tattoos

i love a few of the shows on A&E. in particular i LOVE hoarders. there is something about that show that makes me look at myself. (i always end up cleaning after an episode, and getting rid of junk.)

in some ways i am a hoarder.

i don't hoard stuff. i hoard emotions and memories.

i hold on to memories, because i feel like they are responsible for getting me to who i am. i hold on to the emotions that the memories created. then i memorialize it by getting a tattoo.

i got my first tattoo when i was 18, single, was away at college, and had just bought my first vehicle. i felt strong, independent, and like the world was my oyster. i was attending a private christian college and i also wanted to rebel a little.

as you can see, the rebellion was tiny, because it is a silly one that i picked off the wall the minute i walked in the tattoo parlor.

i love the permanence of tattoos. much like our actions, they can never be erased and we choose weather they leave us uglier or more beautiful.

the next thing i wanted to hoard was love.

i never thought about getting married when i was younger. no plans for a dress or a guy, but when i met the guy who is now my husband i wanted to be with him until i died of old age. we decided to get married. while i love jewelery and how it looks, i never end up wearing much of it, so i decided to get a tattoo instead of a ring.

as a 20 year old getting the word "wife" tattooed on me in english seemed degrading, but in japanese it was beautiful. i still don't understand the logic, but i still love the tattoo.

a few years later my husband and is family lost a very close friend/mentor, and my faith was tested in seeing him very nearly crushed. this tattoo was not to memorialize an emotion i actually had, but instead to mark a permanent goal for my growth.

the verse states: "and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." i want to trust that when things happen (weather i would label them good or bad) God is working for my good, and for the good of everyone; it does not matter if i understand it or not.

a few years later that idea was tested when i had 2 miscarriages in less than a year.

that pain was so sharp, so demoralizing, it has changed me. after crawling thru the grief i saw the image of a swallow, and for me, it symbolized my return to my self and my babies rising to heaven.

i am in love with the beauty and strength that emerged from that period of my life. i feel like i am growing into myself. i am an individual, a wife, and a mother.

my latest tattoo is the japanese kanji for mother. it is mostly for my 2 living daughters and the honor i feel in being allowed to be their mother.

i have a multitude of ideas for future tattoos, but frankly i am running out of space in the areas i like to wear my tattoos. besides, the last 10 years have been so eventful, i feel like i need to save the space for what is to come.

Gratituesday

today i am thankful for the women in my friday morning Bible study.

all 7 of us go to the same church, but i wasn't especially close to any of them until last may. unbeknownst to most of us, we were all looking for a way to get something more out of our personal relationships with God. i don't really know how it came about, but God made it known to linds that she should mention the idea of a Bible study to each of us individually. the struggle was to find a time that we could meet, without children, to talk earnestly about God. eventually we settled on 6 am on friday mornings.

linds felt compelled that scripture memorization be the manner of study. she did not tell any of us ahead of time exactly how much we would be attempting.

the first friday we met was exhilarating. and daunting. we were set to memorize Philippians 2:1-18 (but only 2 verses a week). i was overwhelmed, but linds encouraged us to pray for help memorizing. what an amazing effect scripture has had on me, and i can see its effects in these women who have become the closest friends i can imagine.

i cannot remember a time when i have been surrounded by a group of friends who are determined to grow closer to God. the openness and honesty, combined with the compassion and grace each person offers to every other person, is something i had never imagined finding in a group of women.

in the last 10 months we have memorized Philippians 2:1-18, Proverbs 31:10-30, Psalm 121, and the first 12 verses in a topical memory system.

i have experienced the Bible as a living thing, capable of transforming any part of my life i allow it to touch.

i have experienced change in my marriage, and an openness to change in myself i did not plan for. i have been confronted with my faults by seeing myself through the lens of scripture. i have been raw and hurting, and comforted by the Bible and the arms of my friends.

this is just the starting point. through this study, i am building the foundation for the rest of my life. and hopefully creating a ripple effect through the lives of everyone i meet.

Thank you God for this friday morning Bible study.

my ideal world

we all know that this world isn't perfect. i believe it is because it is a "fallen" world. we cannot comprehend what it would be like if adam and eve had chosen to believe God instead of trusting their own intelligence.

this world could be better.

it all starts with the individual. if individuals (specifically, christian believers) acted out their faith, this is what i believe the world could look like.

each individual would hold God as their intelligence, motivation, guide, and strength.

INTELLIGENCE - this is a hard one. if we put God's intelligence above our own, then we will be willing to do things that go against common sense. most of the time God's intelligence is contrary to our own (i.e. walking on water, crossing the red sea on dry ground, being raised from the dead, etc.) i have a ton more to say about this but i'll leave it here for now.

motivation - God will use our respect/love for Him to inspire us to serve others (our family, our community, our society, the world).

guide - God will use our relationship with Him (prayer/scripture cycle) to show us who to serve and how to do it.

strength - God promises that He will give us the strength (physical and spiritual) to deal with and persevere through any situation. i would also say that, if we ask, He will give us the physical energy to do what He asks us to do.

so, if each christian used God for these things they would gain the ability and drive to serve those around them. if individuals served, then it would inevitably overflow into the community, then into the society, and eventually fill the whole world. imagine how many things (foodstamps, utility assistance, crisis pregnancy centers) would become un-necessary!

a natural side-effect of individuals holding to God for our intelligence, motivation, guide, and strength, would be strong marriages. the strength of these marriages would not be based on compatibility, skills, or determination; it would be based on the power of God. therefore, it would not be possible for it to fail. this is almost impossible for me to understand, because immediately my mind fills with all of the situation where i consider it reasonable for a marriage to fail. i struggle to remember that God, His power, and ability are always going to be more than i can fully understand, and that i am only required to trust not understand.

basically, my ideal world rests on the individual. each person answering only to God. so, the only way this could possibly happen is for me to change the only person i am responsible for: myself.

Gratituesday

i am grateful for a husband who is growing in the Lord.

my husband and i are like water; we always run downhill. we take the path of least resistance.

i found myself growing spiritually when i was going through intense grief, and i remember my husband growing spiritually when we were pregnant with our first daughter. while i believe my husband to be a strong christian, i don't remember his heart drawing him to Christ as it has been lately.

he is thirsting for God and in the Word daily. he hears what i have to say and gently guides me to view circumstances through the lens of God's wisdom.

somedays i don't feel like i know this man at all!

inside our wedding bands we have Romans 12:2 "be no longer conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind; so that you may test and approve God's good, pleasing, and perfect will." this verse has always been our aspiration ...

but now i can see that my husband is leading our family down a path where it is the reality.

and i am honored to be his partner in it.

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

a brief history of me

i come from a functioning, dysfunctional, two-parent home.

my mother's side of the family is equally split in groups of farmers and cattle ranchers. there are 14 siblings (some of the step and half variations) of some very screwed up parents. nearly all of them are alcoholics, many of them use drugs to some degree. as a kid, i relished the time i got to spend with her siblings. they are fun, crazy, accepting (of me), and taught me anything i asked to learn.

my father's side are "city folk" and can seem way too religious. they are always seeing flaws. i did not see that side very much; i liked it that way. in the last couple of years i have gotten to know them better. they are not as bad as i thought.

my parents were super religious in their early days as a couple. my mother has hated my father for as long as i have known what hatred was, but their religious views have relaxed.

part of their religious relaxation came from my brothers having unexpected sons within 6 months of each other when i was in high school. my parents chose to love on my brothers, the girls, and subsequent babies, instead of focusing on the negative. i think that is probably one of the main reasons that i choose not to judge people.

i met my husband in college. we got married ten months after we started dating. we had a daughter almost 3 years later. i lost two babies. i miss my babies. i feel strongly bound to my grief. i am defined by my absent children at least as much as my living children. we had another daughter december 2008 (what a blessing from God!)

my husband's parents have been happily married for over 30 years. they are "hippie" preachers. i could never complain about them, since they have treated me like i was their kid from the beginning. my sister-in-law had cancer as a teen and pre-teen, now she is 30, lives at home, and doesn't date. she is very different from me. every issue is black and white; no wiggle room, or allowance for understanding.

my husband thinks about everything, he does not judge, most things are not important enough for him to care about. he is an amazing artist, an even more amazing father to our girls. he is the most infuriating, maddening person, and i am more in love than ever.

What the heck?!

something happened last summer. my parents came to my house together to have a talk with me. but it was not the talk i expected.

for years i have thought (daydreamed?) about my parents splitting up. for me their divorce would be a relief, since i have always been, or felt, in the middle. but today they came to talk to me about staying together. not just staying together; that's what they have been doing as far as i can remember.

today they came and talked to me as a team. THEY were a team. they looked at each other. they used the word "together" and meant themselves, L and C, as a couple.

at one point my mom referred to something my dad had done as "sweet." i started crying because i had never heard her say anything like that, about dad, without sounding sarcastic or hateful.

that was the biggest change i saw.

since i was eleven i can only remember the invisible aura of hate surrounding mom when dad was in the room or even talked about. and i can only remember dad as being oblivious or ambivalent.

today i could see that there was no wall between them. they were both unsure, but not in a negative sense. they clearly have no idea what they are doing.

i was lost. who am i if not the peacemaker, and child of an unhappy marriage? i thought i was getting an ulcer. my husband had no idea why i was unsettled. i tried to explain to him that this is as weird as if his parents suddenly decided to get a divorce.

it could have been really great though; if it had lasted.

i still have some hope, but my mom seems back to her normal when it comes to her feelings about dad. the lasting changes have been my own. i am no longer my parents' mediator. and i have an even clearer idea of what i want for my own marriage.

Grief

i lost my first baby October 16th 2007. my first daughter was 16 months old, and i hardly remember anything about her from then until after she turned 2.

i had been bleeding for a few days. i started to get anxious so my oldest brother and his wife came watch my daughter while i went to the emergency room.

i only had to wait 30-45 minutes to see a doctor. they did an ultrasound and told me the baby had died. i went home and told my brother and we cried. then i turned into steel. i refused to talk and yelled at anyone who talked to me. a day or two later the real miscarriage started. i felt like i was dying, but that didn't seem as bad as my baby dying.

we didn't have insurance, so there was no testing to see what had gone wrong.

the stress from the medical bills hurt me so bad. how can it cost over $4000 for the doctor to tell you the baby died and they don't know why? i started grinding my teeth and having headaches. we even bought me a mouth guard. but i don't completely regret going to the ER because those ultrasound pictures are the only ones i will ever have of that baby. i named her Opal which means "precious gem."

my husband was so unhelpful. he didn't understand anything about what i went through because to him it wasn't a baby. besides, he thought everyone had miscarriages. i had never known anyone who did. i know i wanted that baby and my body let me down. at the time the miscarriage wasn't something that happened to "us," it happened to me.

i started going to meetings for pregnancy and infant loss and i really liked going there, even though i couldn't cry in front of those other mothers who had lost babies who really looked like babies.

when i lost Opal i was 12 weeks pregnant, and my mom and i worked at the same place and she had told everyone. i hate that she did that. i hated people telling me 'congratulations' and having to tell them she had died.

for me night time was when i was most haunted. my daughter would be asleep, my husband would be playing video games and i would be silently crying in bed. it was like the fingers of grief would creep from under my bed and take hold of me.

during the day i would feed my daughter and myself, but a lot of the time i spent the whole day (or most of it) napping in her bed while she played around me and fended for herself. i missed out on so much of her life it turns my stomach. how could i leave her, at that perfect age, to wander the apartment alone, so i could sleep!?

i find it so easy to hate when I'm grieving. i hate my body. i hate pregnant women on sight. i hate happy people. i hate women who have three kids in three years. i hate people who complain about stupid stuff. i hated my mother's grief.

she never lost a baby. why is she crying about it? why is she talking to me as if she understands? does she really think that she's helping when she tells me to stop eating. i know she thinks I'm fat, but give me this one thing PLEASE!

it has taken me over two years to not feel hate at some point each day. but when i read a blog about grief, or a book about loss, it is the hate and anger that i identify with.

i found out i was pregnant again over Christmas and lost my third pregnancy (who i named Levi) February 1st, 2008. that just sucked. the name Levi means "joined in harmony."

that time i had insurance and didn't have to worry about how much it cost to have them do an ultrasound and tell me he was dead. my older brother's wife was so wonderful. she came to help me with my oldest daughter at the WIC office when i started miscarrying there. she visited me and got my daughter a kissing frog from Target. i will never forget how loved she made me feel.

less than a week after i lost Levi i was at a support group meeting. we were making memory spheres for our lost babies. i had told them at the last month's meeting that i thought i was pregnant. i was uncharacteristically quiet so they asked about the pregnancy and i told them that i had lost another one. there were only four of us at that meeting, all of whom i had built a rapport with, which is probably why i was able to cry.

husband's parents came to town a couple of weeks later and i was able to talk to them about how i was feeling too. my mother-in-law has lost 3 babies, so of everyone i knew at the time she was the one person that i felt would be able to understand how i was feeling. losing Levi really started my grieving process moving. before i lost Levi i had been stuck in the hate and depression part of the pendulum.

there is no right or wrong way to grieve, except when you get stuck and don't move through the grief. grief is a living thing, really. it has to keep moving, changing, and maturing in order for it to achieve its purpose. i really only like a few phrases I've heard about grief. one of them is "sometimes you sit with your grief, and sometimes you walk with your grief." both are important, but if you only do one (either sit or walk) you won't grow through the grief.

about 2 weeks after losing Levi i started to think i was pregnant again. part of me thought "this one is doomed" while another part could visualize being 6 months pregnant. the next month i told the support group that i was sure i was pregnant again, but that i had a huge sense of peace about things. as the pregnancy progressed the peace was intermittent. every time i went to the bathroom i expected to see the signs of miscarriage.

somewhere around 14 weeks i thought i should start the insurance application just in case. i had my first doctor appointment around 17 weeks and everything was good.

i recorded the heartbeat on my phone so i could hear it every time i started freaking out.

at 21 weeks i had my only ultrasound and found out it was another girl!

the hope started to build.

i was due in December; around October i started to feel like i was coming out of a fog. at the walk to remember on Oct 16th, we had a balloon release, and i went home feeling light as air.

the crisis pregnancy center i was using had a volunteer doula, who i lined up to help me in my labor. she and i talked before labor about what role my grief would play in the delivery room.

i asked to be induced as soon as my doctor would allow (which was one week after my due date). i had 5 hours of labor and one push to get my daughter out. i remember saying as soon as she was out, "is she crying? she's okay? can you believe that only took one push?"

life felt amazing! i felt like i was finally the person i was supposed to be all along. i ran on relief and pure adrenaline for at least the first 3 months (with only a few bouts of "nothing is safe, nothing is guaranteed, life isn't fair, so when is the next thing going to go wrong?" moments).

now it has been three years since my last miscarriage. life is moving along at light speed. i feel like most days i have a life i love.

i didn't ship my grief off when i had my new living baby, but I'm no longer its prisoner either. it lives in every corner of my house and in my rocking chair. i don't introduce it to everyone that i meet, but from time to time it makes itself known. today it is almost a badge of honor; i don't know what it will be tomorrow.