Just Say "No?"

I'm going to try to stay on topic today. I'm not very good at it.

Since James died, I've been asked several times by people who don't know my story if I have a family, or how many children I have, or if I have kids, etc. And I don't know what to say to them.

Most of the time, I find myself answering that no, no family, no kids, just my husband and me. Because to tell a random person who comes up to me while I'm working, asking questions that they don't really care to know the answer to, it's just depressing. And hard to say succinctly without sounding blunt. "Oh, I had one, but he was stillborn;" is not awesome conversation while handing someone a pound of coleslaw.

But there are other times I've said no when they asked if I had kids. Sitting next to a woman on a bench, talking, I said no. I think part of it is to protect myself. People pity those who have experienced that kind of loss. They try to say reassuring things, like, "well, you're young, you'll have another;" or "at least you can get pregnant." But those hurt just as much. I don't just want another baby, I want the one I lost. And we may NOT just be able to have another. We had to go through 3 years of infertility and an IUI to get James. And so far have undergone 2 more IUIs and waited 7 months "for another.". It's not as easy as it seems. Besides, just because we can theoretically have another baby does not make losing one better, easier or less important.

Even when I say 'no," though, people say hurtful things. "You're too young to have kids." "Wait a few years, you'll be glad you did," Lady, I knew I wanted kids early when I was 14. When I got married at 20, I wanted to start a family right away. I don't want to "be free" while I'm young; I want to give my energy and love to a baby now, while I have energy to give. I want to be a mother. Don't assume that because you regret having kids early, or think that kids are a burden, or that being in your 20s is an excuse to be immature and make mistakes that I believe that. Don't tell me to wait till I'm older, and have them as a second thought, as an "Oh, well, I've partied hard, but my body can't handle it any more... I know, I'll pop out a kid or two and be done with it." I don't agree with that. If you do, fine. But don't expect me to live my life by your ideals.

Sorry, I didn't mean to rant.

This post was supposed to be more about thinking through how I want to respond to people who ask questions. I don't want to deny James' existence. And if people want to know, I'm happy to tell them.

I was wearing my necklace (James' name and birthdate, and a picture of his footprints) at Target a few weeks ago. I had decided that if someone ever asked me how many kids I have, I would reply with something like, "One angel baby." Everyone knows what that means, right? And it's quick and not abrupt. Well, this woman asked me what my necklace was. I said it was my angel baby's name and footprints, and she replied, "Oh, how old is he now?" I said he had been stillborn in August. Even when I use the term "Angel Baby" some people don't get it... they should count themselves lucky to be unfamiliar with the term. Since then I have not used the phrase with strangers.

It's just hard. I feel like I lose no matter what. Either I bother people, they bother me, or we bother each other... there is no calm, un-upsetting way to explain what happened.

I still don't have an answer. I'm not sure what I'll say the next time someone brings up me having kids. I'm sure I'll just take it one situation at a time and roll with the punches. After all, I've already dealt with such a difficult thing. What's one more cutting remark?

Wheat- Corn- and Soy-free?

Hey.

Sorry I've been AWOL lately.

But today Jon and I are starting a two-week avoidance of all corn, wheat, and soy. Today went really well.

I weighed myself this morning. I WILL NOT be posting that weight on here, but I DID write it down and will be keeping track of it these next two weeks.

I am also keeping a food journal. What I ate/when, how I feel, etc. I really want to see if going off wheat, corn, and soy helps my mood, helps me feel better, and benefits Jon.

After two weeks, we will introduce one at a time and see how we do.

So, day one went well. I ate really healthy. Like, it wasn't just like gluten free sweets all day. I had a banana and peanut butter and a homemade fruit and nut bar for breakfast, salad and veggie chips for lunch, salad and soup for dinner, and a strawberry smoothie when I was craving something sweet tonight. No refined sugars, no processed foods... it was refreshing. I feel like I've gotten nutrients, which is kind of sad. We've been eating pretty badly since James died... we just haven't had the motivation to cook and be healthy.

So, anyway, today was easy and I was surprised. I thought I'd have intense sugar cravings, since my diet was like 80% carbs before, and those just turn right into sugar when you eat them, but I felt pretty good all day and got a lot done. So that's encouraging for tomorrow.

Hope the rest of the two weeks goes okay.

I Will Praise You.

This last week has been hard. I'm not ready yet to go into detail, but it was just a really hard week. For me, for Jon... just tough.

A few days ago I pinned this image:

It has brought me comfort. Today, I read the entirety of Psalm 22. I was curious about the context.

1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
    Why are you so far away when I groan for help?
2 Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer.
    Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief.

3 Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 Our ancestors trusted in you,
    and you rescued them.
5 They cried out to you and were saved.
    They trusted in you and were never disgraced.

6 But I am a worm and not a man.
    I am scorned and despised by all!
7 Everyone who sees me mocks me.
    They sneer and shake their heads, saying,
8 “Is this the one who relies on the Lord?
    Then let the Lord save him!
If the Lord loves him so much,
    let the Lord rescue him!”

9 Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb
    and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.
10 I was thrust into your arms at my birth.
    You have been my God from the moment I was born.

11 Do not stay so far from me,
    for trouble is near,
    and no one else can help me.
12 My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls;
    fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed me in!
13 Like lions they open their jaws against me,
    roaring and tearing into their prey.
14 My life is poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax,
    melting within me.
15 My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.
    My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
    You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.
16 My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;
    an evil gang closes in on me.
    They have pierced[a] my hands and feet.
17 I can count all my bones.
    My enemies stare at me and gloat.
18 They divide my garments among themselves
    and throw dice[b] for my clothing.

19 O Lord, do not stay far away!
    You are my strength; come quickly to my aid!
20 Save me from the sword;
    spare my precious life from these dogs.
21 Snatch me from the lion’s jaws
    and from the horns of these wild oxen.

22 I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters.[c]
    I will praise you among your assembled people.
23 Praise the Lord, all you who fear him!
    Honor him, all you descendants of Jacob!
    Show him reverence, all you descendants of Israel!
24 For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy.
    He has not turned his back on them,
    but has listened to their cries for help.

25 I will praise you in the great assembly.
    I will fulfill my vows in the presence of those who worship you.
26 The poor will eat and be satisfied.
    All who seek the Lord will praise him.
    Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy.
27 The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him.
    All the families of the nations will bow down before him.
28 For royal power belongs to the Lord.
    He rules all the nations.

29 Let the rich of the earth feast and worship.
    Bow before him, all who are mortal,
    all whose lives will end as dust.
30 Our children will also serve him.
    Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.
31 His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born.
    They will hear about everything he has done.*

I love how this follows David's thought process. He doesn't say, "God, I know logically that you're there; but right now it sure doesn't feel like it!" No. It starts from where David is, right that second. David is crying out for help from a God he can't see right then. He feels lost. He feels abandoned. He doesn't qualify what he's feeling; he allows himself to feel it. And only AFTER that does he bring himself back, remind himself of this God that he's calling out to; reminds himself of who this God is, what this God has done. And he sees the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the praiseworthiness of this God. And then he praises him. Ah, to be like David. I'm getting there. But it's a process.

I know it's kinda long. I don't normally post stuff like this. But I wanted to share this with you. Reading this psalm made me think of the Newsboys' song "When The Tears Fall."

It's been a rough week. But God, by his grace, has been continually leading me back to him, reminding me of who he is. I am so thankful for my God, so thankful for my James. So sad that he is gone... But I will still praise God.


*New Living Translation

I'm Not All Right, I'm Broken Inside.

"Missing you comes in waves, and tonight, I'm drowning."

I am drowning. Being buried alive. Burned from the inside out. These memories of you, they won't stop coming. I can't fight back; I can't even defend myself. I am beaten down, blow after blow after blow. And I don't know that I want it to stop. These memories, they're all I have of you anymore. And every hit, every knock out brings me just a little closer to you.

I want to die. Not in a morbid, I'm-going-to-commit-suicide way, but in an I-need-to-see-you-again-and-that's-the-only-way-I-can way.

I can't do it. I can't not have my baby. I can't live without you. I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't. It hurts too much. It sucks. I don't want to feel the pain any more, and I don't want to be without you. I need you. I need my sweet little James. I need my arms to be full, my heart to be whole again. Everything hurts when you're gone. Paradise, lost. I had you for such a short time, and now I have to live for such a long time without you and the pain is killing me. I guess I don't mind that. I'll just get to see you sooner.

I'm sorry I didn't save you. I'm sorry you had to die. I'm so, so, so sorry. I wish I had gone to the hospital Friday night when you were so active. I should have read the signs. That was a warning, wasn't it? I'm sorry I didn't hear you. I'm sorry I didn't listen.

I. Hate. This.





p.s. please don't comment something about how God will be there for me, how there's a plan, how it'll get better. because yes, i know all those things, and no, they won't help right now. just let me hurt. let me cry. don't try to make it better. you can't. my baby is dead, and kind words won't bring him back. i know you'd mean well. i know you want to help. just...not tonight.

I Do All My Best Thinking...

In the shower. Don't we all?

Tonight (as every night) I was thinking about my Jamesy, and I had, what I think, is a profound thought.

A lot of people try to console me by saying there was a reason my James died. And while I agree with them, I think the focus should be on there was a reason James lived. Because God gave him to me for a reason, knowing that he would die. So while his death is important, and sort of defines him, his life should even more so.

And this thought was kind of re-enforced in my mind when I had this thought: The reason Jesus died was to save us, but the reason he lived was to be an example. To show us how to love, how to be righteous, how to pray, how to obey God... how to die. And what an example he was!

I had never really thought about this side of the coin in so many words. I had come to the conclusion that there was a reason God gave me James, knowing his time here would be so short. I took comfort in the fact that God's will was for James to die so young, for him to be taken from me--knowing how much I wanted that baby, how much I prayed for him, how hard we tried for him, having the IUI work on the first time, etc--making his life that much more important. But I had never really put two and two together before.

I'm tired. Maybe I'm just rambling, but I needed to get these thoughts out. I want to flesh them out a bit sometime, but this will do for now.

It's Been A Month Already...

It's been a month--almost to the minute--since I've seen and held my baby boy for the first and last time. Every single day I wish for those moments again, the few hours I got to see my son. It seems cruel that those minutes were so short that I count them every week, every "anniversary." I had from 7:11 pm until about 10:35 pm. That's it. Two hundred and forty minutes with my baby... well, with his body. He wasn't really there. Even so, my arms ache to hold him again, even if it is just like the only other time I held him; even if he isn't really there... but I can never get that back.

Nor can I ever feel those kicks, the hiccups, the flutters of his fingers. I will never feel him, ever again. That thought, those realizations, they break my heart.

I don't think this will be a long post... I just need to vent, to let things out, to let them flow out of my mind, through my fingers, and away. But I also don't ever want to forget how I'm feeling right now. I have this curse-slash-blessing thing going where I want to LIVE, to FEEL every moment; to enjoy the good and embrace the bad. I loved every second of being pregnant, and I lived in the moment during the entire thing... and that has been a huge comfort to me in the aftermath of all this crap. But I don't want to run from the pain, to ignore how I feel. I want to embrace that, too, and remember it... partly because it seems like it's part of James, now. Maybe that doesn't make sense, and maybe it's an awful thing to think. But it seems like that sorrow is part of James. Just like that joy of being pregnant was part of him, too. I don't ever want to lose the memories of either the joy or the pain, or I feel like I'll have lost part of James. ...I probably sound crazy right now...

I'm not saying I have to mourn for forever in order to remember James. I certainly don't feel the ecstasy I felt while I was pregnant. I won't have to feel so sad to keep his memory alive. But I don't want to FORGET how I feel, either... and now I'm just saying the same things over and over again.

I miss my baby. Nothing will ever change that. And I'll love him, always. This journey of healing is a long one. Maybe I'll pretend that by embracing the good and the bad I'm really just embracing my little James... holding him close. Because he died, I need to live, to experience. But not just in a passive way. I need to live and experience in an active way.

Does any of this make sense to anyone? Probably not, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. These are just my thoughts, I'm not trying to write for anyone else tonight. Maybe I'll look back in a year and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about right now, but it's helpful to me in the moment, and that's the most important thing.

This Is What Happens When I Just Start Writing... I Had No Idea I'd End Up There.

Are you okay? How are you doing?

I hear these two questions multiple times every day. 

And my answer truly is, " Yeah, I'm doing okay." 



I hesitated to write this post, because I don't want people to think I'm lying, putting on a face, or even bragging. This is the honest truth. I am doing okay.

Now, I'm not great. I don't feel wonderful. I am not all sunshine and rainbows. But you know what? I'm also not Scrooge; I'm not depressed; I don't spend all my time lying around and crying. Maybe just lying around...

So many people are, I think, worried that my husband and I aren't handling the death of James well, but in fact, we're doing pretty darn good, given the circumstances. Yes, we cry (or at least I do). Yes, sometimes I'm sad and wish James were here. Some moments are definitely harder than others. And I hardly ever stop thinking about him. But most of the time, we go about our daily lives just fine. Not as robots or automatons, but consciously, like normal people do.

You see, Jon and I don't mourn like "those who have no hope." This parting, however painful it seems now, however long it feels to us, is really just a fleeting moment in light of eternity. Jon and I both know we're going to heaven when we die, and we know James is there now. So, really, very soon we'll be able to see our baby again.

My dad has been preaching in the book of Revelation, going through the whole book verse by verse. The last couple weeks he talked about the Millennial Reign. There's too much to go into detail, but one of the verses he spoke on talks about how more than we ever could imagine will happen (during the Thousand Year Reign), and that gives me hope that maybe, one day, I'll get to not only see my James again (oh joy eternal at that idea alone) but that maybe I'll get to see him grow up (cue happy tears). I really hope that maybe I will.

So, every day that passes is one day closer to seeing James again.

But sometimes that just isn't enough. It's HARD to lose your baby before he's even taken a breath. But oh, the people he managed to touch even so! As my sister put it, his "branches have touched so many." The little girl I used to nanny got saved. I know of another who is seeking God because of what happened with James and seeing the strength and grace that God has so obviously poured out on Jon and me. My family has gotten even closer than we were before. Jon and I are closer to each other. There is so much pure good that has happened. God can, of course, make good come out of any circumstance, but it seems like so much more; it seems like this was James' purpose. And I have full faith in God that his death was part of God's plan; that it was not "just something that happened" but that it was an important part in God's symphony.

My sister's friend gave this Bonzai tree to my sister, to remind her of James. It was because of this tree that my sister thought of how James' "branches have touched so many." I just love the analogy.

But knowing all these things... I don't think just knowing them would have made this cross of mine easier to bear. No. All the glory, all the praise for how well Jon and I are doing through all of this... that's all God's. HE has been so present in our lives. HE has given us grace to wake up in the morning, grace to make it through each day, grace to sleep at night. GOD is the one who is holding our hands, leading us on, giving us hope, even through all our sorrow and pain. And there is a lot of sorrow and pain. But it's not unending. We haven't given up hope. Someday we will hold our own baby, one we get to keep here on this earth with us for a little while. I have full faith in that. I am still scared. What if I miscarry? What if the baby is stillborn again, or worse, what if we get to see that little baby grow up and start to bloom, only to have God take it away again, too soon, by our human standards? What if, what if, what if. But even through all this, we are comforted. We'll have our baby, some day. And we will cherish it, and love it, and hold loosely, for things are fleeting.

I always wondered how Job could say, "The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away; blessed be the name of the LORD." I know, now. Because we as believers will always have the GRACE and MERCY of the Lord, even when things are hard and when they don't make sense. Even in the face of great trial.

I gave my son up unwillingly; how much harder it must have been for God, who must have loved His perfect Son more than I could even imagine loving James, to give His Son up willingly. How much He must love you and me! I have but one prayer: that because of James, because he died, that you might finally see God and accept His love and mercy. That you might acknowledge your sin, acknowledge that you deserve death in Hell and turn to the living God for forgiveness, for everlasting life in heaven with James and Jon and me. We would so love to see you there.

If you have questions about how to get that chance, to see James in person for real some day, to see him alive and happy and ...perfect... please, don't hesitate to ask me, ask a pastor, ask a friend. Because this... this is more important than the life of my son. This was the reason that he died. The reason Jesus died. Don't let those deaths be in vain.