Category Archives: Faith Musings

Easter is over – now what?

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IMG_5142I always imagine the day after all of Jesus’ friends discovered that he was alive to be a little, well, weird.

I mean really, what do you do with that?

One of your best friends, a person you’ve admired and followed and tried really hard to be like, dies a horrible death. You’re shocked. Numb. Scared something similar might happen to you, given the political climate.

And then, a few days later, he’s standing in front of you.

Your mouth goes dry, agape. You hug, but you still don’t know how to believe the truth of what you’re holding. And then you’re sitting down on a mountainside, having supper and saying things like, hey Jesus, will you pass the cheese?

***

Lent is over. Easter is finished. I’ve been reminded. I’ve remembered. I’ve worked really hard at giving up my anger to be more like Jesus. And meanwhile, my candy jar is full of leftover jelly beans and I need to stain treat and wash the little white dresses all my girls wore on Sunday.

I spent yesterday unpacking from our trip home to South Dakota. (By unpacking, I mean I managed to put the suitcases and bags in the rooms they were supposed to go, and then took the girls outside.) We played on the hill in our front yard, my daughter running up and down, laughing and singing her bright voice into the sun-drenched morning.

But I had this nagging thought. I couldn’t remember what actually happened next in Jesus’ story. Death. Resurrection. But then what?

So this morning I pulled down my Greek comparison Bible, and I paged through to the end of the books where Jesus’ friends recounted what had happened.

“But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.”  Matthew 28:16

“And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And while they still could not believe it for joy and were marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” And they gave Him a piece of broiled fish.”  Luke 24:38-42

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20

“After the Lord Jesus has spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.” Mark 16:19 & 20

Words from my high school confirmation-type class came flooding back. Ascension. Great Commission. Words that probably didn’t mean much to the people left standing on the mountain.

I imagine someone digging a front toe into the dirt. Another brushing off lunch crumbs. All of them wondering what to do next.

Somehow, the ordinary act of living didn’t feel like enough.

Jesus had said to go and make disciples, but Jesus was gone. How was that going to work? I can hear them questioning one another, ears still processing the phrase “teach them to observe all that I commanded you.”

***

Two thousand years later, I’m still processing it too. What do I do when the hype of a religious holiday is over? Has it changed me at all? What do I do next?

For me, it’s continuing on my journey of giving up anger. There is still work to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully uproot my anger, or if it will continue to be a part of my character that needs constant pruning.

I do know that eventually, Jesus’ friends figured out that the best way to do what He asked them to do was to tell His story. And like any memory, it became more real, more full, more brimming with truth and meaning at every telling.

It wasn’t a once a year sermon preached from a pulpit or a stage. It was God and man. A meal shared with friends. The thread of a story piecing together every day’s living.

Love.

 

Redeeming this common life

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Our wood burning ceramic stove stopped working last week. 24/7 constant burning since November caused a good buildup in the chimney, and one morning, after building a fire, I found my eyes burning with back-drafted smoke.

We have an alternate heat source, so it’s not like we’re walking around in parkas. But it’s been cooler in our normally semi-tropic home. I tell myself this is good for my anger – that cool air has long been a refuge for finding calm, like a smoker retreating to the deck while a family argument overheats the house.

But really, the broken stove is just life. Like so many things overused or late, tired or worn, eventually we all have a moment where we choke.

Confession: I have been angry this week.

I have muttered under my breath about my daughter’s unwillingness to potty train. I bit my lip twice in one meal, ala Jim in The Office Season 9, and allowed it to strangle my morning. I have stomped, yelled, sighed in frustration. Snow has yet again covered our hopes for life outside, and it all feels so sloppy.

Heavy.

I have pray/begged for help, only halfheartedly remembering to think about Jesus carrying the weight of my wrongs up Golgotha.

***

Yesterday, Ellis decided it would be a good day to snap all my chalk sticks in half during art time. So I made it a chance to update my chalkboard, two inch chalk sticks notwithstanding.

IMG_20140320_165351_511It wasn’t hard to pick something – this quote had been cornering me all week.

“By honoring this common life, nurturing it, carrying it steadily in mind, we might renew our households and neighborhoods and cities, and in so doing, might redeem ourselves from the bleakness of private lives spent in frenzied pursuit of sensation and wealth.”

It’s a beautiful quote by Scott Russell Sanders, but strangely enough, what struck me most was how common can mean different things.

I know what Sanders was getting at was common, as in what we share. But I couldn’t help thinking about it the other way. Common as in ordinary.

Life at home with little ones is fraught with ordinary. It’s about repetition and routine. It’s cheerios for breakfast twice a week, and copious amounts of yogurt.

This Lent season, it’s me praying while I nurse in the blue black dawn of the morning. It’s pushing down anger with something heavy enough to sit in its place. But I’m still having a hard time finding an elephant big enough for every job.

My anger is common. But I want to take it out of the ordinary equation.

I want to carry its battle steadily in mind in order to find spiritual renewal. Renewal for those within my house, and those outside of it.  Renewal for my actions, renewal for my mind.

Attacking my common, ordinary anger will redeem my ability to live a common, shared life. And suddenly, it’s clear. This too is a version of the cross – dying to self, living in community with a great cloud of witnesses.

This is Jesus making a way.

Lent Log – Week 1

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calendarIf ever I had a chance to get angry, this past weekend would have been it. Husband gone, babies teething, a toddler who found my secret stash of scissors – a perfectly brewed storm.

And yet, when my daughter went into stealth mode while I was nursing, and I found her a few minutes later with a pair of kitchen shears in hand, I took a really deep breath. I didn’t yell. I listened to her explain, in the animated half speech of two-and-a-half-year-olds, how she needed to cut the threads hanging from the shoulders of her dress-up Cinderella gown because they tickled her.

She wasn’t quite as forthright about why she had to cut her hair as well, but what can you do.

Meanwhile, one of the twins decided to get really cranked about her teeth coming in, and daddy being gone, and not understanding why MPR just wouldn’t ever come out and say what was really happening in the Ukraine.

On Sunday we were late to church. Monday we were even later to Play and Learn. Normally, being late primes my internal rage, pumping harder every hot minute that ticks past my desired leaving time.

And yet, somehow, the anger only circled, a dark shadow trolling the bay.

***

If you’ve ever baked bread, you know that there are a few key ingredients. Flour, yeast, water, salt. When those ingredients meld together in the right environment, they react. The yeast creates gas, which causes the flour and water to bubble and lift. Eventually, the whole mass rises.

When you control the ingredients, you determine the type of bread you’ll make. But the rise is always a mystery (at least to me). It is the least controllable part of the process, and the one that takes the most patience.

I started to think more about controlling my anger some more this past weekend when I was, vigorously punching, ahem, kneading bread dough.

What’s funny about anger is that sometimes I can control the situation surrounding it, and sometimes I can’t.

If I want to control the situations surrounding my anger, I simply need to plan well enough to keep the mishaps to a minimum. (Easier said than done, but in theory…?) For example, if I don’t want to be late, all I have to do is get us moving towards the door half an hour earlier than I normally would have started. Or if I don’t want my toddler giving herself a mullet, I should put all scissors under lock and key.

And in the situations when I have no control over the outcome? When I mixed everything right, used the right ingredients, and yet something still went horribly, awfully wrong?

I still have command over my response.

Slow driver in front of me? Busy restaurant server? Feverish baby screaming in my face?

Breathe. Practice quiet love the way Jesus did when thousands of voices screamed for his death.

***

I appreciate the practicality of finding ways to avoid being angry with a little time management and planning. But those situations don’t always cause me to think with my spirit.

Where I’m really seeing my Lenten practice start to sweat is when I control what feels like the uncontrollable rise of my anger. I need to understand the triggers that normally set me off and see them as just that – triggers. When I face the situation, I have to find that detached calmness (the one I wouldn’t normally be able to muster if I were to just blaze right into fixing whatever went wrong.)

I see Jesus in this. Jesus who, in his work with people, didn’t immediately triage and treat. Jesus who listened. When those around him were flustered and begging, he answered back with patience. When 5,000 people needed to be fed, he got creative with what he had. He used every opportunity as a moment to teach. To love.

After a week, it’s encouraging to see glimmers of change. I feel less defeated when I go to bed, no guilt-monkey twirling his tail around my arm. I don’t raise my voice as often, and have felt, generally, more pleasant. Kind. Less likely to snap.

It’s not been easy, and I’m learning which of my own rules I can bend, and which ones I can’t. The whole void thing? I’ve only used it once. But deep breathing? I use this every single time. Going to bed early is a tough one – I’m still fudging around, trying to figure out the optimal time. (I broke the rule altogether on Tuesday night, and paid for it all morning yesterday.) But for the most part, I think I have a solid set of ways to work with my emotions.

Next step is to find some good, easily accessible reading to drive my focus on the Cross. Any suggestions? Or anything that’s helping your Lent practice stay strong this week? I’d be glad to hear them!

Why I won’t give up sugar for Lent

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Picture4It starts with the slide of the door along carpet. The little footsteps. My glance at the clock proves right – it’s too early to be up.

Anger rolls over beside me, rubbing its eyes.

We eat breakfast, and the yogurt is the wrong color. The wind is sending ghostly whips of snow across the yard. The twins wake up in the middle of my first cup of coffee, owlish and out of sorts. The laundry pile has reached epic proportions. There’s enough milk for one more bowl of cereal.

Anger simmers, waiting.

And then it happens. My toddler and I square off against something meaningless – not wanting to wear pants, giving up her nook, taking something from her baby sisters.

Anger EXPLODES.

I fear this ever-present emotion that overtakes me most days. Honestly, it makes me want to give up. Until today. Because today, I’m deciding to give IT up instead.

***

Some people give up sweets for Lent. Others give up coffee, pop, or caffeine in its entirety. Huffington Post suggested fried food, cigars, or devices.

I can’t help this nagging feeling that something about this is all a little off. If I give up something I enjoy in order to remind myself of Jesus, and then I start wanting that thing but can’t have it because I’m remembering Jesus, I’m going to get cranky. And if I’m cranky, I’ll start associating semi-bitter or negative feelings with Easter.

That seems a little, well, backwards.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m not strong enough to work past the unhappy feelings I think I’d have if I gave up something I really enjoyed. Weak character? Faulty theology? Blatant misunderstanding? All very possible.

But if Lent truly is a season “to rid ourselves of all that prevents us from living a truly Christian life”, I have to wonder how far giving up little luxuries like sugar and meat and cigars is going to go.

This year, I want to try something different. This year, I’m giving up anger for Lent.

No more yelling.

No more face flushing, fast pulsing, blood pressure spikes.

No more disappointments that burrow into a den of resentment.

I live with the flashing of anger every day. I also eat sweets and drink caffeine. None of them are particularly good for me. Here’s where I see the difference though. I know how to tame my cravings for sugar and coffee into moderation. But anger is never moderate. I never feel halfheartedly mad.

When anger comes, it overtakes everything. It is mental and it is physical. It affects my ability to love those around me, and it crowds out my capacity to carry grace.

If I’m going to give something up to better remind myself of the meaning of Easter, shouldn’t it be something that Jesus himself asked of his friends? For example – in the garden on the night of his arrest, Jesus told his disciple Peter, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)

Here’s where I’m going with this. I’ve celebrated Easter since before I could eat Cadbury eggs. But this year, I want it to be different. I want more from the story, because soon I’ll be teaching it to my little girls. And in order to be a good story-teller, I need to engage with the story.

I don’t want to just read a few verses, go to a couple of services, and call it good. If I think this story of redemption and grace is important in my life, I need to LIVE in the mystery of the plot. For me, and for this Lent season, that means cutting out something that separates me from living in grace.

Right. So, it’s all fine and good to talk churchy and idealistic, but I also need to have a plan. Here are some tools I’m hoping to employ.

Going to bed earlier. I can’t stop the girls from getting up in the middle of the night. Nor can I convince Ellis to stop getting up earlier and earlier. But mama, it’s light outside! But my ability to rein in negative emotions is severely impaired when I’m tired. So early bedtime it is. Like 9:00 early. Sigh. I’ll clean my house another year.

Void_Space_by_Maandersen Image replacement. This is a little weird, but I want to have an image in my head to replace my feelings of anger when they come. Call it a new focal point – something to keep me steady. My image is going to be a space void. Yep. A big, open, solar void. I’m smart enough to know I won’t be able to replace mad feelings with happy feelings. But mad feelings with nothing? With space? With silence? With void? I don’t know why, but I think it can work.

Deep breathing. This is completely rote, but it also works. If I can remember to close my eyes and take a solid, in-through-the-nose-out-through-the-mouth breath, I will give myself pause enough to assess the situation, think about the void, and slowly back down.

Prayer. Nothing flowery. Straight up “God REALLY please help me out here” will do the trick.

Redirection. Once I’m off the ledge, I want to remember why I’m doing this in the first place. I want to remember the story of Jesus in the season of Easter. Not to be a better person, but to be a stronger believer. A sturdier story-teller.

It’s a tall order, and to be unabashedly honest, I’m not sure how it’s going to go. Anger comes when I’m tired. It rears after the babies having been screaming in tandem for more than five minutes. It’s red hot when Ellis dumps bowls of spaghetti sauce on the floor, or kicks me in the chin when I’m trying to cajole her into pajamas. It stews quietly when the temperature drops and we’re all faced with another day inside the house.

But Lent was meant to be a challenge. A challenge to deny myself for the sake of the cross. So why not deny a character quality I want to prune out? Why not choose something I want to keep giving up after the 40 days of Lent are over?

Why not do something that makes me more like the Jesus I want to remember?

—-

Do you have a great idea of something to give up for Lent? I’d love to hear what it is, and why you picked it.

Response to “My Abortion”

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bayfieldI wrote this post a week ago after encountering a story in the New York magazine titled My Abortion. And then I sat on it, waiting. I rewrote section after section. I prayed.

The article is a collection of 26 women sharing the reasons they had an abortion. They look directly at the lens of the camera, their eyes bold and haunting all at the same time.

So are their stories.

“It was my senior year of high school. My boyfriend was homeless.”

“Why give birth to a baby who will die?”

“I couldn’t believe I was pregnant—we’d used condoms—and I was disappointed in myself.”

“This guy forced himself on me. When the woman at the clinic went over my options, I bawled. Society is so focused on women being mothers. I felt selfish for not wanting to be a mom.”

When I hear about abortion, it’s always from an angle – either the left, or the right. The woman in the middle becomes a caricature for whatever side is telling her story. But for the first time, after reading the article, I saw reality from the center of the storm. Two things were clear.

It seems we aren’t nearly careful enough with one another. Adult or unborn. 18 years or 18 weeks.

And when a choice about abortion has to be made, everyone is damaged.

***

I blog about birthing and raising twins, my toddler, and our lives as they relate to one another. It is probably not difficult to guess that I am an advocate for life.

And I get it – I’m a mother. Not everyone wants, or is able, to take on that title. But from this side of the fence, what I saw, felt, and learned from my pregnancy experiences was incredible. I am a different person for having gone through them. I am less selfish. More attuned to others and their needs. I am strongly aware of the significance of the lives around me.

I’ve also seen, week by week, the progress of a baby’s growth in utero. It’s hard to describe the emotions of this (although I attempted it here, in my nine week post about carrying twins, in case you’re interested in the details.) It’s crazy. It’s magical. It’s a little bit unnerving.

And one thing was very clear to me as soon as I knew I was pregnant. Carrying my daughters was my first and foremost responsibility because they were a direct result of my actions.

I also fully own that the situations surrounding my pregnancies were privileged – white, married, employed, insured, supported by friends and family. Most importantly, I wanted all three of my children, even though the word surprised does not even begin to cover how I felt when we discovered we were having twins.

It seems pretty easy for me to speak pro-life, and for that I apologize.

But I’m not blind. My situation is only my own. According to the headline of the article, one in three women has an abortion by the age of 45.

One in three.

***

This is 2013. Americans are still recovering from the Gosnell scenarios, the babies whose spinal cords were snipped with scissors, the babies who were put in jars until they stopped breathing.

Likewise, some of the stories in the article are incredibly difficult to read. One woman wrote [after having her abortion procedure] “When I went home, I got up to pee, and this gray golf-ball thing came out. I thought, So I just flush the toilet?”

As I write, my four month old daughters are asleep in their swings, and I choke back tears at thinking of their lives stopped short and flushed into city sewage.

It is a tsunami of emotions, this issue. Sacred becomes waste. A woman hunches over her knees. Certain dates become the hardest numbers on the calendar.

Every story has a hundred different facets, all of them razor-sharp.

But I realized something after I finished reading the stories in the article. It is impossible to navigate the emotions of abortion without being cut. And that’s a good thing. Because I shouldn’t just be crying for the unborn child.

I should be crying for the woman carrying the child as well. She is not a political pawn. She is not evil. She is not ruined for the rest of her life.

In fact, Jesus told a parable about a similar topic in John 8. There was woman caught in adultery (one of the more flammable topics of that day). The religious leaders captured her, wanted to know what Jesus said about her actions, and if she should be judged. Jesus looked them squarely in the eye and said “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.”

One by one, every one of the leaders walked away.

Everyone, that is, except Jesus.

He turns to her and says, “Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and leave your life of sin.”

In so many of the stories, shame and judgment were motivators for abortion. If that’s the case, I have a lesson to learn from Jesus’ reaction, and his response. So please hear me. My heart is broken for anyone who has endured the circumstances surrounding an abortion just as much as it breaks for the life that was ended.

It also strikes me that if anyone expects a woman to support a life she’s harboring, she herself must be strongly, firmly, supported in turn.

***

I read the stories in My Abortion hoping to find a measure of understanding.

What I found was my own responsibility.

When a woman is faced with an unexpected pregnancy, where are her supporters? Where is the person who comes alongside and communicates in love instead of fact? Who says you are not alone, and shows her she is of value, even in circumstances she did not plan for? Who helps buy groceries, or babysits, or offers rides to doctor appointments? Who opens their wallet and gives out of love? Who promises love instead of judgment, care instead of condescension?

Who is brave enough to say that adoption is the heartbeat and prayer of hundreds of thousands of people unable to conceive?

And is it reasonable to expect a woman to value a life she took part in creating if she herself is not, or does not feel valued?

What if we all truly believed we were responsible for one another?

I can’t know unless I myself promise to pour out that assurance whenever it’s needed.

As though a life depended on it.

A litany of I’m sorry and thank you’s

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sorry-650x650To the gas station clerk about to close when I come busting through the door at 10:02 pm and make a beeline for the milk cooler: I’m sorry, and thank you. Breakfast time is a lot less stressful when there’s no one crying about dry cereal.

To my chickens: Thanks for understanding that half the time I can’t physically get out of the door of my house to let you out of the coop until after 10 am. Please don’t hold it against me. And please start laying eggs soon.

To the friend across the table: yes, I see my daughter chewing on her silverware and putting obscene amounts of butter on her bread. But more importantly, I see you. And I want to talk to you. We may have to remind ourselves to focus five times a minute, but our time together is worth it.

To the person on the phone: I’m sorry it sounds like I have Tourrette’s Syndrome. Wow, really? I think – STOP PUTTING YOUR FINGER IN THE BABY’S EAR – we can do that. I promise I’m listening. I’m just also playing referee.

To my husband: Buddy, someday soon I will be able to wipe the sleep out of my eyes, join you for breakfast every day, and have a real, uninterrupted conversation. It’ll be like a date every morning, except that I might also make the coffee, scramble the eggs, and will more than likely be wearing fleece and stretch pants.

To the grocery store checkout lady: Yes, I’m telling you that before my daughter ate the majority of one banana, the bunch weighed two and half pounds. Thank you for trusting me.

To anyone entering my home: There may be dust lions in the corners, lady bugs on the ceiling, and soap rings on the bathroom sink. I have learned to stop stressing, do what I can, and be patient with the rest. I hope you can too.

To the highway patrolman: Thank you for the warning.

To my Ellis: Thank you for climbing on my back when I do push ups, pinching me in the bum with the salad tongs, destroying every block tower I build with you, and telling me to CALM DOWN. You keep me laughing.

To the people behind us in church: I’m sorry we’re distracting. I’m sorry we’re almost always late, make a fair amount of noise, and rarely stop moving during the service. We love being a part of this community, and we are thankful for your graciousness.

To our parents: I know your time is precious, and the fact that you choose to share it with us so often inevitably means a sacrifice of something else. What you may not know is that your granddaughter thanks her Jesus for you at almost every meal, and we do the same whenever we think of you. PS. We owe you a million cherry pies.

To my classmates, professors, and writing group: A majority of my subject matter now seems to be about babies, mothering, and crap I probably should have known before starting this parenthood journey but am now stuck clumsily learning along the way. Thanks for understanding that sometimes writing has to come from where we’re at.

To my Gabby: You are precious, happy, and full of smiles. I’m sorry your sister is forever lying on your stomach if we nurse because you happen to be an extra inch longer and she fits better in the crook of the arm-chair.

To my Lucy: You are treasured, spirited, and always ready to snuggle. I’m sorry your sister’s squalling is usually what you have to wake up to. If it’s any consolation, it means you get to eat more because that’s the best way to calm you down.

To the UPS guy: I’m sorry I answered the door last week in a princess dress, plastic jewelry, and baseball cap. I hope you had a good laugh later.

To You: I’m sorry. I’m sorry that someone, or something, has made you and I want to apologize for everything in our lives that isn’t perfect. Isn’t straight. Isn’t plumb. Isn’t clean. Isn’t smart. Isn’t fair. Isn’t pretty. Isn’t on our terms of time.

Because even for all that, we are wanted.

For all our messiest messes, we are still full of worth.

For all our self-perceived shortcomings, we are still wonderful.

And for everything we HAVE to do make it through the day, there’s always more to who we ARE. No apologies needed.

Full frame

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Every year around major holidays, I scour the ads for DSLR cameras. I am by no means a professional photographer, but I do get pretty upset when I’m trying to take pictures without a flash and they turn out blurry. So this mother’s day, my very kind husband cut my searching off and got me a Canon Rebel. I love it. But I’m noticing something.

I take a lot of pictures to get the shot I want.

The shot that doesn’t show the spit up stains on the baby’s collar. The one that lightens the imperfections in my skin. The one that zooms in on the subject and crops out the total surrounding mess. In fact, I’ve realized something.

With a camera and lens, I can make just about anything look pretty good.

But only in a picture.

***

Yesterday, my cousin lost her husband to cancer. I type that, and part of me wants to delete this entire post because I will never have the words to do justice to her sadness.

Because it makes me ask the hard question. The one I always want to ask when things like this happen.

I know I shouldn’t. I know I ought to trust. Have faith. Call the church prayer line. Get down on my two knees.

Listen.

But my mouth is too full of questions. I keep tripping on the word why. And I wish there was a way to crop the sadness and hurt and emptiness out of this picture.

***

My cousin is a photographer. A real one. She takes amazing pictures, and I hope she doesn’t mind that I’m borrowing this one here.Scott and Anna

This picture left me aching for hours when I saw it last night. It is my cousin’s husband and her daughter.

It is perfect. Not for what it doesn’t contain, but for what it does. She didn’t retouch the photo, or add color where there wasn’t any. She simply made it black and white. And in so doing, what I saw most was the wideness of love from a daddy to a little girl.

I saw the full frame, and my heart wanted to explode with everything it contained.

***

Tonight, we all went for a walk courtesy of the barge, which is my new name for the stroller. (For the record, I think it only took us 32 minutes to get out of the house. We probably deserve some sort of medal.) The waning summer sun flirted with the trees in Wild River State Park, and I was wide awake for the first time in a few days.  My husband explained monarch facts to my mom and I while my daughter giggled with delight as she threw leaves in the trail, and the twins slept like tiny pink caterpillars snuggled into their blanket cocoons.

I found myself wishing I had a camera, because I wanted the moment. But then I realized that had I had one, I would have cut myself out of the picture, because I would no longer be IN the moment. I would become a bystander, calculating angles and light. Getting it all just right, but missing what I wanted most.

The actual experience. The ferocious enjoyment of life lived wide.

Full frame.

Life containing happiness and sorrow. Of joyful welcomes, and hard goodbyes. Life that has the gumption to ask why, and yet, be still and know the reasons to trust.

 

For Courtney, McCartney, Anna, and Scott

What’s in a name…

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IMG_1134 smI’ve always felt like it’s a big responsibility to name something. Perhaps that’s part of loving words. Their sounds. The shapes they leave in the air.

Names have the the ability to create unique meaning.

So, it was slightly embarrassing not to have settled on names for the girls until, oh, about two weeks before they were born.

People started asking us early on if we had names picked out. Had they been boys, the answer would have been yes. (If you ever need any boy name ideas, I’m your gal.) But somehow, when it comes to girl names, we come up short. Case in point – we didn’t fully decide on Ellis’ name until the car ride to the hospital.

So why did we choose what we did?

1. Meaning. I’m a sucker for meanings. A lot of cultures name their children based on some sort of current circumstance or future hope. I’m really tied to the importance of this, so it’s the number one question I search out when I hear a great name. What does it mean?

2. Sound. For a while, we were strongly considering a lovely, unique, very Swedish name that sounded great with Lucia. But after a while, we agreed it felt too guttural. The test? I pretend I’m at the playground, yelling my girls’ names. If I don’t like the way they sound, I start to get cold feet. Because let’s be honest – there’s going to be a lot of calling their names in the coming years.

3. Normality. Yep. Call me boring. But I don’t want my daughters to be the ones in the waiting room of the doctor’s office while the nurse stumbles through the unique or phonetic spelling of their name. I don’t want them constantly having to correct people, or feeling like their name was a secret joke their father and I played on them in the ’00’s. (Dear North West, I’m sorry.)

So after months of calling them Baby A and Baby B, it feels great to give them proper names. And to stop referring to them as letters in the alphabet.

Baby A – Gabrielle Rose: God is my strength. (nn – Gabby)IMG_1043 (1280x853)

Gabrielle held her position throughout the pregnancy, always maintaining her head-down-side-curl status in my stomach. This was a source of strength to me, because her positioning made it possible to birth both babies without surgery, and I’m very grateful for it.

Gabrielle has dark hair and a rosy complexion. She flushes deeply, and has a slightly more oval face than Lucia. At this point, it’s pretty easy to tell them apart, despite their being identical.

Baby B – Lucia Grace: Carrier of light. (nn – Lucy)IMG_1056 (1069x1280)

Have you ever hiked in the dark? It actually works better if the 2nd person in the line holds the flashlight, because then both hikers can see where they are going. It requires trust from the person in front, but if the light is aimed correctly, the going is easy. This is my Lucy – bringing light to dark, making me laugh at her goofy position changes through the pregnancy, moving constantly, reassuring me everything was fine.

Lucia has light hair and a fairer complexion. Her face is round, her cheeks full, and her eyes are slightly more almond-shaped than Gabrielle’s.

Two girls, two names, two sets of meanings and hopes.

Sometimes, I still can’t believe it.

A journey in pictures

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A day as monumental as this deserved a few pictures.

A farewell to carbs

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Well folks, we’ve hit a potential snag. I’m calling it potential, because the confirmation test is this coming Friday. But, as of my 24 week appointment, I failed to pass my glucose test. This means I may have gestational diabetes.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this was a possibility. It’s more likely to occur with a twin pregnancy, and there was also the chocolate cake incident. The chocolate cake incident was one of the very few times this pregnancy where I’ve seriously thought, wow. Something is definitely wrong here.

Now I better explain that really, all the chocolate cake incident involved was a normal sized piece of cake, eaten at a co-worker mid-day celebration, which must have contained enough sugar to send me to the moon and back. Two minutes after I ate it, I got nauseated, dizzy, hot, and had to sit down. After which, I drank some water, waited a few minutes, and then resumed my normal activities. See? Not so scary, right?

I told my doctor at our next appointment, and she said we’d just wait to see what the glucose test results said. And bam. There it was. A failed test. Too much sugar, not enough insulin. Again, pretty common for a twin pregnancy – the placenta is working overtime for two babies, pumping out sugar and nutrients right and left. But my body isn’t able to keep up with enough insulin to deal with all that extra sugar.

So where does that leave me? This Friday I have a three hour glucose intensive. I will fast for 10-12 hours, go straight to the hospital, drink some nasty orange substance that reminds me of church day camp in the park, and then wait three hours for the result. After that, well, stay tuned. This carb and sugar loving girl might have a lot to learn in order to keep these babies healthy for the next three months.