Kiss Your Miracle

I know it’s December, but so far this year I haven’t felt very Christmasy. To me, the holidays are all about celebrating the gift of Jesus with family, and now that my dad is gone, my family feels very different. In a sense, this should be a very special Christmas; because Jesus came to earth, I have the assurance that one day I’ll get to see my dad again in heaven. But even though I believe that with all my heart, I still feel sad when I think about the holidays. There won’t be any more Christmases here with my dad, and sometimes eternity feels very far away.

Over the weekend, Adam and I decided to get a Christmas tree. We debated it for a while. “Is it worth it?” I asked. “Will Sky completely destroy it as soon as we get it up?” I just couldn’t imagine a beautiful, lit-up Christmas tree sitting peacefully in the corner of our living room without her trying to climb up it, or yank off all the lights, or maybe even pull the whole thing down on top of herself. “It’ll be okay,” said Adam, and I thought about how my parents always had little kids in the house and we always had a Christmas tree anyway (though I do remember a few tree-falling incidents). So off we went to pick out a tree, in the pouring Florida rain.

One positive thing about having a high-maintenance child – she doesn’t allow me much time for self-pity. I was too busy forcing her to hold my hand as we walked around the trees to feel sad that I won’t get to be with my mom and siblings in Michigan for this first Christmas without my dad. We grabbed a tree in five minutes flat and got back in the truck before Sky could take off running through the aisles of trees.

Once we got home, Adam pulled out our Christmas boxes and got to work trimming the tree. I sat on the floor with Sky and let her dig through the ornaments. Most of them are very old ornaments that Adam and I made when we were kids in Sunday school. Our moms passed them on to us after our wedding, and they’re almost all battered and falling apart. Sky was fascinated by them. And once we put lights on the tree, she was beside herself with excitement, shrieking and jumping around. She watched me hang a few ornaments and immediately began to imitate me. Sure, she’d pull them off right after putting them on, but Adam and I were still impressed that she was even interested in the decorating part.

I’m starting to realize that one of the best parts about being a parent is the way it forces you to get over yourself. You can still spend time moping around, convincing yourself that everything is miserable. But not as much time. Little kids have a way of pushing you forward, making you laugh, and reminding you that no, not everything is miserable. Some things are still okay. Some things are actually wonderful. Jesus came to earth with the promise of something more, and nothing, not even my fickle emotions, can change that.

When Thanksgiving is over and everyone is shopping their hearts out on Black Friday, Adam and I will be rolling down the highway as fast as we can. We’ll have Sky with us in the car, and the trip from my mom’s house in Michigan down to our house in Florida takes eighteen hours of driving time, not including stops or traffic or any other major problems. We have no idea when we’ll actually get back to Ocala; we just know that we’re leaving Friday morning.

The past two months surrounding my dad’s cancer and death have been a chaotic blend of traveling and living away from home. Skylar and I have basically been in Michigan since the beginning of October except for a five day stretch a month ago when we flew back to Florida to take care of a few things. Adam has gone back and forth a few times, both flying and driving, and because our car is here, we need to drive to get home this time.

But that doesn’t mean we’re happy about it. Sky is not what anyone would call an easy traveler, and she hates her car seat. She usually does okay for the first fifteen minutes, but that’s about her limit. Every now and then when she’s completely exhausted, she’ll fall asleep in her car seat. (The last time it happened I had to take a photo to remind myself that it is possible to ride peacefully in the car with Skylar.) Unfortunately, her car seat naps are almost always thirty minutes long. Then she’s up and fussing again.

And that leads us to this question: are we insane? I think the answer is yes. But if that’s true, at least we’re in good company. Plenty of new parents will be traveling at the same time we are, packing ridiculous amounts of baby equipment, suitcases, and snacks, and enduring a long, loud journey with little kids. So as we’re (hopefully!) flying along the road on Friday, I’ll be reminding myself that many people are doing the same thing we are – singing crazy songs while wearing ear plugs and feeding ice cream or chocolate or whatever else to our kids to keep them quiet for a few minutes and pass a bit of time. It’ll probably be agony to drive so many miles with Sky, but at least it’s for a worthwhile cause. I wouldn’t trade a single memory of these past two months with my family.

Last night I was down on the beach with Adam, Sky, my mom, Aunt Mary, and the two dogs. Everything was muted; the sunset was pale, the water was calm, and the air was still. Lately the emphasis in my family has been on my dad, remembering who he was and all of his funny and best attributes. But last night as I watched my mom and aunt walking along the water’s edge with Sky, I couldn’t help but think about the quality women in my family.

Mary and my mom love the beach and they love to pick up smooth, pretty stones along the shoreline. But because Sky was with them yesterday, they moved slowly down the edge of the water, helping her put rocks of her own into a plastic bag. Later she wanted to throw half of them into the water, and they cheered for her as she tossed them all of three inches ahead of her little tennis shoes. “When you have a toddler,” my mom told me the other day, “the best thing you can do is slow down and go at their pace.” Watching her interact with Sky is a constant reminder to me that finishing my to-do list shouldn’t always be my top priority.

My mom and Mary both have seven kids, and the older I get the more amazing that fact becomes. My first pregnancy was a breeze. I walked several miles every day, right up until I gave birth a week overdue. This time around things are still fairly easy, but I feel more tired. It’s awkward trying to hold my sixteen month old with my belly so big and round. I have varicose veins and my back is sore a lot. I don’t mean to complain – I’m honestly thrilled to be pregnant. I just want to emphasize the fact that this is my second baby and most of the time I feel worn out. My mom and my aunt did this seven times. And not just the pregnancy part, but the sleepless-nights-newborn stage and the temper-tantrum-two-year-old stage and even the rebellious teenager stage. Seven times. And what I remember most about them from my childhood was all the laughing they did, and the way they had coffee breaks just about every afternoon while all of us kids ran wild.

Lately I can’t seem to get over how much I’ve been given when it comes to family. Now that I’m a mother myself, I’m starting to realize how much I have to live up to. I can only hope that God will give me the ability to follow the pattern set before me as I raise my children.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.” – from Luke 12: 48

Since the beginning of October, life has been a bit chaotic, especially since we’ve been away from home. Space is limited at my Mom’s house here in Michigan, so Adam, Skylar, and I have been sharing one room. At this point we’re fairly used to having Sky sleep near us at night, but at 1am the other morning, something woke her up. And instead of going back to sleep as usual, she jumped to her feet and pitifully reached her arms out to us. We were lying in bed just a few feet away from her, and once she realized we were right there she refused to stop crying. After a while we broke down and took her in the bed with us, but that only excited her; instead of sleeping she started crawling all over us. Back to her bed she went, but now she was more awake than ever.

By 4am we were all exhausted, but morning was still hours away. We were tempted to leave her in her bed to cry it out, but it seemed unfair with my brothers and sisters sleeping in the bedrooms all around us. “Let’s go on the other side of the bed on the floor,” Adam finally said. “She won’t be able to see us there and she’ll probably go back to sleep.” As soon as we crawled onto the floor, Sky got quiet. We lay there completely still for a few minutes, afraid to breathe. We didn’t dare climb back in the bed, but slowly and carefully, we reached up to grab a couple pillows. The comforter though, was a bigger problem. It’s made of down and it’s crinkly, and pulling it off the bed would have made a lot of noise. There was a small blanket in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t big enough for both Adam and me. “You take it,” he said quickly. “Okay… but what are you going to use?” Hanging on the closet door was a damp bath towel. “Really?” I said as Adam pulled it over himself. “You’re going to sleep under a wet towel?” That’s just what he did. We huddled together in a tiny space on the floor next to a beautiful, vacant, king-sized bed.

The next morning when dawn came and Sky was up and ready to start the day, I looked down at my round belly and thought, “Well, I guess Sky is doing her part to get us ready to have a newborn again.” And then I thought about how quickly my life’s theme switched from the emptiness of infertility to the exhaustion of new motherhood. Sometimes being a parent is hard. But when I look at my mom and brothers and sisters, and the way everyone has pulled so tightly together through the difficulty of my dad’s cancer and death, I’m amazed by the simple fact that I get to be part of a family – the family of my childhood, but not just that family. The one I married into as well. And the church family where I belong. And now, the family I have with Adam and Skylar and a new baby on the way.

Families can be messy and irritating and flawed in many ways, but when I stop and try to imagine my life without them, I can’t see them as anything but a blessing. In my experience, raising a family is much more difficult that growing up in one. I get grumpy when I’m tired and feel completely overwhelmed at least once a day. But when I get beyond those temporary things, I remember that God has given me what I always wanted. My life is all about family. Every day I get the opportunity to take some of the blessings passed on to me from my parents and hand them down to my own children. It’s a wonderful way to spend a life, no matter how tiring it gets.

If I had to summarize the last month of my life with one word, it’d probably be the title of my last post – grief. But today, God broke into the middle of our sadness again and gave us a beautiful night. After a day of working around the house we went down to the beach for the sunset. My brother Hans and his wife Katy picked up McDonald’s for everyone, and Nelson and Adam built a fire. My mom and Aunt Mary brought the dogs, who always entertain the babies, and Sky ate her very first Happy Meal. A true American, she loved it. A little later she had her first toasted marshmallow, which she also loved, until she realized her fingers were completely stuck together and there was nothing she could do about it. Before Sky’s meltdown though, I did manage to stop and take a breath and acknowledge how nice it was to be down on the beach in the still, fall air, having a sunset picnic with my family.

My family is changing. My dad isn’t with us anymore, and soon Adam and I will have a son. The thing about infertility that many people don’t know is that it affects every other area of your life. If we were still dealing with it, the pain of my dad’s death would be magnified. That sense of change – of saying goodbye and of welcoming too – would only be a sense of loss. The time we’ve spent remembering my dad would be shaded by the fear that my husband might never get to experience fatherhood himself. For me, infertility quietly emphasized every other pain I faced.

Recently I’ve had friends express their sympathy to me that my dad died during this pregnancy. And it is tragic to think about how my father will never get to meet his next grandchild. But at the same time, nothing in my life so far has shown me God’s extravagance the way being pregnant has. I’ve never prayed for anything more than I prayed to become a mother, and God chose to answer those prayers with miracle babies. No matter how sad I am to have lost my dad, I can’t ignore God’s sweetness in my life. I still have my mom, and my brothers and sisters. I have my Adam and my Skylar. And even as I write this, I feel my baby boy – another miraculous answer to prayer – kicking and stretching, each day growing a bit closer to entering the world, my family, my arms.