An Unexpected Journey

We can't totally "do Christmas" yet.  We escape to a beach in South Carolina.  A place I have never been.  To make new memories.  Try to avoid some of the old.  I pull aside heavy curtains the first morning to peek at crashing swells pummeling against white sand.  I catch my breath.  I have not seen it since she died.  I spent the last week of her life watching her chase seagulls and splashing in the blue.  Toes in the warm sand and ears held up to shiny shells.  Fortunately, little cries pull me away, and I really have no time alone to contemplate. Christmas Eve.  We give the girls presents and help them tear paper.  Capture their cuteness with a lens.  Try to freeze the memories in time.  Burn them deep into my mind.    'Oooh mouths' and tiny reaching fingers meet warm cinnamon rolls.  Slobbery kisses and snuggles in bed.  Brush aside the moments of nausea and missing.  H...

How do I describe the holidays in a life like mine?  It is hard to put into words.  Pain and joy are interwoven in a pattern unique to this season of my life.    The thread of thankfulness.  I thank God I have a reason to shop this year.   We buy the girls a few toys.   I ask Cameron if he can believe they are almost a year old.  His voice faltering, he says, “They saved our lives.”   I am caught by his answer.  Surprised at the deep truth popping so unexpectedly from his quivering lips.  A throbbing thankfulness shoots across my heart… The thread of aching.  One morning on the way to work I hurt so badly that it is physical.  A knife ripping through my chest.  Venomous thoughts tear through my mind.  A crushing desire for everyone to hurt this way so I won’t be alone in this bizarre alternate reality of holiday horror.   As if it would lessen my pain.   I hate th...

I wish I had something profound to write.   Something about the miracle of Christmas and time and hope.   But I can’t quite seem to conjour those words up to the muddy surface of my mind.   Maybe in another week it will seem clearer.   I catch a glimpse of the holiday light here and there in my swirling thoughts, but nothing I can latch on to yet.   I have had my feet washed this weekend, though, and for that I am thankful.   I mean I have been listened to and hugged and helped and my babies have been covered over with love by a very special visitor whose family sacrificed a lot to bring the water of herself to our raw and fragile lives.    And some others joined her, too. We did put up a Christmas tree, and the word HoPe   sits on my mantle all red and sparkly, drawing the eye and luring the heart.    Makiah’s green eyes laugh at us through a half dozen picture frames and old ornaments scattered about.   She would w...

We sit behind french doors overlooking the dancing ripples of the Tennessee River.  Orange and red are striking against the deep blue sky.  The leaves sway to the rhythm of glistening water.  Inside the melody drifts from the piano as my sister-n-law’s mother dances her fingers deftly across the ivory keys.  Powerful words pour from her lips and  move like a strong current through the hearts of the listening.  “His arms are fortress for the weak.  Let faith arise… I lift my hands to believe again… You are faithful God forever… Open my eyes…”  Lyrics from a song by Chris Tomlin.  I hold my daddy’s hand as tears stream down his weathered cheeks.  This year has aged us all.  I see it in my own face.  My tears join his.  We have sipped our coffee and listened to my Daddy’s deep voice read to us from Watchman Nee.  Words about eternity.  About finishing strong.  Written by one who died after many years in a Chi...

My little ones are napping and the warm chocolate morsels in my delicate pie melt slowly in my mouth.  I am trying to wrap my mind around  a thought that my mom's friend shared with her and she passed on to me.  The bible says that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.  Now certain scriptures do indicate that there is some sort of passage of time in heaven, but we don't have any reason to believe that it is necessarily at the same rate there as here.  Clearly, based  scripture what feels long to us here can seem but a day to the Lord and vice versa.  Time is a dimension by which God is not defined.  Rather, he defines it .  One of his names in the bible is the Alpha and Omega, aka The Beginning and The End. Keeping all that in mind.  We don't know if time here correlates with time in heaven or not.  So my mom's friend suggested doing some math.  If one thousand years here is as a day th...

Traffic  slows almost to a halt.  I round the curve on my way to work and see two cars stopped in the road… an accident.  It doesn’t look like anyone is hurt.  But there is a mom on the side of the road clutching her little girl, maybe about 3 years old, and crying on the cell phone.  The girl looks okay.  Then a mile or so past the accident the state trooper screeches by me.  Then the ambulances.   Sirens wailing.  And I join them.   Wailing. It is just too much.  I saw the broken glass in the road.  The mommy.  The sounds.  The cell phone.  The little girl who is okay.  But now I am in that day, and the little girl is not okay.  And the mommy didn’t get to hold her… ever again.  And the ambulances didn’t come just to screen us.  They came to carry her away.   Forever.  I cannot hold it in any longer.  I am losing it.  Control.  It broke down on t...

I opened the red, leather bag to pack for the two nights away.  We were going to a conference at a church in the next state that we have attended twice a year since Makiah was born- well, until the accident.   I like to go because I can be anonymous and disappear into the crowd of worshipers.  This is a big step for me.  An act of reaching up to heaven… to God.  It was also another hurdle because of some very special nursery workers who kept her each time since she was a baby and always looked for her to come.  I knew they didn’t know. As I swept my hand across the bottom of the bag, my eye caught a glimmer of something glistening and my heart dropped.  I felt the rough edges and pulled it up to the light.  Was it?  Yes…  Broken glass.  From the accident.  Her window or mine?  I cringe again at the image of the sickening crunch.  I thought we had wiped all the traces away!  Did you know shards of glass...

Did you know that Amish women wear black for a whole year when a loved one dies?  There was a time in my life that I would have thought that was just terrible.  Now I think it is an amazing way for broken people to express on the outside what is happening on the inside.  Everywhere they go others are visibly reminded that they need extra…   extra love, patience, tears, prayers, hugs, “how are you’s?...”  Extra.   Our culture does not have many, healthy ways to express deep grief and pain (in my humble opinion).  We generally expect people to say they are fine when we ask and regret asking if they do say something else.  One of the difficulties in grieving is working out how to function in the world while your insides are screaming that the whole world should stop.  When she first died, I could scarcely look at Face Book because it seemed so obscene that other people were still going out on dates and posting funny antics. ...

Click on this link to see the sweetest video ever... by my husband for Makiah. We love you Baby! Pics below are fishing with Daddy and Pawpaw... Makiah's First Fish

 Dear Sweet Makiah, I suppose that God does not let children in heaven read letters from their parents on earth, but just in case I am wrong...  Today it has been exactly one year since your trip to heaven.   We have spent the whole day thinking about you (that is not too different than most days).  This morning we had waffles for breakfast because you had them for your last breakfast.  We remembered how you loved to have waffles after church on Wednesday nights and you asked for "waffle Wednesday."  Mommy let your cat, Buster, in for the first time since the girls were born, and they were delighted.  Abby gave his fur a good tug for you and Lena grabbed his tail.  It only took Buster a few minutes to go look in your room for you.  Even he has not forgotten! Our sweet neighbor brought a hot apple pie so we ate it for lunch in honor of you.  You would have liked that!  After the girls napped we drove to the resurrection si...

Glistening sun across waving fields of corn.  Picture perfect red barns.  Gardens of leafy greens hugging square, white houses.  Crisp dresses and black trousers billowing in the breeze on sturdy, long clotheslines.  Long beards and bonnets in black buggies behind trotting horses clip clop down the lanes.  It's another world.  A place where people value hard work, each other, the process... the togetherness of life.  I breathe in the peace. We have come to escape our world.  A brief reprieve from the place of our pain.  In still moments one or the other of us will let out a long sigh or notice a tear sneaking from the corner of an eye that dares to look back.  We eat shoo fly pie and cry and kiss babies as we make our way across this beautiful country- Amish country.   But people love to ask if the twins are our first so  we can't seem to leave our story behind. I can't believe in 3 days it will be one year.  How is it...

We sit in her room with the happy, pink flowers hanging on the wall and the butterfly curtains billowing- the babies and I.  They lay on the bright, white bedspread and I show them the things that were special to their big sister, Makiah...  her purple, shell necklace that sings The Little Mermaid's song because she wore it all the time and drove me crazy playing the song... her tiny ballerina bear because she wanted to "be a ballerina not when I'm a grown up but now while I'm a little girl..."  her baby doll that giggles because she loved babies and wanted brothers and sisters more than anything in the world.  I show them her picture and they grin and reach for her, well, for it.  I get out the video camera.  Then it hits me.  The profound sadness of it all.  I am taping my girls' reactions to their sister's picture.  Because I can't video their reaction to their sister .  I almost never cry in front of the twins, but today I cannot ke...

It was like Christmas when it came in the mail… well, what Christmas used to be like.  I couldn’t wait to get the little package open!   I pulled at the stubborn tape, and then ripping it open with a jerk, I held my breath.  I carefully pulled out a dark blue notebook and gingerly opened the flaps.  There they were!  The pictures!  Just in time for the first anniversary of her heaven day, the pictures of the first well and it’s dedication had arrived…  and I felt a smile in my heart.   The well isn’t fancy and the crowd isn’t huge, but it is real.  Something my little girl wanted to do.  A way for her to leave a footprint, to impact another life.  The faces are precious to me.  A little baby in her mother’s arms.  We are connected, this mother and I.  Her child is in her arms and mine is not.  But a little girl’s gift, an outpouring of love from people like you, and a spout of fresh water have joi...

I am not afraid to die.  Maybe I am afraid to live.  But I am not afraid to die.  How can I be scared of something my four year old has already faced?  But do I have what it takes to live-  strength,  endurance, courage to seek Him,  integrity to keep pursuing Truth?  Not enough.  I look inside and there are big gaping holes of not enough.  Faith?  Hope?  Love?  Not enough. I read in the book 1,000 Gifts that Jesus embraced his not enough.  He gave thanks for it and a miracle followed every time.  Can I give thanks for my not enough?  Not enough time with Kiah.  Will it ever be enough?  Enough time with our loved ones?  The bible says God set eternity in the hearts of men.  All loving relationships here end in sadness and separation.  No matter how wonderful.  They all end in death.   But something deep in the recesses of our hearts tells us this is not how it should be...

I was hesitant to go.  I don't have any artistic ability at all.  I can barely draw stick people!  What could I possibly do in an art therapy group?  But it was for local moms who have lost a child recently, and I decided it might help me to meet some who are walking this broken road, too.  We shared our stories and cried for and with each other.  The facilitator had us close our eyes and do some relaxation imagery.  When she said "now imagine that you are coming to a place of acceptance,"  all the relaxing imagery went out the window, and in my mind's eye I was fighting to free myself from an impossible box.  I was kicking and clawing to get out, but I was surrounded on all sides and shrouded in darkness.  I feel red.  I feel powerless.  I feel trapped.  I feel unseen.  I feel... angry. I was totally surprised.  I didn't think that I had been angry at all.  Sad.  Broken.  Depressed.  Crus...

Tiny pairs of sparkling flip flops.   In and out they walk on tiny feet.   I am so glad I work with adolescents most of the time, but this week we are screening elementary children.   I have sparkly flip flops at my house, too.   Sealed up in a box in the attic.   They cannot find the little feet that should be in them.   They didn’t get to go to kindergarten this year.   Didn’t get to hear the little blond girl learn to write her last name.   Learn to read.   Feel   her toes start to hang off the edge as she outgrew them.   Get dusty on the playground or have chocolate milk spilled on them at lunch.   No, they didn’t get to go to kindergarten. I fight off the feelings of anxiety.   The impulse to run away.   Too many little blonde ponytails with faces that are not hers.   Then I see them.   The rainbow painted toenails.   Exactly the way she wanted them the last Sunday when we were painting our nail...

I have not let myself think about it.  Really.   I heard someone say once that we don't have the grace for something in advance... just that day.  So I figure the grace to face the hearing and the boy-man and the evidence will be there in the morning and not before.  I wish someone would tell my subconscious, though. I dreamed someone was babysitting her.  When I went to pick her up, they had let some of their family take her off with a few of her friends.  And I knew.  I knew she was gone.   When their van pulled into the driveway, all the friends got out, but she was not there.  I screamed at the adults hysterically the whole dream- yelling at them that they had lost her. Then the next night I was at the top of a grassy hill.  I could see her down at the bottom sitting in a lounge chair  just at the edge of the woods.  She was playing with a baby doll.  Suddenly I could hear the sound of something terrible and mighty...

It happened by accident.    I was driving to my friend’s new house, and one of the road signs grabbed me.   While we visited, I was turning the name over in my mind.   Could it be?   I thought the accident had happened much further down the highway.    My memory is muddled.    I said I would never drive that way again.   Never again see the place.   I had been with a group to tour my friend’s house a few weeks before she moved in, and I had been nauseous.   But I didn’t pay attention on the drive, and figured it was because I was close to the place.   As I packed my girls in the car to leave,   I took a deep breath to still the trembling inside.   Now I would be on the same side of the divided highway as that day...   Was this it?   I didn’t know another way home.   I would have to find out.   I drove slowly as if in a dream.   And then, suddenly, there they were just before the susp...

So many things have been swirling through my mind I hardly know what to write about.  My time alone is so limited that I think of more things to blog than I am able to get down.  Then I seem to forget them.  They slip away in the fog of mommy brain!  One of my girls was screaming her head off in a public restroom yesterday while I tried to change her out of her poopy (I mean covered in poop!) clothes, and a lady walked by and said "All I can say is thank God!"  Meaning she was glad she didn't have a squirmy, screaming, covered in poop child.  I just looked at her, smiled, and said, "That's what I say, too.  Thank God!  I say that every time I look at her."  And I laid a big kiss on my stinky, precious, red faced one! Squeeze them tighter.  Kiss them more.  Laugh when they spill it all over your clean floor.  Yes, you should.  You absolutely should.  Don't waste another second with them.  If this tragedy has don...

Oh, grass, why won’t you grow?   My baby’s grave all dusty dry.   Bare as bones and fresh as the day we laid her there.   All around the lush grass grows and new life covers over ugly dirt.   Another buried after mine is just around the corner.   Beneath her stone the ground is green as if it were untouched.   Spring came and   bloomed around her headstone.   But not my baby’s grave.     Oh, grass, why won't you grow?  You make tears spring to my eyes.  The stone’s shadow falls on bareness- a wound in the earth- a schism in the universe.   The pact between life and death was broken and her breath was stolen too soon.   Even the earth seems to know it was not meant to be this way.   It refuses to cover the gash.    As if the dirt is screaming that the belly of the earth should not have been torn open for this little one… no, not yet.   From the bird’s eye, all is lush and geen in this field of s...