Flowers on the wall: a trip down memory lane

I love being a Mom, but I also love being an aunt, and I became an aunt before I became a mother.  This week, I was privileged to welcome a new niece into the world, and I was able to go visit my sister and her husband in the hospital.  It was the same hospital where Gideon was delivered, and there were a few moments that hit me hard, and made me stop to breathe deeply so I could keep my emotions under control.

In some ways, it was really hard to go down the same halls.  The chapel at the hospital is called Hope Chapel, and as we walked past it, I remembered spending time there, hoping and praying and yearning first of all for my Gideon to miraculously recover, but second of all to have the faith and strength to handle whatever was to come. I spent time there drowning in an overwhelming whirlwind of feelings: confusion, worry, self doubt, and also hope and comfort.  I tried to sing hymns, and was so overcome that I couldn't, so I just read them and felt them and cried.  I knew when I was there that God heard my prayers, and felt comfort knowing that He had a plan for me.  In my experience, Hope Chapel is an appropriate name.

Until I visited my new niece, I had forgotten about the pictures of flowers on the walls in the labor and delivery and the maternity area.  I love gardening: to me planting seeds, bulbs, or small plants and watching them grow and produce fruits is a miracle.  I love spring flowers, especially flowers that come from bulbs.  (Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, allium, anemones...you name it.)  To me, spring flowers are significant: signifying new life and new birth.  Every room that I was in when I was at the hospital (I was in 3, plus the one my sister was in) had pictures of bulb type flowers on the wall.

It will help you understand this post, if you go back and read my post from last April about spring bulbs and flowers, where I quote my late sister-in-law's blog.  When she wrote it, she was being torn apart by cancer, and created an amazing post about how she realized her body was like a bulb that would one day be resurrected to a beautiful flower.  So to me, the spring flowers not only signify new life in the "newborn baby" sense of the word, but also in the "resurrection" sense.  Those pictures of flowers reminded me that if Gideon did not live, he'd be resurrected.  His body was under so much stress; due to the blockage from his kidneys to his bladder, his kidneys were HUGE and full of fluid and toxins that would normally be filtered out of his body.  They were damaged to a level of not being able to function, and his lungs were vastly underdeveloped because his kidneys had been taking up so much space in his body.  It would have taken a HUGE miracle for him to have lived any type of normal life....but that's just it.  The miracle didn't happen, but it will.  That's what the resurrection will do for Gideon, it will be the miracle that gives him a healthy body that can run and jump and play and cry out loud and pee.  The flowers on the wall were a reminder of that...and also that my sister in law on the other side would be with Gideon, along with many other loved ones who have left this mortal life ahead of me.

This time, I got to walk down the halls carrying my baby in an infant carrier, and I got to leave and take my baby with me, unlike last time, when I went home from the hospital with no baby.  Miri brings so much healing and comfort to my heart, she is a wonderful baby, and I treasure the moments I have with her so much more dearly now than I would have without experiencing the loss of a baby, but I still miss Gideon.  I want to know him and play with him, and I wish Miri could have known him as a big brother.  I treasure all my loved ones so dearly, and am much more grateful for the time I have to be with them. 

Remembering my time at the U of U hospital, I also remembered the overwhelming feelings of love and support that I felt.  Friends and family were praying for us, visiting us, cleaning for us, cooking for us, caring for our other children for us, and reaching out to us in countless other kind ways, and I just felt so loved.  When I visited my sister and her new baby, I wanted to share that love forward, to my new niece and to everyone around me.  Even though that hospital has many sad memories for me, it also holds tender, sweet memories and deep feelings, and it was a wonderful (and hard) experience to revisit them, and also to make new ones and share in a special time with my sister, her husband, and their newborn.

Life Lessons from Motherhood: untangling a slinky

In the typical, weird me fashion, I learned a profound lesson by watching and helping my children play this week. 

I have a love-hate relationship with slinkies.  They're fun to play with, and they do some terrific scientific demonstrations of waves.  Slinkies on stairs are pretty awesome, and they feel pretty cool in your hands and are somewhat mesmerizing.  This euphoric awesomeness can quickly be destroyed by shaking a slinky like a dog and tangling it up into a nearly unsolvable 3-D puzzle...which inevitably happens when my younger children play with one.  My 5 year old has a  particularly cute way of bringing me a mess of a slinky and saying "I'm sorry, Mom." The last time he did this, I murmured to myself as I started unwinding and figuring out the complex puzzle that he had created with his random, crazy, shaking way of playing with the slinky.  I knew the slinky meant a lot to him, but I still debated about throwing it away, because of the amount of time it would take to fix it.  I was frustrated with having to untangle it (again), and I said a quick prayer that I'd be able to somehow make use of the time I was spending on the slinky for other good things.  BAM! Inspiration hit.

I thought about how we are all like slinkies.  Each of us has a purpose, a plan.  We come in different shapes, sizes, colors and capacities, but we can all do some pretty nifty stuff...but not if we're randomly going every which way, running here and there and being completely scattered by this and that whim.  We have to pursue goals, we NEED to make plans and attempt to follow through with them.  Not that we have to have everything under perfect control, or completely organized all the time...sometimes we're going to drop the ball (or slinky) and it's still going to be fine.  Maybe a little tangle, but nothing we can't handle.  But life...it scrambles us.  We get distracted by this and that thing, and we start chasing different dreams, and getting confused about what we want, and where to find it, and pretty soon....we're a tangled mess.  And like my sweet little boy handed me the slinky and said "I'm sorry, Mom." and asked me to fix it, God can untangle our messes.  He knows what he's doing.  He's never tempted to throw us away, because we are of infinite worth to Him.  He will ALWAYS help us with the messes we create, even when we create them day after day after day.     I've approached Him many times with a tangled mess and an "I'm sorry" and He has worked healing miracles in my life.

Hiking, climbing, and growing in 2015

This week, I got to take a short trip to St George UT and while there, I hiked and climbed around some red rocks with my children, while my sweet Mom watched our baby.  I love to hike and climb, and I thought about how life can sometimes be like a hike: you start out with good intentions and hopes, and the going sometimes gets rough--so rough you want to quit, but instead, you take a breather, and keep going.  The distance almost always sounds easier than it actually feels, it always feels like I'm hiking way farther than the distance the map or pamphlet tells me I am.  Sometimes, as I'm hiking, especially if one of my knees starts hurting, I wonder if the views will be worth it, and they are, they always are....they always make me feel alive and excited to be on this gorgeous planet Earth.

2015 has been like that.  I started the year with a lot of fresh emotional pain, having experienced our first Christmas season after the loss of a child.  I had just learned that I was expecting and I was excited and terrified after how badly things had gone during the last pregnancy.  Still, it felt like it was the path to take, and so I took it.  I continued to teach piano, thrust myself into helping others and into having fun and making memories with my family.  I read the 5th Harry Potter book to my kids, was better about going on dates with my husband (until new baby got here), and cried during many of our happy moments, because I wanted to share them with Gideon too.  I have had to stop for breathers when life gets too overwhelming.  I always imagined it would be hard to have a family and to lose a child, but the actual journey feels harder and longer than I ever thought.  It is also awesomely worth it; I have been blessed with many terrific happy moments when my heart is brimming full of joy and delight. This pregnancy went well, and while we still miss our son and still cry during special family times when the lack of his presence is felt strongly, we now have a beautiful baby daughter with us, who has blessed our family immensely.

2015 could also compare to rock climbing.  We have had others "on belay" to catch us, and help us when we slip.  We've been guided by those with a broader perspective.  When you are climbing, you can't always see the hand holds and foot holds that others standing behind you can see--the rock is in your face and you are desperately clinging and attempting to figure a way to go up, but since they have a broader view, they can direct you "reach your left foot out about a foot and feel for that little ridge", when you couldn't see it. Trusting in God, we have managed to climb, despite the overwhelming nature of what we faced, despite feeling stuck and unsure of what to do or which way to go.  He has guided us to some terrific "hand holds" and "foot holds" and we've been able to continue to progress and to even have moments where we are able to look back and see how far we've come.  We'll still fall sometimes, but we've climbed further with His help than we could have without it.

I know my journey is not over, that I have other trials to face, other hikes to take, other mountains to climb.  I'll admit, I'm nervous and scared, but I'm also excited for the views ahead, for the strength I will gain, and the relationships that I will strengthen through those experiences.  Happy New Year to all my dear friends and family who read and share in this journey with us.