Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day.

I think so often about what this day means to different people. I think about the different types of mothers I’ve been and the mothers I’ve known along my short journey. I think about the ways it has formed me and defined me, the ways it has ran me ragged, the ways it has clarified me, the ways it has brought me profound joy.

I am a mother today, I wake up every morning with the task of loving my daughter and i don’t forget how lucky I am to get to love her. And I don’t forget all the other types of mother’s days I’ve had.

So, to the mother who hasn’t been able to have a child:  I’m so sorry for the way this day hurts for you in such a silent way.  I’m sorry you have to congratulate every mom around you with the quiet undercurrent of pain that reminds you that you’re not one of them. I know that when people who know your struggle and secretly elbow you and whisper a “happy mothers day (one day),” you’ll want to punch them in the arm for exposing such a raw bit of your soul and simultaneously cry on their shoulder because it truly is that empty without the baby you want to be holding. I’m sorry that baby showers feel like hot tar showers.  I’m sorry that the lack of mothering leaves your love to turn in on itself and eat away at your sense of identity. I’m sorry that today you have to fake-smile so much and ugly-cry in the bathroom.  

To the mother of a sick child: I’m sorry you have to wonder what next mother’s day will be like. I hate that you have to live in the moment by nature of the reality of your potential loss. I’m sorry you know hospital rooms and doctors visits and the soul crushing fear of loss. I know that watching someone you love in the midst of pain can all but wreck your heart, but I know too the strength of a mother to love through it all.

To the mothers who have had their worst fears realized and lost their child: I’m sorry you have to have the black hole of grief swallowing entire parts of you and morphing everything around it into something resembling grief. I’m sorry that the term mother feels like a brutal reminder of what you are to someone you cannot hold and kiss. I hold your emptiness near to my heart. I know the overwhelming power of a love for a child and with all my heart believe that the loss of one, goes most deeply against the grain of the way this life was meant to be. I can say nothing but that I pray for peace, for everlasting joy, for the grace of God to be what it claims to be - our only hope.

The very best parts of myself exist because I am, and have always been, loved with an never-ending love by my mother. And now I pass that on to loving endlessly my daughter.

I know the grace of God and see his greatest expression of himself through the love of a mother to her child. I find his greatest compassion and endless mercy on display in the heart of a mother. In all the confusion about the world we live in, a mother to her child is some of the best we have to offer as human beings. This love is what makes us human. It is what makes us godly. It is the greatest example of love that cannot be tamed.

May we allow the all-consuming love of motherhood to wreck us. May we see and love those for whom mother’s day brings pain. May we always recognize in the mothers who have raised us, what they gave to love us well. May the world resemble in greater and greater ways the powerful example of goodness found in a mother.

May a mother’s love be a beacon of hope for our souls and for our world.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Book Recommendations

I’ve been reading so much, but here are a few of the recent goodies. Michelle Obama is the queen of the world and her book was nothing short of what you would expect from her - exceptional! The Color of Compromise hurts, racism and the church, it’s hard to read but really important. Joy was based on an interview so the style of the book is really odd, but there are some good bits from both of them so it’s absolutely worth reading. It’s a lesson on finding the sameness in another and not the differences. Finding God in the Waves was incredible, I recommend it for anyone who has any questions about the Christian faith. I think it’s great for Christians who would like to understand what it’s like to struggle with belief, and for those who don’t believe or who work to believe, this will be your heart on paper. Little Fires Everywhere was good, devoured it in days. I had low expectations for Where the Crawdads sing because I saw a bad review, but I LOVED it. The land she lives on is its own well developed character. As you read the book you grow with the character as she grows and by the time you’ve shut the book you’ve left behind a friend. The enneagram obsession is annoying, The Path back to You will make you love it anyways.

Opaque Me

Have you ever noticed that really emotional memories have the ability to thin out the veil of time?  

I pulled into a parking structure yesterday that’s connected to the building where Colette’s cardiologist’s office is. We were headed to a check-up that would more than likely be a quick exam and a sign-off for another year. I had no nerves threatening to make me sick, I felt no fear, my mind was mostly just reflecting my toddler’s behavior – all over the place.  

I was living very much in the moment as toddlers typically cause us to do, not mindfully but more absently responding to her needs while trying to make it to our appointment on time. But the moment I pulled Colette out of the car and began walking through the parking structure I was struck by overwhelmingly distinct memories of the place.  The gap of two years was squished and I was whipped into a clear memory of my former self. I could almost see an opaque ghost of myself two years ago, 7 months pregnant with black-out level fear making my arms feel numb, as I waddled towards the office with Trever.  You would have looked at my pregnant self that day and noticed nothing except my puffy eyes, but I was in pieces on the inside. I had so much fear that I could hardly let myself acknowledge it, and this appointment would confirm what all those fears were screaming at me, that Colette’s life would be short at best.  

2 years ago we were headed to a doctor to check on Colette’s heart.  They couldn’t see her heart clearly at the high-risk doctors office, so they recommended a cardiologist take a look.  When we arrived I laid down on the ultrasound table and stared up at the ceiling tiles while he started the echo-cardiogram.  Then after forty-five minutes of silence saturated in fear, he looked me in the eyes with compassion and said, “well, your baby has significant congenital heart disease.”  What he was telling me was that she wouldn’t survive, that our blessed Colette was just too sick and broken to make it, that our kindest option was termination.

There is nothing like a conversation like that to stop time.  He kept saying words but my ears heard nothing. I caught Trever’s eyes in the swirling chaos of blunt grief and somehow my feet moved and I found myself propped up against him hearing my own sobs, as if all the fear and grief inside me was an animal trying to escape me.  I held a giant printed diagram of a heart with the doctor’s scribbles all over it illustrating all her misplaced tubes, miss-directed blood flows, and some large x’s showing completely missing veins.  This was the end of the hope of her life, this was our greatest fear finally realized. 

I lay on the same table yesterday, I stare at the same ceiling tiles, I glance at the counter where Trever stood two years ago holding me up while I fell apart, I see myself there in opaque version as a pregnant mom who thought she would never get to mother.  I have so much empathy for her, it was so much harder than she even had capacity to take in at the moment.  I want to hug her, I want to tell her that yes, it’s that bad and that it’s ok to fall apart without the need to be cheered up.  I want to tell her to let go of the reigns, to stop working so hard to regulate her emotions, I want to tell her to be kind to herself and stop trying to be ok. I want to cry with her, to comfort her, but I’m snapped back into reality, “B.I.N.G.O. and bingo was his name O.”  I’m laying next to Colette during her echo-cardiogram, she likes the video they put on for her.  They hand her a slinky and without prompting she says, “thank you,” which sounds like, “day doo.” The doctor says, “looks good, see you in a year.”  From the same room but on two sides of the veil of time, my former self weeps with a grief she has never known, but in the present I lean against the warmth of my daughter, turn towards the ceiling tiles that hold an aching memory and feel a silent tear slide down my face.    

As I walk back to my car I see this parallel version of myself walking too. Everything looks different to her now, like a layer of hot tar the whole world is coated in her grief. She’ll go home and sleep all day and likely most of the next day. She’ll sob in bed so completely that she’ll have to nurse a headache for days after. She’ll find her new normal and smile at work in a few days time. She has so much ahead of her, but by the grace of God and a misdiagnosis she’ll get through it. We all will.

“Car! Car! Car! Carrrrrr!!!!!” Colette points out every. single. car. I give her a big smooch on the nose and give her a near-fatal squish of a hug and strap her into her carseat.

“You want Mac-N-Cheese for lunch?”

“Da.”

Self-Care of Sorts

Today was such a hard day and there is absolutely no reason why.  Just some tiny reasons.  Little kitten reasons in the grand scheme of things.  But it ended with me face up across my bed sobbing to the heavens over my lot in life.  

I’ve been looking to go back to work and it has been difficult, partly because I’m probably going to need a career shift and I can’t find the exact direction, and partly because my field is narrow anyways so there isn’t much out there.  So I thought, maybe I’ll just be a yoga instructor, but that’s weird and I worked hard for my masters so I should use it. Plus you have to do like 2500 hours of yoga to get certified so it would be something like, “hey babe, I need to go to yoga all the time and pay for all the classes and BONUS pay for childcare too while making no money, but it’s like my inner calling. Live your truth and all.” 

It’s not ideal. 

So I’m job searching while sitting on my couch during Colette’s non-nap.  As in she didn’t fall asleep, just talked and cried and banged the frame above her crib against the wall.  This, more than anything else, gets me to the edge of my sanity.  I don’t know why I care, she’s in her room and I’m not in her room so I should just make my peace.  But it’s maddening.  After I got her up and she ran outside towards her freedom, I literally squished a stuffed animal and said to it, “go to sleeeeeeep.”  It was truly cathartic, if not a little extreme.  Then from that very healthy place, I started looking for jobs.  

This, mothering, it is a very hard thing even when you love them.  Some people sail through it, others squish stuffed leapords and give them a stern talking to.  I do not write to tie a bow, just to say, sometimes it’s all very hard even when it’s not actually that hard, but I think it’s ok to cry on the bed anyways. 

Gotta go watch The Office and order Post Mates, which is First World speak for “self-care.”

I write to myself

I keep having the same conversation.  My life happens like that, I learn in little spurts, like inlets in my brain I scurry down them and find myself surrounded by a theme. This particular one is a tired topic, the horse has been dead a long time, and yet we remain the same.  The topic is us, millennial’s, and Christianity. Our peers and our parents are trying to understand us, why aren’t we Christians anymore, and we are trying to understand ourselves.  What did we come from, why did they do it like that, what is truth, does it have to be this way?  

The themes I have gathered have definitely been scoured and articulated by academics and the like. There are collegiate articles written on culture and Christianity.  Really thoughtful podcasts are taking on the topic and chasing after answers.  I know the themes of the millennial drain in churches, I know why we’re leaving from books and from what people are saying. But I know it in my life.  I don’t mean to make a cultural critique that I’m not qualified to make, but I see it in my community.  At some point along the way the church stopped being compelling, the collective Christian voice stopped being the choir we wanted to join.

I know it in myself too. I have all the feelings my peers do, I sit across from them as they relay their spiral down into the abyss of doubt and unbelief and their slow climb back to clarity in a new form.  I remember every single step, every moment my hands were pried open and I had to release all the boxes that kept my worldview in squares.  It’s so hard and most of us come out of that deconstruction in a state of silence, we have to heal from the very real pain of disorientation - or some word I can’t grab onto, one that describes a loss of identity and hope and the feeling of being duped and simultaneously being judged and misunderstood for the wanderings. We finally find our feet and have to heal. 

For a long time I was mad at God and the church; as I saw it, they set me up for the spiral of disbelief.  But I see with kinder eyes these days, I see the church and the community of Christians that are desperate to do right by God and I see the drifter trying to find God in all the rightness. They’re both looking for Him, I hope He embraces us all. 

I can’t figure out if I’m afraid or hopeful for us.  Part of me watches my generations and celebrates our efforts to love and accept people better.  We have been kinder to the LGBTQ+ community, we have worked towards elevating women, we have made concerted efforts to alleviate racism, less people are pretending, less of us go to church just because we’re supposed to, if we believe we fought hard to believe, we give less empty slogans for naked pain, we’re better at loving people where they’re at.  And yet, less and less of us are Christians, or at least we’re not in the church.  

Of course the greatest minds in Christendom are likely asking why (hopefully).  But I see themes, I see them in myself and in my community.  I think we got confused when faith was presented to us as black and white and it turned out that it wasn’t.  We thought that there was a cause and effect between making good choices and having a good life.  We understood it that if we had faith in God and didn’t fear the very real fear of this world then God would come through for us.  We counted our blessings and then went to Uganda and couldn’t figure out how to count theirs.  We believed in sexuality as God commanded it and then made friends with someone who was gay. The church spent all its money on being cool for us and it worked as well as putting mom in a leather jacket. We saw the needs of the world and simultaneously heard the collective Christian silence.  We saw a man elected into office who stands for everything but Christian values who was voted in by a great majority of our fellow Christians.  We read the Old Testament –  and that’ll do it.  

I believe in the life Jesus lived.  I’m confused about so much, but I’m not confused about that.  In the very middle of my heaviest season of doubt when I could not get myself to believe in God, I knelt before Jacob’s Well in Palestine where Jesus chose to deliver the good news to a half-breed, enemy women who by all accounts was not worthy of the news, and I sobbed.  I sobbed because I can live my life for that, for someone who saw and loved the least of these.  That moment was the beam of light in the chaos of doubt, and I will not let that go.  

I have so many conversations with friends who are trying to understand God and as they do they’re finding themselves in a mystical place that’s much less orthodox than our pastors might hope.  I hear in their voices a humble approach to faith, “I hope for hope to be true” they’ll say. I have so much space for these conversations, because on my best days I mostly believe, which I’ve accepted is the best I can do. I naturally respect the questions, I work to respect the answers.  

I want us to remember the main point.  I want us to be known for loving really well.  I want more of our money to go to the poor.  I want our communities and churches to be simpler and less self-focused. I want us to have space for each other’s differences in belief. I want us to empathize better with those who are different from us. I want us to be able to be honest about the pain of this life and honest about questions and doubt.  I want us to be really good at loving the orphan, widow and stranger.   

In all its simplicity and all its complexity this is Christianity 101, but we’ll lose ourselves and we’ll lose our children if we don’t respond. 

I write to myself.  

zzz, blink, blink

Hello you.  It’s been a while since I visited my little space on the internet. I suppose there are reasons why, nothing all that interesting.  Social Media was bugging me, all the polarizing voices were bugging me, the race to recognition was bugging me, I was tired of thinking and processing so I got quiet.  I got quiet both here and in my mind.  

I still read a lot though. I read about Amish settlements, Sabbath, Michelle Obama, the Bush sisters, Parenting (Lord have Mercy), some flighty fiction, I crawled my way through a book on trauma, started and gave up on C.S.’s Lewis’ Until We Have Faces.  I bought a kindle actually, which goes against everything I believe in, or maybe it’s everything I perceive myself to believe in.  But whatever, I can read at night without the light on and if you can believe it - the instant gratification of two day shipping isn’t enough, I must have it now and Kindle is just so NOW.  The nail in the coffin, I am of this age. 

But I have positive thoughts about gardening and even some seeds sitting on my counter. They serve to remind me that I will garden one day, as well as offer the air of outdoorsy hippie to my kitchen visitors.  This makes me feel green and superior, which I like and also serves as proof that I haven’t completely lost my principles.  Although, last year it took like eighteen months to grow a little head of broccoli and then I waited a day to see if it would get bigger and went to find it had blossomed into flowers, albeit they were lovely flowers but nothing I could roast and salt.  It was really disheartening  I know I said I wouldn’t get discouraged by gardening but it is truly hard and urbanization has made me useless.  I blame you, history, for my inabilities.   

Maybe I haven’t been writing because my brain is mush.  Motherhood has softened me in all the ways a person can be softened.  The mac-n-cheese I finish off for Colette isn’t helping and the hours logged reading and re-reading and re-reading The Pout Pout Fish isn’t helping either. 

As far as updates go, Colette is, “busy” as my dad says, aka she’s high energy.   She does a fake laugh that totally wrecks me and she has a deep and all-consuming obsession with balloons.  Sprouts is kind enough to place them throughout the grocery store in random locations so that every two second Colette yells, “ba, ba, ba” until I acknowledge, yes, another balloon.  This doubles our time at the grocery store, which she doesn’t mind because she’s extroverted and waves at everyone. I on the other hand would like to make eye contact with less strangers.  But this is my fate. 

Also I got a Disneyland Pass.  It’s all very fun but the only thing I have to say about my experience thus far, is that the adults without children who wait in long lines to see characters such as Anna and Elsa, these are interesting people.  It’s more than I can understand.  I would like to take them to coffee and ask them questions. 

I also did a little guest speaking for Nurture at a local church, it’s MOPS by another name.  I’m always surprised when nice good Christians read my blog and have interest in talking to me about it or having me speak about my faith. I think, you read my blog?” But did you? Because it’s not really women’s ministry level stuff, it’s all mangled and angry and confused.  When I walk in those rooms I feel like the grim reaper, which what even is the grim reaper? Google says its death personified. So maybe less than that, just kind of a wet blanket.  I’m not fluffy or encouraging, but I did the talk and I wasn’t nervous, I think I said what I wanted to say and one time a girl laughed at a joke I made, so all in all, I think it was a success.  

In other news, Trever looks like a mixture of a homeless guy and Bradley Cooper in, A Star is Born. He grew his hair out, except of course his leg hair which he shaves for cycling. Also he is now in a “street style” fashion phase, which I think is code for expensive sweats. Colette prefers him to me, it’s pretty cute.

I still feel like a new mom.  I’m still making peace with what we went through. 

I ran into a friend a few weeks after bringing Colette home from the hospital.  I ranted about all the ways I was figuring life out.  I was trying to understand what happened, what I experienced, what it did to me, how to heal from it, how to be sure I was making peace with it, basically making a concerted effort to FIX IT. He was kind and graciously told me to slow down.  “You can’t force your way to understanding and peace, it will just wear you out. Allow yourself to get there, I promise you will.”  

So I took his advice literally, and if my life was The Pilgrims Progress, I sat down on the trail and took a nap.  

My eyes are blinking open again, maybe my mind will too.  

Cheers! 

Book Recommendations

By Stephanie Danler

By Anne Lamott

By Henry Miller

Bantam

By Therese Anne Fowler

By Chaim Potok

By Lisa Gungor

By Meaghan O'Connell

I’ve been reading a lot lately and writing less often. It comes in phases I guess. I rifled through my sister’s book shelf because she moved and had to part with many of her beloved books, so my stack included less pop lit and more respectable titles. I felt like a cool kid with my book titles showing at the beach, not like when I read Crazy Rich Asians in an airport before it was well known and folded back the cover to maintain self respect. Also that was a lie, I don’t read at the beach anymore, who am I kidding? Davita’s Harp, Eva Luna, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch are a few of these beautiful books. Lisa Gungor’s book was the book I was going to write if someone asked me to, and now I don’t have to, it’s good. Meaghan O’Connell is hilarious on the topic of motherhood, sobbed and laughed, added bonus she’s a great writer. Sweetbitter was good, not as good as expected but worth reading. Loved Z, such interesting insight into the jazz age with all its glory and all its flaws. And of course Ann Lamott, because she’s the queen.

Un-mute

I was wearing an inflatable gold crown to dinner – classy AF. Mob mentality made me do it, or rather the peer pressure of some friends and a glass of wine.  We were celebrating my 30th birthday a year late, as I had recently turned 31, which is something that still amazes me - I keep getting older. I am determined to age gracefully though, unlike the botox stuffed women a generation ahead of me. Last year this time we were in the the cavernous dark hole of the hospital, ironically perpetually artificially lit.

So this year I had swordfish and shared a bottle of Gruner with friends and then they told me the reasons they love me. After a year of chaos they said they appreciated the way I handled myself, they said I was gracious along the way, they said I encouraged them to think differently and critically about the lives they were living, and I melted into a puddle – with an inflatable crown on it. From my puddle I wanted to tell them that they're the reason we survived last year, that their abiding love was our grace.

If we're lucky we have these moments every once in a while when we're reminded of God's grace and that he inhabits this world.  Most of the time I rant about all of the ways I would do the job differently if I were God.  I would make sure everyone was happy and healthy and snakes extinct and koalas a viable house pet.  I tell him that I’m mad he doesn’t intervene, that if I were him, with all my wisdom, I would show up a bit more often.  He’s gracious and lets me shake my tiny finger to the expansive heavens from my tiny place on earth, which is likely some parallel to my place in creation and thus the humility I should posses, but I prefer small dog syndrome.  

Until those moments when I remember whose world I'm living in, I step outside and catch a sunset that is holy in its beauty and it silences me.  The truth is that all of humanity bows their head to God’s nature, we call it mother nature or evolution or miraculously oriented cells, but by another name we still all see its splendor.  

I think God is revealed in those moments. There is a catch in our breath when our bodies know more than our minds, when the cells that bow to the creator respond in amazement.  We feel it, the instant before our reasoning minds silence the worship of our being, before we mute the song of our collective molecules in praise. 

Every once in a while I let my mind learn from the parts of nature that don’t carry reason.  The elements of creation that obey instinctively and carry with them the wisdom and truth of God’s planet. Mostly I think I’m smarter, mostly I explain to God better ways to do things because I don’t have the personality for quiet humble faith.  But then sometimes I let myself see God, I let myself recognize all the ways he is present, through redwood trees, through starry skies, through people. 

I tell God I wish he would intervene in my deep black darkness when maybe he did.  I called it unanswered prayers, he calls it presence in my pain.  I called it pointless suffering, he calls it beauty becoming. I called it impossible blind faith, he paints the sky to be seen if I choose to see. I call it lack of intervention, he beckons me to see Him in the people who carried me.  

On really good days I see things a bit more clearly.  Usually it's when I'm hiking, sometimes it's through friends who stop my yapping just long enough to let me hear God in it.  

Social Disconnection

I plop my Colette into her highchair for the 34thtime that day, it’s a change in location, which brings about a moment of peace.  I take a deep breath as she squeals curiously, the beginnings of what will eventually escalate into frustrated consonants babbled at higher and higher volume and pitch with each passing moment. It’s all to say, “I’m bored, NEXT”. But for now I grab my phone and open instagram to see how the rest of the world is living.  

My favorite blogger is in some remote village in Spain.  I look it up and see its location and envision myself there for a moment.  I’ll have to settle for a coconut La Croix from my fridge.  I dodge IKEA plastic stacking cups that have been scattered around my kitchen floor and make it to my fridge just barely without incident.  A small noise becomes louder and faster as Colette discovers with pure ecstasy the sounds that comes from banging her toy on the counter. I see her smiling with excitement and flash a smile before getting back to my quick scroll.  

A friend has a work meeting over happy hour and I see her frosted glass of Chablis toggling from side to side in front of a slightly blurred bright blue ocean. I don’t think I’m allowed to drink at home yet, it only being 3:30 and all.  I quickly calculate hours until bedtime, 4.  I scroll on, and a family I follow has relocated to France for a year and has been traveling to every bit of Western Europe on the weekends.  They are currently in Biarritz surfing and the weather looks perfect, a nice contrast to the stifling heat outside my house. 

Colette’s squeals are slowly morphing from contentment to boredom just as my stomach reminds me I haven’t taken time to eat. My moment of peace is ticking away so I grab an entire bell pepper and eat it like an apple while scrolling.  The Australian fitness guru slides onto my feed doing one of her vomit inducing workouts. Just a few dozen burpees and a few dozen jump squats repeated a few dozen times.  I watch the video like I’m watching the Olympics; it is both entertaining and so impossible it doesn’t feel like a threat.  I chomp my bell pepper and feel my still soft belly just because I’m a masochist. I can now no longer shut out Colette’s frustration.  What she wants is to walk around, but she still so unstable and it takes a lot of work and concentration.  So I set my phone down and plop her on the floor with plastic primary colored toys I swore I would never buy.  

I grab my phone because if I don’t catch up it will nag at me like incomplete homework.  A natural beauty company comes into view.  A 20 year old without any visible makeup swipes a shade of sheer pink onto her lips and blots. She has pouty plump lips that owe themselves to youth and good genes, and probably some Photoshop.  Makeup free is the new makeup, and youth of course is the caveat, as it is for high-wasted shorts and midriff T’s. 

Colette has now escalated to a level I can’t ignore so I set my phone down to help her stand.  My ratted hair, that hasn’t been properly groomed in days, falls into my face and I lean over to lift her up and she grabs it for support.  I sustain the jolt of pain and tie it back in a bun. Undone is the new done, I think, I’m just being French is all. 

She wants to walk so we travel into the living room where she has many Colette sized pieces of furniture to scale.  I have to watch her closely lest she take a tumble, so I slide my socked feet across the floor and plop down onto our wood floor with a nice view of my thighs in my high school sweats.  Not a sight for instagram.  

I’ve left my phone in the kitchen and can’t be bothered to go get it. Colette starts pushing off the edge of the couch to precariously balance standing alone. She gets so utterly excited she can’t contain her toothy grin and looks in my direction to laugh.  I watch her tubby legs as they dramatically bend, lift and plop down like she’s walking through shallow surf.  She has tiny tan lines between her fat rolls and I laugh at how cute they are.  She’s so happy now she starts to babble incessantly, ba bada, la, dada. I listen to all the details of her noises while staring at her curly brown hair.  How can her hair be that perfect, I think?  How can her cheeks be that ridiculous? I smile and feel that blessed rush of contentment, the kind that comes from presence, from existing where I am.  The anxiety I was hardly aware of dissipates.  Simplicity slides in and I find myself in a moment I’m living in. If I have the guts, I’ll decide to keep living my life within my life, instead of somewhere else. Sometimes I think about permanently staying in my moments, sometimes I think about being present to my contentment, sometimes I think about the relief of disconnection, sometimes I wish for less comparison.

But in a few hours I'll be scrolling to catch up. 

I Don't Know, But

To pivoting when it’s time. 

Last night my friend Shannen made that toast when we clinked our wine glasses.  I had gone to LA to spend the evening with her, as in I left the baby child with Trever and left the house with actual shoes on.  I had to be careful not to overdue it with my outfit, because now I’m a mom, coming to the big city for a meal.  Before I know it I’ll be wearing my one leather jacket every time I cross the county line out of suburbia and into the city. 

We had Mediterranean food in a restaurant the size of my living room that jutted out into the corner of Sunset and something-rather. I updated her on all the best news about Colette, her adorable and happy personality and how much I love being a mom. Then I told her what I’m working on, which is to say, what is hard right now.  “I’m working really hard on mindfulness,” I said, “because I’m happy if I stop wishing I were in Paris. How come no one else struggles”, I asked her. “Because you’re someone else”, she said, “it’s why I like you.” Well that was nice. When it came time for her update, I asked her to tell me the next 6 places she’ll be going to in the next 6 weeks.  “I don’t want to tell you,” she said.  

Just TELL ME!!! 

Japan, Italy, Yellowstone, Big Sur – I stopped listening.  I gluggled my water, they didn’t have wine.   

The grass is always greener though, which means we’re all discontent unless we choose to be otherwise. She looks forward to when she’ll have a partner, I look forward to a bit more freedom.  She tells me she sees beauty in my future, change and pivots and new adventures when it’s time.  Now is the time to love my Colette.  We discuss dating app horror stories and the uneven ratios of eligible bachelors to bachelorettes. 

Then we walk in search of wine and find ourselves under light bulbs dangling from thirty food ceilings, and seat ourselves in front of a 5 shelf wall-to-wall bar housing Japanese whiskey and Mexican mescal. And then our conversation moves its way to where we always end up.  God.  

We grew up the same way, went to the same college, shared the same deep conviction for our faith and conservative lifestyle.  She found herself in a city that stretched her mind, and I found myself in a conservative church that stretched mine.  Opposing reasons for the same shake-up and ultimately the same results, which left us saying - I don’t know, but I believe. 

We lost the blessed ignorance of easy belief.  We discussed how desperately we wished our teachers had told us about the nuance. We wished they didn’t call what was grey, black and white.  We wished they pointed out big questions and confusion so that we wouldn’t discover it alone in a city or alone amongst believers.  We wish we talked about how hard it is to believe, and yet together pursued belief.  

Then we talked about hope, the thing that keeps us believing.  

When life goes where you didn’t expect it to, or genetics or birth defects cause a major f*ck up, you discover how you see the world.  For Shannen and me, no matter our confusion we can’t shake hope.  We see this life as a moment in the greater breadth of time. We see the brokenness as a part of this broken life, so we see hope in the ending of it and thus the beginning of something whole.  Whatever God’s involvement today, creation makes us believe He is good.  

And that’s about all we can say.  We can’t claim belief in the details anymore.  We can’t rest in surety like we once did.  The ease now comes to us in the releasing of a need to know.  

I don’t know, but I believe. That’s what we can say. It’s lovely to have friends who say, me too, a connection itself, which helps me see.  

Thank God, I think, and I mean it. 

Newborn Fibs

I am so out of shape that I needed to join a gym with classes.  I can’t be trusted to whip myself into shape. I’m so far gone that the prospect of the sensation of burning lungs and aching legs, returning again to the former strength and joy of running, is so far gone I get overwhelmed and quit. It hurts. Never mind, I don’t care about health that much. I’ll invest in one pieces for this summer.  I have a baby, shouldn’t I just go home and take a nap? Yes. - Says my mind.

So I went to Orange Theory. It’s running, rowing and weight training. The whole time you’re monitored by a heart monitor so you can gage your goals more accurately.  I was ready for it and feeling upbeat.  While signing in I was sure to mention I have a 10 month old, which didn’t sound as impressive as I wanted it to.  I feel like I just jumped out of my delivery bed and into the gym, or my knees feel that way anyways. But it’s been almost a year and to an outsider that’s a long time.  She congratulated me and signed me in. 

I got in the room and the trainer was doing a little overview of how the class works for the newbies.  “Sounds good” I said, “I have a six month old so we’ll see how well I do, haha.” It felt better that time.  More congratulations and permission to take is slow. Take it slow, that’s what I wanted to hear, and of course what my ego ignored. I started my run at a pace I would have run when I was in shape. Two years ago. Well before I got pregnant with my 4 month old.

We had to do three cycles of chaos and movements right out of the gate my lungs were screaming at me to slow it down.  Two cycles in and I felt like puking. I didn’t vaguely feel like puking, I had to run to the bathroom for fear I might spew my morning coffee on my treadmill.  I must have looked ghostly when I came back because the trainer asked if I threw up.  “Oh no, I’m good,”  I said with a perky smile, “loving this class by the way”.

I finished without puking but spent a good portion of the weight training bent over my bench willing my vision to return.  Lucky for us our monitors recorded the whole thing.  As it turns out I got five splat point. FIVE! Which has something to do with heart rate and red zone and working hard and burning calories. I’m not quite sure, but everyone else had between 15 and 30. The trainer said I must have an efficient heart, which we both knew wasn't true.  So essentially my low splat points meant I didn’t work that hard.  “Oh man,” I joked to the fellow new comers, “I guess I’m more out of shape than I thought.” This was my moment to fit it in. “I just had a baby a couple months ago so I’m a little out shape I guess.”  The congratulations ensued, I smiled like a champion. It’s incredible how lying to yourself and others can actually make you feel better about yourself.  Way to go Brooke, you’ve got a newborn and you’re here.  Keep it up! 

Nuckin' Futs

Motherhood is the greatest contrast.  It ties itself to us then pulls at us from all angles.  I picture myself with ropes tied to my arms and legs and each side of the rope is being pulled from opposite sides.  So I find myself precariously balanced and deeply stretched. 

Here’s what I mean.  Pregnancy was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, maybe the most incredible.  I was growing a life inside of me.  It was so much crazier than I thought it would be, feeling a human grow and move around inside me. The whole experience was profound, I mean that literally, it was one of those experiences that makes one believe in God.  

It’s also hard though. My body was on loan for a year.  I couldn’t drink too much, or eat certain things, or take hot baths, or go for long runs. I became fragile.  I felt tired and hungry all of the time. I was in a constant state of needing to pee for a year straight.   Everything started getting soft and saggy except my rock hard belly, which is the cruelest contrast to the deflated balloon it would become.

It was difficult. It was worth it.

Then of course labor has to produce these crazy happy hormones because otherwise our population rate would perpetually be on the decline - one and done.  Our body’s get ripped open but it’s such an incredible experience.  Or something. So we do it again.

Now I feel this bizarre mix of being exhausted and super bored.  When they’re little the days are kind of mundane, and yet constantly moving.  My mind is restless and tired. 

I have one of the deepest attachments of my life with Colette and yet I’m sort of lonely.  I found the greatest fulfillment of my identity and somehow feel emptied out, like I lost myself a little bit. I’ve found life long purpose and yet I feel like I’ve lost a sense of direction.  I want to be close to her constantly, but I need space too.  Life got quieter and slower but really it’s noisy and busy, just differently.   I’m excited for her to grow up and I beg her daily to never change.

The absolute best things that’s ever happened to me.  The absolute hardest thing I’ve ever done.

It’s set up like this so we go crazy.  It’s like some weird sexist law of creation.  Does all of life have such opposing elements, or am I right that becoming a mom is particularly so? It’s two sides of the same coin, or a double-edged sword, or more contrast analogies.  

I'm still figuring this whole thing out. 

So, I’ll leave you with this – I put soup on a plate yesterday. 

Recent Reads

I Nurture

So I’m a stay at home mom now.  It’s not something I had planned on, but with Colette’s complex medical journey, staying home became the obvious and only choice.   It’s hard but I really do love it. However I am going a little crazy.  I'm not stir crazy, but like, if I’m gonna stay home I’m gonna stay the fook home.  I’m doing this thing. 

I’m reading books about plants and cooking and getting into it.  In a dream world I would like to be in either the middle of a city or in the middle of nowhere.  Which is why I’m in the suburbs. Best of both? Or of neither? Or something?   I don’t know but I could move to a farm right about now, were it not for Trever’s work. I’m sure there’s a rip roaring fashion industry in Paso Robles, no? But then there's the fact of his general indoorsyness that may not be suitable to farm life. **Which spell check just changed to farm wife which is a mother cussing sign if there ever was one! 

But for now the farm will come to me.  I live in a neighborhood built in the early 1900s, so unlike a lot of coastal southern California we have yards. Not just patios. My house is the size of a motorhome squared, but I’ve got an orange tree so I’m winning. We’ve built some garden beds with radish and butter lettuce babies growing inside. I thought they were taking too long and surely had died young, but I just saw a little green sprout and got reaaal happy about it. 

Also nothing and no one is spared from my antics.  Like Trever and his office for example.  After getting large empty egg cartons from local restaurants (like a freak) I planted kale, leek and lettuce seeds in them and left them in Trever’s office to sprout.  His office now smells a little like dirt but it sort of already did so whatever. When he tastes that crunchy fresh kale, half eaten by a squirrel, he’ll remember why he married me. 

Everyone I talk to who has had a go at gardening, tells me how hard it is.  All the bugs and squirrels and birds and fungus. But I’m in the honeymoon phase right now.  New love is blooming and I have lofty dreams of our future together. I can see it now - all of us happily chomping on cabbages, not a care in the world.  

My plant babies are part of my weird mom routine. I slip on my berkenstocks over my socks and tighten my robe, squinting my eyes at the sun I adjust my glasses and pull my hair back into a messy bun to water my herbs and garden bed, then grabbing a clump of chocolate mint to deeply inhale on my way inside. Motherhood suits me. Trever probably agrees.

Sometimes I think about poor Colette.  What will she say about me? Not only am I wearing socks under by berks but I’m permanently displaying the inside of my brain on the world wide web.   Actually she probably won’t care, future Brooke will super care. She’s like, “sshhhh” from 30 years away.

Speaking of being crazy. Trever and just decided I need to take some time for myself to read, think, write, and become normal again.  I think it’s a pretty good idea.

Kale!

Inception

My friend Annette once said to me that having kids saved her from herself. At the time the only thing I heard in that statement, was that it would take me from myself.  I heard the negative of what I would lose for this opaque gain of mothering, or more precisely, of loving.  In giving up part of ourselves to another, there is loss. I don’t have a job anymore. I don’t think as deeply. I write less.  I read less.  I interact less.  My days feel mundane sometimes.  I feel isolated sometimes.  I feel small. I’m tired.  I feel simple. And I hate to say it, but on bad days I feel trapped.

I was talking to a friend once about marriage.  He was so disinterested in it because it just sounded hard.  He rattled off all that seemed difficult, the required selflessness, the loss of independence, all the effort it is to maintain, the 50%.  I remember thinking, well ya, that’s all there, but you’re missing the goodness of it. The love. Maybe you don’t know it until you know it, but when you do, all the work is nothing. The love, as I understand it, bears the weight of all the toil.

From Annette I just heard that mothering might keep me from myself, from simple pleasures, from part of my happiness. I didn’t take into account what it would save me into. It’s a bit of a risk, by choice or not, to lose simple goodness for strenuous greatness.  It’s an act of “dying into life.”

Maybe our lives are made up of a bunch of tiny deaths that lead to greater life. Everything is reflective of what it is to live. The acts of emptying ourselves in exchange for connection, for purpose, for holiness, brings us closer to heaven on earth. We start to see a pattern, that when we lose part of ourselves to love, what we gain in return is to truly live.  It’s inception.  It’s a ton of tiny analogies for life inside this life, that even in heart stopping death, we are simply coming to greater life.

It’s better to lose ourselves to love than to own ourselves.  It’s a big blaring sign for belief if we see it, by the grace of the cross, death leads to life within this life, and so,  it will keep leading to life beyond it.

For those that have the eyes for it, it is the gospel on repeat in our lives. In both big and small ways, loss of parts of ourselves to sacrificial love, whatever the form it takes, truly and completely saves us from ourselves and saves us into life.

Thank God I'm not made for me. Thank God for Colette.

The Sun is Bright

I was walking from my parked car with my mind still spinning at the quick pace I maintain when doing things like unloading Colette and all of her accessories from my car. Have mercy, do babies need accessories. I used to judge moms while thinking, just have less stuff, people in Africa don’t need all of this (always a sound and educated argument, or whatever).  It was our first beach trip, which meant walking down the boardwalk while she slept in her stroller. She is still easily over stimulated because of all that time in a temperature, light controlled 10x10 room, so we’re taking it easy on the new experiences. I turned the corner to arrive on the boardwalk, looked out at the sparkling water for the first time in almost seven months and it hit me.  I felt really happy. 

For the past month since coming home, I have felt really flat.  I felt a lot in the hospital but in bizarre soul wrecking ways, then after there was nothing. I'm coming back to normal and realizing how mixed up I was. I feel like I'm just now thawing out. The expectation was to be all mended once the hospital was over.  I thought that with a rush, the moment we walked out of the hospital, I could be back to myself. I didn’t expect residual effects to creep into my new life at home. I don’t think I quite understood the toll the last 5 months had taken on me.

Are you surprised by my surprise? Me too. The self is the hardest to see I guess.

This is why my celebration felt off. I could be walking down our street with Colette in her stroller doing exactly what I had dreamed of for all those months in the hospital, I would look around me and think, I’m so happy - just think it. It was completely cognitive. I hadn’t had that tingly feeling I get when I think about all the things that could be, like a fun trip, or a good new book, or dinner with friends.  I never felt completely relaxed the way I used to when I took a bath or did yoga. I never felt energized from a good run or accomplishing all my goals for the day. I just felt flat.  I had the memory of the feelings from these experiences so I would paste the knowledge of the correlating feelings on and figured all was normal, except a little not normal.

But today at the beach I felt the first whiff of real joy. I’m coming back to myself, my new self anyways. The last couple of years did some things to me that will always be. In all the joy I’ll eventually return to, there will always that temporality.  I don’t think I’ll forget how fragile it all is, or how likely it is that we’ll hit tragedy and pain again.  So celebration will always be for this moment. Second, I’ll always think of those who never got bailed out. I had significant pain, but for the most part I have had relief.  Colette survived with little lifelong repercussions so I’m healing from a bad experience that ended.  But others have to heal without the relief of circumstances. I think about that all the time. I think about how one day that will be me.

Hmmm. Dark.

On a lighter note I have more oranges on my tree than there is champagne in the world and what else are oranges for? My sourdough starter is barely surviving but I plan to pick up my bread making again. Also, we re-did our bathroom during the hospital stay, because when life is crap why not move into a Best Western Plus for two weeks?  But now that we’re finished with our house we’ll take some pictures and show before and after. 

Also, I went to the gym and I was remembering the last time I properly ran. It was the day before our IVF appointment to implant the embryo that would become Colette.  I remember thinking about how it was the last time I would run with abandon for a while. I had to spend my pregnancy with caution and fear.  This was my time back, I could just run as fast as I wanted without concern for anyone else. I could finally let all that anxiety out with deep breaths and aching muscles. I love that feeling. So I did it. I ran a twelve minute mile and almost puked. Wait, what?

Expectations > Reality. 

Lastly, I have just begun reading after not picking up a book since Colette was born. I could have read an entire library’s worth of books in the time I sat in the large green hospital chair staring at a wall.  I could have learned French. I could have crocheted a blanket the size of a mini-van. But for whatever reason I couldn’t do any of it. So now I need book recommendations. Also, on the list of Obama’s books he recommended for 2017 was A Gentlemen Moscow. Which I read! So it’s like we were in same place. Not at the same time but we were both there. He also liked Chance the Rapper’s, “First World Problems”, which I liked. I’m just gonna say what I’m thinking, Obama would probably like me. Anyways, book recommendations would be great.  

P.S. I really want Colette to like being outside but she mostly just squints and gets grumpy at how bright it is.  Trever's an indoor guy if you know what I mean.  I'll tell you what I mean, he wears suede designer boots and skinny jeans when he goes to the beach.  I will not allow Colette be her own person in this regard. She will not inherit indoorsyness.  I will force her to like the beach if it's the only thing I do for her, because the main reason I had a kid was so I could have someone to go to the beach with. 

P.S.S. As we can all assess per this post, clarity of mind and linear thinking has not yet returned to me. Maybe it's time for a new hobby. 

The Hoehne's

I should be sleeping. "Sleep while the baby sleeps." But my sister Hayley sent me these photos that she took of us.  They make me so happy I can't sleep. I'm so tired but so happy. That's the definition of motherhood isn't it? 

Best and Worst

Last year, this week, we had our first ultrasound.  Because of our infertility I had an elevated sense of fear that we would lose our baby to miscarriage.  I wasn’t fully celebrating pregnancy because I was so convinced it would end tragically.  This first ultrasound would be the point I could finally let myself take a breath.  The appointment went well, the ultrasound tech was really positive and we left with the first sense of relief we had felt for a long time.  A few hours later on our way to my in-law’s we got a call from our doctor with the news of Colette’s omphalocele. 

With it came a risk of genetic abnormalities, congenital heart disease and underdeveloped lungs.  I was sitting at the table for Christmas dinner while holding my phone under the table and spiraling down into the google pit of information.  I was a wax figure that night, forming my face up into a smile and hoping it would hold. I held it together until we got in the car, and then I cried, a loud animal cry that I couldn’t control. I remember lying in bed that night and becoming so overwhelmed that I thought I would be sick, so I focused completely on breathing in and out.  With each breath I remember praying, “I need you,” until I finally fell asleep.

We went to the mountains the weekend after for Christmas with my family.  We were all trying to be positive but the fear was saturating everything.  I remember my laugh even sounded fake and felt separate from me. Internally I was spinning in chaos.  I wasn’t present in any experience because I was processing worse case scenario and begging God for mercy. At our new years party I was pasting on smiles and having pleasant conversation while my mind was living in really deep grief and fear. Not many people knew yet so everyone was celebrating our pregnancy, while its very existence was my nightmare. Each mention of it and congratulatory hug was a reminder.  It was the deepest loss looming over so recent a blossom of love.

Even thinking back on it I feel sick to my stomach.  The fear is still palatable.  Anniversaries of experiences might be the way I’m forced to process this last year.  Bit by bit I’ll feel the darkness of that particular moment again, remember the pain, grieve what was lost, review how it changed me, and maybe learn to accept it all. This day a year ago I remember feeling half alive, both numb and painfully awake.

Now looking back a year later, it was all so much harder than I could have imagined at the time.  The fear, the pamphlet the genetic counselor gave me, the encouragement to terminate, the heart diagnosis, months of begging for a miracle, watching her go after delivery, months in the hospital, x-rays, infections, kissing her goodby in the O.R., breathing machines, doctor’s worried faces, medications, the recovery, the love, the fear. 

Colette is in her room sleeping right now.  She has her chubby arm draped over her chubby cheek.  It was so hard because she was so worth it.

A year ago my perfect plans for life were shattered. I’ll never regain the blissful ignorance that life will go as planned. I think about the future differently, I live today differently, I’m darker and deeper and brighter all the same.  2017 was the worst and best year of my life. I’m writing this when I should be packing for the mountains for Christmas with my family. Colette will stare at all her cousins being crazy and loud as my family has always been.  I’ll genuinely smile.  My laugh will be mine. I’ll be present to the moment. And by the grace of God, Colette will be there with me.

So cheers to 2018

Here’s to hoping for better days ahead, to letting fear go, to celebrating each moment in the moment, and in spite of the loss that defines this life, to loving.

Candy Canes and Unknown Lanes

I thought the hospital would be this phase that would exist and then would end.  That I would come home from that unfortunate time and be who I was with a baby in tow.  Of course I never thought we would be there five months and I never thought we would almost lose her.  Except maybe I did think those things, I just blocked that out and figured I would survive it and then return to Brooke when it ended. No matter how it ended. 

Colette had a follow up appointment with her cardiologist yesterday. During the appointment I watched her laying on the bed that I laid on just nine months earlier when we got such horrible news that she had major congenital heart disease, potentially incompatible with life.  Yesterday she was just staring at the echo screen and the doctor was making light-hearted small talk and just five minutes after he started he finished by saying, “everything looks great.”  Nine months ago I sobbed in that room.  Trever and I both did, the doctor had to leave the room so we could break down and pull ourselves together enough to make it to the car.  Nine months ago I had stared at that same echo screen playing out what it would look like to lose our baby girl. I also experienced a miracle in that room when her diagnosis got reversed. “Woops, we got a bad angle.” Yesterday I looked up at the ceiling tiles I had stared at 9 months ago with all that nausea and fear swirling around. I looked up at them and I looked down at her and I held it together just long enough to make it to my car.  

Because all is well. The people around me are celebrating Colette in ways that make me weak with gratitude. No one is tired of her story.  They keep applauding her miracle and I’m humbled.  They help me celebrate.  Because the dark truth of it is that sometimes it’s hard for me to celebrate.  I’ve come out of the hospital and our whole family is different. Colette is just representative of how we’re all slowly healing and weaning off our survival drugs (her: morphine / me: a stiff upper lip). I’m learning the new me as all the strength wears off and the leftover pain settles in. I can’t figure out how to feel less afraid. I have a short fuse that once was long. I have low energy that gets me just barely to the end of the day.  With every celebration of our miracle I grieve with those who were left with tragedy. It’s weird and dark. I expected candy canes and silver lanes when the reality is that I celebrate with a remaining shadow. I suppose it’s that dark truth that life is unpredictable and I can’t unlearn that lesson.  Or it’s a delayed response to all the pain.  Or it’s the baby girl that was our NICU neighbor who is still there without a predictable end date. There is a heaviness to my being that won’t slough off.  Or maybe it’s a realism that will never go away, I have a new view of life that will always carry with it the truth of pain.

I’m learning this new part of me, discovering new scars and making peace with them. But I’m celebrating every second with her too.  Every time we sit in the backyard and she stares at the sky.  Or every walk we take and she dozes off in her stroller. Or every time we have friends over and we peacefully have dinner with her in our laps.  Every bit of it is a celebration.

You’re part of what is helping me celebrate.  Thank you for applauding and crying and sending happy emoticons and warm meals. I try and follow that secret social media protocol, not too many picture, less baby photos, don’t try so hard, etc. etc. Well I used to, and now I just post too many photos and even though I’m a bit uneven you’re helping me see the brightness in it all. Thanks for loving her. Thanks for getting excited over all my ridiculous mom posts.  It means so much, especially right now while I learn my new self.  You're our cheerleaders and I didn't realize how much we needed it. Thanks. 

Home

I’ve been silent on here for a really long time.  Silent because I had nothing to say.  I don’t have a treasure chest full of profound thoughts that have been accumulating over the time I’ve been living in the upside down.  I thought that’s how it would be.  These last couple of years have been so difficult and through it I’ve learned a lot and had so much to say along the way.  But that was the kiddie pool. It was the time where I was keeping my head above water, finding my feet after each new wave.  I didn’t realize that there would be a point where I would become overwhelmed and resort to tucking my head, pulling in my arms and legs and becoming just moving sediment in the ebb and flow of crashing waves.

I’ve had a few epiphanies.  But not really.  I’ve just been surviving. And there is nothing poetic to say about that. I have no deep thoughts about what it does to your faith to walk passed a prayer room in a children’s hospital every day and see sobbing parents as desperate as me for a miracle.  In the stinging moments when we thought we were losing her I had no beautiful and miraculous peace. I'm not sure how to make peace with seeing two friends lose a child in the five months we were scrambling to save ours. I don't know what to do with the empathy I have for God, for as greatly as we love our children it must break him to watch us suffer.  Maybe as I look back I’ll have some thoughts about it all.  But for now I’m not sure what to say, so much happened but it was all swirling and chaotic. Maybe when it all settles I'll see a little more clearly. 

But that’s all for another day because today I went for a walk. Colette is home and it has been the biggest relief of my life. She's cute and chubby and mellow and I love not having to say goodbye. The leaves in my neighborhood have all turned and are starting to decorate the sidewalk with autumn colors. Colette was sleeping peacefully in her stroller and the sun was just warm enough to make the cool breeze comforting. I’m typically a futuristic person, until I learned that life doesn’t play out the way you plan it to.  So I’m getting better at appreciating the moment without the fear or hope of what tomorrow will be.  And today the weather was truly perfect.  As are Colette’s blue eyes and chubby cheeks. I woke up in the morning and pulled her out of her bassinet and into bed.  I made dinner while she napped in her room. We’re all starting to heal a little bit and it sort of feels like I’m coming back to life. Maybe there will be things to say later, but for now I just wanted to say, thank you. There was a lot of darkness in the last five months but a spot of brightness was the kindness of the people around us. So, thank you, it made a difference.