missed one very important detail. Oops.
Since I discovered my mistake so early in the day, I went to the guest relations booth and they gave me a card for a local "pop-a-lock" company. I gave them a call, fed the girls lunch, and the whole thing was over and done relatively early in the day. My car did not sit there as a thief's dream target for very long, and when we were ready to leave, we didn't have to wait on the pop-a-lock guy to come. Another bonus, my parking spot was so fabulous that it wasn't a gigantic pain in the derriere to keep going back and forth from the park to the car. It was literally in the fifth space from the entrance of the park. And when I found it, it was the last available spot in the lot. Thank you, God!
Hehe... I glanced up at the title of this post, and from what I've said so far, that FUN looks sarcastic. I didn't mean it that way when I first typed it. I promise!
The rest of the day after lunch was really wonderful. There were a couple of moments when the kids started complaining. It's really hard to listen to complaining kids anywhere, anytime, but when you're going WAY out of your way to give them a good time, it's so much harder. At one point I told the girls that I didn't want to hear any more, and if they had complaining thoughts not to let them come out of their heads and into their mouths. It was a pretty good parenting moment. Another mom behind us in the line said she was going to use that sentence. And the kids stopped complaining. It actually worked!
Later, in another line, I made a comment to Big Girl about being so tired maybe she should drive us home. I'm afraid she didn't get that I was joking. She was concerned by that comment because she doesn't know how to drive. I wouldn't have let her anyway. She's only eight years old.
This park is big enough that there are two different parts of the park that you ride a tram to get from one to the other. One time on the tram, we were some of the last poeple on and it was pretty crowded. We couldn't find three seats together. The girls sat in the back together and I sat about five rows ahead of them by myself with a stranger next to me. I turned back and said, "Hey girls, I'm going to get there before you do." Big Girl didn't miss a beat. She replied, "Mom, it's not a race." That got a chuckle from the other adults around who were listening to us.
There's one ride that goes off the top of a building. You ride these little mats down the slide, laying on your belly. Little Girl rode that ride last year when she was just five years old. This year she wanted to do it again, and so did I. When it's just the three of us together, and two out of three want to do something, all three of us have to do it. That's the rule. Otherwise we'd get separated, and that's just not acceptable. So anyway, Big Girl got up to the top of this ride, mat in hand, and at the last minute, she chickened out. I leaned over (totally violating the rule about staying behind the line until it's your turn), grabbed her hands and put them on the mat, and gave her a nudge down the slide. When I got down there (I was next in line behind her), she was raving about how fun it was. That kid is an adrenaline junkie if ever there was one. But she's afraid of heights, and I think that's what got to her there at the top looking down the slide. We have these little moments when she has a hard time trusting me, and in the end, she learns that I was right, and I can be trusted. I know what she'll like. She can trust me if I tell her she's going to like it.
I'm trying to remember if there were any other memorable moments I won't want to forget... There's probably something, but nothing is coming to mind. I'm TIRED. I'm the kind of tired where you can feel it in every body part you know of, and then some. I think even my toenails are tired.
All day long, once again, I had "Psalm Twenty" in my head. I even sang it a few times as we'd float through the tunnels on the rides. Good stuff.
After that ride, we had to go back to our stuff on the table and look through it. I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't there, and I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to tell where it was when I got to the car that I was pretty freaked out. Sure enough, there it was, in the ignition.
In case you didn't know, frazzled mommies make mistakes.
I did such a good job this morning of packing food for the three of us, getting our clean clothes ready so we'd have something dry to wear home, once we found a parking spot (and a good one at that!) getting the girls out of the car with all that stuff I had packed. I missed one very important detail. Oops.
Since I discovered my mistake so early in the day, I went to the guest relations booth and they gave me a card for a local "pop-a-lock" company. I gave them a call, fed the girls lunch, and the whole thing was over and done relatively early in the day. My car did not sit there as a thief's dream target for very long, and when we were ready to leave, we didn't have to wait on the pop-a-lock guy to come. Another bonus, my parking spot was so fabulous that it wasn't a gigantic pain in the derriere to keep going back and forth from the park to the car. It was literally in the fifth space from the entrance of the park. And when I found it, it was the last available spot in the lot. Thank you, God!
Hehe... I glanced up at the title of this post, and from what I've said so far, that FUN looks sarcastic. I didn't mean it that way when I first typed it. I promise!
The rest of the day after lunch was really wonderful. There were a couple of moments when the kids started complaining. It's really hard to listen to complaining kids anywhere, anytime, but when you're going WAY out of your way to give them a good time, it's so much harder. At one point I told the girls that I didn't want to hear any more, and if they had complaining thoughts not to let them come out of their heads and into their mouths. It was a pretty good parenting moment. Another mom behind us in the line said she was going to use that sentence. And the kids stopped complaining. It actually worked!
Later, in another line, I made a comment to Big Girl about being so tired maybe she should drive us home. I'm afraid she didn't get that I was joking. She was concerned by that comment because she doesn't know how to drive. I wouldn't have let her anyway. She's only eight years old.
This park is big enough that there are two different parts of the park that you ride a tram to get from one to the other. One time on the tram, we were some of the last poeple on and it was pretty crowded. We couldn't find three seats together. The girls sat in the back together and I sat about five rows ahead of them by myself with a stranger next to me. I turned back and said, "Hey girls, I'm going to get there before you do." Big Girl didn't miss a beat. She replied, "Mom, it's not a race." That got a chuckle from the other adults around who were listening to us.
There's one ride that goes off the top of a building. You ride these little mats down the slide, laying on your belly. Little Girl rode that ride last year when she was just five years old. This year she wanted to do it again, and so did I. When it's just the three of us together, and two out of three want to do something, all three of us have to do it. That's the rule. Otherwise we'd get separated, and that's just not acceptable. So anyway, Big Girl got up to the top of this ride, mat in hand, and at the last minute, she chickened out. I leaned over (totally violating the rule about staying behind the line until it's your turn), grabbed her hands and put them on the mat, and gave her a nudge down the slide. When I got down there (I was next in line behind her), she was raving about how fun it was. That kid is an adrenaline junkie if ever there was one. But she's afraid of heights, and I think that's what got to her there at the top looking down the slide. We have these little moments when she has a hard time trusting me, and in the end, she learns that I was right, and I can be trusted. I know what she'll like. She can trust me if I tell her she's going to like it.
I'm trying to remember if there were any other memorable moments I won't want to forget... There's probably something, but nothing is coming to mind. I'm TIRED. I'm the kind of tired where you can feel it in every body part you know of, and then some. I think even my toenails are tired.
All day long, once again, I had "Psalm Twenty" in my head. I even sang it a few times as we'd float through the tunnels on the rides. Good stuff.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Last Days of Summer
This week is jam-packed full of busy. Most of it is fun.
My girls and I went to visit my sister-in-law and her family Sunday night and spent the day together yesterday. The four little girls (ages 4.5, 6, 6.5 and 8.5) played together better than ever. Monday morning we took them swimming for nearly 3 hours, and that was a blast. It was a joy for my sister-in-law and I to listen to them play in the bedroom from our conversation in the living room. She and I have been friends since we were 6th graders, and it's always amazing to get together and look at how we are related now, with blood relatives in common, and still friends who love one another.
Today I have a doctor appointment to see my knee doctor. My knee has clicked for over two years now, and I'm finally having it looked at this summer by a specialist. This is the third time I'm seeing him this summer. I saw my general doc about it two years ago, and he ordered x-rays and then I never heard from him about what was up. On my first visit to the knee doctor, he had my x-rays from two years ago and showed them to me and told me what was going on. He ordered physical therapy, which I did for a month. Then I went to him again after that month, and he stopped the PT order, and we're going to see today how I've been doing on my own.
My kids get to hang out with their Nanna while I go to the doctor. My mom is so great to help me out with things like this. It's not that my kids can't handle going to the doctor with me. They went the last time. It's that she loves them and doesn't want them to have to go, and she loves me and wants to offer me the luxury of not having to take them and then being free to get other things done afterward. I can't say enough about how wonderful my mother is to me. She doesn't tell me how to run my life, but she steps in to help me when I ask for help. She'll probably teach Big Girl a piano lesson and take them both swimming afterward. Day two in a row of swimming for them. Fun!
Then the plan for tomorrow is for Daisy to go to the vet to be spayed. That's been on the books since June. While she's not in the house, us girls will go back to our favorite water park for the entire day. This is the same one where my choirs go after they sing a contest (which my tiny choir has won "Best in Class" for two years running!!). They give me coupons to come back with my family for very cheap. Tomorrow the three of us will get into the park for $20 plus tax. Tickets are usually in the neighborhood of $40 per person. So that's day three in a row of swimming for the girls.
Thursday... I start work. Already.
I think I'm ready. Last week I started digging through my music library to pick out pieces I thought would work for my choirs. It's a crap shoot at this point, since I don't know who is in my classes, but I can at least pull out pieces that interest me so that when I go to make real selections, I have much less to look through. I have four envelopes set aside, one for each of my choirs that I will direct, and then a miscellaneous stack of pieces that I like and want to use, but I don't know which choir would be best suited by the pieces... It's so complicated. I'm choosing the songs that will be stuck in my head, and the heads of my students. Whatever we start the year singing will likely be the songs at the end of the year will be requested for nostalgia's sake. It happens that way every year.
I don't think I'm ready to deal with the schedule of going back to work. The work itself is not my hangup. Getting up before 7:30 EVERY DAY will be a shock to my system for a while. Now that I think about it, getting up at 6:00 is a shock to my system all school-year long. My body wakes up naturally around 7:30 or 8:00. It's been nice to get up when I feel like it for these months. It makes me sad that it has to end. Again, here I am being a big fat baby.
So here's to making the most of what little time is left!
The song in my head is one that hardly anyone will know, so I figured out how to post it to this blog so you can hear it yourself. It's "Psalm 20," by Eternity. You won't find gems like this on youtube!
Edit to reflect the rest of Tuesday, August 9, 2011:
I need to say a bit more about this song. I have had it in my head since I woke up this morning. As I was driving around today (which was quite a bit more than usual), I would start to sing it, and be brought to tears. There's been something weighing heavy on my heart (I'm not quite ready to blog about it), and the pricks of conviction would come every time I'd sing it. It's powerful stuff. Additionally, it's a song in 6/8 meter, which is my all-time favorite meter, with some duples thrown in for variety on the chorus. Love it. I can't sit still and listen to it. Even if it does have a cheesy synthesizer at the beginning. When I was singing in the car, I had left my iPod charging at home, so I was just hearing it in my head, and only sometimes was I singing melody. :o)
My girls and I went to visit my sister-in-law and her family Sunday night and spent the day together yesterday. The four little girls (ages 4.5, 6, 6.5 and 8.5) played together better than ever. Monday morning we took them swimming for nearly 3 hours, and that was a blast. It was a joy for my sister-in-law and I to listen to them play in the bedroom from our conversation in the living room. She and I have been friends since we were 6th graders, and it's always amazing to get together and look at how we are related now, with blood relatives in common, and still friends who love one another.
Today I have a doctor appointment to see my knee doctor. My knee has clicked for over two years now, and I'm finally having it looked at this summer by a specialist. This is the third time I'm seeing him this summer. I saw my general doc about it two years ago, and he ordered x-rays and then I never heard from him about what was up. On my first visit to the knee doctor, he had my x-rays from two years ago and showed them to me and told me what was going on. He ordered physical therapy, which I did for a month. Then I went to him again after that month, and he stopped the PT order, and we're going to see today how I've been doing on my own.
My kids get to hang out with their Nanna while I go to the doctor. My mom is so great to help me out with things like this. It's not that my kids can't handle going to the doctor with me. They went the last time. It's that she loves them and doesn't want them to have to go, and she loves me and wants to offer me the luxury of not having to take them and then being free to get other things done afterward. I can't say enough about how wonderful my mother is to me. She doesn't tell me how to run my life, but she steps in to help me when I ask for help. She'll probably teach Big Girl a piano lesson and take them both swimming afterward. Day two in a row of swimming for them. Fun!
Then the plan for tomorrow is for Daisy to go to the vet to be spayed. That's been on the books since June. While she's not in the house, us girls will go back to our favorite water park for the entire day. This is the same one where my choirs go after they sing a contest (which my tiny choir has won "Best in Class" for two years running!!). They give me coupons to come back with my family for very cheap. Tomorrow the three of us will get into the park for $20 plus tax. Tickets are usually in the neighborhood of $40 per person. So that's day three in a row of swimming for the girls.
Thursday... I start work. Already.
I think I'm ready. Last week I started digging through my music library to pick out pieces I thought would work for my choirs. It's a crap shoot at this point, since I don't know who is in my classes, but I can at least pull out pieces that interest me so that when I go to make real selections, I have much less to look through. I have four envelopes set aside, one for each of my choirs that I will direct, and then a miscellaneous stack of pieces that I like and want to use, but I don't know which choir would be best suited by the pieces... It's so complicated. I'm choosing the songs that will be stuck in my head, and the heads of my students. Whatever we start the year singing will likely be the songs at the end of the year will be requested for nostalgia's sake. It happens that way every year.
I don't think I'm ready to deal with the schedule of going back to work. The work itself is not my hangup. Getting up before 7:30 EVERY DAY will be a shock to my system for a while. Now that I think about it, getting up at 6:00 is a shock to my system all school-year long. My body wakes up naturally around 7:30 or 8:00. It's been nice to get up when I feel like it for these months. It makes me sad that it has to end. Again, here I am being a big fat baby.
So here's to making the most of what little time is left!
The song in my head is one that hardly anyone will know, so I figured out how to post it to this blog so you can hear it yourself. It's "Psalm 20," by Eternity. You won't find gems like this on youtube!
Edit to reflect the rest of Tuesday, August 9, 2011:
I need to say a bit more about this song. I have had it in my head since I woke up this morning. As I was driving around today (which was quite a bit more than usual), I would start to sing it, and be brought to tears. There's been something weighing heavy on my heart (I'm not quite ready to blog about it), and the pricks of conviction would come every time I'd sing it. It's powerful stuff. Additionally, it's a song in 6/8 meter, which is my all-time favorite meter, with some duples thrown in for variety on the chorus. Love it. I can't sit still and listen to it. Even if it does have a cheesy synthesizer at the beginning. When I was singing in the car, I had left my iPod charging at home, so I was just hearing it in my head, and only sometimes was I singing melody. :o)
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The Days are Few
I'm looking ahead to starting school next week. Teachers go back Thursday in our district. That means I have a single week, a mere seven days, of sleeping in, of freedom, left. In the week to come, I have made plans for Monday, I have a doctor appointment on Tuesday, and more plans on Wednesday. Then Thursday, back to real life. For the rest of this week, my main goal is to get as much fun out of it as possible with my kids. Most of what's in the plan for next week is fun stuff that they will enjoy (aside from the doctor appointment).
I have done some preliminary work that I hope will make the school year run more smoothly. I have started digging through my single-copy music file, and pulling pieces I'd like to use with my choirs. I have three envelopes set aside for each of the choirs I direct. I got from A to I in my file before I ran out of gas on that project on Monday. I have the rest of the day today and tomorrow to get that done. It seems like a monumental task. I doubt I'll finish. (Realism is overtaking the optimism.)
Right now I'm waiting for my firstborn daughter to finish taking a shower. Then we have some grocery shopping to do. I think my days of going grocery shopping without my kids is pretty much over. I had worked things out last school year that my kids stayed at the YMCA after school program at their school, so I'd go shopping before picking them up. This year we're not doing the Y, and I'll be picking them up after school each day, and dragging them to the store with me. The good news though is that they aren't babies, and soon I'll be able to send them on errands for me within the store. "You go get this and you get that, and meet me back here in 3 minutes." We're not there yet, but we will be soon.
Hubby and I have been watching "Arrested Development" on Netflix streaming. This started a discussion about various cast members, including Portia de Rossi who married in the mid-1990's to obtain legal working status in the US. That thought led me to thinking about Green Card, a movie starring Gérard Depardieu, whose name is mentioned in the Weird Al song, "Genius in France," (at about the 6:00 mark). That's how my brain rattled around from "Arrested Development" to "Genius in France," which was the song in my head last night.
I have done some preliminary work that I hope will make the school year run more smoothly. I have started digging through my single-copy music file, and pulling pieces I'd like to use with my choirs. I have three envelopes set aside for each of the choirs I direct. I got from A to I in my file before I ran out of gas on that project on Monday. I have the rest of the day today and tomorrow to get that done. It seems like a monumental task. I doubt I'll finish. (Realism is overtaking the optimism.)
Right now I'm waiting for my firstborn daughter to finish taking a shower. Then we have some grocery shopping to do. I think my days of going grocery shopping without my kids is pretty much over. I had worked things out last school year that my kids stayed at the YMCA after school program at their school, so I'd go shopping before picking them up. This year we're not doing the Y, and I'll be picking them up after school each day, and dragging them to the store with me. The good news though is that they aren't babies, and soon I'll be able to send them on errands for me within the store. "You go get this and you get that, and meet me back here in 3 minutes." We're not there yet, but we will be soon.
Hubby and I have been watching "Arrested Development" on Netflix streaming. This started a discussion about various cast members, including Portia de Rossi who married in the mid-1990's to obtain legal working status in the US. That thought led me to thinking about Green Card, a movie starring Gérard Depardieu, whose name is mentioned in the Weird Al song, "Genius in France," (at about the 6:00 mark). That's how my brain rattled around from "Arrested Development" to "Genius in France," which was the song in my head last night.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The letter I wrote to baby #2 back in Nov. 2004
I've been looking through my facebook notes and deleting ones that were duplicated here. This one wasn't, and I thought it was blog-worthy.
___________________________________________________
November 16, 2004
Dear Baby,
You never got a chance to know me, but I’m your mother. I carried you for your short life of only six weeks. I was the one who saw the tiny flicker of your heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and I may be the only person who truly misses you.
From the day I knew you were inside me, I loved you. I had dreams for you. Your sister would have been just over two years old when you were to be born. I was already envisioning a life as a stay at home mom with the two of you. I hoped you would be a girl. In my heart I’ve always thought of you as Katie. You were supposed to fit into all of your big sister’s clothes, being born in the same season. You and your cousin would have always been right about the same age. This Christmas was to be your first Christmas, right along with your cousin. It was supposed to be so much fun.
But all that ended April 18th, when I lost you forever. I don’t know why. All I know is that you weren’t growing like you should have been when we did get to peek at you at that ultrasound. They didn’t tell me that. Hindsight being what it is, it’s plain to see that you weren’t going to make it.
So since you’re already there with God, could you ask him why you didn’t have the chance to live? Could you find out for me what all this was about? Why did I have to go through the pain of losing you, someone I had never met? When will I be through mourning your death? How could I love someone so deeply whose face I’d never even laid eyes on? Why must I go through all this alone?
I guess I don’t really expect answers to any of my questions. That’s not how it works. What happens is that God tells us in the Bible that He knows what’s best for us, and that He loves us, and we just have to trust that He’s telling the truth when things like this happen. When we don’t understand the specifics of the pain, or the problems, we go back to the principles that He’s taught us through the years, and those are the closest things to answers that we will have until we get where you are now, and can ask Him face to face.
Since I’m on the subject, let’s see what God has to say about this.
Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Before the beginning of time, God knew about you. He knew before I was born that I would carry you, love you, and lose you. He knew, even planned my current pain. And yet, He says that His plans are not to harm me. He plans that through this I will still have hope and a future. I can see that, sort of, playing out right now. I already mentioned your big sister. Well, you now have a little sister. She wouldn’t be inside me right now if you had lived. Her life started just two months after yours ended. Early ultrasounds indicated that she was healthy. In fact looking at the pictures of you and her side by side, the contrast is remarkable. I have hope for the future in that. But there is hope also in facing that the pain I’ve felt over losing you hasn’t been the end of my life. There were times when the only thing keeping me going was your big sister and her need for a mommy. I’m the only one she’s got, so I had to get out of bed and take care of her. That’s not the case anymore. I’m not sad all the time. I almost feel bad putting this in a letter to you, but there are days when I don’t think about you at all. I used to be acutely aware of your absence every day with a pang in my heart. As time has gone on, more time passes between my thoughts of you. It doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you, or that I didn’t love you. There’s one little girl here now who needs my attention, and there’s another on the way who I’m loving and thinking about in the ways I loved you and thought about you. All that’s to say life goes on, and God’s word indicates that it’s a good thing to go on.
Deuteronomy 31:8
“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."
No matter how alone I may feel, I am not going through this truly alone. I may look around me and not see anyone else in tears of mourning over your tiny life, but I am never alone. Besides the Lord being with me, there are hundreds of women whose hearts ache for their tiny babies that died just the way you did. Their pain is just like mine. So many women I never knew had lost babies have come to me in my grief to try to help me. That seems to have subsided quite a bit since your little sister is on the way. I’m sure that some day I’ll be the one to go to another woman who is hurting and share in her pain. I know how she hurts. I know how her dreams have been crushed. That verse of scripture also speaks about having fear. That’s something that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, especially before I found out about this new baby. I was terrified of getting pregnant again. I didn’t want to go through this again. I was about ready to give up entirely on having any more children because I didn’t have a guarantee from God that this wouldn’t happen again. Then I was expecting. Before I could see the ultrasounds, hear her heartbeat, and know that everything was going well with her, I had fear that I would lose her the way I lost you. I guess I still have some fear. I never had any of these feelings when I was expecting my first baby. I just trusted that everything was going to be fine. In the four months I have until this baby is supposed to be born, I know, intellectually, that many things could go wrong. I am not guaranteed a healthy baby just because I’ve carried one for five months. The key to getting past that, besides noting in scripture where it says not to fear, is the knowledge that even if the worst happens, I won’t be alone, and that there is still a future for me. God’s guarantees are not healthy children, or a pain free life. He promises that no matter what, we can trust Him with everything we have, and everything we are. At the end of the day, that has to be enough. That’s all we’ve got.
I love you, and I miss you. I know you’re now with God, and that’s some comfort to me. While you’re there, get to know your Great Granddaddy Doc. From what I’ve heard, he was a pretty neat guy.
Love,
Mom
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Since losing this baby, I've had more practice at grieving. My grandfather died in January of 2007, and my father-in-law died in January of 2008. In each of those situations, the heartache of losing this baby was dredged back to the surface, and I went through all of the stages of reconciling the truth of what happened with God's goodness. There were times, especially after losing my father-in-law, that I thought I would never again be able to say, "God is good even though this happened."
A friend of mine, another choir director from a middle school in my district, has just lost her baby last week. He was full term and born alive. I don't know how long he lived after he was born, but it wasn't long. Not even a day. I can only imagine the heartache she is feeling. Please join me in praying for her. Her body is still recovering from pregnancy and the birth. I'm sure her arms are aching to hold her baby just one more time.
Living in a fallen world is no fun. I long for heaven when I will be reunited with my baby, my Pawpaw and the sweetest father-in-law anyone could imagine. Pain will be history.
Just as a matter of wrapping up the story of Baby #2, my heart wasn't healed until my Little Girl was 10 months old. My sister-in-law was due with her first baby two days behind Baby #2. It was probably 4 or 5 years before I could look at my niece and not be reminded of Baby #2. There was a definite point where I could say it didn't break my heart to think about this, or even to talk about it, and that's when I think my heart had been healed.
About 3 or 4 years later, one of my best friends experienced a miscarriage. For her it was baby #3. Walking that road with her was a healing experience for me. I think she and I went through our miscarriages for each others' sakes, only I didn't know it at the time that I was going there for her. If I help anyone else for the rest of my life, it's just gravy. That experience has served its purpose.
Well, now I'll delete this note from my facebook page. It's preserved.
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