Molly Piper

Last week I wrote about the fear that kept me from blogging about being pregnant. This is another post written during my post-Felicity pregnancy, the one that brought the blessed arrival of Morrow. Morrow is now 17-months-old. So this post is old.

The first reason was fear; the second reason I didn’t post about my pregancy was time.

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Aside from the fear of telling people about our upcoming arrival, I also had a deep longing during this unique season to focus on my daughter.

From the time this pregnancy started, I’ve felt this desire to protect her place in my life and heart, not ever wanting to feel like I was trying to replace her.

I’ve also known that these months where I could focus my energies more on her and her memory were limited. Especially as we got closer to having our second son, I kind of wished that I could be pregnant longer, just so I could keep focusing on Felicity.

I knew that the instant he arrived, my affections and heart would be different, because I would have so much love for him. But what would happen to the feelings I still want to have for Felicity? Will there be room enough for all of them? I almost felt like her territory was being encroached upon. Not that this would be the fault of our next child AT ALL; I just felt like her little spot in my life would get even smaller. And as her mother, I dreaded that.

I never, ever want to leave her behind. And in some ways, I know I won’t. But in other ways it’s inevitable that our life will move on. And I’ve wanted to hope so badly that it will be good when it did.

I just finished an excellent book by Jerry Sittser called A Grace Disguised. A dear sister gave it to me. Her full-term daughter Addie died due to complications during birth just over a year ago. Anyway, if you have ever experienced any kind of loss, this is an excellent book. One of the closing statements really shed light on what I just described.

The accident remains now, as it always has been, a horrible experience that did great damage to us and to so many others. It was and will remain a very bad chapter. But the whole of my life is becoming what appears to be a very good book.

Since I’m writing this before the arrival of this child, I don’t know how all that is going to shake out. I suppose you’ll hear more about it in the coming months. I’m thankful for the book that God is writing. I never thought it would include a chapter like Felicity’s, but it has. By no means is the chapter finished, but now there is another chapter called “Morrow.”

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Reading this post again after so much time has passed is very interesting. I thought that having another child would be so healing for me. And ultimately, it was. But I was expecting it to be healing in the short run, too, and it wasn’t. In reality, having another child sent me into a new wave of grief after his birth.

It was after his birth that I finally came to terms with my depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was after his birth that I got the most counseling (professional and non-professional). His birth didn’t remove me from the pain of losing Felicity, it blew the lid off of it.

I thought I was focusing on Felicity in the year after her death when I was pregnant with Morrow. Looking back on it, what I can remember at least, I was still in shock. I was pregnant (And happy to be!) 3 months after her death, but it caused me to focus on the pregnancy and what was ahead more than focusing on healing from the wounds of the past. So much so that when we got through the pregnancy with the hoped-for result (a living baby), all the pain of the pregnancy with the unhoped-for result forced its way to the top.

And that had to happen. I had to come to terms with the deep pain and loss. And I did that with a new baby at my breast.

In some ways, he saved my life. He ushered me into the darkest, most painful places I’ve ever been, where I wrestled and struggled and thought for sure I would die. He was my constant companion through those dark, dark days—grunting, smiling, filling his diaper. It was like his presence and the regularity of his need for me kept me alive, kept me waking up every morning, forced me to go to my counseling appointments (since I only had a small window until he’d need me again), and gave me a reason to want to get to the other side.

He was God’s little catalyst for my healing, ultimately.

So there I was, my whole pregnancy with Morrow, worrying about having enough time to grieve. Turns out, God had hardly begun the mega-process I was in. He gave me just the right time, with just the right people, and one very special baby who remained a mystery to all of you while God knit him together.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Our Christmas tree decorating process has morphed and evolved over the years. Now it includes shedding tears for our family member who’s not with us, prancing around the Christmas tree and getting into trouble.

Our daughter has been with Jesus for three Christmases now.

Most people who’ve ever lost someone they love will tell you that the holidays are particularly hard. So, for people to have the foresight to give these ornaments to us back in 2007… let’s just say, I’m deeply thankful.

We’ve done it differently every year, but this year, the Felicity ornaments were the last to go on the tree. And since there were three, Abraham, Orison, and I all chose the one we’d like to hang.

I don’t want to make our tree a Felicity tree, I just want her there. These three little ornaments are very special to us.

If you’ve ever wondered what to get for someone who has lost a child, I would highly recommend an ornament. That way, it’s not another item they have to find a place for year-round, but when Christmas comes, there’s a ready-made place for remembering.

Our tree isn’t fancy. It’s not pristine. But it’s ours. It’s our family tree.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.

-Luke 2:9

This, my friends is our angel.

I know… she’s filling you with fear right now.

I know… it’s weird. But to us, it’s hilarious. And now… it’s just tradition.

You can’t see too well against the pink bow backdrop, but the angel has some pink netting for wings. And of course, her cotton candy hair.

“What is the deal?” you might be asking. Well, this is an art project my husband did when he was little. And for our first married Christmas, my mother-in-law bequeathed us the box of ornaments she’d been collecting for each of her kids. (Which was a very good thing, because we had neither Christmas decorations nor money to go buy them.)

Abraham’s family grew up not doing Christmas trees (they did a Bethlehem Tree instead). I grew up going out into the field and chopping one down as a family. So the first Christmas we were married, Abraham just didn’t understand why I would want a Christmas tree so much.

But one night, he dropped me off to do some grocery shopping, and said he needed to go run some errands of his own (we shared a car then, and still do). At our set meeting time, he picked me up, but when I looked around for evidence of his so-called errands, I couldn’t find any.

As we got home, we came up the back stairs to our second-floor duplex apartment and started unloading groceries. A few minutes into it, the doorbell rang, and he told me, “Why don’t you go get that?” I remember being kind of annoyed, thinking, “Well, why don’t you?”

But somehow he convinced me and I walked toward the front of our apartment. As I walked into the dining room, there it was…

A Christmas tree, standing tall and proud.

I screamed and hugged him and screamed some more and hugged him. (Oh, and then I got the door.)

It was one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. So surprising, so unexpected, so thoughtful.

Thanks to Abraham’s mother we actually had some things to put on the tree. But what would we do about the topper? We didn’t have a star (which is what my family always did), and we didn’t have a proper angel.

At some point during my lament about the sad state of our tree and it’s lack of crowning glory, Abraham jokingly placed the little drag queen angel from his childhood at the top. We had a good laugh about it, and decided she should stay.

And she’s assumed the same post for all our Christmases since.

What’s the weirdest thing on your Christmas tree?

I’m getting this post up during the final minutes of Thanksgiving 2009!

My mother-in-law posted a video of some of our racous family moments today if you’re curious. (Bonus! You’ll see footage of Morrow walking and dancing. Aaand… you’ll get to see my awesome dance moves during a kiddy dance party with Orison and his cousin Grace.)

I mean, who wouldn’t want to see that?

I decided to finish the night quietly, knitting a pair of mittens for Morrow. The weather’s gotten really cold, really fast! So while Abraham sleeps (the lump in the back of the picture) I post on my blog and knit.

I’m thankful for a quiet end to Thanksgiving 2009.

*Warning: this is a disjointed, brain-dump post as I try to organize my thoughts and life before my El Salvador trip*

In some ways, I’m totally in denial that I’m leaving the country and my family in four days.

In other ways, I’ve been anticipating and preparing. For example, I’ve been trying to make some freezer meals for Abraham and the kids to help them along the way. They should be well-stocked with spaghetti sauce and wild rice soup. I figure if I get one more meal made, that should be sufficient (taking leftovers into account). I mean, I’m only gone for five days. And if they get really desperate they can always order pizza or make scrambled eggs.

I’m going to meet our family’s sponsor child while I’m there! I’m so excited about that. I have yet to get gifts for him and his family. What I learned in our team meeting the other day is to think practically, and to think about the whole family. Toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, deoderant, and maybe some small items like photo albums and little toys for the kids.

I think I’ll get our little guy a soccer ball with a pump for a special gift. That way he can use it with his friends and siblings and everyone can enjoy it.

I had a good idea last night to bring some of my extra stashed yarn and needles along to give away to women/moms there who knit! And if they don’t know how to knit, maybe I’ll give a knitting lesson! Good thing I’ll have a translator! And some things can be done through demonstration, so how cool would that be???

And of course I chose yesterday to paint my laundry room. I am such a random weirdo. I mean, who does that? Apparently I do. I think I respond to stress by choosing to take on more stress. Actually, painting feels more like an accomplishment. So maybe it’s that I take on projects that I can control when there’s so many other things out of control.

And who psychoanalyzes their painting? Apparently, I do.

Orison went trick-or-treating for the first time tonight.

I wish I could’ve bottled up some of his enthusiasm and zest as he ran, full-speed, from house to house.

I wish I could’ve apologized to all the people whose doorbells were rung in rapid-fire fashion as he waited to scream “Trick or Treat” with all the excitement a four-year-old body can handle. He didn’t seem to hear me when I said, “Only ring it once!”

He dressed as a cowboy, and he was the cutest little cowboy there ever was.

There’s another pretty cute cowboy in this town, too, and they joined forces for a little croonin’ before bed.

(Yes, they both have *real* cowboy boots!)

Happy Halloween, y’all!

I watched this video this morning over at the Compassion blog. It seemed fitting, especially since I just posted about the Child Survival Program.

I couldn’t help but tear up, allowing the gravity of the topic to land on me for a few minutes. The reality that 9 million children a year die before their 5th birthday—my son turns five in a few weeks, Lord willing.

For me, having lost a child to something I couldn’t control, it hits even harder. I mean, I can do something about diarrhea. I can help people learn how to sanitize bottles and breast feed their babies.

You don’t have to feel the same way, but this is a very exciting ministry to me.