... but I thought I would share, for those of you who do.
Skip to the next post if you are just looking for a more generic update!
I finally contacted my old OB's office last week to ask for the report that was generated when we lost our first pregnancy. The baby was a triploidy XXY boy, which means he had an entire extra set of haploid chromosomes, a condition that causes profound abnormalities. Triploidy is believed to account for about 17% of miscarriages, and triploidy babies who do survive until live birth do not survive for very long. The longest-lived triploidy child on record lived for 10 1/2 months.
I'm not writing this to be dramatic or morbid, but because this recent decision marks an important change in my heart. We lost him almost exactly two years ago, and quite early in the pregnancy. I knew about the triploidy from about 6 weeks after the sad events, but I did not know his gender. I think it was too painful at first to think of that loss in terms of having lost a son or daughter, however unusual his chromosomes. All of the fears of the partial molar pregnancy and the anguish of the process overwhelmed me, and it was all just too much.
Now, looking back, it seems merciful that he did not live longer, both for his sake and for mine. It's only now I am more grateful for his short presence with me than I am saddened by his loss, and, while I would have loved him and wanted him in any condition, I am glad he didn't suffer all of the agonies of a short life in a broken body.
Now that we know he was a boy, there are new possibilities. We haven't named him yet, but we are thinking about doing that, since we are firmly convinced that any life, no matter how short, is worth celebrating and remembering, even if we are the only ones who know or care about him. We know his gender, something most parents who have lost a baby so early do not know, so I feel a certain responsibility to somehow use and honor that knowledge.
He was a special part of our lives and brought incredible joy for the few weeks he lived in me. He ushered me into motherhood, but left the rest of the job of breaking me in to Ian, opting to take God up on his offer to sing in the heavenly choir.
Not a bad idea, if you ask me.
Showing posts with label miscarriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miscarriage. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Carried to Castles of Gold
In two days it will have been one year since we finally lost our first child to miscarriage. I say "finally" because this was the point at which we decided with the doctors that my body was not going to expel the baby on its own, and surgery was necessary. We discovered later that surgery had been the only real option because of abnormalities of the placenta, but we didn't know that at the time. We only knew that it had been nearly 3 weeks since the baby had stopped growing, and that my body had yet to let go. That child, though tests revealed it to be imperfect, was wanted, and its loss was heartbreaking. According to what we know of genetics, this particular child could never have lived (indeed it had stopped living by the time of our first ultrasound), but that didn't matter to us one bit. It would have been about five months old today, and as the anniversary of its loss draws near, it's hard not to mourn all of the losses that attend a miscarriage -- the dreams, the expectations, the hopes -- all over again.
Months later, I remember waiting with Daniel at my gynecologist's office in a hallway, pregnant for the second time, and desperate for good news in the first ultrasound that we awaited in just a few minutes. I saw two young women come down the hallway within a few minutes of each other: each admitted for "post-surgery" consults. (The nurses were not as discrete as they may have been, I think.) Both girls were pretty, carefree, and looked to be about 20, maybe, and they both had come in alone. It suddenly occurred to me that they had probably had elective abortions, and as quickly as the thought crossed my mind, I felt as if every emotion I was capable of experiencing had welled up and threatened to choke me. Here I was, desperately wanting a child I couldn't have, while other people choose to destroy children who would, in all likelihood, be healthy, perfect children that someone would love dearly even if their mothers' lives didn't have room for them.
This isn't to say I don't understand what moves others to make that choice. When our culture is two-faced about the unborn, it's easy enough to choose whichever belief system suits your circumstances, especially if you have not been given reason to believe that some things are more important than others. I mean, a fetus of the same gestational age is a "baby" to a woman who wants it, and "product of conception" to a woman who doesn't. If you think this confusion doesn't make miscarriage rather more difficult to experience honestly, then try talking through tears to the distantly nonchalant medical professional who, for the sake of his or her own conscience, must think and speak in latter terms and, when it is your baby unmoving on the black screen, reverts to talk of embryos and fetuses with studied medical detachment.
Our culture as a whole simply does not value life that hasn't started breathing air rather than amniotic fluid, and so it sets up this dilemma of "rights" that seems somehow compelling in an arena from which certain realities and viewpoints are barred. In truth, I have a great deal of compassion for the women who find themselves in the position of feeling they must make the choice that our culture offers them. I mourn, however, the fact that our culture is so duplicitous as to make that choice seem to be without consequence or importance beyond that of one person's right to order her life as she wishes without the intrusion of what amounts, by this way of thinking, to a tumor.
Something I read recently in Sigrid Undset's Gunnar's Daughter - a saga in Icelandic style but written by a Catholic woman in 1909 - dealt with a strikingly similar issue of life, in the context historic clash between Christianity and paganism in Scandinavia. It's not a new question, really, this question of life. It comes down to worldview. This story that Undset shares makes it plain just how radical Christianity with its respect for vulnerable life must have seemed to the Viking world.
I wish to share and episode from the book here, condensed. Let me preface it only by saying that it was apparently quite common to "expose" unwanted children to the elements to let them die after birth. While the fact that the children in question have been born alive may push the argument to another level even in our cultural framework, if, as most Christians believe, life is sacred from conception, then the problem is really the same at any stage.
A Christian priest named Eirik tells the story of a woman, Tora, who was seduced and bore a child, and "to hide her misfortune she cast the child into the sea." She later married, had children and lived a respectable life until she became deathly ill. She believed herself to be dead, though only in a swoon, and she could hear her children crying for her. All she wanted was to be allowed to return to her crying children. Instead, a man in a black cloak led her towards a castle of gold through a dark valley that, at first glance, looked to be full of little lambs:
"But when she came nearer she saw they were little children; there many thousands of them; they were quite naked and newly born, but their faces were old, and some were bloody and horribly mangled, and some were wet. They tried to climb out of the valley on both sides, but they rolled back again at once, for they were so small and weak. This seemed to Tora such a sorry sight that she began to weep; she asked him in the cloak what it was and how the poor little things had come there. 'Their parents have left them here,' said the man. 'They willed it so.' 'I can never believe it,' said Tora."
Tora ripped her own clothing to cover as many of the children as she could, until she was quite naked herself, while the children swarmed around her and asked her to carry them out of the valley so they could see the world. Tora explained, tearfully, that she simply wanted to return to her own children and she pressed on.
She reached the water in the valley, in which children were shivering neck-high. Moved with compassion, she gathered as many of them as she could, until she could carry no more. She could not make it out of the valley herself, let alone carry the children with her. Her knight offered a solution: he would carry her or the children, and he asked her whom she would have him take first. There were thousands of children, and more arrived every moment, so if he were to take them, she may be left to wait a very long time indeed, but she told him to take the children from their suffering, and she would wait as long as she needed to wait for him to return to the cold, desolate place for her. He then revealed to her:
“'It is your eldest son, Tora, who is now lying next against your breast--all these are children who have been robbed of life before they could live in the world or learn the way to my house.'
“Tora fell on her knees and asked in terror: 'Who are you, chieftain, and what is your name?"
“'Christ is my name,' said the King. And now a radiance went out from him, as though a sun had risen upon the valley, warming all the children. But Tora had to shut her eyes before the glory of it. And when she opened them she was at home, lying in her bed.”
When she awoke, she confessed her history, causing such anger in her husband that he threw her out of the house in the middle of the night. She ran to the shore, thinking that her sin was so great that she didn’t deserve to live. Once there, she was drawn by the cries of a tiny abandoned male infant, which she nursed and fostered.
From that moment, she dedicated her life and what riches were hers to taking in and caring for any child that was unwanted, and she lived simply off the earth. When Christians came to evangelize the area, they were surprised to find that she already knew the Lord by name and worshiped Him. She and the children were baptized, and when she died, she was called holy.
I thank God today that he does not abandon the little ones, but carries them to Himself and, in this parable, His castle of gold. I am also grateful for his mercy and forgiveness and power to save in the face of even the most grievous of sins. Even so, I cannot help but mourn all of the little lives that are lost, whether by the wise hand of God or by human hands that know not what they do. Most of all, I praise God that, to the best of our knowledge, this child now in my womb is healthy and continues to grow. As He well knows, if this child is not destined for this earth, it will not be because we chose it to be so.
Months later, I remember waiting with Daniel at my gynecologist's office in a hallway, pregnant for the second time, and desperate for good news in the first ultrasound that we awaited in just a few minutes. I saw two young women come down the hallway within a few minutes of each other: each admitted for "post-surgery" consults. (The nurses were not as discrete as they may have been, I think.) Both girls were pretty, carefree, and looked to be about 20, maybe, and they both had come in alone. It suddenly occurred to me that they had probably had elective abortions, and as quickly as the thought crossed my mind, I felt as if every emotion I was capable of experiencing had welled up and threatened to choke me. Here I was, desperately wanting a child I couldn't have, while other people choose to destroy children who would, in all likelihood, be healthy, perfect children that someone would love dearly even if their mothers' lives didn't have room for them.
This isn't to say I don't understand what moves others to make that choice. When our culture is two-faced about the unborn, it's easy enough to choose whichever belief system suits your circumstances, especially if you have not been given reason to believe that some things are more important than others. I mean, a fetus of the same gestational age is a "baby" to a woman who wants it, and "product of conception" to a woman who doesn't. If you think this confusion doesn't make miscarriage rather more difficult to experience honestly, then try talking through tears to the distantly nonchalant medical professional who, for the sake of his or her own conscience, must think and speak in latter terms and, when it is your baby unmoving on the black screen, reverts to talk of embryos and fetuses with studied medical detachment.
Our culture as a whole simply does not value life that hasn't started breathing air rather than amniotic fluid, and so it sets up this dilemma of "rights" that seems somehow compelling in an arena from which certain realities and viewpoints are barred. In truth, I have a great deal of compassion for the women who find themselves in the position of feeling they must make the choice that our culture offers them. I mourn, however, the fact that our culture is so duplicitous as to make that choice seem to be without consequence or importance beyond that of one person's right to order her life as she wishes without the intrusion of what amounts, by this way of thinking, to a tumor.
Something I read recently in Sigrid Undset's Gunnar's Daughter - a saga in Icelandic style but written by a Catholic woman in 1909 - dealt with a strikingly similar issue of life, in the context historic clash between Christianity and paganism in Scandinavia. It's not a new question, really, this question of life. It comes down to worldview. This story that Undset shares makes it plain just how radical Christianity with its respect for vulnerable life must have seemed to the Viking world.
I wish to share and episode from the book here, condensed. Let me preface it only by saying that it was apparently quite common to "expose" unwanted children to the elements to let them die after birth. While the fact that the children in question have been born alive may push the argument to another level even in our cultural framework, if, as most Christians believe, life is sacred from conception, then the problem is really the same at any stage.
A Christian priest named Eirik tells the story of a woman, Tora, who was seduced and bore a child, and "to hide her misfortune she cast the child into the sea." She later married, had children and lived a respectable life until she became deathly ill. She believed herself to be dead, though only in a swoon, and she could hear her children crying for her. All she wanted was to be allowed to return to her crying children. Instead, a man in a black cloak led her towards a castle of gold through a dark valley that, at first glance, looked to be full of little lambs:
"But when she came nearer she saw they were little children; there many thousands of them; they were quite naked and newly born, but their faces were old, and some were bloody and horribly mangled, and some were wet. They tried to climb out of the valley on both sides, but they rolled back again at once, for they were so small and weak. This seemed to Tora such a sorry sight that she began to weep; she asked him in the cloak what it was and how the poor little things had come there. 'Their parents have left them here,' said the man. 'They willed it so.' 'I can never believe it,' said Tora."
Tora ripped her own clothing to cover as many of the children as she could, until she was quite naked herself, while the children swarmed around her and asked her to carry them out of the valley so they could see the world. Tora explained, tearfully, that she simply wanted to return to her own children and she pressed on.
She reached the water in the valley, in which children were shivering neck-high. Moved with compassion, she gathered as many of them as she could, until she could carry no more. She could not make it out of the valley herself, let alone carry the children with her. Her knight offered a solution: he would carry her or the children, and he asked her whom she would have him take first. There were thousands of children, and more arrived every moment, so if he were to take them, she may be left to wait a very long time indeed, but she told him to take the children from their suffering, and she would wait as long as she needed to wait for him to return to the cold, desolate place for her. He then revealed to her:
“'It is your eldest son, Tora, who is now lying next against your breast--all these are children who have been robbed of life before they could live in the world or learn the way to my house.'
“Tora fell on her knees and asked in terror: 'Who are you, chieftain, and what is your name?"
“'Christ is my name,' said the King. And now a radiance went out from him, as though a sun had risen upon the valley, warming all the children. But Tora had to shut her eyes before the glory of it. And when she opened them she was at home, lying in her bed.”
When she awoke, she confessed her history, causing such anger in her husband that he threw her out of the house in the middle of the night. She ran to the shore, thinking that her sin was so great that she didn’t deserve to live. Once there, she was drawn by the cries of a tiny abandoned male infant, which she nursed and fostered.
From that moment, she dedicated her life and what riches were hers to taking in and caring for any child that was unwanted, and she lived simply off the earth. When Christians came to evangelize the area, they were surprised to find that she already knew the Lord by name and worshiped Him. She and the children were baptized, and when she died, she was called holy.
I thank God today that he does not abandon the little ones, but carries them to Himself and, in this parable, His castle of gold. I am also grateful for his mercy and forgiveness and power to save in the face of even the most grievous of sins. Even so, I cannot help but mourn all of the little lives that are lost, whether by the wise hand of God or by human hands that know not what they do. Most of all, I praise God that, to the best of our knowledge, this child now in my womb is healthy and continues to grow. As He well knows, if this child is not destined for this earth, it will not be because we chose it to be so.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Rites of Passage
There is no single "Orthodox" way to deal with a lost pregnancy. What to do ends up coming down, in large part, to what each priest feels is best in his capacity as spiritual father dealing with a hurting spiritual child. This is a mercy, I think, because while each of us experience the same feelings and the same life events, no two of us experience them the same way, and the room for pastoral judgment means there are choices.
While there may be no single way, there are guides to follow, precedents to consult, and the comfort that comes from the knowledge that there is no human experience that is "new" to the Church as a whole, even if it is new to me.
Daniel and I decided together with our priest here to have him come to our home to pray with us after the miscarriage was physically complete and before I returned to church. I was very comfortable with that plan. But, as so often happens, it was as if God whispered, "my plans are not your plans," and my best-laid plans were laid aside. On Saturday, a brief phone call confirmed that I would instead come to the church and the priest would pray with me there before the regular services.
I don't like surprises. I don't like change. I've had enough of both lately to last me a long time. When Daniel asked if I was willing to change the plan, I said I was. I was, it was true, but I sure wasn't happy about it.
"Will it be private?" I asked. Well, yes, and no. It will be early enough that most people will not yet be there. The priest, soft-spoken and gentle, will breath the prayers quietly over me rather than shouting them to the rafters. It won't involve fanfare. It will be deeply personal, but not private in the sense I might most like.
My question and my worry about that fact betrayed that I had forgotten something rather important that I slowly remembered as the morning wore on.
Since when is my salvation a private matter? Who among us is truly saved in isolation? Which of us does not need others as witnesses, guides and helpers? Who is so self-sufficient that Christ's love, poured out through other hands and other lips are made impotent and irrelevant? Who doesn't need to be surrounded by others when we would most like to disappear?
-------------
There are ways in which this grief isn't like others. Our culture teaches us not to acknowledge the life of a new unborn baby until it is both "wanted" and thriving after the first treacherous 12 weeks in the womb.
But is that really the way God sees it? I don't think so, somehow. Still, this conflict lives in me. Part of me wants to hide this away in my heart as my private sorrow... mostly, I think, because I really don't want pity, and because I feel that we culturally don't do well with grief in general, let alone the duplicity and confusion that attends the natural loss of a life that our culture says is legal to end willfully without a second thought--a life that only counts if someone wanted it... and even then, only in a way that makes us collectively uncomfortable because this life has the air of promise about it, not actuality. We are not equipped to mourn a life we are not prepared to celebrate.
Yet, some part of me wants to acknowledge what was lost as a real grief, a genuine loss. What better place for that than the place where we greet all of life's spiritual transitions? None better, in spite of my wants.
----------
When we arrived at the church, the walk to the main outside doors seemed incredibly long. I focused on the crunching of my shoes on the gravel of the parking lot, I contemplated turning back around and I experienced increasing dread of the next few minutes. When we stepped inside the first set of doors and made our way towards the interior doors, my heart sank. About half a dozen people were already there--busy at their prayers. I wanted to be alone in that moment. I didn't want to cry in front of them. I didn't want them wondering what was being said if they were out of earshot. I didn't want them to hear if they weren't.
I stood just outside the doors, not sure of what to do, waiting nervously and looking for Father behind the curtain of the icon screen. When, a few moments later, he walked towards me and asked me to stand before him in the doorway, I knew how it would be and I understood how right this situation was for me.
I recognize this position, this place. Standing facing the altar from the back of the church. This is where, traditionally, couples stand to become betrothed, before going to the altar to be joined in marriage. This is where new converts stand to renounce Satan before they go to the altar for annointing. This is where new mothers stand when they are "churched"--blessed and brought back into the church after childbirth. This is a place of transition, or preparation for something new. A place of deaths, blessings and rebirths.
O Sovereign Master, Lord our God, Who was born of the all-pure Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and as an infant was laid in a manger: do You Yourself, according to Your great mercy, have regard for this Your servant Nikki, who has miscarried that which was conceived in her. Heal her suffering, granting to her, O Loving Lord, health and strength of body and soul. Guard her with a shining Angel from every assault of sickness and weakness and all inward torment. You who accept the innocence of infancy in Your Kingdom, comfort the mind of Your servant and bring her peace. Amen.
The prayers themselves were short and comforting: prayers to the King who was born as an infant to a very human mother. When they were done, I stepped into a place replete with reminders of Christ's unfailing mercy and measureless sacrifice.
I sang with the choir for most of the service, stopping to compose myself when the words we sang touched something deep in me and tears started again.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Let us lay aside all earthly cares... that we may receive the King of all.
Yes, let us lay aside earthly cares and focus on the things of heaven. After all, heaven is where God shall wipe away all tears...; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
----------
Possibly some of the most interesting books I have ever read were written by Mircea Eliade, Romanian philosopher, writer and historian of religion. It's been long enough since I read the books that I don't remember much detail. I only know that when I contemplated the power of sacred ritual, of transition, and of their place in our lives as members of community, his work came immediately to mind.
I pulled out his "Rites and Symbols of Initiation" today to see if I could discover what it was that had so resonated with me. What I found, skimming the introduction, was repeated reference to the sacred reality of initiation rites and the essential component preceding all births: death. There was also a deep sense of the connectedness of the individual to a whole cosmic, sacred history that is very much cherished and shared.
What came to mind next was the passage in John 12 where Christ speaks of a grain of wheat falling to the earth and dying before it bears much fruit, painting for us a picture not only of his own impending death, but of the death that all of us must die if we are to follow him and the promises of both fruitful lives and resurrection.
I can't pretend to understand all of this. I only know that as I stood at the threshold of the church on Sunday and was ushered in again with prayer, after several weeks of absence, I could not escape the feeling of having somehow, in a small way, experienced a death and a rebirth, a rite of passage.
But this is no empty ritual, assigned arbitrary meaning by humans who search for reasons for suffering and impose order where there is none. There was more--a connection between that which is physical and sensual--incense, candles, human touch, breath, spoken prayers--and the greater spiritual reality. There was more because the God who loves is in our midst and answers prayers--especially the prayers of the broken.
This was, like so many things in life, a rebirth that is a microcosm of the rebirth we are each offered through Christ, who makes all things new.
While there may be no single way, there are guides to follow, precedents to consult, and the comfort that comes from the knowledge that there is no human experience that is "new" to the Church as a whole, even if it is new to me.
Daniel and I decided together with our priest here to have him come to our home to pray with us after the miscarriage was physically complete and before I returned to church. I was very comfortable with that plan. But, as so often happens, it was as if God whispered, "my plans are not your plans," and my best-laid plans were laid aside. On Saturday, a brief phone call confirmed that I would instead come to the church and the priest would pray with me there before the regular services.
I don't like surprises. I don't like change. I've had enough of both lately to last me a long time. When Daniel asked if I was willing to change the plan, I said I was. I was, it was true, but I sure wasn't happy about it.
"Will it be private?" I asked. Well, yes, and no. It will be early enough that most people will not yet be there. The priest, soft-spoken and gentle, will breath the prayers quietly over me rather than shouting them to the rafters. It won't involve fanfare. It will be deeply personal, but not private in the sense I might most like.
My question and my worry about that fact betrayed that I had forgotten something rather important that I slowly remembered as the morning wore on.
Since when is my salvation a private matter? Who among us is truly saved in isolation? Which of us does not need others as witnesses, guides and helpers? Who is so self-sufficient that Christ's love, poured out through other hands and other lips are made impotent and irrelevant? Who doesn't need to be surrounded by others when we would most like to disappear?
-------------
There are ways in which this grief isn't like others. Our culture teaches us not to acknowledge the life of a new unborn baby until it is both "wanted" and thriving after the first treacherous 12 weeks in the womb.
But is that really the way God sees it? I don't think so, somehow. Still, this conflict lives in me. Part of me wants to hide this away in my heart as my private sorrow... mostly, I think, because I really don't want pity, and because I feel that we culturally don't do well with grief in general, let alone the duplicity and confusion that attends the natural loss of a life that our culture says is legal to end willfully without a second thought--a life that only counts if someone wanted it... and even then, only in a way that makes us collectively uncomfortable because this life has the air of promise about it, not actuality. We are not equipped to mourn a life we are not prepared to celebrate.
Yet, some part of me wants to acknowledge what was lost as a real grief, a genuine loss. What better place for that than the place where we greet all of life's spiritual transitions? None better, in spite of my wants.
----------
When we arrived at the church, the walk to the main outside doors seemed incredibly long. I focused on the crunching of my shoes on the gravel of the parking lot, I contemplated turning back around and I experienced increasing dread of the next few minutes. When we stepped inside the first set of doors and made our way towards the interior doors, my heart sank. About half a dozen people were already there--busy at their prayers. I wanted to be alone in that moment. I didn't want to cry in front of them. I didn't want them wondering what was being said if they were out of earshot. I didn't want them to hear if they weren't.
I stood just outside the doors, not sure of what to do, waiting nervously and looking for Father behind the curtain of the icon screen. When, a few moments later, he walked towards me and asked me to stand before him in the doorway, I knew how it would be and I understood how right this situation was for me.
I recognize this position, this place. Standing facing the altar from the back of the church. This is where, traditionally, couples stand to become betrothed, before going to the altar to be joined in marriage. This is where new converts stand to renounce Satan before they go to the altar for annointing. This is where new mothers stand when they are "churched"--blessed and brought back into the church after childbirth. This is a place of transition, or preparation for something new. A place of deaths, blessings and rebirths.
O Sovereign Master, Lord our God, Who was born of the all-pure Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and as an infant was laid in a manger: do You Yourself, according to Your great mercy, have regard for this Your servant Nikki, who has miscarried that which was conceived in her. Heal her suffering, granting to her, O Loving Lord, health and strength of body and soul. Guard her with a shining Angel from every assault of sickness and weakness and all inward torment. You who accept the innocence of infancy in Your Kingdom, comfort the mind of Your servant and bring her peace. Amen.
The prayers themselves were short and comforting: prayers to the King who was born as an infant to a very human mother. When they were done, I stepped into a place replete with reminders of Christ's unfailing mercy and measureless sacrifice.
I sang with the choir for most of the service, stopping to compose myself when the words we sang touched something deep in me and tears started again.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Let us lay aside all earthly cares... that we may receive the King of all.
Yes, let us lay aside earthly cares and focus on the things of heaven. After all, heaven is where God shall wipe away all tears...; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
----------
Possibly some of the most interesting books I have ever read were written by Mircea Eliade, Romanian philosopher, writer and historian of religion. It's been long enough since I read the books that I don't remember much detail. I only know that when I contemplated the power of sacred ritual, of transition, and of their place in our lives as members of community, his work came immediately to mind.
I pulled out his "Rites and Symbols of Initiation" today to see if I could discover what it was that had so resonated with me. What I found, skimming the introduction, was repeated reference to the sacred reality of initiation rites and the essential component preceding all births: death. There was also a deep sense of the connectedness of the individual to a whole cosmic, sacred history that is very much cherished and shared.
What came to mind next was the passage in John 12 where Christ speaks of a grain of wheat falling to the earth and dying before it bears much fruit, painting for us a picture not only of his own impending death, but of the death that all of us must die if we are to follow him and the promises of both fruitful lives and resurrection.
I can't pretend to understand all of this. I only know that as I stood at the threshold of the church on Sunday and was ushered in again with prayer, after several weeks of absence, I could not escape the feeling of having somehow, in a small way, experienced a death and a rebirth, a rite of passage.
But this is no empty ritual, assigned arbitrary meaning by humans who search for reasons for suffering and impose order where there is none. There was more--a connection between that which is physical and sensual--incense, candles, human touch, breath, spoken prayers--and the greater spiritual reality. There was more because the God who loves is in our midst and answers prayers--especially the prayers of the broken.
This was, like so many things in life, a rebirth that is a microcosm of the rebirth we are each offered through Christ, who makes all things new.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The Muddle in the Middle
I had a chance this week to briefly catch up online with a friend I have never met face-to-face, but have found to be an inspiration over and over again over the last few years -- especially when my going gets a bit tougher than usual. She has been through more challenges than I can imagine surviving -- let alone coming through with flying colors -- and still she exudes victory and wisdom well beyond her years and life station.
I found myself reaching out to her this week because I knew she would understand some of the things I have been facing lately. In addition to being a writer, a wife, a medical "survivor," a friend and the filler of any number of other roles large and small, this woman is also mother to several children... all but one of whom passed from this life too soon. This woman has held her living child and then kissed his lifeless form a few hours later, and she still finds hope, joy and a reason to fight to make life as rich as it can be. A brush with her spirit is a gentle reminder that sorrows, while deep and very real, do not need to remain festering wounds. A few words from her are like a gentle upward breeze when my hopes have started to plummet to earth.
When she tells me that I will make it through all of my current hurts, worries and confusion and emerge even stronger than before, I believe her. She really doesn't offer me any other choice, because her conviction is contagious, and I know she is speaking to me as me, not offering empty platitudes.
It's not that I really doubt that I will make it or that I will be strengthened by adversity... I have already been through some rather dark moments, and they haven't erased my hope. But I'm struggling in strange ways now, in part, I think, because I find it somewhat harder to define myself.
I've changed fundamentally. Then again, I haven't changed. I'm still the same old me. But sometimes I don't recognize myself when I gaze into my internal mirror. There are facts about me that are forever altered: I've been part of the creation of new life. I am a mother, even though there is no external signpost, no little person to chase around and no memorial plot to mark the few weeks that made up a life that I knew more intimately than anyone else this side of heaven. I've experienced an amazing gain... and a subsequent loss that surprises me at times with its strength and presence.
Under the circumstances, I can't help but be different somehow.
I'm really not inclined to dwell too much on the loss. It is absolutely real, and I feel it to my core. It inhabits my dreams and flits in and out of my consciousness during waking hours. It's never far away, even when I am busy with other things. That is just the way it is. But I don't want to be defined by what might have been or what was. I want to be in the present, not the imagined future or the actual past. I want to be here now, because, while being here hurts, here and now I am blessed -- and I have the opportunity to heal.
My friend and I discussed a woman we knew of who died in her 40s this week after a long battle with excess weight and a shorter battle with illness, and we both were struck by the feeling of unfairness that always comes with deaths like hers -- not unlike my feelings when we heard the telling silence in the ultrasound room. Circumstances are unfair... we can't help but feel that... especially when someone we think is too young, too good, too important, too long-suffering or too special to us exits life in ways or at times we would never have chosen. Perhaps it is a reflection of our deep knowledge that the world that we live in is not the world we were designed to inhabit and that we are not the people we were created to be. This world is flawed and fallen -- as we are -- but the spark of the divine in us shines through the darkness of life as it is to shows us life as it ought to be: whole and at one with our Creator and His creation. We can't help but long for things to be the other way -- we were made for that.
We look at the world as it is and we feel it is unfair. We are right. It isn't fair... but not in the way we think.
Fairness is destruction. Instead, our lives are bathed in mercy and we have absolutely been given reason to hope, no matter what unfairness life dishes out.
Most of the time when I really think about my situation and the feelings I've battled that tell me my circumstances are unfair, I end up deciding that I really can't complain. I said so to my friend in these words:
"I don't think I have suffered that deeply."
"Suffering is relative. You can't compare when you are living it," she replied.
She's probably right. I don't have the full picture yet. Still, our hurts, the big and small ones, are all part of what it is to live.
But, how am I to be here and now... who I am, now, changed and unchanged? Joyful and sorrowing? Eager to suck the marrow from life and yet burdened by loss and sometimes feeling unable to move?
It's easy to be defined by a pet project or a role or a relationship or a plan. It's easy to come up with pat answers to "Who are you, and what do you do?" It's not so easy to put the reality of all we are in context sometimes... especially when parts of who you are at your core cannot really be shared with the world in a way the world can understand.
I had begun to be defined by pregnancy and motherhood. That fact had so completely taken over my body and mind. So what am I now? Who or what defines me?
My friend has defined herself of late by one of her long-time personal battles. It's taken up incredible amounts of her time and space and thought and energy, and now she wants to finally be herself as a whole person, not herself as the crusader for a cause. I understood what she meant, somehow... especially when she said, "I didn't want to lose any of the other things I am... especially the mother to my bunch in heaven."
I don't want to either.
I don't want to lose sight of the blessing that was mine for a few weeks. Then again, I don't want to lose the joy of living now because of something that was for a time and that isn't now in a tangible way that anyone else can see and intuitively understand.
For now, anyway, I guess I just need to muddle through.
I'm still in the middle... in the middle of a rather deep transition from who I was to who I am and who I will yet be. In the muddle between what I thought life would be and what it actually will be -- the details of which are, mercifully, perhaps, hidden from me. It's hard to know how to be and what to think and how to feel when I am stuck here in these moments. Still... somehow... I know I am where I must be, and being here and now is good enough.
I found myself reaching out to her this week because I knew she would understand some of the things I have been facing lately. In addition to being a writer, a wife, a medical "survivor," a friend and the filler of any number of other roles large and small, this woman is also mother to several children... all but one of whom passed from this life too soon. This woman has held her living child and then kissed his lifeless form a few hours later, and she still finds hope, joy and a reason to fight to make life as rich as it can be. A brush with her spirit is a gentle reminder that sorrows, while deep and very real, do not need to remain festering wounds. A few words from her are like a gentle upward breeze when my hopes have started to plummet to earth.
When she tells me that I will make it through all of my current hurts, worries and confusion and emerge even stronger than before, I believe her. She really doesn't offer me any other choice, because her conviction is contagious, and I know she is speaking to me as me, not offering empty platitudes.
It's not that I really doubt that I will make it or that I will be strengthened by adversity... I have already been through some rather dark moments, and they haven't erased my hope. But I'm struggling in strange ways now, in part, I think, because I find it somewhat harder to define myself.
I've changed fundamentally. Then again, I haven't changed. I'm still the same old me. But sometimes I don't recognize myself when I gaze into my internal mirror. There are facts about me that are forever altered: I've been part of the creation of new life. I am a mother, even though there is no external signpost, no little person to chase around and no memorial plot to mark the few weeks that made up a life that I knew more intimately than anyone else this side of heaven. I've experienced an amazing gain... and a subsequent loss that surprises me at times with its strength and presence.
Under the circumstances, I can't help but be different somehow.
I'm really not inclined to dwell too much on the loss. It is absolutely real, and I feel it to my core. It inhabits my dreams and flits in and out of my consciousness during waking hours. It's never far away, even when I am busy with other things. That is just the way it is. But I don't want to be defined by what might have been or what was. I want to be in the present, not the imagined future or the actual past. I want to be here now, because, while being here hurts, here and now I am blessed -- and I have the opportunity to heal.
My friend and I discussed a woman we knew of who died in her 40s this week after a long battle with excess weight and a shorter battle with illness, and we both were struck by the feeling of unfairness that always comes with deaths like hers -- not unlike my feelings when we heard the telling silence in the ultrasound room. Circumstances are unfair... we can't help but feel that... especially when someone we think is too young, too good, too important, too long-suffering or too special to us exits life in ways or at times we would never have chosen. Perhaps it is a reflection of our deep knowledge that the world that we live in is not the world we were designed to inhabit and that we are not the people we were created to be. This world is flawed and fallen -- as we are -- but the spark of the divine in us shines through the darkness of life as it is to shows us life as it ought to be: whole and at one with our Creator and His creation. We can't help but long for things to be the other way -- we were made for that.
We look at the world as it is and we feel it is unfair. We are right. It isn't fair... but not in the way we think.
Fairness is destruction. Instead, our lives are bathed in mercy and we have absolutely been given reason to hope, no matter what unfairness life dishes out.
Most of the time when I really think about my situation and the feelings I've battled that tell me my circumstances are unfair, I end up deciding that I really can't complain. I said so to my friend in these words:
"I don't think I have suffered that deeply."
"Suffering is relative. You can't compare when you are living it," she replied.
She's probably right. I don't have the full picture yet. Still, our hurts, the big and small ones, are all part of what it is to live.
But, how am I to be here and now... who I am, now, changed and unchanged? Joyful and sorrowing? Eager to suck the marrow from life and yet burdened by loss and sometimes feeling unable to move?
It's easy to be defined by a pet project or a role or a relationship or a plan. It's easy to come up with pat answers to "Who are you, and what do you do?" It's not so easy to put the reality of all we are in context sometimes... especially when parts of who you are at your core cannot really be shared with the world in a way the world can understand.
I had begun to be defined by pregnancy and motherhood. That fact had so completely taken over my body and mind. So what am I now? Who or what defines me?
My friend has defined herself of late by one of her long-time personal battles. It's taken up incredible amounts of her time and space and thought and energy, and now she wants to finally be herself as a whole person, not herself as the crusader for a cause. I understood what she meant, somehow... especially when she said, "I didn't want to lose any of the other things I am... especially the mother to my bunch in heaven."
I don't want to either.
I don't want to lose sight of the blessing that was mine for a few weeks. Then again, I don't want to lose the joy of living now because of something that was for a time and that isn't now in a tangible way that anyone else can see and intuitively understand.
For now, anyway, I guess I just need to muddle through.
I'm still in the middle... in the middle of a rather deep transition from who I was to who I am and who I will yet be. In the muddle between what I thought life would be and what it actually will be -- the details of which are, mercifully, perhaps, hidden from me. It's hard to know how to be and what to think and how to feel when I am stuck here in these moments. Still... somehow... I know I am where I must be, and being here and now is good enough.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Silence Explained
I will be the first person to admit that when someone likes to write as much as I do, not knowing how or if to even write about what is going on in my life and desperately wanting to write is a real dilemma. It's why I haven't written for a while. I'm ready to open up a bit now, even though right now that is no easier than keeping silent.
Daniel and I have had a whirlwind of changes in the last six weeks or so... much of it has been exciting and miraculous, and some of it has been exceptionally hard. Currently, we're in one of those exceptionally hard patches.
We found out at the end of December that we were expecting a baby. That was very welcome news, but it has been a very bittersweet journey, both because the pregnancy itself was very hard on me physically, and because it has come to an end much sooner than we had hoped.
An ultrasound yesterday morning, at what would have been 8 weeks 6 days, confirmed that the baby had stopped developing at 7 weeks 4 days. It's rather hard to describe how painful it was to see the all-too silent and still ultrasound before walking through two long hallways of very pregnant women and their beautiful babies and then waiting in line, face red and puffy, to check out. I really don't begrudge them their happiness -- in fact, I need to know it doesn't always end like this -- I just wanted to disappear.
The process isn't over yet. We've chosen to let nature take its course and check back with the doctor next week, at which point we'll decide how to proceed if my body hasn't managed to complete the process naturally. I understand the science, I know the statistics. I'd hoped to be fortunate enough not to face this outcome, but now that it is here, I'm quite resigned to doing whatever needs to be done and moving on as best I know how.
People who know me well enough to have known about this sooner have called me or messaged me online, most of them asking how I am doing, and I think I can honestly say that while I am heartbroken, I actually feel a great deal of peace about the situation. It's still rather emotionally exhausting to talk about, so if I decline to take a call or delay answering an email, I hope you'll understand that it is not at all personal and that it doesn't mean I am cutting myself off from you or from others. I really only have so much desire to talk. I communicated with no fewer than 30 very kind and supportive people yesterday in various ways, including 2 priests and a couple of women who have been through similar circumstances, so I am genuinely not feeling isolated or unsupported.
About 2 weeks ago I posted a rather philosophical post on a pregnancy message board about my deep conviction that even painful things like miscarriages, as senseless and difficult as they must feel (no matter how easily and handily science dismisses them), happen in the greater context of God's perfect plans. Around that time my prayers changed, too... from pleading that God would work things out my way, to accepting that my way may not be His way and asking instead for grace to handle whatever He may have in store for us: difficult pregnancy, easy pregnancy, a healthy child, a child with special needs, a miscarriage or some other outcome I couldn't imagine. I still feel that way. We're all in His hands.
I lay in bed last night thinking about some of the other deep disappointments in my life: the long-term boyfriend who didn't want to marry me, the exciting move that didn't happen, the transfer to college that fizzled... each of them were devastating to me at the time. However, from this distance in time, I can see very clearly how each of them fit in the bigger picture, and, in every case, something wonderful was brought into my life later on. Dare I say something better? In many cases, that is absolutely true. I don't know why this baby wasn't meant to thrive. I'm not sure it matters to me, really. I'm content to know that this baby wasn't meant for a longer stay and that the choice was never mine to begin with.
I expect I'll have my moments as time goes on. I expect to grieve -- with all that that entails. But I also know that we'll be okay, and we'll open ourselves up to the possibility that next time may be different. Those of you present at our wedding probably recall the dozens (hundreds, perhaps) of reminders that children absolutely must, somehow, be a part of our marriage. We're confident that they will be...
Finally, I know this is one of those uncomfortable topics that prompts one to say, "I don't know what to say." Please... you don't need to feel that you need to say anything, or that you need to come up with the "right" reply. The "right" reply may simply be letting us know you are there and praying. That's comfort and support enough.
Daniel and I have had a whirlwind of changes in the last six weeks or so... much of it has been exciting and miraculous, and some of it has been exceptionally hard. Currently, we're in one of those exceptionally hard patches.
We found out at the end of December that we were expecting a baby. That was very welcome news, but it has been a very bittersweet journey, both because the pregnancy itself was very hard on me physically, and because it has come to an end much sooner than we had hoped.
An ultrasound yesterday morning, at what would have been 8 weeks 6 days, confirmed that the baby had stopped developing at 7 weeks 4 days. It's rather hard to describe how painful it was to see the all-too silent and still ultrasound before walking through two long hallways of very pregnant women and their beautiful babies and then waiting in line, face red and puffy, to check out. I really don't begrudge them their happiness -- in fact, I need to know it doesn't always end like this -- I just wanted to disappear.
The process isn't over yet. We've chosen to let nature take its course and check back with the doctor next week, at which point we'll decide how to proceed if my body hasn't managed to complete the process naturally. I understand the science, I know the statistics. I'd hoped to be fortunate enough not to face this outcome, but now that it is here, I'm quite resigned to doing whatever needs to be done and moving on as best I know how.
People who know me well enough to have known about this sooner have called me or messaged me online, most of them asking how I am doing, and I think I can honestly say that while I am heartbroken, I actually feel a great deal of peace about the situation. It's still rather emotionally exhausting to talk about, so if I decline to take a call or delay answering an email, I hope you'll understand that it is not at all personal and that it doesn't mean I am cutting myself off from you or from others. I really only have so much desire to talk. I communicated with no fewer than 30 very kind and supportive people yesterday in various ways, including 2 priests and a couple of women who have been through similar circumstances, so I am genuinely not feeling isolated or unsupported.
About 2 weeks ago I posted a rather philosophical post on a pregnancy message board about my deep conviction that even painful things like miscarriages, as senseless and difficult as they must feel (no matter how easily and handily science dismisses them), happen in the greater context of God's perfect plans. Around that time my prayers changed, too... from pleading that God would work things out my way, to accepting that my way may not be His way and asking instead for grace to handle whatever He may have in store for us: difficult pregnancy, easy pregnancy, a healthy child, a child with special needs, a miscarriage or some other outcome I couldn't imagine. I still feel that way. We're all in His hands.
I lay in bed last night thinking about some of the other deep disappointments in my life: the long-term boyfriend who didn't want to marry me, the exciting move that didn't happen, the transfer to college that fizzled... each of them were devastating to me at the time. However, from this distance in time, I can see very clearly how each of them fit in the bigger picture, and, in every case, something wonderful was brought into my life later on. Dare I say something better? In many cases, that is absolutely true. I don't know why this baby wasn't meant to thrive. I'm not sure it matters to me, really. I'm content to know that this baby wasn't meant for a longer stay and that the choice was never mine to begin with.
I expect I'll have my moments as time goes on. I expect to grieve -- with all that that entails. But I also know that we'll be okay, and we'll open ourselves up to the possibility that next time may be different. Those of you present at our wedding probably recall the dozens (hundreds, perhaps) of reminders that children absolutely must, somehow, be a part of our marriage. We're confident that they will be...
Finally, I know this is one of those uncomfortable topics that prompts one to say, "I don't know what to say." Please... you don't need to feel that you need to say anything, or that you need to come up with the "right" reply. The "right" reply may simply be letting us know you are there and praying. That's comfort and support enough.
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