Bigger Picture Moments: On Your Birthday, A Gift

Dear Selah,

This morning when the wise woman talked about finding each moment of grace, each moment of gift through the easy moments and even the hard, I thought of you.

I thought of how your short life here on Earth, buried in my ever-expanding womb, was marked with moments of grace and blessing.

And how even your soul passing from body to body anew into the glory of forever, still while inside my very own, was surrounded by very good gifts, from a very good God.

I think of you today because this day, last year, was the first and last time I ever held your small body, all 10 perfect fingers and toes, in my shaking hands.

And I wept over you, a miracle, and gave thanks, my hands cradling you with palms stretched up toward the giver of good gifts, giving you back to Him.

You helped me understand how it is possible to both hold and give, to both receive and let go. You were my pregnant pause, Selah, and your life continues to give me just that. Your life was a series of moments of grace and your death, even, was a gift of pause to understand what it really means to live.

God works all things together for the good of those who are called according to His purposes, and I have heard Him call my heart, inviting me out into deeper waters still.

After you went soul from body to body renewed, I prayed a desperate prayer for God to make clear what He wanted for our family, and I really just wanted you to come back. In the midst of being heartbroken at losing you soon fast and quickly, God answered my plea in a way I didn't understand when He began to break my heart for the children who don't have parents.

I thought of the heartache of losing you, entrenched in my mother's heart, and I fell face first into grieving the reverse loss, a baby losing her mother and father.

We prayed hard, and when your due date rolled around, we knew God was inviting us to host a girl who found herself in those shoes of loss reversed. And she came, and we learned, and we loved, and we cried together because when you know loss as deep as what she knows and what my mother's heart knows, you know what empty looks like.

But I'm not empty any more. I miss you, yes, and I long for you, yes, but another mercy moment, another gift of grace from your life and from your death was understanding that empty is a space that is yet to be filled only by Fullness Himself.

It's a gift you gave me to know that, and one that I'd like to whisper to other hearts that are empty and aching with voids they just can't seem to fill.

And the girl we hosted because our hearts were broken for the children without parents after we knew the broken of being parents without the child we loved, she'll come, God willing, into the fullness of a family that was born of empty and the fullness of a Family that was born of broken. And she'll have the parents, the brothers that were first yours, but that you all now share, and I pray that she'll have the Father we all share.

We know, because of your life, that one child never replaces another, and so we also know that one mother and father never replace another mother and father that were before. She'll know your name, and we'll know the names of the ones who came before us.

So this morning.

When the wise woman spoke about recognizing moments of grace and moments of gift through the good times and the hard times

and when she told us to make dots to mark those sightings and then string them together

and when she asked what I saw in the stringing together of those moments from this past year, I breathed in awe and exhaled reverence at what was before me.

I saw the Giver of Good giving me more gifts to unfold and savor, abundant gifts gleaned from your life.

A most perfect birthday present to celebrate your life, my beautiful baby girl, on the day you were born.

My love and my heart,
Mommy

Life After Miscarriage: Maybe We Shall

Essentially, I passed go. 

I don't know how the conversation began or why we were discussing fertility at all during a recent doctor's appointment, but when she finished my half-way point evaluation she'd said she wouldn't be concerned at all if I were to get pregnant tomorrow. 

Through a mustered smile, I thought to myself -- maybe she wouldn't, but I couldn't say the same. 

Her green light was unexpected. So unexpected that it left me more flabbergasted than joyful, like I would have expected. 

I'd long been dreaming of the day, the appointment when my crazyhella smart doctor would say that my body wasn't so broken that she would worry about what a pregnancy would do to me, that she wouldn't have cause to believe we'd say goodbye to another baby before we ever got to hold that new life in our arms. 

After John and I left her office, the astonishment of her words, the shock of my reaction didn't wear off. And as days have progressed into weeks, I've become a river of emotion winding wildly down stream through every twist and turn imaginable. 

There's no question of if I want to welcome a new baby into our family; I do. Honestly, we both do. 

But I'm the complicated one who was cleared to pass go but can't seem to collect her $200 and be on her merry way. 

Because now I know that positive pregnancy tests don't always mean baby in arms at the end of a nine-month journey. 

Now I know that we have to welcome all the risks that come along with the chance of welcoming another baby into our lives because another baby, whether living here on Earth or there in Heaven, will indefinitely take up more real estate of the heart and mind. 

I find myself praying, asking God if we should try again to grow our family. If we should journey into three, and I enter into theological discussions about having more kids and the whole "be fruitful and multiply" command and whether or not two miscarriages were clear indicators to let go of the dream of a bigger family. 

Over time, after discussions, in searching my heart, I know, though, that I'm not really asking theological questions anymore. I'm not really asking if having another baby is black-and-white right or wrong for our family. 

I'm asking if this time we will actually have and hold another one. 

I'm asking if a new baby will be in our arms, not just our hearts. 

I'm asking if we take the risk, will there be rich reward. 

Or will we be face to face in another seemingly dead end.

****

We're wandering a corn maze with our boys, our good friends and their boys on a bright, warm October afternoon; we're discussing such matters of the heart and such matters of theology as we keep running right into dead ends of thick corn stalks -- so many times that I joke they might have to come in with a search team and flashlights to find us. 

And that's when it stares me right in the face, bright and golden like the towering cornfields beneath soft autumn light. 

There's not really any such thing as a dead end if you can turn around. It's more a side-road detour. 

And

we didn't enter the maze just to effortlessly walk through. We went in knowing it could be a trial. We could get lost. We could be wandering aimlessly until the sun set over the fields. 

But, too, we went in trusting that we would be rescued if rescue was needed. No theological discussions about whether we should turn at this corner or that or if it's right for us to walk a path before us that we're unsure of where it leads. No desperate prayers for an answer before we even come to the fork in the road. 

We find our way through after a few long roads that led to nowhere, after lots of discussion and giggles, tears and tiredness, triumph and trial, conversation and sun soaked onto faces. 

I grab John's hand and catch his eye, our boys running off into the clear open space of prairie outside of the maze. 

And I think to myself, maybe we shall.


Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you." 
Psalm 9:10

Bigger Picture Moments: What Only God Can Do

It begins quietly and simply.

A few-sentence email enters my inbox asking if I can attend a meeting at our church regarding social media.

Though I've long been thinking our church has needed a social media presence and I'd love to help, I doubt I can make the meeting; John is in Europe that week, and babysitters are hard to come by mid day in the mid week -- like raindrops in drought.

But there is an easy sprinkle from a small little cloud, and I'm able to attend the meeting despite all of what normally works against such possibilities; I leave the meeting, hope rising in my heart at the response of our leaders who deem social media important to implement at our church. But when I leave the meeting, though my mind is spinning and racing with ideas, I return to life as normal and tuck them away. I'm at capacity, and I can't volunteer time to any kind of project beyond what I'm already doing without something having to give.

****

Month's later, there's been no resume submitted but there has been a meeting of the minds, and there has been the Spirit of God heavy in conversations and lastly there has been a perfectly tailored job description and offer extended to me to join the church staff as the social media coordinator.

An opportunity to serve in a way I'd only thought was a dream {me? small-town girl from the middle of nowhere evolved punk-rock mistress turned cynical journalist thrown a life jacket of grace me?}.

An opportunity to reach into people's everyday lives and help them know better the God who loves and created them, help them know better the community of God within a church we've been extremely vested.

And the fine details, lined up like just right, stars in a constellation:

Working only 15 hours per week.

Doing what I've long loved, while working out of my top five strengths from my home most of the time, nonetheless.

Confirmation from daily wanderings in the Word and conversations with those who shepherd my heart.

All of this after we decide to listen to the unexplained stirrings of our heart to put our Curves up for sale ... and then meet with extremely interested perspective buyers within two weeks of our letter of intentions saying we are looking to sell.

All of this amid one of our closest family friends, who lives within minutes of the church, sharing that she'd love to babysit for our boys one day a week during the weekly staff meeting {more raindrops ...}.

All of this folded up into a beautiful package at the heels of years spent investing time and effort and thought and heart and soul into the sharing of our story, my story, here at this blog, of investments made in virtual community and social media.

Some might call it serendipity or awesome coincidence, but I know it to be more; I know it to be grace revealed, blessing given, opportunity shared.

This story, it blows my mind.

This story, it's so different from the ones I've written in the past.

Because this time, I'm telling a story of which I'm not the one striving to write

One of which I've had only a very small, responsive hand.

This time

I feel like I'm telling the story of something truly only God can do.

During the next few weeks, I'm transitioning into my new position at church all while ensuring that I'm spending time with my family and taking care of all the Curves details, so please be patient with my sparser posting and interactions. I'm so excited to share how God moved my heart into this place, as it didn't come quite as thoughtlessly as I would have expected such a thing with such worked out details to have come. Prayers are appreciated, as is any encouragement during this extremely important transition month.


Each Thursday we come together to share the harvest of intentional living through sharing a piece of life gleaned: a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with the beauty in the simple moments of the week. Link up your gleaned moment this week at Sarah's!

Link your moment at Sarah's this week!