My wonderful inlaws (and I’m not just saying that because I found out they occasionally stop by here and read my ramblings) are here spending the night. We just had a serious talk and my poor MIL didn’t know how to bring up the topic of discussion. Every once in awhile she reads my blog. I didn’t know that. They are still on dial-up and blogs take forever to download, especially blogs with pictures. Now I’m stalling…
She found out about my miscarriage by reading my blog. I know that’s terrible. Let me explain. When we talked about who we should tell, we thought it might be best if we didn’t call his parents. Benny thought his mom would worry about us even more than she already does as a mother. Since I didn’t know she stops by my blog, I didn’t think she’d find out. But she did. It put her in a position of having to figure out how to talk to me about it. YUK! I love my inlaws. I don’t set out to make them worry or make them uncomfortable. So here is my official apology and future promise:
Pete & Margie, I am sorry for not telling you before I sent that news into cyberspace and I hereby promise to call you in the future with any such news BEFORE I release it to non-family members. I did not mean to put you in an awkward position and I am glad you still love me. 🙂
Maybe we are more alike than I thought. I believe too much information is usually better than not enough. What can I say? Sometimes I’m an idiot. This is actually strike 2 for me because this is also how she found out about my tattoo. oops. That was 2 years ago, I figured she hasn’t been back since.
FYI…I could use your prayers as I’m still recovering emotionally from the miscarriage. My body may be almost back to normal, but my heart still hurts.
My Journey has led me to the grandest of mountain peaks where the sun glinting off the snowcaps was blindingly beautiful and my heart soared with eagle’s wings of joy. It has also led me through the driest and darkest of valleys where I felt like I would die of thirst if nourishment didn’t somehow get past my crusty and cracked lips. Such is life…and I don’t view it as something to be endured as much as something to be experienced while being fully present through the pain and the joy. I walk with God – or more like He walks with me. He chose me first and when I chose Him back, He promised He’d never leave me. In the past few weeks, I’ve clung to that promise.
I debated for a long time whether or not I would post about my sorrows. I’ve been skimming along the surface for awhile now, avoiding some tough things I’m supposed to discuss here. Blogging what I’m about to share is me taking the deepest breath I can and diving for the depths – partly out of obedience and mostly hoping and praying it will help someone else. If you’re coming along with me, breathe deep friend. I’m not coming back up for air until next week sometime.
I miscarried.
Those two words sent me into a state of shock and I’m still recovering. I think I will be for a long time. Without sharing all the details here, let me share with you why I was/am so shocked. I had a tubal ligation done 4 years ago when Petey was born. That decision was based on discussions with doctors about scar tissue I have from 3 previous c-sections. My babies don’t come out the other way. I felt strongly like I shouldn’t have a 4th c-section. We have always planned on adopting someday, so I was o.k. with not having any more babies.
Three weeks ago I miscarried. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until it happened. I think I was about 10 weeks along. It didn’t require any medical procedures. Though oxygen when I figured out what was happening would have been nice. Shock doesn’t even begin to cover it.
What does this mean? Questions flooded my mind like a geyser had erupted somewhere inside me and shot them straight through my brain stem. Was the tubal a mistake? Did it not work on one side or both? Did it work but my body healed itself during the recovery process after delivery? How did this happen? I know there are no guarantees but this method is one of the most fool-proof forms of sterilization? How could I beat the odds? I’m a statistic! Is God trying to tell me something? Am I supposed to have more children? We talked through that decision for a long time – were we wrong? Is sterilization wrong? Does God care about such things? Am I in danger of this happening again? Do we need to start using birth control again? Do I have another surgery if needed? Should I have exploratory procedures done to show me what happened? Wouldn’t it be nice to have health insurance right now? How do I feel about the possibility of having more children? How does Benny feel about it? What’s my fear here? Do I just wait and see what happens next? Do I tell people and ask for prayer? Who should I share this with? Why do we always think things like this happen to other people and never to us? Do we tell our kids? (We decided they are too young to understand.) How common is this?
The first week I spent in shock and asking questions. I was trying hard to wrap my brain around it. I was pregnant? Really? Then I taught at FACE and a girl in one of my classes wore a small pro-life pin on her shirt. It was baby feet at 10 weeks gestation. I saw that pin and felt like someone simultaneously slapped my face and punched me in the stomach. I faked my way through the rest of the morning, and came home to fall apart. The emotion I felt guilty for not having the week before came on hard and fast in tidal wave fashion. And here I sit two weeks later still processing and crying at the oddest times. I’m sure my hormones are still not back to normal, but I’m a crier anyway. Most of the time, I can talk about it without crying. Today has been hard though.
Yesterday I received an email from a college friend whom I’d not yet told about what I’d been going through. She was distraught because she miscarried this week. She had just found out last week that she was pregnant (5 weeks) and she was deliriously happy. This week she is depressed and healing and reaching out for support. I love this woman and I want to encourage her but I’m struggling with the how of it all. We all deal with loss in different ways. She knew about the baby before it was gone. I didn’t know about mine. It took me a week just to acknowledge that it was a BABY. Then came another shock. I had sent out an email to several friends telling them what I’m going through so they could pray for me as I process and grieve, and MORE THAN HALF of the women who emailed me back had miscarried and I didn’t even know. A few of the men had experienced the loss from a husband’s point of view. I hadn’t given much thought about it being a subject that isn’t discussed. I had no idea how common it was – even among my friends.
WHY??? Why didn’t I know? Why isn’t this shared? Why do people suffer alone and not surround themselves with a supportive community to help them cope? Am I strange to be so open in talking frankly about it? Is that just MY way of coping? I would have taken every opportunity to encourage and love on a friend going through something like this even when I didn’t have the first clue what it felt like to suffer this loss. I felt alone and didn’t know who to call when I was freaking out…I didn’t know. I did call a local friend who gets me and lets me be blunt, and she was fabulous! She had experienced miscarriage herself and she was of great comfort to me. Maybe I’ll get to be that person for someone else someday. Maybe it will be sooner than I think. I want to minister from in my pain. And that is where I am…in pain. Physically I’m fine. Mentally I’m still processing.
I have more to say, but it will have to wait until next time. I’m spent. I would appreciate your continued prayers that God’s will be done in my life and that I rely on His strength to get me through my valley of the shadow of death. Pray for my friend as well. If you’ve already prayed and/or sent me an email, thank you so much for your support and encouragement. I’ve always said I’m richly blessed when it comes to friends.
A few facts I found on the web:
25-50 % of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Many women miscarry and don’t even know it – they think it’s a heavier than normal period.
Approximately 143 in 10,000 women get pregnant after having a tubal ligation. Most of them miscarry within the first trimester. The odds go up slightly 10 years after a tubal, but this is still one of the most effective (human error free) methods of sterilization.
I had an unplanned sabbatical from the blogosphere this past two weeks, so my apologies for the delay in the many posts I have in the works. We had some family stuff come up that needed attending to, but almost all is well now and I’m back.
In our family of five, at least one of us has been sick for the past two months. We just keep passing it around and the symptoms morph a little bit with each person. Petey was down on Christmas Day, and now it’s Zoe’s turn and she has a fever of 103. We could use your prayers for healing.
We didn’t keep with tradition for our holiday plans this year. We enjoyed a relaxing day at home with our friend Heather. Christmas afternoon, Benny took the two older kiddos to see The Water Horse, which they liked. Heather and I watched The Bourne Ultimatum at home while Petey slept. Instead of going out for Chinese food, Benny grilled his famous beer brats, and Heather made onion dip for chips and veggies. I didn’t cook a thing. 😉
The questions conversation has sparked some interesting discussions and I’ve really appreciated the comments and emails regarding how questions shape each of our faith journeys. I was also grateful at the timing of some of the comments that were uplifting. I look forward to future dialog about the questions.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones!
My friend Zack showed me this video today. He was looking at it in the context of the health-care system here in America, which fits and is a good discussion for another day. But my first thought was that it was a good visual example of who we are and need to be as parents, friends, and a community of believers. The video is of a group of water buffalo who engage in a battle with lions and a crocodile to rescue a young waterbuffalo that has become prey. It is titled “Battle at Kruger”.
What a picture of life. There are lessons we can learn from this video. For example, we don’t have to go looking for trouble, it can easily find us on it’s own. I also thought how well this illustrated Bible passages like 1 Peter 5:8 which says, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
Thinking about how this applies to my family and my life, I have a picture of all of the things out there that are a threat to my children. I have gone through periods of life where the threat wasn’t real even though I perceived it as such (imagine cardboard lions instead of the real ones), and I’ve lived the opposite where the threat didn’t seem as great as it actually was. In those situations, underestimation can kill you. There have also been times that I walked into threatening situations with my kids in tow, maybe not realizing the dangers that awaited me (not only were there lions, but a hungry croc as well). So what’s an anxious momma waterbuffalo to do? She went and got back-up. Along comes the whole herd to help her rescue her baby. “It takes a village” and “Safety in numbers” worked in her favor this time and the result was one hurt but alive baby and lions being tossed in the air and chased off by the mob. Calling in reinforcements saved that baby buffalo’s life – as far as we know.
It’s a good plan. It’s what I feel some of my friends were trying to do for me when they sent the warning email about The Golden Compass movie. (I received another email about it today.) What I hope I conveyed with my post on that subject is that sometimes the mob mentality backfires and causes more damage than needed. Sometimes the mob thinks it is protecting the young and attacking the enemy when in actuality there might not be a real threat. But what if there is – like in this video? Shouldn’t we be ready for it and willing to fight it? But what if what I perceive as a threat, you find harmless? What then?
We have a responsibility to protect our children. We are the filters for what they watch and learn while they’re young. It is through our guidance and direction that they learn what is appropriate and acceptable and what is not. We raise our children reflecting our own values and morals. And there in lies the problem. While there is certainly a standard moral code (ie. don’t bring harm to others), beyond that morals and values vary from family to family. For example, our family highly values stories about superheroes, our kids all have their own capes and I don’t limit where they can wear them – other than while they’re in bed for safety reasons. We talk about what makes the characters super, their powers and their frailties, and how they deal with both. We even have a superhero family name – The Fantastic Five. We loved watching “Who Wants To Be A Superhero?” on T.V. Then there is my friend *Kathy. That’s not her real name – I’m covering my butt. Her family does not watch superhero shows, she doesn’t like superhero costumes, she thinks that kids can pick up some pretty bad habits from watching superhero stuff, and basically finds all of the hoopla annoying. They are a wonderful Christian family without the superhero influence. We are Christian family with it. Is either of us “wrong”? I don’t think so. It’s a matter of us both training up our kids the best way we know how with our own values in mind. Which brings me to my next point…
Though our love for all things superhero runs deep, there are things in that genre that are not appropriate for our kids at their current ages. We don’t let them have access to certain superhero movies and shows, and won’t until we think they can handle it mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Kids can’t handle the same things adults can. You’ve heard me rant on this topic before when I witnessed frightened children with their careless parents at the theater watching PG-13 and R-rated movies.
Marketing companies hack me off by spending millions of dollars selling teen or adult movie merchandise to small children. It makes me a bit crazy. We drew the line with the superhero movies like Superman Returns, the Spiderman trilogy, Elektra, X-men, etc. Those movies are not intended for a young audience, but were entertaining for older teens and adults. All of the buzz surrounding The Golden Compass may be a case of just that. From where I’m at in the book, I would not read it to my children until they’re older. At 8, 5, and 3 they aren’t ready for the mature situations I’m reading about. I understand the caution being taken by concerned parents. I may have friends that choose differently than I do. I’ll still love them and be their friend if they do.
So back to the video…I thought that baby was done for. When I saw the herd of buffalo arrive for the showdown, I thought at the very least they would run again and at the most they would recover a dead calf. The lady on the video kept saying, “They’re too late, they’re too late”. It was amazing to see the calf stand up and try to get away – which it did. We can be like that herd of buffalo and come to the aid of our fellow buffalo. It’s necessary to know what the danger is ahead of time and have a plan. They ran the lions off one at a time – not as a group. There was no need to run the crocodile off because he wasn’t a real threat. We need to know who we’re fighting and what we’re fighting for.
We need to take responsibility for our kids and be proactive not by boycotting, but by talking it out and walking our walk and setting the example yet letting others have the freedom to choose their own actions. We need to know when to call for reinforcements and when to avoid the watering hole all together. We also need to rally with the herd to rescue the kiddos in our community when they’re in danger. That could be the start of another post about our ministry…;)
She is the lucky winner of a signed copy of The Restitution! Thanks to all who played. I’ll be doing more give aways in the next few weeks on my blogs, so check back often for more free stuff!
It’s Family Movie Night at the Nowell’s, so Zoe and I are off to Redbox to pick up our flick. We’re going to use our coupons for free pizza, and a new friend from Friday school told us to try a new popcorn topping : Equal parts coconut oil and agave, with a sprinkle of sea salt. Sounds yummy!
Friday Family Movie Night is a big deal at our house. We were invited to a family game night at a friend’s church tonight and the kids voted to stay home and carry on with our tradition instead. 😉 Here’s how it works. Each week we take turns picking a movie and choosing what’s for supper. After a light supper we all get in our pajamas, make popcorn, get our fuzzy blankets ready, gather in the livingroom and stake out our territory and settle in for the night with the chosen movie. After the movie we end up cuddling on the couches and/or wrestling around. Bedtime is a little later on Fridays, but usually Benny and I watch another movie after the kids go to bed. It’s a great way to wind down from the activities of the week.
Tonight’s movie is Barbie as the Island Princess. Guess whose turn it was to pick? 🙂
Sometimes I Write 