Molly Piper

Awhile back I wrote a post for inCourage about my difficulties with regular Bible-reading.

Many people left comments on that post, confessing as well that Bible reading is difficult for them. Perhaps you’re one of them?

So I guess I’m just feeling a need to check in and ask: How you doin’?

Here’s what I’m not interested in:

• Any type of wow-I’m-so-great nonsense.
• Attempts to earn brownie points with God.

BUT…are we doing the hard thing?

How I’m Doin’

Right now, I’ve found that I’m bad at going to the open Bible on my counter. I won’t lie, there may even be dust settling in that page.

BUT…I’ve decided to keep my little Bible and a small journal in the car.

Each day I go pick up Orison from kindergarten, and I’m usually there with 5-10 minutes to spare. So on my way there (about a 15 minute drive), I’m praying. No formula, no list, just whatever/whoever God brings to mind as I drive.

Then when I get there, I pull my little Bible out from between the seats and crack it open.

Right now I’m reading the Psalms, and in my notebook I write character traits of God, questions I have, or verses I love.

I might not make it through a whole chapter some days, and some days I’m running late and I don’t get to it at all, but at least there’s some time that I’m trying to set aside.

What have been your trials and errors? What’s working? What’s not?

This video is of our church worship team this past weekend covering an awesome Tom Waits song called Come On Up to the House. It was so stinkin’ good, I just had to post it.

It was amazingly timely, too, because last week, a family in our church suffered a 35-week-gestation stillbirth. And for a relatively young church who hasn’t experienced much death or grief, people came around them so well.

I was particularly struck by the line:

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short?
Come on up to the house.
The seas are stormy
And you can’t find no port.
Come on up to the house.

What I took from it was a simple confirmation to just come to Jesus. I feel like I can hear it in ways I wouldn’t have been able to when we were so freshly living our tragedy. I also felt like I was able to call to mind times that I was able to “come on up to the house” in the last three years that changed me in such deep, irrevocable ways.

And I’ve experienced his welcome every time I’ve come on up.

Happy New Year, friends!

Today I’m over at (in)Courage, posting about my failure to read the Bible regularly.

I hope you’ll pop over there and join the conversation. Perhaps you have good suggestions to share to keep us in the Word in 2011.

Thanks for reading!

This morning at church, they played a video that really inspired me. It’s gonna sound so weird when I describe it, but here goes anyway: It’s the “cast” of the original Christmas story, but followed and recorded via a social media platform like Facebook.

And when I tell you that tears streamed down my face during it, you might really think I’m crazy. But watch it and see what you think:

A few things struck me as I watched it:

• Mary’s faith and reliance on God: I think whoever made this video honored what we see of her in the Bible–her faith, her character, her resolve to do the Lord’s will. I want to be more like that.
• A love story between Joseph & Mary: When he gets the news that Mary’s pregnant and he goes to type “hurting” but then backspaces and writes “confused.” Just thinking about the humanity of their emotions in the midst of the experience of bringing the Son of God into the world made me wreck.
• Their JOY: Just like you and me, they were overjoyed and awestruck with their child. And yet there was a whole crazy dimension to their experience that you and I never will experience, knowing that they are beholding God’s Son–the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Also, I think it was especially moving to experience this video in a room with a few hundred others. There was laughter. There were tears (trust me, I looked around and I wasn’t the only one wiping my eyes). It really struck me that here were are, thousands of years later, gathered together to worship and celebrate the same thing the angels and shepherds celebrated that night…

Immanuel, God with us.

It’s still the most shocking and scandalous story ever told: God puts on human flesh and is born of a woman. (Think of how many religions would be offended by just that statement alone.)

And while some might scoff at a video like this, thinking it’s an attempt to make Jesus “relevant,” I would say that yes, Jesus is relevant. He’s the most relevant reality that’s ever been. And if people tell His story over and over in ways that’ll break into my cold, hard, media-soaked heart, then I say bring it on.

I need the Christmas message. I need Mary and her firm and child-like faith. I need Joseph, and his confusion and then his tender regard for his very pregnant wife. I need the shepherds and angels to be my examples of worship. I need Immanuel, the little baby God who turned heaven and earth upside down.

I need Christmas.

(HT: 22 Words)

This past Sunday we had the twins dedicated!

It was so super crazy getting 4 kids (2 of them infants) and 2 adults out the door by 8:30am, but somehow we did it (without any fighting, I might add!). Abraham & I really have to work as a team to get out for church on any given Sunday, so we’re getting the hang of it. But for some reason this Sunday felt extra challenging (maybe it had something to do with Abraham having been up with the twins since 4:30am and not getting back to sleep).

Whit was first in line:

There was a little insert in the bulletin to introduce each child. This is what I wrote for Whit:

Whitsun (Whit) is a 3-month-old TWIN! He is a very happy baby, talking and cooing often. Whitsun is a English word that means “White Sunday,” used in the Catholic church to mark Pentecost. Robert is his middle name, after his maternal grandfather (“Papa”). It is our hope that Whit will be filled with the Holy Spirit from a young age & believe in the Lord Jesus for his salvation. We also hope that he gets along with his 3 older siblings–Orison, Morrow, & twin sister Cadence!

Followed by Cadence:

Cadence is a 3-month-old TWIN! She’s a very happy, chill baby who is very soft & squishy! Cadence is a musical term to explain the resolution of a musical phrase. Her middle name is Felicity to honor her older sister (Felicity Margaret) who was stillborn in 2007, and Felicity means “intense happiness.” So when you put her name together, it’s like a happy resolution to a very sad time in our lives. We’re so thankful that the Lord would give us this happy blessing of another little girl. And here’s hoping she can hang tough with 3 brothers: Orison, Morrow, and twin brother Whitsun!

I don’t know if you can tell, but she totally smiled at Pastor Steve when he talked to her. It was awesome!

And here’s our whole crazy crew afterward:

By the time the dedication portion of the service was over, Abraham and I were both ready to pass out! We were so exhausted!

Sorry this post is so short, but the twins are waking up and screaming to eat. Gotta run!

Last Wednesday morning, at 8am, our twin pregnancy took another dramatic turn. First, let’s recap:

• First, I wasn’t expecting to be pregnant in the first place.
• Second, I found out I was having twins at an 18 week ultrasound (which actually ended up being changed to 16 weeks when they measured the babies). Most people know they’re having twins before that point in their pregnancy.
• Third, I found out they were two girls.

Ready for the next plot twist?

Well, turns out one of our twins is a boy.

Here’s a little window into how it went down:

Ultrasound tech asked me, “What were you told for gender???”

“Two girls,” I confidently answered.

“Oh no,” she said gently. “Twin B is a boy.”

“Are you SURE????” I asked over and over and over.

Anyway, you get the idea.

I spent the rest of the day in a stupor of confusion and disbelief. Literally, the day before, I had gone to a girl’s house who was getting rid of her twin girl clothes and bought a ridiculous amount of stuff from her. A couple weeks before that, I’d had a baby shower for twin girls. How could this be happening to me????

I lamented through the rest of the week and the weekend, mostly because I’d let myself get attached to the babies (even disciplined myself to attach to them) and now they weren’t what they were “supposed” to be. One of the things that just killed me about the whole thing was that when I had my original ultrasound, and they told me it was twins, then told me that Twin A was a girl, I was almost certain she was going to say Twin B was a boy, and I was totally cool with that. But I’ve spent the last two and a half months making myself slowly embrace these two little girls who I was told were coming into my life.

I went yesterday for my first non-stress test (which will now be a weekly event because of our history with a full-term unexplained stillbirth) and listened to their heartbeats. Then I had a visit with my regular, yet oh-so-amazing doctor. She and I pored over the pictures from my original ultrasound and the ones taken last week.

Now, my doctor has a reputation as pretty much never getting gender wrong–never. She said she didn’t believe the people who told her about my updated ultrasound. And when we looked at the pictures from 16 weeks, she said, “If someone else came in today with that same presentation at 16 weeks, I’d still say girl.” It really was that clear to her then. She and I worked through some of the emotions I’ve been feeling, and she of course was so sensitive and empathetic. It really was a good visit.

For some reason, hearing it from her settled it for me. I don’t feel confused anymore. I don’t think I understand, but I don’t feel confused. I don’t feel cheated anymore. I don’t feel like the butt of some cosmic joke anymore.

Instead, I’m starting to embrace the reality that I am the mother to twins–sister/brother twins. There are some things I’m still digesting and emotions I’m still processing. That’s to be expected. I have a lot of work to do now to get rid of some of these girl clothes and get some things for my son. I have some revisions to make to the grand plan of my life, but I feel confident about one thing:

LOVE.

I feel confident that God, in his love for me, will take me through this change. I feel confident that our son will be embraced just as fully as his sister would have been by the people who love us. I feel confident that, in my love for my son, I won’t always look at him and see “the girl he was supposed to be.” I feel confident that his siblings, in their love for him, will enfold him as just who he’s supposed to be–their brother. I feel confident that we will be in love with him.

So, if you want to greet our son, feel free to leave a comment. I want him to know the most sincere, heartfelt welcome from me as his mother, and I’m trusting God to get me to that place in my heart over the next 8-9 weeks (we’re talking induction at 36 weeks due to my history).

Please pray that this is the end of the drama, pregnancy-wise. My doctor and I even had some energy to joke around yesterday. She said, “I really hope all this drama early in your life means that you’ll just sail through later years, like the teenage years.” And we both laughed, knowing how unlikely that is. But here’s hoping, anyway.

I guess we’re not getting the super-cheesy Hollywood ending to our story. But a story isn’t much of a story without a few plot twists, right?

I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people about grief in the last two and a half years. Some I’ve been able to answer personally, some I haven’t. There’s really no formula for how I decide which ones to answer and which ones not to. It’s more of an in-the-moment thing, where I have 15 minutes and can pour my soul into a response to a complete stranger.

Many of the emails come from people who know someone who just lost a baby–someone from church, a family member, a close friend. That’s probably because the people who just lost the baby are not even sure what’s happening and are completely and utterly in shock. The people on the outside have their heads on straight enough, relatively speaking, to put an email together and ask for help, or even just commiseration.

The one thing I’ve found myself writing to these people over and over again is this: Give brokenhearted love. Ask God to give you a broken heart. That will go further with your friend than any meal or house-cleaning ever could. Granted, I think meals and house-cleaning are immensely important to offer, and some people will be particularly gifted in giving those things. But if you want to go deeper into the loss with your friend, you’re going to have to be heartbroken.

For one thing, grief is really isolating. Especially when it’s a baby who is stillborn, people can sometimes think things like, “Oh, well the baby never lived outside the womb. It’s not like they knew that baby or anything.” And when you come home without a baby, there’s very little evidence that that child ever existed. So when you’re going through the hell of grief, it can feel like you were the only one who lost that baby, and that everyone else’s life has just moved on.

And in some sense, that’s true. Most people are not marking the days and weeks the same way as you are. But there will be a few who will.

And I suppose that’s who I’m writing for, the people who remember.

In our culture, people don’t like to talk about death. And dead babies??? Forget it. That’s because it’s horrifying. I’ll never forget how terrified I was to look at Felicity for the first time. And she was my child.

But brokenhearted love will choose to take on the horror and bear it with you.

In the first few weeks after we lost Felicity, a stranger who I didn’t know (but who went to our church) was signed up to bring me a meal. I kind of had my brave face on to answer the door, get through the interaction, get the food, exchange a few pleasantries back and forth, and get back to my existence.

But there was something very different about this person. As she handed me the food, she was sobbing. I’m not exaggerating here–tears flowing down her face. I was completely disarmed. I remember eventually she asked me if she could see Felicity’s room, if we had it set up. And before I knew it, I was climbing the stairs with this complete stranger, taking her into one of the most sacred spaces in my home.

It felt kind of crazy, but it felt safe. Because she was heartbroken. Just like me, heartbroken.

And even just last week, I had someone tell me that she stopped at Felicity’s grave. And she told me, through her tears, what she was thinking and feeling about that. It’s been two and a half years. She’s never told me anything like that before. And so we stood in her back yard and cried real tears together.

This is the bravery of brokenhearted love.

People who are grieving need to know that they’re not alone. They need to know that their loss is somehow your loss too. Tell them that you visited the cemetery–not for brownie points, but because you want to remember with them. Tell them that you cried in the bathtub the other day. Tell them that when you hear a certain song it takes the breath out of your lungs.

I’ll warn you: you might cry when you tell them these things. HALLELUJAH! You have NO idea what that will mean to someone who’s grieving. Let it FLOW! What are we holding it together for anyway? So our mascara doesn’t run? So we won’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable? There’s a reason that lump forms in your throat. It’s because you’re holding something in that wants to come out!

So if you’re wondering what you can give your grieving friend, I know it sounds totally cliche, but…give them your heart. Lay it bare. Entering into their pain and sharing your experience of the loss will be profoundly comforting.

I’ve made it through the last two years and seven months because of brokenhearted love. It’s been a gift to me, from those who were willing to give it.

This weekend our family went to our church’s Spring Retreat. The theme of the weekend was “I Hope.” We looked at lots of Scripture passages about hope, and talked about how we can apply hope into our daily lives.

But for me, hope is a really scary concept–really scary.

I remember feeling, in my darkest days of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), that hope is what God tells you to do so he can distract you, then sucker punch you in the gut with reality.

At that time, hope for anything good from God felt impossible. It felt like we only got calamity. And I know I “should’ve” stepped back a bit from our circumstances, taken a broader view, looked at the big picture and then I could’ve seen how good we had it–one healthy child, a home to live in, a car that got us where we needed to go, a job that paid for all of what we needed and much of what we wanted. And that did help sometimes. But I still had a deep, gaping, bloody wound.

I was stuck. So deeply stuck in the hopelessness of Felicity’s death. So confused. So wounded. I don’t think saying, “People in Cambodia (or North Korea, or Congo) have it really bad, Molly. Just look around and get over yourself,” would’ve have been healing for me. It might have taken the “bad thoughts” away quicker, but would it have healed the wound I was feeling or mended my broken view of God?

I think taking a broader view of God’s world can be incredibly helpful for getting us outside of ourselves, don’t get me wrong. But it’s insufficient by itself for healing when you’re up against some deeply painful personal issues.

I was dealing with questions like:

• Is God trustworthy?
• Does he listen when I pray?
• Does he care about me and my anguish?
• Has he forgotten me?
• Have I wearied him with too many requests?
• Am I being punished or “taught a lesson”?
• Is my loss “small” in the big picture of things? Does it matter to God that I’m still so sad?

And of course a really simple division that one can make about hope is that there’s hoping in our circumstances and hoping in God and who he is. As you can see from my list of questions above, my circumstances and who God is were pretty enmeshed. And I think that’s probably the case for most of us. Our hearts aren’t so easily compartmentalized, are they?

Anyway, there was (and is) lots of undoing that needed to happen for me to begin healing. That’s another post. But I realized this weekend that I am still so afraid to hope for the arrival of the twins. Kind of like, if I want it too much, God’s going to teach me a lesson, smack me on the hand, flex his muscles, and show me who’s boss.

I want to believe that God flexed his muscles already and showed me who’s boss by giving these babies to begin with. I don’t want to see a taking again. But I suppose on some level, we all have to be prepared for that.

So how do I hope that these babies are going to come? How can I hope in God (who gives and takes away) and not get that tangled into my circumstances? is that even possible for those to be completely separate?

I’m afraid I can’t wrap this thought up with a pretty bow and present it to you all figured out. These are my wonderings, my laments, my questions that I wade through as week #20 with two babies in my belly pushes on. I desire to hope, but I’m still slogging through what that means. It’s messy, this slogging. Who’s with me?

Every year around major holidays, there’s a particular sting for a mom missing her only daughter. It comes when I set out to find a decent-looking set of clothes for my sons to wear.

Here’s the criteria I’m usually looking for:

• Nothing with cartoon characters on them (or skulls & crossbones, thank you very much).
• Something affordable (I don’t want to spend more than $20-25 per kid), but still made nicely.
• Something handsome, usually with a tie and collared dress shirt (Orison loves a good clip-on).

You’d be surprised how difficult this quest can be. I try department stores, and then the lesser-expensive department stores (Target, Kohl’s), and then move onto stores like Marshall’s.

What I hoped would be a fun way to buy some cute clothes for my kids usually turns into frustration and anger, though. I spend five minutes just trying to find the boys’ dress clothes amidst the sea of girl dress clothes. Eventually I might find a rack or two, and I’ll think from looking at the front, “Oh, this one looks nice…” and then I turn it over and there’s a HUGE applique on the back that says something like “Little Devil” with a demon face on it. What?!?! Do people buy this stuff???

I’m sure the equivalent for little girls would say something like “Perfect Angel” or something sweet like that. Because we all know that girls are just so sweet and perfect, and boys so…not???

I’m sorry, I know it probably sounds like I’m bitter. I’ll admit it, I get angry. It really sucks to go in the kids’ clothes section at all sometimes. And then to be so poignantly reminded that I have no business shopping on 90% of the racks hurts even more. It’s like there’s a big sign slapped on all those racks:

“You Don’t Belong Here.”

I know there are other women like me, living without their only daughter. There’s a particular hole for a mom, a woman, who loses her chance to raise her little girl. So many hopes and dreams die with that little girl.

One thing I’ve learned on my journey is that if I take the time to listen to what’s going on in my heart, all this anger and frustration, and let God pull me deeper, past the self-protectiveness of the anger, I get down to the pain of it. If I will get honest with God there in my anger, he always shows me just how much I’m hurting. Somehow the wall of anger crumbles and I’m left in the rubble, weeping.

Because underneath the anger is always the pain. I can stay there in the anger and grow bitter and hard (trust me, the temptation is there), but God has helped me see that it’s always better to let myself feel all of the emotions (first the anger) and then search for what’s really going on in my heart. Pretty much 100% of the time, under the anger is pain. More pain to feel, more tears to cry, more aspects of the loss that I need to grieve.

Sometimes I don’t want to go there. Sometimes I just want to rant and rail against my situation. Sometimes I just want to buy clothes for my sons. It’s hard and frustrating. Sometimes it feels like there’s nowhere to go from the pain–it can rise up anytime or anywhere. Grief is not just for grieving places, like the cemetery. It happens in other stranger places–you know, places like Kohl’s.

I suppose the other option would be to pretend like I don’t feel the anger. “No, no, no…it’s bad to be angry. God took Felicity away and I have to be happy and content with that.” If I decide on this option, I also miss the chance to grieve, just like I would have if I would’ve stayed hard and angry and bitter.

But Jesus doesn’t turn away the grievers. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” I am called blessed. And I’m promised His comfort.

This is blessed assurance. It’s like a great big sign at the foot of the Cross that say:

“You Belong Here.”

This is Blanca. We visited her home this afternoon. She just seemed to show up at my side multiple times during the day.

Christina. Another one who kept finding her way to my side throughout the day. She noticed my lipstick and wanted some.

Isabel. That meek smile accompanied me throughout much of the day.

Joslynn Tamara. This is her in her home. She’s been attending the project for a couple years now. Through her attending the project, her entire immediate and extended family are now walking with God, free from addiction and living in the light of his Presence. Her mother is now walking with Jesus and tutoring at the project. Her mother wept as we prayed for them before they left, that they would continue to walk with Jesus and remain faithful to his work in their lives.

This is Oscar. He came up to me and told me he wanted to recite a poem for me. And then… he did another one. I asked him, “Do you like to rhyme?” He enthusiastically nodded. I asked him to say a Bible verse for me and he couldn’t remember one on the spot. So I told him, “When you remember one, come find me, okay?” A couple hours later, he made good on it. He found me in the director’s office and recited Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you…” He became a special buddy of mine today. And who could resist that smile?

Maricella. Mother of Blanca (picture #1). This is her in her home. She welcomed us there, even though she was nervous. Jesus came and met us there, though. She told us of her history of gang membership and the tattoo on her forehead because of it. And she now can’t find work because she won’t be trusted. Even though in Christ, she is a new creation…. My heart broke for her.

My first day of interacting with people on the receiving end of Compassion has been nothing short of amazing—their stories, their homes, their openness to our presence, their excitement for Compassion and the effects it’s had on their families. My heart is somehow broken and full at the same time. Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.