The M word

I would have been 6 weeks pregnant tomorrow. Daniel & I had just found out and we were keeping quiet just in case anything went wrong. We didn't want to have to tell the world, to share the pain of losing a baby.

Yet here I am blogging about having lost our baby. Though I'm not actually blogging about having lost our baby, I'm actually blogging to publicly declare that our God is always always good. And so very faithful. Our God is personal and wants intimacy with us, wants to speak to us, wants to comfort us.While Daniel & I would so appreciate your words of encouragement and sympathy over our loss, I'd rather you walk away feeling encouraged that Jesus is so deeply in love with you and so bound to you that He aches right alongside you, as a husband or a best friend or a parent might. Whoever you turn to for comfort, Jesus is a million times better at comforting than that person might be.

Last night Jesus comforted me through a dream.

Before I tell you the dream, let me give some back story. Sunday morning I woke up with a little spotting but I spotted when I was pregnant with Isaiah so I wasn't that worried. Throughout the day though it got more and more heavy and by Sunday afternoon I found some more convincing evidence and was pretty certain the baby was gone. I went downstairs to tell Daniel (who is still recovering from a painful LASIK/PRK eye surgery. Daniel was lying on our couch with all the lights off and a pillow over his face, because he is so sensitive to light. This has not been a great weekend for the Reads.) I told him I was pretty sure I had lost the baby. He held me and I cried. He may have cried too but his eyes have been watering so much from the surgery, there's no telling. Then I got up and went about the rest of the day. I put Isaiah to bed, gave Daniel his eye drops, and then I called my parents to fill them in. There were lots more tears and my mom encouraged me to grieve the loss of this life, no matter how new it was. So I grieved some more and more tears fell. Exhausted, Daniel & I crawled up to bed.

About 4am this morning, Daniel woke up needing more pain medicine. I put his drops in and then fell back to sleep. It was then that Jesus chose to comfort me through a dream. Let me say, as a disclaimer, I am not usually a spiritual dreamer. God does not typically give me dreams that make sense, or give me dreams that have any spiritual ramifications.

In my dream I was at my parent's house (Apparently Daniel, Isaiah, & I were living in my old bedroom.) I was in my childhood bathroom and I had just miscarried but the baby came out looking like a jello mold of a tiny baby, all wobbly and see through, though I could see his bone structure through the jello-like substance. The baby was about as long as my forearm. I laid the baby on the bathroom counter and I called Daniel in so we could say goodbye. I left the bathroom to go get Isaiah and when I came back in the jello baby had transformed into a real baby. He was blinking and breathing though he was very very small. We picked him up and carried him into our room. I tried to nurse him and he drank a little. We kept saying over and over how we needed to soak up as much time as possible because we knew he wouldn't last long. We found this little blue sweater and put it on him. He kept growing too. He began to look more and more like his brother. He had the same white-blond hair as Isaiah. We called our families and they all came over to meet our little guy. Then here is where God stepped in. I asked Daniel if he wanted to name our son. Daniel said yes, he wanted to name him Reuben. My first reaction was to disagree. I wanted to say no, that people would nickname him "rube" (a slang word that means "hick") but I felt like I was just supposed to submit and keep my mouth closed. From there the dream gets hazy and the rest is inconsequential.

I woke up feeling at peace. Content knowing that there will be more babies and that this little life is with Jesus, enjoying his heavenly reward. He'll never have to go through this yucky world, he got promoted straight to Jesus' arms.

So, just by dreaming of our little son as alive and well, even if alive just long enough to love on him and hold him was such a comfort. But this morning I was still left with the name Reuben hanging on my mind. I looked it up. Initially the name Reuben (the oldest of the 12 tribes of Israel) is not that impressive. According to chabad.org, "The name is made up of two halves: "re'u" means "look" or "see" and "ben" means "son" So Reuben literally means "look, a son." But... another description from the same website says that Reuben can also refer to "a highly tuned level of Godly awareness that is so real it is as if the person actually perceives God with his own eyes. No amount of argument will convince a person that he did not see something when he did. The name Reuben expresses certainty and immediacy in our awareness of God."

WHOA.

There is no arguing with the peace and closeness I feel toward God right now. Whether He really did speak through that dream, whether that baby was a boy or not, I feel at peace and that alone is a God thing. I am very aware of God and His presence today. I am comforted and at peace. I don't understand why we weren't allowed to meet this little baby face to face or why we are now going through the experience of miscarriage. However, I do understand that my life is small in eternal significance and God has not chosen to give me eyes that understand as He understands (for that I am thankful.)

Today I am living out 1 Corinthians 13: 12, 13-

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

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Helpful anticipators

I have always appreciated people who are "anticipators." People who see a need and respond to it before being asked. People who foresee trouble/problems/situations and do what they can to prevent or solve such issues. Helpful anticipators. My mom is a helpful anticipator. She will send a box of diapers just as the last diaper is about to be used. My mother-in-love Ellen is a helpful anticipator. She will invite us over for dinner exactly when I have run out grocery money and only had mac n cheese to make for dinner. Daniel is a helpful anticipator. He keeps the oil changed in my car so that it runs as smoothly as possible, and hopefully sparing me from any car trouble.
God, in His infiniteness, is the ultimate helpful anticipator. The examples listed above are really examples of God providing. I think He just loves when we are open to being used by Him. I think God loves it when we allow Him to work through us and uses us people to provide for each other. When we know Him and are listening to Him and we're being obedient. I think obedience might be God's favorite love language.

Sadly I, in my worldly short-sightedness, am the ultimate forgetter. WHY DO I ALWAYS FORGET THAT GOD WILL PROVIDE?! Why is that I can remember a hundred different romantic things that Daniel has done for me but I can't remember the billion amazing ways God has provided for us?  And when God does do something incredibly helpful, something extraordinary, why do I act so surprised?

Yesterday I was going through Isaiah's winter clothes to see what he will need. We have generously been given enough hand-me-downs to clothe a small village of baby boys but I'm also missing a few, pretty significant pieces in Isaiah's warm clothes wardrobe (ie. a winter coat in his current size!) Just as I was fretting over how we were going to pay for some of this stuff, I got a text from my mom saying she had just "picked up a few things for Isaiah" and could she drop them off later today? And then I get a FB message from a friend at church saying she's got 3 bags of clothes for Isaiah.

WHY. DO. I. DOUBT?!? Seriously, why? And even as I type this, even as I ask myself these questions, I know I will struggle with this my whole life. I feel like I will still be surprised the next time God provides in an extraordinary way.

And yet, maybe that's actually ok. I'd MUCH rather fall on my face in gratitude in front of the One True King every single time He provides for my family than get too cynical or jaded or spoiled to act like God providing 3 bags of clothes is no big deal. I'd much rather be surprised when God lavishes on me than expect it and get angry when He doesn't lavish the way I think I ought to be lavished on. Or worse, to think He owes me. (Ooh, God please don't ever let me fall into the trap of believing that you owe me ANYTHING!)

But more than being on the receiving end of these blessings, I also LOVE being on the giving end. I love when God calls me (and my family) to give, whether out of our abundance or out of lean times, I always walk away feeling closer to God, so in tune with His voice and His will. I hope that Isaiah will be so saturated with knowing God as his provider that he will never struggle with doubting God's provision. That he will never even think to worry about stuff because he will automatically look to God for peace. Maybe I will learn from my son's example :)

Having more babies...

Please note right off the bat that this blog post is NOT, I repeat NOT a pregnancy announcement. I am not, to my knowledge currently with child. I am however becoming more and more OK with getting pregnant again. Up until, oh... yesterday I would have told you that I am just not yet ready to add another baby to our mix. Isaiah is still my baby! I am guessing this is normal but I'm having a difficult time seeing my baby as a toddler, and with good reason. He's still nursing 3-4 times a day and he's not walking yet. He's still a baby to me! Maybe I'll always see him as my baby. Time will tell I suppose.

So up until yesterday, every time I thought about going through pregnancy again I felt uneasy. I remembered the heart burn and the difficulty sleeping, the feeling awkward in my own skin. And I had an easy pregnancy with Isaiah! It all started with a negative pregnancy test a few days ago. I had been having terrible heart burn (which I've only ever had when pregnant) so I thought maybe I was in the family way. But when the test came up negative I felt a tiny twinge of sadness, which took me by surprise! I have been vehemently telling Daniel that I'm just not ready for #2 yet.

Then I saw a newborn baby on Sunday and I got that inkling.

And I was at Once Upon a Child today looking for a winter coat for Isaiah and I saw all the newborn clothes and I got the urge.

So... maybe there will be another Read baby in 2014. Thankfully I'm not the one who decides when a life is created so I just get to enjoy the ride ;)

String Cheese Koozie

Do you know what a koozie is? It goes by a variety of spellings. Coozy. Koozie. Coosie. Coldy-Holdy. (I think that one is my favorite.) A koozie is the foam thing you slip around you can of Coca-Cola so you can comfortably hold your ice cold drink AND keep it cold.

Well. I have just recently been given something like that but for... STRING CHEESE. Oooh yes. I have a string cheese koozie. I SUPPOSE if you wanted to be picky, you could argue that it's actually more of a cooler than a koozie but koozie is more fun to say.

Here's the story. Since I get to stay home part time with Isaiah, I like to look for other ways to bring in money for my family. I participate in diaper panels and surveys and the like. I also subscribe to a variety of websites where you have to answers a bunch of questions and surveys and over time you build up enough credit and they start to send you goodies like coupons and free samples and... cheese koozies!! This particular "cheese accessory" came from Influenster and Sargento cheese (proudly displayed on the top of the koozie, of course.)

Now, you may be asking yourself if a cheese koozy is really worth getting all excited about. And the answer would be no. I laughed out loud when I pulled the cheese koozie out of the box and it took me a minute to realize what the thing actually was. But underneath the koozie was a coupon for a free package of Sargento cheese. NOW we're getting somewhere! Free cheese is even better than cheese you have to pay for. BOOM BABY!

The Uncertain Mommy

There is little else more crippling than uncertainty. I'd rather things be truly black or white but uncertainty is that frustratingly perfect shade of gray. I'd rather be sure of myself and be dead wrong than keep questioning every move, every thought, every possibility. Allow me to provide a little backstory.

One year and 18 days ago Daniel & I welcomed the most perfect little baby boy into our lives. And let me tell you, he was perfection. We got off EASY with this one. Isaiah was a great sleeper (he slept through the night at 3 weeks old.) He was a great eater (after a 2 week adjustment period, nursing was easy-peasy.) He was a very easy newborn and I really didn't struggle to feel sure of myself as a new mom. It felt natural to me.

Then around 6 months we got Isaiah on a great nap schedule. It took a few weeks of cry-it-out but our decisions felt good and right. Yes he was crying but it was a means to an end, eventually he'd learn to be ok with naptime. We also introduced him to solids. We learned very quickly that Isaiah preferred fruits to veggies. But it really didn't matter, we were just introducing solids while still nursing full time. I was sure of myself.

As the months went by, Isaiah met new milestones and learned new things and was a happy, easy to please, joy-filled little guy. Parenting felt natural. I rarely questioned myself or my decisions as his mom. That's not say I didn't make mistakes or have a few lessons to learn (Someday I'll share the story of when a woman in the Kroger parking lot called the police on me but that lesson still hurts a little :) But I was sure of myself. I was getting pretty good at reading Isaiah's cues and cries and moods. I felt so good as a new mom, at times I even felt like I was fulfilling some higher purpose just by living my life.

If parenting was college, this past year I majored in Isaiah (And minored in Daniel.) I have spent the last year of my life learning all about Isaiah.

And then Isaiah turned 1.

Suddenly I feel like I have an entirely different kid. This new kid is SUPER moody- there's no telling if he'll wake up happy and ready to play or angry and inconsolable. He freaks out every single time I lay him down for a nap. He has a few favorite foods and everything else gets thrown to the floor. He's learning to be more independent so when I tell him no or take him away from something dangerous, he throws a fit with limbs flailing & tears falling. Where is my happy, smiley baby? Who exchanged him for this temperamental toddler?

I am now entirely uncertain of nearly every decision I make involving Isaiah. Here's an example of what I mean. Let's pretend it's lunchtime at the Read house. My internal dialogue goes something like this:
"I should really give Isaiah something new for lunch. He can't live on watermelon and goldfish crackers alone. He needs to eat something GREEN. Ugh, why bother? The likelihood of that getting eaten is pretty small. It'll end up on the floor, in his hair, on the wall, everywhere but in his belly. Still, I should at least offer it. The experts say that a kid should try something 10 times before making a decision to like or dislike it. But I'm really in no mood to mop the floor. Again. But it's important that he be exposed to a variety of foods. I'd rather mop the floor 100 times than raise a picky eater..."

And on and on, back and forth I go. And I'm like this all day long: Isaiah has a little cough, should I fork over $200 and take him to the doctor? Why does he fight his naps when he is clearly tired? Why does he wake up crying? Why does he eat great at some meals and won't touch anything at the next? Is he too young to discipline? What is so fascinating about climbing up and down the stairs? Why does he cry every time I put him in his car seat? WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?

It's exhausting. I have found myself wishing he was older and could talk so that I wouldn't spend my day guessing at what's bothering him. I don't want to wish this time away, I've heard from too many parents to "cherish the time, it goes by so fast" but I'm so tired of being so uncertain.

Sigh. So that's my struggle. So sorry for the rant. It's just where my head+heart are at today. Feel free to comment with your suggestions for any or all of the questions posted above :)