Leaving Flowers in the Ground

I am not a huge fan of change. 

I wish I could say I am one of those super cool people who not only didn’t mind change but coveted it, always looking round the corner for the next surprise, hoping for the thrill of the new and unexplored.

Unfortunately, I am not an adrenaline junky, but more of an enthusiast of all things steady, still and calm.

I have a tendency to become fondly acquainted with my corners, attached, comfortable and devoted to what has become ‘home’. This is basic human instinct for many I suppose, and there is good in that. 

The problem lies, of course, in the fact that the world doesn’t stay still, and we don’t either. Naturally we change, day by day, moment by moment, and so does everything around us. That is growth, rebirth, death, and all that lies in between. So why, then, do we so often fear and resist when the path ahead is no longer familiar? 

I can only speak for myself in this, but it’s not for lack of experience nor the good of the outcome that I dread this reality- it is more, perhaps, the road I know I might be asked to travel in order to get there. 

In the summer of 2019 I lost my first baby, and I would conceive, love and lose three more within three year’s time.  The pain of each goodbye was more than I felt I could bear. In the midst of these losses, I underwent three consecutive lung collapses over the span of two months, four chest tubes and five separate surgeries. By the end doctors told me I would never be able to conceive and carry a healthy child to term.

 At the time I often felt like God was simply taunting and taking, and it was nothing short of terrifying to know He was not only able but willing to take my children home before I had a chance to hold them. 

Though not quickly, and not easily, God worked deeply in me through this span of time, this dark valley, showing me himself in a way he’s been re-teaching me my entire life- that is, the art of freeing myself of my own grip and trusting regardless of what my eyes tell me is true. 

Letting go .

So cliche sounding, I know, and I wish I had a more eloquent way of saying this, but it is the greatest lesson of my life and one I will never entirely master on this side of heaven. I fought him on it, and I fought hard. For a long time I could not separate the idea of him taking my babies and what I perceived to be his ongoing disfavor and abandonment. I felt more heartbroken, alone and confused than I have any other time of my life.

But, one finger at a time, he opened my hands and showed me who he was again, and I finally let go. 

He carried me through the end of that valley when I had nothing left but my open hands. I learned I could live on without them and find joy and peace beyond what I thought possible, despite my circumstances. Not because any of it was ok, it never would be, but because He is.  It was never about getting what I thought I needed or deserved on this earth, but something far greater promised to me.  And in some strange way, what happened next no longer mattered, because I knew the end of the story, at least the part I needed to know. And that was enough.  I was with him, and I was free.

 “Our” world is not meant to be grasped tightly as if they were ever our own. As humans we seek to capture and hold all that we cherish, even if that means that some of those things are no longer free. 

And neither are we, then, I suppose. To release our world to him can be the most terrifying thing we can imagine, because we don’t know where he’ll take us, and we have to trust him on a deeper level than ourselves. But, in truly doing so, there is some great peace that will ensue.

The road of change, of tearing and of leaving reminds us that the core of love is not possession, but joy in what something or someone is, independent of us entirely.  It is to delight in what God created them to be, for however long or short that happens to occur. 

The goodness and beauty of my four children had nothing to do with me, as it turned out. They were beautiful and good in their own right, and while I wanted them to be mine, with me here, their not being so actually didn’t negate that.  

Death, sickness and pain will never be ok or safe, but He will.  And because of that I can choose to take His hand and walk any road he deems necessary, as long as I am with him.

The world around us teaches us that success and happiness lies in possession and control, but I am living proof that is untrue.  In order to truly find joy and peace in what can feel like chaos, we must let it all go and open our hands.  To love but never grasp for ourselves, killing the idea that something is somehow better because we are holding onto it.  We want to pick the flowers we delight in and keep them for ourselves, but as soon as we do, they die. 

And, for those who don’t know the end of the story, after all had been given up to him, He gave me a miracle named Rowan Harper.  He didn’t have to, but He did, and her existence is my daily reminder that He is good and I can keep my hands open. 

I wonder if you, too, might have something in your hand. Something you’re wanting so deeply to be free of but cannot manage to release. It can feel like you’re stepping into the abyss to let go, but there is something so good on the other side.  

I could tell you to sit here and open your hands with whatever that thing is and just release it, but I know it just doesn’t work that way. It’s a journey not a destination, one I still walk every day.  I know it can feel like a death of sorts, and in some ways maybe it is.  But I think it’s worth it.

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”-  CS Lewis, A Grief Observed

—

Extra ordinary miracles: the sacred chapter

In June of this year, M and I announced that we were expecting. Not our first, but the first we will ever hold on this side of heaven.

This little one has been the biggest delight and bombshell of our lives, one that we could never have planned for, and the furthest thing from what we were expecting. I finally feel ready to tell my story, at least this part of it.

I have kept so much in my heart the past few years as I’ve wrestled through the many goodbyes we’ve had to endure, and anytime I’ve come to tell you about them, the words simply haven’t been there, nor the strength to pen them.

To be quite honest, I hesitate in some ways to say them now, not due to fear or lack of clarity, but because it’s not the end of the story yet. It never really is, which is part of the beauty and magic of life.

But we must, I suppose, begin somewhere.

The story I’m about to tell you is one I’ve never told. It’s not particularly unique, inspiring or heroic, but it’s part of me. I promised God a long while ago, that if He grant me the gift of life for a little while on this earth, in all its pain and joy and glory, I would find the courage to share this. For it is by unhiding our wounds and storms that another soul may find refuge in the scars they leave behind. You are never alone in the darkness, dear one, and perhaps knowing that will, on some dark night, be enough to get you through.

It began unconventionally and not at all as planned. As you may or may not have figured out by now, life does not follow our plan.

Ever.

For a long while, M and I never really knew if we even wanted to have children, it wasn’t a dream either of us had known before. Both unconventional with an untamed way of living life, neither driven by tradition or the expectation of others, we found the concept of doing something so ‘normal’ rather foreign in a way.

The absolute irony in this is not lost on me, if that is what you’re thinking, nor is it something I’ll ever quite understand. How many nights have I looked up at the stars missing my babies, wondering why I could not have simply remained on that side of desire, never tasting, never wanting, never missing any of them.

Sort of life’s way, I suppose, of handing us the joker just when we think we’ve got every play sorted out.

In July of 2019 my life had just been turned upside down and tipped over twice within a two week span. Everything that I had held dearest to me was either being taken by death or threatened by something, perhaps, much darker.

Somehow, this mess and madness that came to destroy the life that M and I had, did something quite extraordinary- it brought us deeper into love instead. A Love greater than ours took the bits and pieces and crafted them into something far more beautiful than we had ever made ourselves.

The next month, on August 22nd, we found out I was pregnant. It was the most unearthly moment, as we had neither planned for nor expected him, but felt deeply the beacon of hope he represented, something that symbolized the deep love reborn between us.

And as suddenly and unannounced as he came, so he left us in the fall, and our hearts were broken. No reason given, of course, other than ‘that is simply part of life’, a phrase that will forever haunt me and will never bring any amount of comfort to an aching mama’s heart.

The best reason to offer, in my humble opinion, is none at all. For there is none good enough.

If someone had told me, at this time, that I would conceive and love three more babies growing inside me and lose them both within two years time, I would have thought them mad. To bear such heartache would not have sounded humanly possible.

And in truth, it wasn’t, but we bore it.

And somehow, amidst all the tears and sorrow, that unearthly love that bound us together kept M and I strong and close.

We grieved them constantly, but I found in ever-so-secret and sacred ways, the contiguity of joy and grief, that they are actually sisters, not enemies. And to bear one as deeply as I did, I must also carry the other equally so. I learned somehow to hold them both, each in a part of my heart, and live life as fully as I always had, only with a greater weight to carry. Neither grief nor love can exist here without the other, and I learned the wisdom in that far more deeply than I ever desired to at the time.

In the summer of 2021, M and I decided to give ourselves one last try before closing the door to children and moving on to other adventures of life. We began the process of IVF over the course of several months, ultimately landing me in the hospital with serious internal bleeding, a very close call after a complication with my egg retrieval procedure. It became very clear to both of us that this wasn’t something we could or should risk again, but our little Harper found us anyway.

Harper.

She was the one embryo of 5 that made it, and she fought to continue to grow and develop, to the great surprise and expectation of the team of geneticists and doctors monitoring her. She defied all odds with her will to live, and I knew she was doing all she could to find me. It was months before my body was healed enough to take her, and while we did all we could to keep her with us, she did not make it.

In the midst of these losses I underwent three consecutive lung collapses over the span of two months, four chest tubes, five separate surgeries with a 3cm growth found on my liver just hangin’ out for no apparent reason. After running some additional tests, genetics also discovered I tested positive for BHD, and while this explained the past 20 years of pneumothoraces, it also meant facing and accepting the rest of what that would mean in coming years. I continued with infusions on a regular basis and pushed through covid like the rest of the world, often feeling like my body was hanging on by a thread and daring me to keep breathing.

It is a strange thing to feel your soul gaining strength while your body seems to be failing you at every turn. I learned to love it anyway, for keeping on, for not giving up, for carrying my babies as long it possibly could.

Geneticists, specialists and surgeons all kindly told me that without intervention, conception would simply not occur.

Letting go of the dream of little ones here on earth was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, but somehow we did. I knew that the One who had carried me and my babies all along the way was asking me to let them go, all of them, and to hand them over to Him.

This did not happen over night. Over the past three years I have wrestled with Him in many ways, earnestly trying to understand why He let my babies come, and why He took them back. I went through times I didn’t know what to think or believe, and every effort to try and trust him fell flat.

How I can I trust the One who handed me a child, 4 of them, and then let them die inside of me? Over and over and over again.

Every part of me struggled to find the why. Somehow it seemed that if I could uncover that mystery, somehow I could make sense of the sorrow that filled my heart.

The way through the valley He took me through with my heart’s questions isn’t one that is simple or easy, nor easily explained. The strange thing is, I never found the answer to the question I was asking, I never found the why. The quandary I was so focused on didn’t ultimately matter at all.

There was a moment in time, or perhaps many moments in time gathered together in another dimension that I walked into where I finally saw it and knew deep in my soul what I needed to do. I had to let go and He was going to catch me.

He was good, and whatever he chose to do, however long or short my children were with me, that remained true.

I didn’t just want to know that, I did know that. With every fiber of my being. I saw the other side, the beautiful Other that is awaiting me no matter what blackness swirled about. I saw beyond all of it, and my heart found peace.

I could live on without them and find joy beyond what I thought was possible. And I did, and thats the truth. It wasn’t about getting what I thought I needed or deserved on this earth, but something far greater promised to me. Once I saw it, I could not unsee it. My heart had found a secret- a depth of joy and understanding I cannot explain.

And in some strange way, what happened next no longer mattered to me. Because I knew the end of the story, at least the part I needed to know. And that was enough.

So M and I moved on and closed the door at last, looking to new ventures that awaited us. Lo and behold, at the end of April, on the 6th floor of a hilton hotel in Los Angeles, we were hit with the surprise of our lives and haven’t been able to find the ground since.

She was naturally conceived, without intervention of any kind, perfectly healthy, active and full of Life.

I am in my final trimester now, amazed daily by my growing belly that gets so lovingly and gently kicked by a life I cannot explain. We hope someday to hold this little soul on this side of heaven, to whisper to her the secrets she and her siblings taught me that I never knew I needed to learn.

Beauty in the Dark

I’ve been putting this off for a while, probably sorta hoping it would just go away if I waited long enough. The thought wasn’t exactly illogical, though perhaps a bit optimistic given my circumstances.

Last month I had my 2nd yearly BHD MRI scan and was told I have a 9.4x 4.6 cm cyst growing around my liver now. While I’d like to say I wasn’t expecting this, part of me knew something was up, because honestly, when it comes to my body when isn’t something up? I’ve been pretty queasy for the past 3 months, chomping on tums to get me through the day, and popping dramamine at night when I eat to keep from hurling . I had been in other treatments just prior and originally thought that was the cause, but then the treatment ended and the quease persisted. I had no idea why and was really just too tired of trying to figure out why my body does what it does to care all that much. After a while you just learn to accept things and not ask questions.

They cannot touch it without risking damage to my liver, so for now I’m just being monitored to see if it grows since they are 95% confident it is not malignant and won’t do any permanent damage aside from making me pretty uncomfortable.

And so, I just added it to the pile and endured.

I wish I could sit here and tell you that in doing so I handled it all like a champ. That despite this new thing being added to all the rest of what I’ve been battling, it didn’t take me down.

But it did.

This is now the 4th organ my BHD has affected since I was diagnosed last year. I’ve had 4 chest tubes for collapsed lungs, 2 VATS lung surgeries, a uterine surgery to remove a growth, a two inch ovarian cyst, two baby losses (one involving surgery) 3 months of infusions followed by three months of very difficult treatment. And now I am told I have a giant alien growing on my liver? Thats just dandy.

Everyone has their breaking point, turns out that was mine.

All these little things- the doctor calls, the growing charts, being told it’s just a matter of time before my lungs go down again, the scarring from so many IVs that they can no longer easily draw blood, the ignoring of my body because it just hurts now and that is life, the goodbyes and aloneness that can never explained in words. All these small things add up I guess.

But the thing is, even in the midst of it all I can still sit here and say it’s a bitch and also that life is so desperately beautiful and worth every tear.

As humans we want to separate. We want to neatly categorize the good from the bad, the black from the white, the their’s and mine. But the thing is, almost everything is both, and the more I’ve learned to accept that, the more indescribable joy I’ve been able to contain.

Darkness is a siren that will draw in every inch and swallow you whole if you buy the lie that Beauty is tidy or sensible or sane. If you are waiting for life to bring you happiness when you get it ‘sorted out’ life will come along to defy your soul and make you choose, and pain will always take you down. For you have to walk through the darkness to find the greatest good, and the deeper you go the more beautiful it becomes. It is dark and cold and unclear often, but if you look you will find the sky is dappled in gold.

It is both. It is all. And it is worth it.

And thats how I’m still standing (sitting) here and my heart is still so full of joy. I am no hero or even a particularly strong person in my opinion, and there are those who face much more difficult roads than I. I am simply an old soul who discovered a secret a while ago, and I’m here to pass that along to you. Please, take it. ❤

a love observed

I didn’t really wanted kids growing up, it was just never my thing.   As I listened to most of the girls I knew dream non-stop about their goal to one day be a mom, it became very clear to me that I was an anomaly in that.  It was not only one of their main goals in life, it was often the main goal.

And while I loved listening to them dream about it, it would never be my dream. And I was ok with that.

My dreams were just different. I wanted to learn to train dogs, play soccer, ride horses without saddles, and surf as well as any boy.  I wanted to study voice and learn to sing, to perform and share my love for music with the world. I wanted to write, go to school to study counseling and bring hope to the heartbroken.  I wanted to have huge dogs and love someone who I could truly call my bestie.

And so I did. I did all these things and more, and life has been beautiful.

This past year, two surprise children found their ways into my life, my belly and my heart. They did not stay long, but oh how I loved them.

I still do.  These two beautiful, precious souls taught me so much about life and love, and my soul at it’s core.  They showed me a piece of myself I had, perhaps, never really looked hard at.  When I love, I love deeply, perhaps fearlessly.  My heart takes in any creature put before me, and to a depth I don’t even understand.

I’ve always been that way, mom says it was my  superpower growing up. I could see people’s souls- their pain and joy-and I could love in a way she couldn’t always explain, on a level that couldn’t be deciphered logically.   When I loved, I just never half-assed it. I either did or I didn’t, there was no in-between. And I embraced the pain that came with it whole-heartedly.

My babies came to mess up my plan, to remind me that my plan didn’t matter.

Because, you see, they were never in my plan to begin with.  And then, once they came, my plan was to keep them, but it didn’t really turn out that way.  Funny thing is, I would do it all over again, just the same.

Why?  Because love isn’t contingent upon whether or not you get to hold onto that which you love, it simply exists.

Forever.

I got to know a love I didn’t know existed. And there it was.

And there it is.

They are gone, but not really. I think of them daily and smile. I know them, even though that shouldn’t be possible. I do.

And they remind me what a beautiful life this is.  I see them when I look into M’s eyes looking down into mine. I seem them in our two beautiful angel beasts they call dogs.   I see them in the sky, and in the sun, and in the ocean waves.

I miss them, but I am glad they came, and my story is different because of them.  To love the  beautiful souls and creatures around me, just as I always have, freely, deeply, and fully, that is a gift.  I continue to carry that love wherever I go, and now they are a part of me.

Through the shallows

To say the past 8 months have been difficult would be laughable, at best.  But as I sit down to try and put words on a page  (as all true writers are forever compelled to do) I find myself at a loss. Not because there are no words, but because the words I have tell a story I neither like nor understand.

They tell a story of grief.

For better or for worse, I am a heavy-hearted optimist. I cannot help but see hope and breathe deep joy while simultaneously bearing upon my shoulders the depth of sorrow in this world.  It is a strange coalesce, and I am a strange soul indeed.

But recently life has become so heavy, I have been tested beyond what I thought I could bear.

Over and over again. 

It’s as if I have been blindfolded and deafened, then shoved into a dangerous underground of cold blackness and told to find my way home without direction, sight or sound.

I have lost so much…too much along the way.  Two children, my best friend, my health, and some of which I will not speak of here. All in a matter of months. Every time I lose another piece of my soul, my wound is torn off bigger than before, and my heart threatens to cease altogether.

I have lied down in that darkness so many times, staring up at the sky, wondering if that tiny light inside of hope and joy has gone out for good. But as I have scraped myself up off the floor, standing up again against all depths of darkness upon me, I have found a fight and strength I did not know I had.

It goes against all common sense and logic, really. It would make more sense to let it all go and give in at some point.

But that hasn’t happened, and I believe the reason for that is the joy and hope I carry isn’t some flighty feeling of being happy, it’s my core.  It is what I am made of, body spirit and mind, and now I have no doubt of that.

Instead of all this shit destroying me, as it seems intent on doing, all it has managed to do is reveal the person I truly am inside.

Deep pain and loss make you face not only the monster in the dark, but yourself.  It tears down pretense and fragmented notions of self awareness, and it forces you to look into your own eyes and soul.

This is not the first valley I have been through by a long shot.  But it has tested me more viciously and violently than I can say.

I am alive

I still choose deep love

I still carry deep joy

I still have hope.

Darkness, you have not won, and you never will.

 

 

 

Purgatory

Here I am again, the middle of in-between, the space where no one talks about and everyone does their best to avoid.  There are no answers here, only questions. Not the ones that make you hope or wish or dream, no, this is the dreaded space.  The type of questions that naw and scrape at you, that never leave you alone and make you feel like you are falling in your dreams with nothing to grab a hold of.

I don’t pretend to understand it, and though I try my best to keep my wits about me, I feel like I am failing. I’m falling and failing while the world continues to zoom upward and I, I spiraling below without a thing to hold.  My mind is filled with all the awful questions and none of the answers. Even the worst answers I could bear right now if only they could offer themselves.

But no. You have me here, in the in-between where there is nothing but You and I and nothingness.

What would you have me say? What would you have me do? That I trust it will all turn out?  That I believe you will do a beautiful thing and save my child if only I really truly can trust and give you my hand?  That is the hand that took my child before, it is hard to reach for.

It is blindingly horrifying to let go of her and grab hold of you.  I must, for there is nothing truly in my hand and nothing to grab but yours.  I must trust that if she lives, she lives by your hand alone and I must walk in the darkness until you bring her out.  Either to hand her to me or take her to be with you.

You have promised nothing but that you will be with me. You may take her and I must let you.  The question of why you ever brought her to me will forever remain just that- a question. But the fact of your goodness remains, even in the darkness.

I understand nothing and see even less.  So here in the darkness I will remain until you bring me out.  For in the darkness I would rather be that in the light alone.

A season of darkness

Sometimes the reason why we remain silent is not that there is nothing to say, but there is too much to say.

That has been true for me the past few months, and every time I sit down to write it’s like trying to fill a thimble with the ocean waves crashing in front of me.

I could try to laugh this off and tell you these days will come, which would certainly be true, but life has also taught me there is something to be said about acknowledgement of loss.  Failure to do so often results in a non-so-pleasant demand later on by way of our our own heart’s need to process.  The pain will surface, one way or another, I simply prefer to get it over with.

After losing Mr B in July and baby Z in September, I found myself back in the hospital with yet another spontaneous pneumothorax. This was the first left lung callapse after dozens on my right over the past 12 years, another chest tube for the books.  This one occurred at 4am in the morning as I turned over in bed.

A week later while driving home from the hospital after getting it removed, I felt my lung go down again.  I tried to fight it, sleep it off, sternly tell it to get into place, all to no avail.  I was admitted back into the hospital the next morning, eventually receiving a wedge resection mechanical and chemical pleurodesis.

In non-doctor speak, thats shred the inside of your chest cavity until it looks like raw beef, cut part of your lung off, staple, and glue to said shredded chest cavity. Tada.

This surgery, while not new to me, was particularly shitty.  I’m not sure what it was that made it so much more painful this time, but the recovery has been a bitch.  I’m told if you watch the surgery performed online, my struggle to recover makes perfect sense.  I cannot say I’ve been brave enough to do that, but I’ll take their word for it.

There is another incident I could mention that occurred in the midst of all of this, but it’s really not worth mentioning. Because it didn’t win.  Evil and lies never do.

Suffice it to say, ever since the night of July 13th when my boy took his last breath, life has hurt. Waking up, lying down, simply breathing has hurt, and not just physically.

The kind of hurt that has a way of making us choose.

Choosing to live or to die, hope or despair.  To take on tomorrow or let yesterday swallow us alive.  To choose to just see the wounds or to look beyond them to the scars that will eventually make us stronger. Choosing the courage to live and not to lay down our sword.

It’s been a lot, too much you might say. But I’m still here, and a better person for it I think. Pain always gives us the opportunity to choose whether we will use to build our soul stronger or make us callused and cold.

I have cursed, I have cried, I have given up at times. But at the end of the day I have chosen life over and over again. Why? Because the beauty of the good outweighs the agony of the darkness

Every time

And the most evil and dreadful things in this world cannot touch the thing it wants more than anything, which is the soul He holds.

If I can breathe through each of these heartaches, I will find on the other side a more beautiful place than I knew before. I really do believe that, though it’s been shit and a half getting there.

Over and over and over again, until the sun comes up again.  And the crazy truth is, I wake and sleep with a deep sense of joy, despite it all. Not happiness, but a depth of beauty and peace that entangles my soul, reminding me that Love has got me, and Love will win in the end. And thats enough.

Hope, dear heart, have hope.

 

 

I so wanted to meet you, baby

I’m not sure why this topic is often avoided and kept so ardently concealed when it’s something so many have suffered.  Perhaps the level of pain it incurs simply keeps us from being able to utter the words in real life.

But it is too heavy a burden to bear alone, which is why I am sharing my story. Sometimes we need to brave for those who suffer as we do so they do not suffer alone.

This week I lost our little boy. I felt his presence from the day he was conceived and waited two weeks for technology to catch up with what my heart already knew was true.  He was, in fact, a miracle from day one, brought into the world during the most painful season of our lives. And he offered us joy and hope as we’ve never experienced.

You didn’t stay long, little one, and I’m not sure why.  I will always wonder what you looked like, what you loved and what your little soul would have brought to this world. I love you dearly and always will. Please say hello to B for me, and wait for me there in that other place.  Thank you for bringing my such immense joy and hope, we will always remember you.

Love you forever,

mom