Of Birthdays and Blessings

I see the look of reservation in their eyes, the cautiousness that loss can bring.  At the dinner table when it's my turn to say what my best for the day is I say that, if it's God's Will and all goes well, we will have a new baby in the Spring.  Someone says I need to have a boy to even the score while another says only one boy would NOT even the score and Josie says my stomach isn't big enough to hold seven babies, whatever that means.  I catch the eye of sweet Cecilia and Mary.  They know the risks well.  They remember the losses of the past year and maybe those before then.  I wonder if we made the right choice telling them so soon. But not telling them doesn't make the baby not exist and I covet the prayers of our children.  Prayers for God's Will.  That's what I want. 

 

 We are a pro life family, after all, and (to me) that means celebrating a life no matter how short it may be.  None of us has a guarantee to live another day, week, or year but we celebrate our daily lives all the same.  We live in gratitude, or we try, for the time we have been given.  To be honest I never dreamed I would be pregnant again.  I wouldn't say I gave up hope because as a believer of Jesus Christ hope is in my heart all the time.  But I truly felt like I had lived out my fertile years and I was grateful for all that I had been blessed with - both on earth and in heaven.  I was at peace.  I was so much at peace that I got x-rays just the day before I got a positive pregnancy test.  I do not know how this will end but I know that God works all things together for good for those who love Him (Rom 8:28).  In all honesty I was so completely depleted emotionally and physically after we lost Zelie in March that my rising age was sometimes a comfort to me.  Perhaps God was pushing me along to a new phase of life.  After nursing and/or being pregnant for 20 years maybe it was just time to accept I had aged out....or maybe not.  Or maybe.  We just don't know.  Either way what I *do* know is that this baby is a beautiful and unique soul planned by God.  I may get to kiss his or her head here on earth and I may not but a mother's love knows no boundaries.  Whether this baby is earth bound or heaven bound (or hopefully both) I love him or her all the same.  I'm so GRATEFUL for this opportunity to love, nourish, and cherish life.

 

 

Last week our sweet Frances celebrated being 3.   I know I sat in this very spot nearly four years ago lamenting if her life would be spent here on earth for any length of time or would she also go straight to the arms of Jesus as Veronica had gone before her.  Now here she is no longer a baby but not yet a big girl.  She's a perfect 3 and she couldn't be more precious.

 

This picture was taken earlier this month.  It's the one time we have all been together since October 2015 and the last time until November 2016.  I have finally learned to cherish moments that seem like mere minutes before they melt into the next day and then the next.  Our life in the past few years has been dismantled and rebuilt.  What seem like significant losses have only brought us closer as a family and, most importantly, have found me clinging to Jesus in ways I never knew before.  I will thank you in advance for your prayers and support.  In the end I will count it all JOY.

 

 

 



Meeting Life Where It Is

"I always felt and thought that if I love You intensely I would not be affected by the presence or absence of human love, possessions, success and all those things in daily life that make it livable and bearable...to love as You loved in this life is to be open, vulnerable, ready to love so intensely that one's heart ceaselessly gives as an overflowing fountain, vulnerable enough to feel this least absence of love but generous enough to stand beneath the Cross of separation, misunderstanding, hostility, and loneliness and never closing the flood gates of love.  Is it to be able to feel the numbness of heartache and never surrender to self-pity, to long and thirst for infinite love and struggle with the attachments that seem so much a part of us? " ~Mother Angelica from the book Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles

I nearly stopped the van at that point in the book.  My newly acquired free version of the Mother Angelica book blasted from the van speakers as I sped down the highway to get home from the vet.  The last six months have been a whirlwind of traumas mixed in with joys and everyday life.  I didn't exactly have words for how I was feeling until the narrator said those words.  "Never surrender" hit me the hardest.  Each day when I wake up I think "Lord, I'm so very weak and tired." That weakness makes me feel like a failure.  The newsfeed of Facebook and Instagram buzzing with those good and successful moms and people.  For me it seems that I try a lot of things but have little to no success.  Earlier this summer I did a cleanse.  I managed to 98% stick to it while it was going on but in the weeks that followed I slowly fell back into my old routines.  Fail.  I started the summer strong with math and other educational supplements everyday but slowly they tapered off.  Fail.  I think to myself "Lord, I love You so why is this all so hard?". 

The kids are growing up and going out on their own.  We see Brandon and his wife Rose maybe twice a year.  Next it will be Hannah off and married and living her own life.  Friend relationships wane as I submerge myself in my daily "rule of life".  Prayer, cooking, cleaning, laundry, chauffeuring.  In the midst of it all due dates come and go from babies lost too soon, financial struggles are a constant, kids grow, time flies.  I think the idea of life as God created  it is to long for Heaven.  But He also created many good things that we are to soak in and enjoy in this world. 

 

 

"Is it to be able to feel the numbness of heartache and never surrender to self-pity, to long and thirst for infinite love and struggle with the attachments that seem so much a part of us?"  This line makes me think maybe what I view as fails are just struggles on my journey Home?  I think, as Americans, we have been sold the idea that any kind of pain, struggle, hardship, inconvenience is to be avoided.  Pleasure, I have heard, should be the highest ideal.  Of course that's not real life.  That's no one's life.  We all have different struggles and hard times to go through.  In our attempt to make everyone think we are doing well we hide our pain or self medicate or use some other destructive way of making our lives seem "all good".   Of course my daily struggles are like a cake walk compared to much of the world.  That much I understand.  I do miss the days when all of my kids were younger and lived at home.  I imagine time only goes faster from here.  Learning to live in the present moment is an everyday thing for me.  Learning to be content with what IS and not with my ideal is a struggle I imagine will last a life time.  And perfecting the art of clinging to Jesus instead of self pity, well, I'm not sure I'll ever do that one right. 

When I think life maybe isn't what I thought it would be, or hoped it would be, I have to remember that His Will is perfect.  It is as He wants it to be.  And if I truly do love Him then I only want to do His Will.  Not mine.  Figuring out what His Will is on a daily basis, well, that's a blog for another day. 

The evil one wants us to always give in to self pity because in self pity we look to comfort, self medicate, and give in to the temptation and sin.  So as I go through my days screwing it all up instead of using the word "fail" I will be grateful that God's grace and mercy is there everyday.  Each sunrise brings a new opportunity to meet life where it is.  In the words of Blessed Mother Teresa, "God doesn't call us to be successful, He calls us to be faithful".