Thursday...

Thursday - I like Thursdays... a lot! I think it's because I'm past the day of the week when we delivered Eli. Sunday is tough too but not like Wednesday. I'm hoping that at some point in time, Wednesday will just be Wednesday, no baggage, no tossing and turning in bed, no silent tears breaking loose, no sadness, no pain.


Over the last few days it's been a pretty tough battle for me to stay above water. Sickness? Exhaustion? Sadness? Reality? All of the above? I don't know for sure but I have accepted that this is going to be much like a rip tide. If I try to swim against it, it's going to wear me out, drag me down and I'll drown. However, just like with a rip tide, if I swim with it, let it take me where it's going to go, it quickly loses it's grip and I can safely make it to shore again.

Yes it's silly but it always seems sunnier on Thursday. Even though it's raining outside on this particular Thursday, I've been thinking about Eli's little flower garden. Hey, I've been thinking about the whole yard. Then I think about Eli, the garden, Eli, the yard, Eli, the outside, Eli... they have naturally meshed together. So here is a pic that has inspired me and makes me happy: (from the Internet via my friend S, not my photo this time)

I love these colors! They don't have to be watered!!!

And look... moss, rocks and green stuff... I can DO THAT!

~edited to add~ turns out these are works of an artist who is fairly local! http://www.claredohna.com/

Besides flowers, plants and some yard art, I'd like to add a few hummingbird feeders and a few of you know why. It's a bit of a long story but hummingbirds mean something a little more now. Plus, K loves making hummingbird food and R... well, R likes anything that flies! I found these online that I thought were really neat - much more colorful and interesting than my regular feeder that is currently doing its job.

They look like candy don't they!?

Anyway, today is a good day. I like getting over the hump of Wednesday. I like looking forward to the weekend (which is rather silly since I'm a stay at home mom). I LOVE the fact that this Sunday is supposed to be sunny again. I am looking forward to walking through the yard with all four of us working on deciding what we should add this year. We all talk about Eli, we might as well all work on the flower garden/gardens together. Plus, this summer I was planning on tending to a new baby, instead we will tend to our garden of flowers and hummingbird feeders. I don't plan on having a single all out shopping trip or anything like that. I have used 'retail therapy' in the past with my losses and I refuse to go down that road again. I plan on slowly collecting things that 'speak' to me and building the color in the yard. I do NOT plan on going into debt to work on our garden.

One great thing about living on 90 sprawling acres is that I can pick and choose where I place my shovel and turn over the dirt. I don't really have any boundaries to hold me back and while, in the past this has rather bothered me, this time I can enjoy just picking spots throughout the yard that are comfortable and comforting. I certainly don't have my garden plan yet but I do plan on taking in the sun, feeling the dirt and smelling the air while working on the yard this spring and summer, and the next and the next...

Change...

I am having a hard time with change, always have unless I'm the one who's controlling it. Humm, well, maybe I have a few control issues too but that's not my point right now. My point is that without change there can't be growth. Life would be a very boring, stagnant place. Sure there might be no sorrow but there probably wouldn't be any joy either. I have got to remember that there will always be changes that I cannot control but I can control how I react to them.

There are a lot of things that a big part of me would like to change about this journey that I'm on. I would really like to not lie in bed awake every night tossing and turning until the clock shows 1:04 am. I guess I can be thankful that Eli wasn't born at 3:04 am! I kind of wish that my heart didn't automatically know when Tuesday night arrives so I could get some rest and sleep even if it is restless. However, it is nice to be able to thank God for Eli every late night/early morning that I'm still lying there. Of course I wish he was still here with us though. I miss him like crazy. I miss thinking about how our family of five would interact with each other. I miss wondering what the perfect name for our baby would be. I know his perfect name. I know that as a family of five all we get to do is talk about baby Eli and look at his photographs and I still miss him... that will never change.

I'm curious to see where this major life change takes me. We were so surprised when we found out that we were pregnant with Eli. I'm very glad that I chose to embrace that change with joy and excitement because it was gone so fast. It would have been a tragedy to have spent much time worrying about how I was going to deal with this change and never enjoy the day dreaming about our future.

It's fair to say I'm in the deep end of the tide right now. I have to assume that it's because as I get a little further away from the numbness caused by the intense pain, it just becomes more real. Eli's not coming back to us. It's not some bad dream. It's just the way it is. It gets exhausting some days to try to stay positive about this change. The days keep coming and the sadness, for us, is still there. But the nature of tides is lovely, soon that weight will lift and I'll be above it again.

I'm thrilled that Eli never had to feel any of our worldly hurts, pain, loneliness... he was in the most warm, comfortable place he ever knew when he died. But, for me, it's a pretty uncomfortable place. Anyway, my hope for this change is that it's much like the seasons. I tend to look at the beginning of the changing seasons with such excitement so I'm hoping that soon the sun will start shining again so I can enjoy it and appreciate and grow from this change in my life.

Sigh...

*Sigh*... time keeps ticking, moving... sometimes without me it feels. The three week mark is rapidly approaching. I have come to terms with the reality of February 20th, that it's not some weird dream, that it's not someone else who I'm watching go through it. It's me... it's us.

Sometimes it feels like a really lonely place when dealing with a loss but I would so much rather be alone than have to watch K & R go through it too. It's really hard, to a point where there are no words for it... painful, to watch K play pretend. It's very healthy for her since it's the only way she knows how to process the information but it crushes my heart. She'll put a doll or animal under her clothes and talk about her baby. She'll say things like "I sure wish baby Eli was just pretending to be dead." She'll change in to dress up clothes but where she used to be a princess, now she says that she has to "get ready to go to the doctor so I can get my dead baby out." *sigh* I can't make it better for her. She knows that Eli is in heaven. In fact, when I told her that we weren't going to get to have a baby this summer she just said "OK, well, the baby can keep your grandma company in Heaven then." That was it, end of discussion, back to coloring. But her thoughts still come to the surface on a daily basis. Thankfully, I don't have to watch R act it out as clearly but he will play with her, rub whatever she has under her shirt and say "Hi, baby!". His trucks will play together and then all of a sudden his "mommy truck" will start yelling "baby! baby! baby!"... ach, I hope this passes quickly. I have never had a big breakdown in front of them. There were a few rough days right after we came home from the hospital... fresh wounds on top of hormone crashes are not very pretty but at no point was I ever out of control. They were generally very silent tears. They both know that they have a baby brother in Heaven, I guess that's a start. This is certainly uncharted territory for me and I'm terrified that I'm screwing it up.

As much as it feels like time is moving without me, it also feels like I'm right there, plugging along. It's that whole parallel universe thing again. I'm aware that bills are coming up (though thankfully Jim handles them), holidays are approaching, company will be visiting... the first day of Spring will also be the 1 month mark of Eli's birth. How's that for poetic juxtaposition? I am totally aware that time moves on and that doesn't bother me. A part of me, a big part of me is really glad that the time keeps moving. It means that I'm that much closer to having genetic results. Next week would be a reasonable time frame for them to be available. I hope and pray that they give us some answers and some closure. I do get a bit sad however, thinking about how Eli should be getting bigger and older... and he's not. He will be forever a 16 week, 6 inch, 70 gram, beautiful memory.

Friends, in the 21st Century...

Friends, in the 21st century are certainly discovered in a different way aren't they? I have a few great friends who are physically around me but I also have a ton that I have never met in "real" life. I also have some who have moved but other than missing the physical hugs, they don't feel so far away. This is a great thing!

I get so many messages a day in my in-box that tell me how strong I am, how good my heart is, things like that make me blush. However, if it wasn't for these friends, I'm not sure where I would be in this journey. I have had to realize that mentally, I will never understand, in this lifetime, why things happen the way they do. Please also realize that I'm lumping select family into the friends category, the family that checks in are also my friends. I could expand on this further but I think everyone knows where I'm going with that thought... you know, the whole "you can't pick 'em" thing.

God knows what I need to hear, every single morning. After yesterday, when I crawled into bed last night I prayed for a little more... understanding, emotion, energy... just more. So, I thought it was pretty great when I had my daily e-votional (get it!?!) in my inbox. The title was "Good Morning, Lord!" The point was instead of waking up and thinking "Good Lord, Morning?!" you have the choice to wake and think "Good Morning, Lord!" It went on to talk about how we can take "bad" things that happen to us and sulk about it and be bitter or we can rejoice in that our trials are being used for something bigger. I narrowed in on Lamentations 3:22... "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail."

I want to feel. I think that's normal. Yesterday was a weird place for me as you know if you've read that entry. So today, I'm thankful. Thankful for my friends, for my family, for God's Word smacking me in the side of the head if I need it to... thankful that without much work at all today, I'm going to see an improvement in this messy living room! I'm thankful that my body seems to be healing itself for real this time, thankful that I have a beautiful old wooden end table to knock on as I type this, thankful that I haven't lost my sense of humor or my sense of compassion. I'm thankful that I did end up getting outside, with that "extra" hour of daylight and get the daisies moved as well as that poor dead hydrangea out. The hydrangea was a bit of a mental issue since it was planted after my grandpa's funeral almost 20 years ago. I just decided that we'll plant something else special in that place.

I am thankful that I can choose to be "better" instead of "bitter"... and that's all thanks to God and my friends. Yes, today I'm thankful...

OK...

It's kind of funny, to me at least... today I am ok. Not great. Not bad. Not mad. Not even really all that sad. It's a bit strange for me to just be "OK". I'm generally one of those high emotion people, so it's a weird place for me to just be ok.

The weather is relatively nice again today and I should be feeling a bit overwhelmed with things that I want to do but since my body isn't quite in that place where I can get everything accomplished I guess I'm allowing myself to be ok with it. I have yard work that I'd like to do (or at least have someone do), a few wild daisies that I want moved to a flower bed, a poor hydrangea that isn't going to come back to life that I would like out of another flower bed so I can put in a new one or an azalea or something else that is ok with a fair amount of shade. We also need to get some moss killer down on the lawn at some point in time. But, I'm not stressed out about yet I'm also not feeling like I just want to ignore it... again, I'm just ok with everything that should be done. The same can be said for the inside of the house. I have a mental list of what I would like to get done but I'm really ok with is just being the way it is for now. A very strange place for me to be.

I should also be really, really happy about a huge debt that we had, finally being all paid off... but again, I'm just feeling ok about it. I should be thrilled that we have excellent insurance coverage since the EOB's are already rolling in but I'm not. I am ok though. It's weird. I don't know if it's a coping mechanism right now, if it's because I'm just tired of being tired, if it's because I'm fighting a cold. So strange. I'm hoping that in the coming days that I can experience a little more excitement and be a little more upset about things too... that would be more normal for me.

I realize that the old me probably won't ever exist again. I will be a new me and (surprise, surprise) I'm ok with that. If I can continue to deal with these crazy life changes, that will be a good thing.

Proof!

Here's the proof that Spring is trying to peek out here in the Pacific Northwest!

This morning I was feeling a bit weepy. For some reason, that's my weird time of day. It's probably because I wake with my dreams still on my mind and it's not like they're very peaceful dreams lately. Anyway, I was feeling groggy and a little down. I thought "Gee, here we are getting ready to Spring forward tomorrow and it's grey and rainy." Just about that time, the sun started to shine through the clouds so I decided to step outside for a few minutes. I looked down and realized that Spring was, indeed out there so I decided I'd document it for all of you still stuck under snow and ice.

Seeing the proof of life, that it continues on, even after the pounding rain last night, is certainly nice. It reminds me that Eli's death wasn't a dead end, it was just a fork in the road and I'm really glad that those roads will join again in the future.

Why?

Why?
Why me?
I, of course, find myself going "there" every so often.
I wonder why we would be blessed with a child, just to have him taken away.
I wonder why it was me.
I wonder why it is always so difficult for us to get and stay pregnant.
I wonder why this time we didn't even have to "try" to get pregnant.
I wonder why in the world I had to explain this to a 4 year old.
I could spend at least a whole day listing all the "whys" that have gone through my mind over the last 2+ weeks. But really, there is only one answer to all those questions...
Why not me?

There is some greater reason for why... I'm sure of that. I have to be! I do not enjoy the crushing pain that it has caused but I know there has to be a reason for it. I'm quite curious what that reason is because right now, of course, I can't fathom what it could possibly be. There has to be a reason for why Eli's heart stopped beating. It certainly wasn't for lack of being loved and wanted... that I know for sure.

Yesterday I came across the same scripture three times, in various lengths so I thought I'd share...

From Psalm 139

16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

I find it somewhat comforting to know that it really doesn't matter what I did or didn't do. Eli was meant to come into our lives for 16 short weeks. He was meant to be delivered straight to heaven and then into my arms without a breath. I can't wait to know why.