I am outside tonight, enjoying the cool temperatures, high humidity and gorgeous Iowa sunset.
I love connectedness. I love how one person is connected with another; how the sky is connected to the earth, the beauty of the sunset, the importance of the bugs and animals and that all together as one we sing out a beautiful chorus to our great Creator.
The sun has just disappeared behind the blue/purple/pink haze of summer but the sky is still bright.
I have just returned home from leaving my oldest child at summer camp for the first time. I have no doubt she will have a fantastic time. She is growing into a young woman and is full of confidence and grace - and laughter, so much laughter.
(Okay so the bugs did make me go inside. I know mosquitoes serve a purpose but why does that purpose have to include MY blood?)
My husband and littles have stopped for ice cream on the way home and I have been granted the rare opportunity to sit in quiet and reflect on life.
I don't get to reflect much anymore - I just feel tired alot.
(And now I itch.)
I walked to the post office tonight and watched a plane fly overhead. I wonder where those people are going? I wonder who they are going to see? Are they happy? Are they sad? A business trip or a pleasure trip? What about us? When we travelled to China to pick up our sweet baby boy, were there people down below wondering about us? I wish I could tell them how wonderfully our world was about to change.
(Seriously, I just got so many bug bites and I was out there 5 minutes. I hope Amariss uses the bug spray I sent with her. Soooo glad I packed bug spray!)
I was prompted to write another blog post by a good friend of mine. She was 12 when I met her... She was a shy girl coming to youth group as a 6th grader and my husband and I were youth sponsors. I seriously remember the very first day she and her older sister came to youth. Now she is 24 and is married and is mothering her own little one. I'm pretty sure when I was 20 I never imagined that we would someday be sitting and having coffee and catching up as friends. Friends, connected - through life, seasons and motherhood.
Also, where did 12 years go?
(My family will be home soon and I'm anxious to check the camp website and see if there is a picture of my little girl yet.)
I love to remember my connections. The new neighbors down the street with young children, being from a small town, loving to sing and dance and paint and experience life - I love to see connections everywhere I go.
I wonder if we looked deeper to see how we were all connected, if we might learn to love a little more deeply, to share a little more grace and to experience a lot more joy?
7.06.2016
5.05.2016
It's the week before Mother's Day and I have been thinking -
I haven't logged into Blogger in so long I was worried I might have to reenter my password... and then the hassle of trying to remember my password.
I almost didn't put forth the effort.
But here I am - so far past my last blog.
It is the first week of May already and we are on our spring break before we head into our final 9 weeks of school. Ending the last week of July, just in time to take a 4 week break and start again in September. Woohoo!
Homeschoolers love making their own crazy schedule to fit their own crazy needs!
It has been an emotionally strange week for me. And by that I mean that I have cried this week. To a friend, not my husband and that was weird. Not because crying is weird, I'm just not one of the people in this world who can make the tears come out. I feel them inside, but rarely do they work their way out of my eyeballs.
Whoa - that was off.
This whole post is off. Who knows if I'll even post it!
Monday was the 3 year anniversary of our loss of Isaiah. Monday Aaron left for France for 4 days (work trip, mostly travel time.), Wednesday I finished reading Ghost Belly, which is a memoir written by a mom regarding her stillbirth. And Mother's Day is Sunday.
All of this just wraps its way around my heart.
Isaiah's loss, Aaron gone, emotionally exhausting book, Doron's birth mom. My heart is feeling pulled at.
I don't know. That's it I guess. It all is just surrounding me and I'm trying to process while I live and breathe and mother and purge and manage this. all of this.
I started a 2000 Things Clutter Free Challenge, and I'm decluttering spaces - 15 minutes at a time, 15 minutes a day...
That's really about all I can handle. But I look up at the top shelf of my closet where 5 baby boxes sit. 5 boxes of memories representing 8 babies who never took a breath on Earth but live full and beautiful lives in heaven - I don't know what to do with them. And I know that right now, I'm leaving that space to be purged later. I'm not sure what to do with them.
A paragraph near the end of Ghost Belly rings through my mind -
"It's supposed to be comforting to know that overwhelming grief will not last forever, that it will fade and you'll feel normal again, that sadness will become something that remains within measure rather than covering the universe.
It's certainly practical that this happens. It makes it more tolerable to correct page proofs for a book that has been in production far too long. It's even good that this happens: It makes it possible to laugh at baby giggles.
But it's no comfort. Even when I was in my deepest despair about Thor's death, I feared the day that despair would lessen, because I knew it would feel like a betrayal: a betrayal of a child already grievously betrayed."
- I feel that, towards each baby box. Even though I know they were there for me. For Aaron and I to process our grief better and to remember the journey of each child of ours. But here now, almost 10 years after our first loss - Seriously, 10 YEARS?! I can remember that day like it was yesterday.
10 years after our first loss... almost 3 years after our last... I'm healed, healing? healed enough? I don't think of our little ones every day, not even every week. I remember their lives. I can mention 8 miscarriages without feeling the angst in my soul. And even then, I have forgotten the most wrenching parts of the pain surrounding it.
I sat yesterday morning reading in my devotions from 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4 "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. "
I was reminded in this. I don't speak as much about the years we walked through our miscarriage journey, I have felt out of place in this world having now moved to the other side of that journey and have followed God's leading into a new and different (albeit still hard) journey of motherhood.
There was a time when remembering the pain, plunged me into feeling the pain so deeply all over again - and now that that has past, remembering the pain just reminds me of God's faithfulness here on this side of our journey. But as I read those verses in 2 Corinthians I was reminded, yet again, that I was comforted in all of my troubles and because of that I can be a comfort for those who are facing the same sorts of troubles. I took so much strength from God as I walked that hard hard road of loss. And it propelled me to lean into him for strength during the hard hard road of life. The hard road of adoption and unknowns, the hard road of surgeries, the hard road of respiratory illnesses, the hard road of separation disorders, the hard road of night terrors, the hard road of an incorrect ADHD diagnosis, the hard road of making hard decisions, hard phone calls, and asking the hard questions - the hard road of all of the unpredictables that are bound to come our way.
While the journey I am currently walking is important and valuable and holds great significance - the journey we have already endured has not lost its importance, its value or its significance. While speaking about miscarriage is no longer a daily part of my life, the role it has played in my past can still make an important impact on someone else's life.
And then there is Mother's Day - and tackling this day as an adoptive mom for the very first time. I am currently processing that - remembering and honoring Doron's birth mom on this day. I remember her nearly every day because our boy is so incredible. I look at him in awe and wonder and I love him, his past, his present, his future. All he is, all he will be, and where he came from. This woman, who loved our son, but couldn't mother him - I am processing her this week as well. I suspect she will be in my heart for the rest of my life.
God bless,
Brie
I almost didn't put forth the effort.
But here I am - so far past my last blog.
It is the first week of May already and we are on our spring break before we head into our final 9 weeks of school. Ending the last week of July, just in time to take a 4 week break and start again in September. Woohoo!
Homeschoolers love making their own crazy schedule to fit their own crazy needs!
It has been an emotionally strange week for me. And by that I mean that I have cried this week. To a friend, not my husband and that was weird. Not because crying is weird, I'm just not one of the people in this world who can make the tears come out. I feel them inside, but rarely do they work their way out of my eyeballs.
Whoa - that was off.
This whole post is off. Who knows if I'll even post it!
Monday was the 3 year anniversary of our loss of Isaiah. Monday Aaron left for France for 4 days (work trip, mostly travel time.), Wednesday I finished reading Ghost Belly, which is a memoir written by a mom regarding her stillbirth. And Mother's Day is Sunday.
All of this just wraps its way around my heart.
Isaiah's loss, Aaron gone, emotionally exhausting book, Doron's birth mom. My heart is feeling pulled at.
I don't know. That's it I guess. It all is just surrounding me and I'm trying to process while I live and breathe and mother and purge and manage this. all of this.
I started a 2000 Things Clutter Free Challenge, and I'm decluttering spaces - 15 minutes at a time, 15 minutes a day...
That's really about all I can handle. But I look up at the top shelf of my closet where 5 baby boxes sit. 5 boxes of memories representing 8 babies who never took a breath on Earth but live full and beautiful lives in heaven - I don't know what to do with them. And I know that right now, I'm leaving that space to be purged later. I'm not sure what to do with them.
A paragraph near the end of Ghost Belly rings through my mind -
"It's supposed to be comforting to know that overwhelming grief will not last forever, that it will fade and you'll feel normal again, that sadness will become something that remains within measure rather than covering the universe.
It's certainly practical that this happens. It makes it more tolerable to correct page proofs for a book that has been in production far too long. It's even good that this happens: It makes it possible to laugh at baby giggles.
But it's no comfort. Even when I was in my deepest despair about Thor's death, I feared the day that despair would lessen, because I knew it would feel like a betrayal: a betrayal of a child already grievously betrayed."
- I feel that, towards each baby box. Even though I know they were there for me. For Aaron and I to process our grief better and to remember the journey of each child of ours. But here now, almost 10 years after our first loss - Seriously, 10 YEARS?! I can remember that day like it was yesterday.
10 years after our first loss... almost 3 years after our last... I'm healed, healing? healed enough? I don't think of our little ones every day, not even every week. I remember their lives. I can mention 8 miscarriages without feeling the angst in my soul. And even then, I have forgotten the most wrenching parts of the pain surrounding it.
I sat yesterday morning reading in my devotions from 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4 "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. "
I was reminded in this. I don't speak as much about the years we walked through our miscarriage journey, I have felt out of place in this world having now moved to the other side of that journey and have followed God's leading into a new and different (albeit still hard) journey of motherhood.
There was a time when remembering the pain, plunged me into feeling the pain so deeply all over again - and now that that has past, remembering the pain just reminds me of God's faithfulness here on this side of our journey. But as I read those verses in 2 Corinthians I was reminded, yet again, that I was comforted in all of my troubles and because of that I can be a comfort for those who are facing the same sorts of troubles. I took so much strength from God as I walked that hard hard road of loss. And it propelled me to lean into him for strength during the hard hard road of life. The hard road of adoption and unknowns, the hard road of surgeries, the hard road of respiratory illnesses, the hard road of separation disorders, the hard road of night terrors, the hard road of an incorrect ADHD diagnosis, the hard road of making hard decisions, hard phone calls, and asking the hard questions - the hard road of all of the unpredictables that are bound to come our way.
While the journey I am currently walking is important and valuable and holds great significance - the journey we have already endured has not lost its importance, its value or its significance. While speaking about miscarriage is no longer a daily part of my life, the role it has played in my past can still make an important impact on someone else's life.
And then there is Mother's Day - and tackling this day as an adoptive mom for the very first time. I am currently processing that - remembering and honoring Doron's birth mom on this day. I remember her nearly every day because our boy is so incredible. I look at him in awe and wonder and I love him, his past, his present, his future. All he is, all he will be, and where he came from. This woman, who loved our son, but couldn't mother him - I am processing her this week as well. I suspect she will be in my heart for the rest of my life.
God bless,
Brie
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