Molly Piper

Orison is Morrow’s personal speech and language coach. Morrow’s got a pretty good vocab going already, but I’m expecting drastic growth if their regular sessions continue.

Here’s a lesson overheard recently:

Orison: Morrow, say Mama.
Morrow: Ma-ma!

Orison: Morrow, say ball.
Morrow: Bau!

Orison: Morrow, say Daddy.
Morrow: Da-dee!

Orison: Morrow, say baby.
Morrow: Bay-bee!

Orison: Morrow, say international.
Morrow (much more uncertainly): na-na-na.

A couple weeks ago, they had a routine with animal sounds that they did. And you’ll see from the video, Orison’s not the only one quizzing him on his words. (I’m a speech pathologist! And Abraham’s a word freak, alright???)

I love Morrow’s complete lack of self-consciousness. He’ll try almost any word, especially if it’s presented by his beloved brother Orison.

Time for true confessions: I don’t drink coffee.

[insert audible GASP!]

I know, I know, I know. Will you still be my friend? I can drink tea! Or even a chai tea latte (see… SEE? I’m getting closer, right?)

But seriously, all funny business aside, I’m at peace with my distaste for coffee. I can still be a grown-up! I can still do all the things that responsible adults do!

I figure, if I made it through college and graduate school without resorting to coffee, then I will probably do just fine for the rest of my life (with a cup of caffeinated tea from time to time). You know, they say “It’s an acquired taste.” I just chose not to acquire it. I love the way it smells, can’t stand the taste.

So, with that fumbling preamble out of the way, I had to pass on this adorable (yet informative) cartoon about… coffee!

I like this cartoon because:

• It’s so cutely illustrated.
• The points are short enough to keep my attention (that of a non-coffee drinker).
• So much useless information (but could probably be of use in Trivial Pursuit someday)!

So if you actually like the stuff, you’ll probably be doubly entertained.

(via Wesley Hill)

This post was written right after the birth of our third child, Morrow. Today he turns 17 months old. So this post is about that old.

I never published it—not sure why.

For those of you newer to our story, our third child was born 8.22.08, 11 months after the stillbirth of his sister, Felicity. But… I kept my pregnancy a secret from my blogging audience until the day I was going in to deliver.

Here’s the original post, written sometime in late 2008.

*          *          *

Many of you were probably a little bit surprised by the news of our third child’s arrival. I am too.

There are a few reasons I haven’t blogged about it.

1. Fear.

Women who have experienced the death of a child often deal with irrational thoughts. I’ve dealt with so many since Felicity’s death. Many of them have been those “if only” thoughts:

If only I had gone into the hospital the night I was having some painful contractions, maybe they just would have let me stay and I’d have her right now.

Others have been more like:

My baby died inside of me. My womb is a place of death.

So much of me has struggled to believe that the birth of a healthy, living child could ever happen for us again.

Maybe God will never do this for me. I’m going to live with the agony of another stillbirth so that he can keep making an example out of me and my suffering.

I don’t want to be an example. I want to be the mother of more than one living child.

So, though I don’t believe in jinxes, I shied away from announcing my pregnancy for a long time, mostly because I was afraid to actually say the words and then have God snuff it out because I was presumptuous and he was going to teach me a lesson about that.

I know these thoughts don’t reflect a belief in a loving God. And I’ve wept even thinking the thoughts. But they’ve been there.

I didn’t even tell my parents for almost five months that we were expecting. It was as though my mouth went dumb every time I tried to bring it up in a phone conversation with them 900 miles away. It was just easier to talk about weather or Orison or what I was making for dinner.

The fears I dealt with throughout this pregnancy were ones that I wanted to deal with personally, first between me and God, then between me and Abraham, then between me and my family and close friends. These concentric circles of trust and support have been what I needed for the duration of my pregnancy.

*          *          *

It’s been about 17 months since I wrote those words. And since then I’ve given birth to a healthy, full-term, living baby. That should prove to me that it’s possible, right? That should take care of my fears, right?

God has indeed proven his faithfulness in many ways in my life since September 2007. But… fears remain. This Christmas I was struck over and over and over with how each person responded to the announcement of Christ’s coming. What was the first thing the angel told each of them (Mary, Joseph, the shepherds)?

“Fear not…”

It’s like the angel knew what a human’s knee-jerk reaction would be—fear.

We’re so stinkin’ fearful, every last one of us. But one thing I’ve been clinging to recently is something my mentor told me when I was dealing with something very fearful for me.

“Hell dances when God’s people are afraid.”

So I can either add to their revery and stew in my fears down here, or I can bring them to the Cross, where God is not spurning them, but hearing them and calming them. If the angels know that we will react fearfully, then surely God knows our inclinations. He’s not surprised by my fears. So I can run to him, and he will embrace me.

I just keep telling myself: He is a loving Father, and not my adversary.

I came to my computer relatively late in the day, after dealing with a sick kid this morning and going to a doctor’s appointment. But when I got there, I saw messages on Twitter alluding to the following:

So you’ve probably figured it out. We’re expecting our fourth child.

I’m not angry at all for my father-in-law’s Tweet. He knew we were telling people, and with an excited 5-year-old on the scene, secrets are no longer. There were a couple thoughts that went through my mind in rapid-fire succession though:

• “I haven’t told Danielle. I haven’t told Danielle. I haven’t told Danielle.” Danielle is my best friend in the entire world, but we live 900 miles apart, and I’ve been too tired to call her. First trimester has been kinda brutal with my energy level. So, publicly, I love, love, LOVE you, Danielle. And you’re gonna be an aunt again. Forgive me for being so lame.
• My book club girls are gonna kill me! I was with them last night (before the vomiting 5-year-old episodes) and had a couple opportunities to just say something, but every time my mouth went kinda dumb.

So…

I am currently 10 weeks pregnant. I feel pretty horrible most of the time. I survive on Bisquick biscuits and sometimes some chicken soup. I have the sleeping patterns of an infant. I am experiencing gestational gastritis, which basically means my stomach hates me.

I’m 10 weeks pregnant. Baby will arrive in August. This will be our third pregnancy in a row to end in late summer. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, endlessly repeating the same cycle. We’re working on trusting that this is the right time for us. “Are you sure, God?!?!” has gone through my head more than once.

And…I’m 10 weeks pregnant. I held my friend Dorothy’s infant son the other day and just about died in half at how wonderful he felt. Life is a miracle.

So whether I have 10 weeks, 10 months, or 10+ years with this baby, today I heard the little heartbeat and know that it is indeed a blessing and a miracle.

*          *          *

I have some posts that I wrote during my last pregnancy about why I didn’t blog about it, and I’m working on editing those to publish here. It might help some of you understand why I don’t usually share very much about my pregnancies on my blog. Stay tuned.

I have a new website! After a year of intending to switch from wordpress.com to my own self-hosted blog, it’s finally happened! (Not to say that I could explain to any of you what that means, but whatev.)

This couldn’t have happened without the hard work of the following people:

• Josh Sowin of Rainsong Media, the technical brainpower behind pretty much everything.
• Brannon McAllister, the designer of my banner. I love how simple yet pretty it looks. Not to imply that I think I look pretty, but the floral design…
• Abraham Piper, my faithful and devoted husband who knows waaaay more about blogging than I do. He’s seriously a genius.

If you’re already a subscriber then nothing should change for you. If you haven’t subscribed, I’d love it if you did!

If you’re new here, you may want to jump in with my Compassion series from when I went to El Salvador, or my series on How to Help Your Grieving Friend. And of course you can learn more about me on my About page!

Thanks to all of you who’ve read this blog and brought it to this point with your readership and comments. I can’t wait to see where this goes.

I was very honored that Mandi at Organizing Your Way asked me write a post in her series this month “More Than Resolutions.”

And then I read the topic that she wanted me to post on—“Volunteer More”—and I almost laughed out loud. I probably guffawed. Because I don’t think of myself as a big volunteer. And that’s because I’m not. But I accepted anyway. “Why?” you’re probably wondering.

I suppose if you count how much I volunteered in 2008, and compare that to 2009, then my volunteering efforts increased dramatically—they went from zero to one!

See, I totally dropped off the map from 2007-2009, after the stillbirth of our daughter at 39 weeks gestation. All organized volunteering was completely off the table. We spent the entirety of 2007 & 2008 surviving (and having another baby—a son—born 11 months to the day after his sister).

I spent 2007 and 2008 being the recipient of peoples’ volunteering: meals, cleaning my house, babysitting my kids. I can’t even begin to communicate how thankful I was and am for people volunteering for me. It’s humbling.

In 2009, however, I was given the opportunity to serve and volunteer. Because of my blogging, I was asked to participate in one of Compassion International’s blogger trips to see their work and write about it. So I guess that leads me to my first point about volunteering:

1. Do Something That Interests You

I love kids. I love working with kids (I’m a pediatric speech language pathologist). I love blogging. I love travel. I love the thought of children being released from the grip of poverty. So many of my interests and passions came together on this trip!

If you get asked to volunteer in the kitchen at your kids’ school and you HATE being in the kitchen, maybe you should ask for a different opportunity. Chances are there are other things to do. (There’s always work for a willing volunteer.) If you make your interests known, you’ll probably end up doing something you actually like and will therefore thrive in, instead of dreading.

Of course there are times when you kinda have to die to yourself and just do the thing that needs to be done. I’m not saying we should turn our noses up at things we don’t like or things that aren’t glamorous. There’s always going to be jobs that no one wants to do, and sometimes we should accept those. Sometimes there will even be joy in doing the things we didn’t think we liked doing.

But for any ongoing, long-term volunteer work that you’d be expected to care about…probably something that interests you would be best.

2. Do Something Possible

All of us have to figure out what works for us and our families. The Compassion trip I took was only 5 days long. It fit nicely into our family schedule without disrupting too much. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have gone if it had been a longer trip; it just meant that fewer things had to be juggled around, and that made the trip feel more possible for me and my family.

Also, I already had a blog. And I was pretty sure I could write a decent post for what they were doing. It would’ve been silly of me to accept an offer to do something outside of my skill set, like be the tech support for the trip. That, my friends, would’ve been a disaster, an epic FAIL.

If you’re horrible with numbers, don’t volunteer for an accounting opportunity. That would be really silly, right? But that’s often how we respond when we hear about those gaping volunteer opportunities. We talk ourselves (or let others talk us) into jobs that don’t match up with what we can actually do, just because the need exists.

3. Pace Yourself

If you’re already an exhausted, overwhelmed mother of young children, you probably feel like you have very little margin in your life to be giving much more (because you’re giving all day long). Maybe you only have one hour once a month—that’s honestly what’s possible for you. Be okay with that. Be willing to give more when you’re in a season for giving more.

Perhaps for some of you, this is the year of more time, more margin, more availability. Be on the lookout for what you can do with that time!

If we try to do the impossible in volunteering and overextend ourselves, not only will we overwhelmed and rue the day we ever thought that volunteering was a good idea, but we’ll burn out and be of no use for an even longer period of time. (Because you’ll probably swear off of volunteering all together!)

For me, at the end of 2009, I was finally willing and able to step into a volunteer role again. I wanted to be there. I felt ready to be there. And I did one thing in 2009. And it was an awesome, life-changing one thing.

4. Volunteer Under the Radar

You can give of yourself in a million ways every day. Just because you’re not signing up for a regular slot on a schedule with a specific company or organization, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.

Be your own organization!

• If you love making meals for new moms, be that person that shows up six weeks after all the other organized meals have stopped coming and bless someone’s socks off!
• Be the person who secretly drops off flowers for someone who just lost a loved one.
• Show up randomly for the graveyard shift in the hospital room, giving the parents of a sick child a chance to go shower and sleep in their own home.

When I was in my darkest hours of need, this type of kindness was exactly the kind of volunteering that saved my life.

I think it’s right and good for all of us to have volunteering in our minds at the beginning of 2010. Who knows what that will look like come February or May or September? For some, you will have jumped in with both feet and be volunteering to your heart’s content. For some, you’ll still be looking for just the right thing. To be honest, I don’t have a plan for how I’ll volunteer in 2010. I just know I want to be open and available when opportunities come my way. I’ll say no to some and yes to others.

But I do know that I’m more likely to accept an opportunity if I get a chance to use my interests in a way that feels possible, and at a pace I can handle.

*               *               *

I’d love it if you read about my trip to El Salvador with Compassion. And, more importantly, I’d love it if you sponsored a child. 2010 is your year!

I just signed up for a scientific study about traumatic loss. Here’s the description from their site:

We are a team of researchers from Arizona State University,  University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Austin College. We are exploring the experiences of those aged 18 and older who have experienced traumatic loss and bereavement.  The purpose of this study is to determine the individual, familial, and societal effects of trauma and to improve standards of care to the bereaved and a model of compassionate caregiving and intervention that fosters resiliency at every level.

The lead researcher for the study is Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. Here’s how I know about her:

The first book I read after Felicity died was one called Stillborn: The Invisible Death by John DeFrain et. al., researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They did a study back in the 80s and published it in book form. It’s mostly stories of peoples’ experiences with stillbirth. It was deeply helpful for me just to read that other people had gone through what I had.

Then, I emailed Dr. DeFrain because the book was out of print. He so politely and sensitively emailed me back and suggested I look into the MISS Foundation, the organization founded by his former doctoral student, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, who had also lost a child.

I really appreciate her continued research into the topic of stillbirth and traumatic loss. I thought, since so many of us here have lost children traumatically, we should contribute. We can be a means of further research into this painful, under-studied area by sharing our time and our stories to help others.

So here’s what you do:

• Go to http://tearstudy.org .
• Enter your name and email.
• They’ll send you an email right away, and then you just click the link in the email to confirm your email address.
• Wait for them to email you with further details.

I say, let’s do this!

A fellow grieving mother sent me this poem the other day. Her son is buried very near to my Felicity. I visit him each time I go.

I know I haven’t written much about how I’m doing, grief-wise, in awhile. But it’s there, always, and some of it too deep, too painful to share here. Maybe I’ll get there someday.

In the meantime, you can read something that just recently made me cry tears of longing and joy and pain, all at the same time.

Resignation
from The Seaside and the Fireside

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882)

I know I’ve completely dropped off the map in 2010…

I know you’ve been wondering if:

• I ate so much holiday food that I’ve literally popped and vaporized?
• I got trampled when some post-holiday shopping madness went terribly wrong?
• There was some horrible glitch in the matrix and I’m frantically banging on the window of 2010, stuck on the other side, in 2009?

Truthfully, it feels like I’m stuck a few days behind, just waiting for the energy to officially enter into 2010.

Someone call Keanu.