Monthly Archives: December 2013

Last week I was invited to lunch with a woman I had never really met other than a passing hello. As my husband is now employed by a church and I have sought and feel a prompting to serve in my own ways, I also feel obligated to stretch socially and it’s not completely comfortable to me.

I am an open book on paper or if we sit down one on one, but in a crowd, a group, a party, I’m a people gazer. I would rather watch and absorb the environment and small-talk is something that is mentally straining to me. (My extrovert husband, the one that makes friends with grocery clerks & restaurant servers, has no idea why it’s hard for me. Opposites attract.)

So there I was, with a lunch invitation I had just said YES to and a phobia of small talk but this didn’t feel small. She had wanted to get to know me. She had reached out to me.

I met Peggy on Tuesday afternoon. She greeted me like she had known me forever. From her cooler, she pulled “the best egg salad sandwich” lovingly hand wrapped in wax paper, a bag of chips, a salted caramel, and soda she had brought for me. Me! We sat in the church fire-side room while my 2-year-old revved his cars along the fireplace and we talked with ease for an hour and five minutes. Somehow she had learned more about me in that hour than some have in…ever… and it surprised me.

“What did you guys talk about?” My husband asked as he walked the little man and I out to the car after my lunch.

I thought for a moment and it struck me, “Wow, everything?! I mean, she knows the outline of my life puzzle: my family, my health, our children, our story.” And within learning all of that about me, she let me know pieces of her and even spoke into my life and things she thought I should pray on. I heard what she said and it’s been mulling inside. I’ve been turning it over and over throughout the last several days, stretching it out like taffy. Tonight I opened a book she has let me borrow called, “Mended: pieces of a life made whole,” by Angie Smith. I ended the first chapter thinking, “that’s nice,” but as soon as I had what seemed like that passing thought, I wanted to cry.

I told Peggy something at lunch that day that I had actually never spoken before because I truly didn’t know I felt the way I told her I did: to blame. That’s where this story begins.

On December 23, 2009 I lost my second baby. A baby I was so looking forward to, so excited for, and preparing to announce on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. That loss took everything I had in me and stonewalled me. In truth, I haven’t felt that loss and cried over it in two years, but I am tonight.

When I think back to December 2009, I can honestly say I felt like I was in a season of on my way to having it all. I had a beautiful son I had so achingly desired to be home with that I stepped out to pursue my own company with one of my best friends all while working full time in the corporate world and my husband worked two jobs. We were working desperately to break free of student debt so we could live more freely, buy a home one day, and have me be at home with our kid(s). I was working hard, my husband was working hard, but we were happy.

So on December 22, out to dinner with my dear friend and business partner and our husbands, I felt the loss begin. I nearly ran into a waiter as I stumbled to the restroom. I told my husband we needed to leave. The Dr. on call was unfriendly at best telling me there was no point in seeing a Dr. because nothing could be done so I should wait to talk to my nurse practitioner in the morning. I sent my husband to work the next day having him drop off our son at daycare and I stayed in my robe. I called the office and told them I would be late. I waited anxiously for my OBGYN’s office to open. It was 8:04am when they confirmed what I knew, that the pregnancy didn’t hold and I fell to the livingroom floor.

We spent the morning in the hospital for blood work. I told my husband to Cancel Christmas. How on earth could I celebrate the BIRTH of Jesus when I was physically losing my baby? It was the most horrendous physical, emotional, and mental loss I could ever go through with no one else who could possibly understand what it felt like with me. When we lose a loved one, we mourn together, when we lose someone no one knows about, like this baby for me, I was all alone in a season that everyone else was singing in.

Like I said, I haven’t thought about this in two years, but what I told Peggy during that lunch was this: losing that baby was MY fault. If I hadn’t worked a full time job AND wanted to start my own business, it wouldn’t have happened.

I don’t feel that way now so to hear that come out of my mouth surprised me. How did I NOT know I had felt that way? I lost more than our baby that day, I lost my ability to feel, chase dreams, be spontaneous, and even laugh. I went entirely dead inside.

I was pregnant with our 2nd baby 4 years ago today. That long since built-on-top-of memory struck me tonight.

SO MANY THINGS STRUCK ME TONIGHT.

God did bless me with a healthy pregnancy in 2011.  And our 3rd baby but second child had the same due date: August 11.

Today I have 2 beautiful and healthy boys + an incredible husband. This loss was a thing of the past. I was ready to have the kids down to bed and enjoy some television with my man, God had other plans. Turns out He’s at work in me on something I thought was mended….

Photo by: ara133photography on etsy

I’ve always loved the rain. Down to the core of me I love what it does, how it feels, and the way it sounds. Rain gives reason to my love of stillness, grants purpose to my preference of solitude, and cultivates a womb in which I can live both productively and peacefully.

I love that rain makes things more magical and unexpected: I drive slower, I connect with the depth of the space I’m in, I hear the echoes of that which it strikes, and while others retreat from it, I escape with it. Rain is my companion.

Rain and sun are all I have ever experienced. Decembers on the coast of California yield sandal weather, beach picnics, and fresh cracked crab on the pier. When the rain flutters past, you can see the ocean come alive, the smoke come from chimneys, and the occasional couple choose to stand and embrace in it (my husband and I were that couple when we were dating. I think we should be again…) Rain and Sun became my routine.

Until now.

Until now I have never known true seasons. Seasons were lost in an endless summer year after year and I always have craved a little bit more. A few more opportunities to shift gears, a chance to reflect on the joy that moment of time held and welcome the moment ahead.

When “the snow” first started to fall, I was like a child. Lit up inside and ecstatic at the sight. While I photographed and debated what was and wasn’t snow and learned terms of what a dusting vs. snow is, I marveled at it. Thirty one and I felt like I was five learning new terms, calling things by the wrong name not knowing I was wrong while others would have thought it was cute (had I been five). It was magic! I stood in my window, tuned out Sesame Street, and tuned into the sound of snow: silence.

And while everyone else was still, I came alive! I ran up the stairs to pull out the “snow gear.” I draped the babes in “long johns” and “snow bibs” and mittens and “snow boots.” The street was hushed, there was no pavement in sight, the trees were wrapped in winter white and we were alive with noise in a quiet world of solitude. It was there I said, “sweet dreams” to one season and, “good morning” to another. With my heart on fire, my mind capturing this moment for all time in the deepest place of my heart, I felt that happiness that comes with new experience embrace me…again.