A year in review: 2016

1. What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before?

I visited the Biltmore in Asheville. I found an mixed alcoholic drink that I liked on my own account, a chocolate martini. And I just remembered we fostered 5 dogs and 3 rabbits this year, we had never had a pet as a family before.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I was supposed to write letters to people. I did write letters, though I probably didn't do one each month like intended, I did write letters.  I also picked up knitting again after a long break of not knitting. 

3. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve?

Hanging out with the kids and husband putting together a puzzle watching TV. I'm very lame, and I like it that way. 

I4. Did anyone close to you die? Did anyone give birth?

This was a year of death, so much death, and it was sad.  We lost a baby at 13 weeks, Noel Constantine.  And then my paternal grandmother died on my 9th wedding anniversary. And then my husband's maternal grandmother died in November. 

As for births, there were a decent amount of them, most notably a nephew was born in November and then a good friends double rainbow baby was born in October. The list could go on, and even though we lost our baby, I'm so very thankful for the new life in these babies that were born.  There is always room for more babies and the joy they bring.

5. What countries did you visit ? Did I travel this year?

I hemmed and hawed about actually taking a vacation post miscarriage, I was really still struggling with a lot of things with just living, but we decided to go through with our vacation to Asheville, NC, Nashville, TN and Cincinnati, OH. It was overall good to go, but it made me remember also why I like where we live too. 

6. What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

Less hurt. More joy. 

7. What date from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

May 12, the day I delivered Noel.  July 14, the day my grandmother died.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?

I climbed all the stairs of Terminal Tower in Cleveland. 

9. What was your biggest failure?

I never finished knitting a sweater I started making for my daughter because I messed up the one sleeve really terribly. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Well, I lost a baby and that felt like injury. I also have had an extremely rough time with this current pregnancy in that my left leg won't let me function or walk like I am used to doing.  

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A six month pass for 6 full body massages. That's helped a ton with stress of the madness of the year.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Medical bills and paying for new doors for the house. 

13. What song will always remind you of 2016?

I think Soldiers by the Rocket Summer

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Swimming in the summer. I was in a funk for most of the summer that I don't remember enjoying it like I should have.

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying. 

16. What was your favorite new TV program?

This is Us.  It makes me cry and smile and laugh.  A good program for sure. 

17. Do you love anyone now that you didn’t love this time last year?

I think two people.  Noel and baby girl Kurak #2. 

18. What was the best book you read?

The Awakening of Miss Prim

19. What item of clothing did I wear the most?

Full length compression stockings, and maternity leggings. I am completely 100% pro leggings at this point.

20. What was your favorite film of this year?

Inside Out

21. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

My husband cooked a meal for me, a modified thanksgiving dinner. I also went out with friends for a meal a bit later. I turned 33. 

22. What kept you sane?

Prayer, knitting, friends especially Sarah.

23. Who did you miss?

The obvious would be my grandmother and my baby. But I think also my friend Janelle. 

24. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned..

I think just life is really, really hard at times, and I think what I learned is that I am so thankful that God gave me my husband to stand by my side in these hard times. I also learned that I wasn't crazy on some things where I though I was, and so I think maybe to trust your gut but also to take care of yourself because if you don't then you can't help others very well. And lastly that death is part of life, and its a very unpredictable thing. 

25. What pictures best represent 2015?

 

 

A girl

Last week it was confirmed that we were having another girl at an OB check up. I had thought many times before that this baby was a girl.  It felt a bit like my previous girl pregnancy, full of emotion and just many other weird things that seem to go along with a girl pregnancy and me.

As you may recall my one grandmother died this past July and it hit like a ton of bricks because it was loss followed by loss for me and out of any of my grandparents, she was the one whom of which I was closest. Just a few days prior to her death I had an inkling that I was pregnant and took a test and found out I was. But everything in my head was such a mess and I was just in grief it was hard to focus.

One day though, I blurted out that if this baby was a girl, that I really wanted to name it after my grandmother.  But to me that was just a thought, and though it was a nice one, I didn't think it would come to fruition.

Fast forward to November, where yet another grandmother died, this time Keith's maternal grandmother, it felt like something was lining up. I went to my monthly appointment at the OB to check on things and well, baby at the time wanted us to wait a bit longer to see boy or girl. So deflated I went home, knowing that he or she was healthy but nothing else.

And then December came, and I got another chance at one of my last OB appointments before I officially made the switch to my old midwife for a home birth.  I needed some extra reassurance this pregnancy due to the later miscarriage last time and so, I chose to do co-care with an OB. It meant more appointments, but also I think it helped me see that last time didn't define this pregnancy. I asked this time if we could find out if this was a boy or girl, and the OB said that we could take a look.  And girl it was.

And so it comes back to the name. I know most people think through names a lot, and I am one of those people with the distinction that I like Saint names to be part of my children's names.  I didn't have this as a protestant growing up and it feels like its one thing that maybe my kids will have that will help them to remind them that they are not alone in this life and they can ask their namesakes to pray for them.

Thinking about girl #2's name, made me think about girl #1's name. Girl #1 for us is Helena Perpetua. Oddly enough without me knowing it and it slipped dear husband's memory that on top of having saint namesakes, she also has a great grandmother she's shares a name with, Helen. Some providential naming happening or coincidental affinities to names at the least.

When approaching girl #2, Keith and I have agreed we want to honor our grandmothers that passed away this past year, and it just feels right to do so. This means that baby girl #2 would have two middle names, and I think that's kind of fun though maybe tricky legally.  A side note is that I have one more living grandmother, and as odd or maybe not odd, her first and middle name is a combination of the other two grandmothers names. So not that it was completely planned out to be so, but it seems to be lining up as so. The only thing is we feel its good for her to have part of her name be her own and so we aren't just going to take the two middles and make one be a first. Instead she will have our picked out first Saint name. So two legacy middle names (Saints as well) it is and it seems just about right.

Now, as to what they are, well, that you will have to wait for to find out...

To be me, broken and all.

I've been a bit restless these past few weeks, especially last night.  I didn't fall asleep until 3am. I couldn't shut my brain down enough to sleep.  And this is not always the case, but usually is something that comes when something big has happened.

I know many techniques of calming myself down, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't because I can overpower that if something is really affecting me so much. In some ways, I find this helpful because it helps me to realize that I need to take time to process and can't just get by anymore.

And that's where I'm at. A lot has happened since Thanksgiving, and its fascinating and terrifying and challenging all at once. I finally spoke up about something that has plagued me for years. With it players played just so in a way that I knew I was no longer crazy.  That this needed to be done and I need to break to be changed.  I couldn't keep it together anymore, and that hadn't been happening for a while, I also couldn't be silent anymore. Because the silence was making me feel misunderstood.  Not that I'm ever understood, but anyway. So I wrote a letter saying how things were.

And I felt at peace doing that, but now I feel like I'm waiting and am in this weird place that if I started something I would just be pulled back into the painful disfunction. But now I'm sitting her questioning motives and trying to see where to go next and it just feel big. Like I recently noticed that to be an authority, I feel like I'm being mean every time. And I'm thinking this comes from not being assertive in my life until now. But how do you figure out if you are being mean or assertive when you have only known how to bend over backward not to make someone blow up in your face about something? It makes the whole Christianity bits of being our brother's keepers and watching out for one another be messy things in your mind.  Because enabling isn't helping, or watching out for someone even if it appears that way from the outside. And setting boundaries against hurt isn't blaming someone its taking ownership that this is more than you can handle.

Maybe, though, maybe its not my job to predict someone's reaction. And maybe that's where I'm struggling.  I still want to accommodate someone else's reaction, which I can't do.  I feel very selfish in saying that I need to think of only what I'm trying to communicate, but maybe that's not selfish?  Maybe, its just that I'm skewed in my thinking that I perceive it this way.

One more thing, in a way, I have been thinking that it would be nice to have things work well already. To lament that this is terrible and just be angry, but maybe, I just need to be in this brokenness. That this is where I'm going to see Jesus right now. That this is where I can feel his love, not in the perfect but in the imperfect.  And maybe there will be growth there as well.  One day it would be nice to be able to look back and see this as something that I can be an advocate for that one can get through this, but I'm not there yet, and that's got to be okay too.

A Seasons of Life Reflection

I think a lot of folks were disappointed in the Gilmore Girls revival because nothing happened with the character development in the main two characters.  And while, yes this was true. On the other hand it was almost fitting, there was never a strong undercurrent in the value of relationship.  Instead there was a lot of use of another person instead of seeing them as human. I've been thinking about relationships a lot lately, and its hard to live them. Sometimes you have to step away and sometimes you really have to step outside your comfort zone to grow.

Currently in a main relationship of mine I've had to step away from it, I haven't figured out how to have this relationship and not be in constant pain from it.  Its a complicated one and while I wish it was better its not and its hard and feels so slow in how it is to be made better.  But I guess this is one way that I feel as if I differ from Rory or Lorelai, though a lot of times I feel like Lorelai and relate more to her than Rory any day. But the thing is that I am trying to make progress in my own self, because I know now there is no way that I can change the situation at hand except to do that, but progress is slow.

One thing I liked in watching Seasons was that at the very end it did feel like Lorelai and her mother were in a better place, something I hope for myself someday with my relationship I had to step away from currently.  In the end of season 7 of the original series, it felt like Lorelai was able to understand and relate better to her dad, but it wasn't until the end of this series that I felt she was able to speak to her mom and not feel like she had to defend herself.  A lot of times Lorelai is stuck as her 16 year old self in her maturity because, well, something traumatic did happen to her then and psychologically that does happen a lot to people. And honestly that does bug me at times.  It feels like she's never really dealt with her issues and carries them everywhere.  But a lot of us do this.  I know we want to say we don't, but there are definitely times when we do, especially if we don't recognize that we are doing so because a lot of other things are going well.

That is why to me, I was okay with Lorelai being where she was, I mean her lifestyle and values are different than mine, me being a practicing Catholic, her being an agnostic perhaps.  But I think the humanity seen in her and that things sometimes take time to make progress, I think I liked that bit.  And not that the writers were trying to accomplish this at all, but to me it was a reminder to trust in the slow work of God, or at least what seems slow to us in this world were we can get anything material we want in a snipet of time for the right price. But don't let me start on Rory, she is a whole different kind of non progress brought to you by many things I haven't had the fortunate "privilege" like her to become so.

And what comes next

As I sit here a little over 15 weeks pregnant, I feel like I should tell the story of that.  Well not the actual story, but just what life has been in this state.

You see this baby surprised me.  I hadn't gotten a normal cycle back yet and well in my thinking I was still heavily grieving and there wasn't any way that I could be pregnant again so fast. My last miscarriage took the better part of 6 months for my body to recover from and silly me thought this one was going to be longer, but apparently this isn't the case and well, God had different plans for me. So two months after miscarrying little Noel, I found myself surprise pregnant. And honestly I wondered if it was just hormones playing with me, so I took more than one pregnancy test on different days, because I honestly just didn't feel ready and I was a bit mad and more so scared out of my mind.  I couldn't bare another loss.  I just was shocked a bit too.

A few days after finding out, my grandmother (my dad's mom) died, and it was not pretty.  I was mad at myself for not calling her back ever after losing Noel.  I had gotten her a card but never sent it. I was scared about having to see my family at such a vulnerable time. So I went and I hid and didn't really talk to anyone, because I couldn't and to me that had to be okay.  That was all I could do. But knowing I was pregnant I was already hoping for a girl, someone I could name after my dear grandmother.  She really was the only grandparent that I ever knew in a deeper level, and I just wanted to do something in her memory.

I came back to my life from that trip and I just wanted to hide, hide and hide.  I wasn't ready for this pregnancy overall and I sure wasn't ready to discuss it with every passing person.  And granted being pregnant was way more obvious to me than to the outside world, I felt like I didn't want to be seen as there was a chance someone would know. My body on the other hand knew it was pregnant and didn't let me forget with extreme heartburn and carpal tunnel and racing heart and varicose veins and exhaustion.  And because I was where I was in grieving and in pregnancy it was hard to tell what was from what.  My husband has been a trooper thru this all and has helped me when I needed help and has done more than his share of late night runs for food cravings and comforting during cry sessions over life.

Being pregnant post loss is scary, especially a loss that was later than any other loss before because you realize how much you are not in control of any outcome.  That you just have to take a day at a time because God is the only one with a say in how long we get with our kids. And this is so very hard to do, because we hope for the best.  We imagine the future of holding a baby and yet you know maybe that's not going to happen.  Instead you may only get to know them through photos or kicks or just a glimpse of a positive pregnancy test.  And it is so very hard and I don't wish it on anyone. I had a first trimester full of intense anxiety and parts of it have lingered.  I hate waking up in the middle of the night because I can have flashbacks of going to the bathroom and finding I had bled so badly and was miscarrying. They are less now at 15 weeks then they were at before the same chronological time of my last loss, but its this eerie reminder that it happened and I would have hoped for a different outcome but now I'm here.

And that day and night have come and went in this pregnancy and it ended up low key and not dramatic at all those few days, and I am so very thankful for that.  So maybe I will get to hold a baby at the end of this pregnancy, and I pray and hope for that, but if that's not the plan, well I'm trying to remember I'm still in God's hands. One of the reassuring things that God has done for me when I so very needed it is when I was in the church and closed my eyes, I saw this image of Him carrying me in his arms like a sleeping child. Something I so very needed. Because I felt like the only thing I really was keeping on with was God's grace and it just felt like a perfect reminder to me of that. So on those hard days I remember this and pray for me to recognize his grace, and somehow I have pulled through each time so far.

So I'm here now at 15 weeks 1 day and praying to feel a baby kicking in the next few weeks. I'm still apprehensive a bit, but becoming more and more excited.  Some days, I still want to hide, but its less of that and more of okay I'm here now, and God thinks I can do this, so help me God to see that I can do this.

Thank-you for listening to my story.

Joy in the child

As Mother Teresa was canonized yesterday, the quote of hers that came to mind was the following:

“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.” -St. Mother Teresa

I have always loved this quote, but struggled with it too. However, there is truth here, and I am learning to live it daily. 

When I was pregnant with Noel, I struggled so much with what others might think of a fourth child.  I know I shouldn't have let it bug me, but I did.  There were some people that I still let into influence my thinking at the time that weren't positive about another child.  And in fact sometimes weren't really positive about the ones I already had.  Honestly, this type of thinking stemmed way back to 10 years ago when I was engaged to my now husband, and I'm sure even before. You see, I let in counsel to someone I trusted, and the one objection to me converting to Catholicism along with marrying my husband was that, "those Catholics, they just have so many children." I didn't have the background that celebrated children as always being a gift, instead they were financial burdens or things to fit in to a narcissistic life. 

But Noel, despite my internal battle was a gift, a true gift in so many ways.  I remember the time I told my students about him and just the absolute joy they had in celebrating a new life was amazing. I don't think I'll ever forget that day because honestly, I don't think I've ever experienced that much joy from someone else about something/someone in my life.  It really was eye opening. 

And then as I sometimes struggle with my kids and their well, being kid like, I was upset about something that my one son did in the presence of another teacher.  Later talking with that teacher he recanted it in a positive manner, one which again celebrated the life the gift that the child was instead of a sum of his faults. 

Recently, a dear friend kept witnessing my crying so much at church this past summer, because for some reason the Holy Spirit just brings the tears there, the much needed tears. She gave me a note and a dear little painted heart shaped rock, with the words "Jesus wept". Oh so appropriate words they were and are. My friend remembered my dear little baby, this baby that only was with us for so long.  My friend didn't judge one bit about timing or family size, but loved and saw that I loved, and for this I am so grateful. 

You see, I think to this point I didn't think that there really was a place where every life could be really celebrated in its entirety. I was broken and couldn't see it, I couldn't see it in the people around me, I instead always felt judged or judged myself.  I think its odd to say that death has brought an understanding of joy, but yet somehow I think it is so for me.  I think seeing people have authentic joy over life has been one of many lessons little Noel has fruitfully taught me. And in that joy, I feel like I can finally understand more about gratitude. And while I know there is thanks in the suffering, I think the thanks in the joy, this, this has been missing for me, and I am so very grateful to be learning this now. 

There is more, but I will save that for another time. 

Fitting

I was driving home from visiting a friend today with the kids when I saw the cemetery and decided that I needed to visit. I was supposed to visit yesterday but didn't.  So at the last moment I got off at the exit and went. There was a new monument right in front of Noel's grave, a crucifix, and no it wasn't for Noel. I honestly don't know the reason its there yet, but it seemed fitting.  I went today and cried yet again, and none of the kids wanted to visit today so I left the hang out by the car. But it was good to be there alone, even if my attention was divided.

You see there are little things, little moments that sometimes give me glimpses of grace and other times they are bits of sufferings. Both, well both share in Jesus, and thats grief journey I'm on, both part of my cross as I was reminded today on my visit.

My oldest in his 6 year old grief has basically uttered one sentiment for his lost sibling. He didn't get to know what he liked.  And if I sit with this for a minute, I tear up, because in his limited understanding of life and death, he understands so much. It is sad that we didn't get to know him, and while I am glad to have an intercessor in heaven, I am sad about not knowing him too.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were able to have dinner and chat and she theorized that maybe so many Catholics end up with miscarriages because they need intercessors to help them get through this life as a Catholic. A while I'm not sure about the theology of it all, I do know that I do have two intercessors in heaven now, and as I thought about it today, I realized just how hard it really is at times and how much of a grace it is to have people in heaven praying for our family.

Because I had traveled this road before, I struggled with knowing that I had to go through all that losing a child entails yet again.  At times it seems harder, but other times, its odd and it feels like maybe its a grace pause.  Like for so long I have been working on either being working towards something or being afraid of a new life coming too soon, that this time where I know I can't do anything about it, I get to step back and see what's in front of me in a new light.

So whether it be that I am reminded of losing Noel through my hair falling out or other effects of my hormones, I'm thankful that I got to know him and love him for as long as I did.  I already think he's interceding and making me stronger and for that I'm thankful.