A long time ago in a galaxy not so very far away (in our own, as a matter of fact), there lived a man and a woman. As with many other stories, this man and woman had everything they could want except a child. This was a serious thing, because the man carried a very special blessing that was intended to be passed on to his son just as it had been passed down to him. As they grew older and older, the man and woman grew very concerned that they would never have a child to inherit the special blessing. The man finally prayed earnestly that his wife could have a child...and to their surprise and joy, soon they realized their prayer had been answered and God had granted them a child.
Except that when the child grew big enough for the woman to be able to feel movement, she was dismayed that she seemed to have a wrestling match going on inside her. After days of being unable to sleep and having her ribs hurt from little feet drumming on them, she finally said in exasperation, "I can't endure this! Lord, what is happening inside me?" And then a very special thing happened. God himself spoke to her, right to her just like a friend would. He said, "You are carrying two different nations inside you, two sons who will both become very strong peoples. But the younger is going to become much stronger than the older and the older will serve the younger." Of course, she was both excited and worried, because in those days, having twins who survived was very rare. Not only was she going to have two babies - after so long without children - but God had specifically said that the youngest son was to be the inheritor of the special blessing her husband was expecting to pass down to his oldest son. To their people, the oldest son was the most special child of all children, the one who was just naturally the favorite and who was given the inheritance as a matter of course. Younger sons had to work harder and weren't given all the special attention oldest sons got. She went to her husband and told him what God had said and her husband marveled that they would be having two sons. But he didn't say much about God's prophecy regarding older and younger sons. It didn't mean much to him yet; and two sons were a miracle enough - plenty of time for them to grow and receive his blessing. After a time longer, it was time for the two babies to be born; and sure enough, the woman had two strong, healthy baby boys. Everyone laughed at the story of their birth, because the older son came out red and feisty and with a lot of dark hair...but the quieter younger son came right after him with his little hand clutched around his brother's heel. Twins aren't usually born that way - there's usually at least a little space between one birth and another. But this younger son sure didn't want his brother leaving their secure little home inside their mother without him. When the proud father watched his two little boys begin to grow and change, he began to think about what his wife had told him before their birth and what God's prophecy meant. His feisty, strong, wonderful oldest son was not the inheritor of the special blessing. But of the two boys, the father admired the older son right from the start. The father was a quiet man himself, but he couldn't help but laugh and be proud of his older son's energy and precociousness as the boy grew. How could this son not be the Inheritor? His wife, on the other hand, had a much easier time with the younger son - who did not like to practice shooting arrows at prize goats and who did not regularly sneak out to do things she told him not to - and she grew much closer to her younger son than the older. And she did not forget that this was the child of the promise, the special one who would inherit the blessing. No matter how much her husband favored their oldest son and treated him with the honor of his birthright in spite of his shenanigans, she looked at her younger son and said, "This is the one God said would be stronger." The boys eventually became men. The older was one of those manly men who spent all his time out hunting and drinking with the guys and chasing the girls without a care in the world; the younger was quieter, reading and tending to things around the house and even turning into a pretty decent cook. His older brother was a bit scornful of this, but he just shrugged his shoulders at his wimpy twin and kept decorating with more antelope horns from his latest hunt. As for the younger son, he admired his brother's skillfulness, but the thing he really wanted was to inherit from his father as if he were the older son. He wanted to take on his father's responsibilities and manage the household - which was quite large and wealthy by this time - and raise strong healthy sheep and run the family business. It was not a very likely dream, though. He was the younger son and younger sons don't inherit. The shame of it was, the older son really didn't care to learn the family business. He found it boring. He would much rather be out shooting deer. But in the meantime, the father was growing more and more uneasy. He loved his younger son, of course; and actually, he and his wife worried quite a bit about the older son's careless attitude and the way he didn't seem to care much about being a wise administrator (not to mention his taste in girls)...but he was determined that his older son should not be disgraced by having the Inheritance go to the younger son. It just wasn't right. It wasn't DONE. If he should pass the Inheritance down to his younger son, it would be like he was telling the whole world that his oldest son had displeased him and he was so irresponsible he wasn't worth the position he was born to. It would be a terrible disgrace and the father could not see how he could hurt his son that way. Perhaps his wife had made a mistake. Maybe she hadn't understood what God was saying all those years ago. The wife was worried, too. She saw how foolishly her older son was behaving - when he ran off and got married to an air-headed local girl without even a proper wedding, she was ready to disinherit him herself - and she knew she had not made a mistake in what God had said. He had spoken so clearly. The younger son was the one who needed to be blessed with the Inheritance. It became a bit of a sore point between the man and the woman, because the man stubbornly stuck to his determination to give their oldest son the Inheritance and the woman believed it would be a disaster to try to ignore God's instructions. Finally, the day came when the husband realized it was time to pass on the Inheritance. He was very old by then and his eyesight had failed so badly he had to have his studious younger son do all the accounting for the family business. He wasn't able to run the household as he should anymore, which meant he had to make his final decision. And he stuck to his decision: his older son would get the Inheritance. His conscience pricked him a little. He knew it was not wise to ignore a prophecy God had given his wife. But he just could not see depriving his older son of his rights. So he called his oldest son in and told him to go bring him a very special dish: freshly-caught venison prepared in a stew. This meant the oldest son actually had to go out and shoot the deer, which was going to take a while: but it was custom back in those days for there to be a task for the son to complete before he was considered worthy of the Inheritance. The woman sat beside her husband as he sent their son off in search of venison and knew the time of reckoning had come. But she did not try to argue with her husband that day. She had said all she was going to say. So she got up and left quietly and went to find her younger son. She made the special stew with goat instead of venison and she tied the skins neatly to her son's arms so that her blind husband would not realized that his much-hairier older son was not the one serving him the special meal. And while she did it, she prayed that God would forgive her for tricking her husband and that her husband would forgive her too. The trick worked. The old man ate the stew, was only a little suspicious that the bearer of the stew wasn't his older son, and finally took a deep breath and prepared to give away the inheritance. It was a legally binding thing, this special moment, this special blessing. And finally, finally, he was going to give it to his beloved older son. And he didn't just give a blessing to pass on the Inheritance. He gave the most binding, complete one he could come up with - and he'd been thinking about it a long time - with not a single loophole in it. He didn't just pass on the Inheritance, but he deliberately gave his son his brother as his slave and said every single bit of the Inheritance would be his, nothing held back, nothing left over. He didn't leave anything at all for his younger son. He knew when he was saying it that he was being defiant and even unnecessarily harsh to his faithful and quiet younger son...but he was very determined. There was one prophecy that was not going to come true, he promised himself. Then it was all done and his son took the dishes and left, the proud bearer of the Inheritance. The man settled back tiredly and closed his blind eyes, ready for a nap. Part of him was very satisfied. He had provided for his oldest son. He hadn't disgraced him. Another part was suddenly uneasy, though. Had it really been necessary to be so very thorough? He could've passed on the Inheritance without making one brother the slave of the other. That had perhaps been a little unwise, he thought. Then the door opened again and he smelled a familiar smell, heard a familiar voice. "Father, I'm here with the venison you asked me for!" his oldest son said in his rough, boistrous way. "Sit up and eat it so you can give me your blessing!" The old man began to shake. He knew immediately what had happened. He had been tricked. The prophecy had come true. He had irrevocably and completely given away the Inheritance...to his younger son. Just as God had said so many years ago. He had made his beloved older son a slave to the younger and he had left nothing at all behind. In his defiance, he had cheated his older son of even the small portion that usually belonged to younger sons. It was all his fault, because he had been so determined to do things the way he wanted to instead of what God had planned. This is a true story. The man's name was Isaac and his two sons were Esau and Jacob. And in the end, Isaac's refusal to accept that Esau would not be the son who inherited God's promise to be the Chosen Nation caused Esau's line to actually die out. Today, there are recognized descendants of Jacob, the Younger Son, in every nation on Earth. God himself states his name as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Our Messiah was born from that family. But Esau the Older Son literally ended up with nothing. If there are Edomites left in this world, they are few and scattered and no longer identified by their father's name. Isaac was very thorough in that blessing in his attempt to circumvent God's plan; so thorough that there really was nothing left to give his favorite older son after the trick was discovered. I'm not completely sure what the ultimate lesson is here for us. But I do know that it had never occurred to me before how defiant Isaac really was in that blessing. He had to have known of the prophecy. Rebekah his wife must've told him. But he was blinded by his love for his son and the fact that he thought he knew better than God who should inherit the promise. That's certainly something that's easy to do, thinking that whatever God's doing here must be a mistake. God doesn't make mistakes. No matter how hard it is for us to figure out what he's doing, trying to correct him or make his plans bend to ours will always end up far more disastrous than anything we could've imagined. And as kind of a funny footnote: I've always found it interesting that the "Man's Man" Esau had only five children while his quiet, bookish, homebody brother Jacob...had thirteen. Don't overlook the quiet men! Grandma is having trouble remembering.
When I first met her she was having some trouble, but it's become much more profound over the past few months. I have moments when I'm afraid we moved her one too many times, because every move was harder on her; but then I remember that we moved her home so that she wouldn't wind up in a nursing home and that is still a very good reason. Actually, I'm increasingly relieved we moved her when she did because if we were to try to do the same thing now the upset would be exponentially harder on her, I think. The loss of memory is fairly normal, people keep telling us, and eventually it gets to the point that changes in routine of any kind so throw a person off that it can be weeks before they're not confused by the change anymore. "That's just how it works," people say. "Your mind just changes as you get older, and these things happen." Still, it breaks my heart almost every day. Imagine living in Grandma's place. She wakes up in the morning and has trouble knowing what day it is, even with three carefully crossed-off calenders placed in all the spots she can look at them. She does not remember exactly who the people she's living with are. She's not even sure how many of us live here. When she's reminded it's just Ben and I, that we're her grandchildren and we're expecting, she's shocked and hurt because we didn't tell her we were pregnant and everyone else knew it first. She's troubled when she can't remember why she walks with a walker and thinks it was just a little fall that crippled her, so she's terrified of what will happen if she has another little fall. She feels that I'm a know-it-all because when she asks why she has a walker and I tell her the whole long story, she can't remember the details I'm telling her and she thinks I'm either making it up or somehow deceiving her because she can't remember. Sometimes this is frustrating (probably a hundred times more to Grandma than it is to me!), but to be honest most of the time it makes me really sad. Because one of the most terrifying things I can think of is to not be able to remember. At first I was getting mildly annoyed when Grandma would ask for the fifth or sixth time that day what day it was; but then I started catching on that it wasn't just absent-mindedness. It was true memory loss and it was really a new question each time. As that has progressed to more and more things - and even as Grandma has gotten more irate with me for things like remembering how she walks with a walker when "you weren't there, how do you know?" - I've actually become more and more patient with it. Because somewhere along the way I've realized that it's our (Ben's and my) position to be Grandma's memory. Not to be her teacher and not to lecture her on the things she's forgotten, but to be a sort of walking, talking notebook keeping track of all the things that Grandma wants to remember but just can't. When we were in Pennsylvania, Mom's cousin Sandy gave us a piece of advice gained from experience of caring for her own mother for 30 years: "When she asks over and over about simple things she can't remember, she needs mostly to know she's safe. Someone will always be available to remind her of the thing she wants to remember." There are a few things we've been doing to try to help. We've begun a project where we're putting together some small book-sized photo collections entitled things like, "Why I Walk With A Walker" because when Grandma sees photos, she remembers. This is when Mom's penchant for documenting everything - even holiday meals - is rapidly becoming even more valuable than it already was. I'm also trying to write every little thing that I know is coming up on a desk calender by Grandma's chair. She reads it like a book every day, sometimes a few times a day. Whenever she asks a question, I answer it fully instead of just the brief answer you would normally give someone who can remember all the back details that might go into the question. If Grandma asks, "What's today?" she wants to know the day, the date, and the year, and probably anything we were planning to do that day. When she asks, "Where does everyone sleep?" she needs to know who's living in the house, how we're related to her, and to be reassured that we are there every night while she's sleeping. It's a whole facet of life that I've never had close contact with before and it's an astonishing thing to witness. It's requiring thought and patience and care that I've never had to summon before. It's actually requiring more love than anyone has ever needed from me before. It's a tricky thing, being someone else's memory. But Grandma needs it, if only because if someone can be her memory, then she can feel safe. Yet amid all of this, Grandma is living a life I don't think she ever imagined possible. Last Saturday is a good example. She woke up in the morning, had a leisurely breakfast (with berries on her cereal, which she really likes), then got in her transport chair and was wheeled next door, where she spent the afternoon watching her great-granddaughter playing on the floor, sharing lunch with Mom and her two granddaughters, watching all the centerpieces get put together for her youngest granddaughter's wedding, and watching TV with her son-in-law. Her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were in and out all day. She had her favorite macaroni and cheese for dinner. People made sure she was cool enough or warm enough and took care of getting her medication to her on time. She looked through stacks of photo albums from when her grandchildren were younger (one of her favorite things to do). When it was time for bed, she went next door to her house and went to bed in her own bed, not in a room she's just visiting while she's in town. I hope she still has the memory that allows her to know how special this really is. Because it's perfect. It's how life should be. And I am very blessed to have a piece in making it possible. This week I can definitely tell I'm no longer in the first trimester of this pregnancy. I suddenly have the overwhelming urge to take care of all the little odds and ends I've been putting off for the past three months. So far I've been painting doors, cleaning corners of the house that have been building up dust and clutter, finally beginning to think about how to actually decorate around here, weeding the flowers, trying out new recipes, and no longer needing a nap every afternoon in order to have energy to make dinner. I notice that I can go up and down the stairs without feeling achy. How exactly does that work, I wonder, considering the baby is a hundred times bigger and heavier than three months ago?
I can also take a shower first thing in the morning before breakfast without passing out. Betcha everyone was just itching to know about that. Furthermore, I had the energy to also be interested enough in politics again to go read up on all the candidates on yesterday's ballot before we went in to vote. I haven't even wanted to hear the radio lately; and for anyone who knows me well, this should be an indication of just how tired I was. There was an exciting bunch of skulduggery going on in my hometown...but I wasn't voting there. Bummer. Apparently there were some similar fireworks in our new hometown, but I didn't have the same kind of background to know what was going on and who to really vote for. So yesterday morning - the first big election I haven't worked in twelve years! - Ben and I sat down and read through a lot of candidate statements and news articles before going in to vote. That's when I realized the fog must really be lifting off my brain because my reaction wasn't "eh...okay...big deal..." A lot of people have told me, "Oh, you're going to feel really good these next couple of months." It's not that I didn't believe them, but it is actually surprising to me how much better I feel. After all, I just did two first trimesters in a row between Joshua and this baby, so feeling better while still expecting is all new territory. And folks have started with the patting-the-tummy thing. I wasn't sure how I was going to respond to that, if it would be really weird and uncomfortable or if it wouldn't bother me. Turns out...so far it doesn't bother me. Maybe because I'm so very pleased this baby is still around and getting around-er, so to speak. Today I spent most of the day barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.
If you’ve lived in a cave most of your life, you probably haven’t heard this is a bad situation. Anyone else has probably heard this phrase used with scorn to describe a woman who’s supposedly downtrodden, miserable, and certainly not “living to her potential”. I can honestly say I loved every minute of it. There was a time I thought I wasn’t going to get a chance to be in this position and I actually laughed aloud when I realized I could now accept that particular label. I’m not sure when this job got such a bad rap. Cooking is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Being barefoot on a hot day is it’s own pleasure. And while being pregnant has it’s weird, startling, or yucky moments (this is definitely not the time to lose a good sense of humor!)…it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. I’ve never been called on to use so much foresight, energy, ingenuity, decision-making skills, or management capabilities as have been required of me these days, which means my “potential” is being tested in ways it never has before. I expect that bar to only get higher in the coming weeks and months as I become responsible for a young child and Grandma Lila continues to need increasing care. And this is not a job I was press-ganged into. It was one I enthusiastically agreed to. Tough to be downtrodden under those circumstances. Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. And proud of it. Our zucchini plants brought in their first good-sized zucchini two weeks ago. The plants were huge – the biggest I’d ever seen – and they were loaded with flowers. I was relieved we’d only planted the two; well, actually, I’d only planted one of the little seedling pots, but there were two sprouts in it that I couldn’t separate so I decided to just leave them be and end up with two plants instead of the one I’d intended. I didn’t think we could absorb more zucchini than that without having to resort to pawning them off on unsuspecting neighbors; and two weeks ago, looking at the crop of flowers starting to bloom, it looked like I was right.
Then something odd happened. The flowers were blooming fine, but rather than forming new baby zucchini…the blooms were just dropping off on the ground and leaving empty stalks. Dad and I discussed the problem. “The plants look beautiful,” I said. “No wilting, no fungus, no yellow leaves, nothing. There doesn’t look to be anything wrong. Could the squirrels be nipping them off?” “They do things like that,” Dad said. “Maybe we should net the plant.” “That should work,” I agreed. As a side note, sharing the garden with Dad has been terrific. I’m used to growing a garden where I do most of the gardening. Between Dad and Ben, I’ve barely pulled a weed this summer; and all I have to do is say, “yes, let’s net the zucchini” and the next thing you know, Dad’s out there with a roll of netting enclosing the plants. I’m going to get really lazy at this rate. For the next week, I kept watching the flowers; but I made a big mistake at this point. I contented myself that we’d solved the problem with the squirrel hypothesis and I did not closely examine the plants. I also didn’t snip off the stalks from the flowers that had dropped, so I really had no way of knowing if the new flowers were dropping too. Don’t ever do this with vegetables. They die or lose their crop way too quickly to get complacent. A week ago, I finally had to face the facts that the new flowers were also dropping and we weren’t getting anymore zucchini. Something was wrong. I noticed one of the baby zucchinis was turning yellow on one end and some of the big leaves were definitely yellow, so my next hypothesis was some type of blossom end rot. I decided to un-net the plants and clear away all yellowing leaves and any weeds or other debris and maybe spray with calcium chloride because we’d had a whole lot of rain. But I decided this at dusk one day while out inspecting the garden. I should also add that I’ve been feeling pretty consistently crummy all month and the thought of doing any work at all in the garden was a little daunting. Still, I knew I’d be feeling better in a few weeks and then I’d be kicking myself for not taking care of the crop when I had the chance. Next morning, I came out to work on the plants. I pulled the netting off, pulled off the first dying leaf, and got my first clue that we had a really big problem. Right at the base of the leaf, the normally tough stem had been turned to mush…and in the middle of the mush was an ugly worm, sort of like a cross between a caterpillar and a giant maggot with a black head. Ew. I squashed it. But I was under no illusion that was the only one. Something was niggling at the back of my mind, something that had a phrase “zucchini cutworm” involved. I’d never seen a cutworm before. I had a feeling I’d just squashed my first acquaintance. Then, of course, it was war. I got a small stick and poked around the base of the plants. Nearly the entire stem of one had been chewed through and was yellow mush – and that plant was beginning to wilt as the sun was getting warmer. I hadn’t noticed wilting before. I found several entrance tunnels and ran my little stick up them. Worms started evacuating the plant. I got out the insecticide dust, coated the stem, coated the dirt, and began squashing worms. I think I killed about ten of them, big fat ugly things, and every time I thought I’d gotten them all I found another one. They had almost completely destroyed the trunks of both plants, but one was a whole lot worse than the other. I pretty much figured we’d lost one, but there was a chance to save the other. I poked more insecticide dust up into the newly-cleared channels, carted all the debris out to the garbage can (no paper bags for this stuff – I was taking no more chances!), scrupulously cleared everything from the base of the plants, and settled down for sentry duty. For three more days, I policed those plants, removing any dying leaves (debris is attractive to bugs), checking every day for worms I might’ve missed (found three more), and watching anxiously for the plant that wasn’t wilting to show signs of it. The plants actually began to revive. Anyone ever tells you zucchini isn’t a tough vegetable, just laugh. I don’t know how these things are still talking to their roots, given the interruption in communication, but they’re still growing. And blooming. And the blooms…aren’t dropping. There’s a moral to this story. Pay attention to the little things that don’t seem quite right and don’t be content with having solved the problem until you’ve really solved it: until you’ve seen the problem stop. Don’t put off checking on a problem because you’ve decided you’ve fixed it. Be truthful rather than complacent. Because little worms end up chewing away at a lot of other things in life besides your vegetables. The technician's diagnosis: "You're definitely pregnant."
With an acrobat, apparently. You would not believe the maneuvers we watched this peanut do. Flips, somersaults, and a lot of kicking and waving. The age by measurement is about 10 weeks, 6 days. Technically, we're only at 10 weeks 3 days, so this is good news. There were no signs in the preliminary reading of anything unusual or abnormal. My bloodwork has all come back with excellent reports, we've picked up the baby's heartbeat three times, and now we have some nice black and white pictures. We're being told repeatedly, "Looks like a nice normal pregnancy. Have a nice day!" All of which means...the little weird things that happened were just little weird things and no indication this time of an impending miscarriage. God has not only blessed us with a strong little peanut, but given us overwhelming evidence to prove he has. Hospital policy is to exclude everyone from the ultrasound room except the patient and that was making me pretty uneasy. I really didn't want to do the ultrasound without Ben there, but hospitals have a way of sticking to policies even when you beg. When they called me in and told Ben to stay behind, I broke from my usual meek habit of following the rules and said, "Isn't there any way he can come in too?" "I'm sorry, that's the policy," the nurse said. "You can talk to the technician, but we don't let anyone in and for now you'll have to go wait in the other waiting room." So there I sat, off in a little waiting room while Ben was left in the main room. I was pretty nervous by then (not a good combination with morning sickness and a stomach full of water...) and when I looked around for something to distract me, I was surprised and thrilled to discover and current copy of Cooking Light sitting on the table. Nothing distracts me quite as well as indulging my recipe habit. I found a few good ones and began copying them down on a piece of paper I found in my purse. As a distraction, it worked pretty well because I got a lot less nervous; something I was very thankful for a little while later when the imaging center's manager beckoned me out into the hall for a conversation. "I hear you have some family you would really like to bring in for the ultrasound," he said. He was an older man, and he seemed kind of nervous to be talking to me. "Yes - I was really hoping my husband could come in too," I said. "I've had some bad experiences with ultrasounds and I'd feel much better if he were there." "Would it make any difference if he just sat outside?" he said. "Because we really don't like anyone else to be in the room while the technician is doing measurements." "It would be better than nothing," I said. I kind of brightened up, because Ben sitting just outside the curtain was a lot better than Ben in a waiting room across the building. At least he'd be right there. "Now, the reason we have the policy," he explained, "is because sometimes...when family is there...and the technician might make some kind of facial expression or the family member might not understand what's being measured or what's being looked at...things can get kind of unpleasant and people get scared and I would hate for you to have a worse experience than before." It was funny, but right about then, I knew I could convince him to let Ben in. All I had to do was be very calm and very reasonable. So I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, what's happened before is I was present for an ultrasound where my youngest brother was found to have a genetic problem and it was thought at the time he might not even have a brain. Then with our last baby, we had two ultrasounds where we knew the baby was dead even though no one told us as much. We were together for those and we were okay for them, but it makes this ultrasound kind of hard for me to do." He looked at me for a second and said, "I think in this case, we're going to make an exception from the policy." I think I almost cried. I said, "Thank you so much. That is really, really kind of you and I appreciate it." Later, Ben was waiting for me to use the bathroom (64 ounces of water at once?!! Yikes!!) and the manager came by. Ben said, "Thank you so much for letting me be there. It looks like everything is fine and the baby is healthy." The manager shook his hand and said. "Good. God bless you." I'm not sure which was the bigger blessing for the day: another diagnosis of "everything is fine" or meeting a man with enough kindness and common sense to let Ben stay with me through the ultrasound. I was very glad he was there. And we tried two of the recipes for dinner. They were both 5-star-keep-in-the-recipe-book ones...though I should probably write them on something more permanent than a two-month-old shopping list. If someone were to ask me seven or eight months ago if I was afraid of death, I would've said no. Death is not something to be afraid of. God is bigger than death and it's a lot better to save that kind of respect for the one in charge, not the underling.
Then Joshua died and I discovered something about myself: I'm not afraid of dying myself...but I am very afraid of death when it comes for the people I love. Especially, as it turns out, my children. I didn't realize quite how afraid I was until this week when I saw a few mildly abnormal pregnancy symptoms. Before I tell the rest of the story, the week has gone by and we've figured out that we're not dealing with another miscarriage but something only annoyingly problematic on my end. In other words, it doesn't appear anything is wrong with the baby or threatening him. (Or HER, as Anna firmly states. She has a good track record. She's making me doubt my usual all-babies-are-boys-until-proven-otherwise mindset.) Over the course of this week, though, I've had a lot of reason to think about what it means to be afraid and what needs to be done to conquer fear. At first I thought I needed to talk myself out of it. Turns out that doesn't work. For one thing, I wasn't exactly sure what I was afraid of at first; and for another, when you find one thing to focus on that's positive, you can find negative things that send you right back to being afraid again. Ben watched me failing to be unafraid and began stepping in pretty quickly. He reasoned with me several different ways before he eventually said, "You know, there's a reason we're told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And 'fear' is different from 'terror'. When you fear God first, you respect his power and authority over everything else more than you respect anything else. When you really know and fear God, you can't be afraid of death, because God controls death. The closer you are to him, the more you should have fear of him and the less you should be afraid of anything else at all." It seems like through the course of my life, the lesson I've needed to learn most is how out of control I really am. I can't control my own life, let alone anyone else's - even those I love and want to protect most, like the tiny baby it feels like I'm so responsible for protecting right now. As much as I want to do it - even as much as I try to do it - I'm still not in control. There are so many other things and people stronger and more in control than I am: and the controller of all of these is God. What's amazing is how quick I am to focus on something like death and fear it rather than focusing on the Controller of Death and fearing him! The thing about fearing God is that it only leads to wisdom if you believe that God is Good. Lots of people are afraid of God because they think he's arbitrarily cruel or doesn't care what happens to us or just allows bad things because he feels like it or he's ineffectual at preventing it. That's not the kind of fear that takes away other fears. It's a whole other ballgame to fear God while wholeheartedly believing he is wholly and completely Good without change or fail. It's this reminder that finally broke through the fear I couldn't shake myself from. I feel like a little kid who lost her mother in the store only to realize she'd been standing right behind her the whole time. Ever have a moment of relief like that? It feels pretty wonderful. Happy 10-week anniversary, Peanut. I can't wait to hear your heartbeat. Ever hear of sibling rivalry?
Yeah, I've heard about it too. Apparently, it's expected that in any family of more than one child there's always an underlying level of competition where the kids are each vying for attention and putting the others down to manage it. Siblings pick on each other, the common lore goes. The more siblings, the more intense the bullying and the struggle for command. Movies like "Cheaper by the Dozen" (the new version) really promote this concept, and a common breakthrough in a "family" show is when the kids learn their brother/sister is really quite dear to them and not all that annoying after all. The kids in my family are far from perfect and have definitely been unkind to each other. But this sense of competition with each other has been absent. I suppose I always took this for granted until recently, when someone from a family similar in size to mine told me some stories about her relationship to her family during her growing-up years and shortly into marriage. For her, everything was - and is - a competition to see who's better. Who's smarter, who's more talented, who gets the better boyfriend, who does better in school, who has prettier children, and so on. They love each other; but boy, do they compete against each other. I listened to these stories and started thinking about my siblings, who would downplay their strengths to keep another sibling from being embarrassed or who would coach a sibling on their schoolwork rather than crow over them about getting better grades. Then I looked at Ben's family and realized one of the things that was always familiar and comfortable to me about them was the relationship of the siblings and the way they take care of each other and don't put each other down. Jenny used to clean Ben's room for him while he was at school just so he could be delighted when he got home, for instance. I recognized that trait and loved it. That's what I want our kids to be like. The thing is, competitive rivalry - probably better just named "Boastful Pride"! - is actually natural. It's our earliest inclination, the kind of trait that lends credence to the whole idea of "survival of the fittest". The mentality of holding each other up, protecting each other and being selfless is actually the unnatural one, the philosophy that goes against our basic natures. If loving humility exists among siblings, it means something was deliberately done to cause it to happen. If something was deliberately done, then that's what we want to do to our children! I mentioned this to Ben. "At some point, the parents of the other family must've thought the competition was good," he said. "They must've seen it as normal, as making their kids stronger, at just indicating healthy preparation for living out in the world. Otherwise, who would tolerate it?" Perhaps the first thing - as always - is simply recognizing how ugly this rivalry is. Pride and boastfulness have to be intolerable. Not cute, not normal, not healthy. Intolerable. Perhaps it's also easy to do our kids an injustice by making them think when they're little that they're the most beautiful, talented, amazing people ever to grace the face of this planet. If they make the mistake of thinking they are, they'll start getting jealous of people not recognizing how great they are. A person's life is about who they are in comparison to what is perfect, not who they are in comparison with anyone else around them. I think it may be when kids start thinking of themselves as pretty wonderful and comparing themselves with their siblings that they start finding out their brothers and sisters can *gasp* outdo them in places and that's where the rivalry comes in. It becomes a fight for each to ensure their status as top-wonderful-person-of-the-family. So to help our children love each other better and not get blinded by selfish rivalry, I think we're going to be pretty matter-of-fact about their strengths and weaknesses and be on the sharp lookout for the development of "Aren't I pretty great?"-ism. We already love our current little peanut very much, but for his or her sake we're going to have to prevent him/her from getting a big head. Love them truthfully for who they are and point them toward becoming more like God, not toward outdoing anyone around them. Because it would be so easy to let that pride take hold and the rivalry creep in, and I was deeply saddened by what those things had done in the life of the person I spoke to recently. It has created resentment and jealousy and bitterness and grief through the years and it's bound to create more in the years to come. It's a painful, ugly, cancerous thing - nothing healthy and normal about it at all. As Ben puts it, "It's a bad weed we have to keep out of our garden." Life feels in slow motion to me right now.
Part of it is my body not allowing me to do my usual number of things in a day. I'm used to pushing myself, to doing a lot at a time, managing to clean the kitchen, do the laundry, cook three meals, make all the beds, take a walk with Ben, help Grandma with a shower, weed the garden, trim the bushes, and sit down sometime in the evening to enjoy a little time on the computer before bed. I have family members who complain about this, but my philosophy for a long time has been that if something needs to be done and I have time to do it, I should do it: because there's no guarantee there'll be time for it tomorrow. My mom has told me many times that when she was expecting or nursing a young baby, she had to learn to pick a few things in a day and just do those or she would be worn out. Mom and I have kind of different temperaments, though, and I always wondered if I would really have to cut back that much. Then there was my pregnancy with Joshua and I was still getting a lot done even if I started feeling iffy around 5:00 in the evening. So I figured, "Well, I just have more energy than Mom." Then along came this baby. Like a lightswitch, at about five weeks my energy started dropped off. By this week - week six - there were a few days when I got literally nothing done. Every time I tried to get up and get going, I was lightheaded, short of breath, sick to my stomach, and generally feeling like I got run over by a truck. We're starting week seven now and I've discovered a few things: every day is a smaller window of opportunity than it used to be. Every day requires me to spend a lot more time eating (apparently my blood sugar is crashing and I'm under orders to eat protein every two hours), a lot less time cooking, and a lot more time sitting. Every day is more precious to me than before, and it often seems to drag by as I wait patiently (or not so patiently) for this baby to get bigger and make it through the most uncertain time of his/her young life. I have to be very careful to sort out what's necessary to get done and what I can let go for the time being. Grandma Lila is a little confused about this - she's used to me getting everything done and I think she forgets why I might be slower to cross days off on her calender or get her bed made in the morning than I was before, and meals are definitely less elaborate. Actually, I'm not sure she always knows it's me who does these things, so she's worried about me doing too much but thinks the staff is not keeping up with things like they used to. I'll have to give that staff a talking-to; but hopefully the next few weeks will go by quickly and I'll be back up to better speed before long. And then there's Ben, with his new motto of "You're feeling sick - woohoo!" I have a friend who told me that when she was newly expecting and throwing up every morning, her husband would say, "Isn't this exciting? We're having a new baby! It's kind of cute that you get sick every morning!" She was laughing about it and I knew why, because I can see Ben doing that. It's a good thing, too. Because boy, these slow days are no joke: I'm not used to having to STOP to smell roses - I generally appreciate them as I'm running by with a bucket full of weeds. So when Ben cheers because I feel like I'm about to get sick, I laugh a little and then I feel better. I've been told most of my life that I don't smile enough and take everything much too seriously. Like all the things that float around in my mind as things that have to be done, but that will be just fine if I don't get to them for a while. Going at half-speed for the past week is reminding me to take things less seriously, smile when I feel sick - no, actually because I feel sick - and be satisfied with getting only a few things done each day. Like making dinner. Which I should probably go do now. If I can just get out of this chair... Last Monday - well, two Mondays ago, now - we had a very productive day. Ben and I spent about six hours out in the yard weeding, cleaning, pruning, and planting (3 flats of impatiens, all under the Kanzan cherry in the front yard). We also spent a while working on the big project we've been working on with Dad Turner over the past few weeks. I didn't think much of it - there was a lot to get done and we were just tackling it like usual.
Then Tuesday morning, I began doing the laundry which had been put off by a day because of all our outdoor work. I was carrying laundry baskets downstairs when I felt something I hadn't felt for a while and had sort of forgotten about: a sort of tugging in my stomach muscles that was just on the edge of uncomfortable, like when you've worked the muscles in your legs too much and they keep threatening to cramp. I was standing downstairs sorting clothes and thinking about the feeling and started to do a little simple math. That's when I got suspicious. I came upstairs and said to Ben, "I think it's time to buy a test now." "What?" he said. "Well, we can wait a few weeks like last time," I said. "But I think we're expecting again." By that evening, I was practically sure of it. We went over to Leah's family's house for dinner and I was helping make hamburgers when the uncomfortable feeling got strong enough that I finally sat down and then put my feet up for good measure. Instant relief. Yep, I thought. Something is definitely going on. I'm not the kind of girl who sits around with her feet up very often, especially when there's a lot going on in the kitchen. Leah's mother-in-law looked at me and said, "How long ago did you miscarry?" "Late February," I said. "Hm," she said. "I know. I'm suspicious too," I said. Last time around we were a lot more secretive for a lot longer. This time I pretty much gave up. Everyone we know already knows that we were expecting a baby before and it was only a matter of time before we were again. It took us until Thursday to get around buying a test. And I woke Ben out of a sound sleep Friday morning to inform him that it was very definitely positive. At which point, we promptly began spilling the beans to our family just as fast as we possibly could. If you would've asked me a year ago if I'd be the kind of person who would tell the whole world she was expecting as soon as she knew about it or if I would be the kind of person who would just keep it to herself (well, herself, her husband, and their parents/siblings...) for a few months, I would definitely have picked the latter. The problem is, we did that last time and we found out something: Joshua's life was something to take joy in and most people barely knew of his existence before he was gone. We told everyone and then immediately had to turn around and tell everyone of his death. This does not mean that I think everyone should know our private business all the time. But life is very precious, even life that's a baby only the size of a sesame seed. It is something to treasure and rejoice in for the miracle and the gift that it is, a gift God gave us just as certainly if we possess it for one day or three million. I treasure every day this baby is continuing to live and grow, every day that brings on a little greater loss of energy and all the other symptoms that are making me lose ambition to get other projects around here done again. I suppose I would be lying if I said I have perfect unshaken confidence this baby will join our family as a newborn at the end of January: it's sometimes a moment-by-moment thing to keep my mind on being at peace and not being afraid. There is just such a long way to go and so many things that could happen. It even makes me feel quite vulnerable to tell everyone about this baby so soon, as if he's a secret I'd like to hold onto for a while just to make sure he's really real. In a way, boldly telling everyone of his existence is a gesture of faith, at least on my part, because it's flat out claiming, "Yes, we are having a new baby!" Not "maybe", not "if everything goes well", not "well, we hope..." Those things are all true, of course, but at the point you announce, "We're expecting again" it's an unqualified statement. It's a statement of hope. As much as my doubts want to take over, as much as I want to hold back and do the pessimistic "wait and see", I am joyfully saying, "We're expecting again!" We named our last baby Joshua because it was a declaration that this child was ours and had a place and was known to God; we also named him Hope because we wanted to remind ourselves that it was something we still had even if we could not keep the child himself. Joshua's death was not the death of hope. This baby's life is something entirely new and distinct and different, and we are full of hope - also translated "expectation" - that we will hold this child in our arms and raise him (or her!) to Godly adulthood. And that is our very wonderful news for this week. |
Author: LaurenWife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day. Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading. CommentPlease don't be shy! If you're reading the blog updates, we'd like to hear what you think. Click on the "comments" link to send us a note.
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