I collapsed full force into our beige sectional a cushion down from my mom at about 12 AM this morning. She and my dad had come to keep our son so that my husband and I could have a night pretending that we had no cares or responsibilities to speak of. Garth Brooks is one of our favorite entertainers, and true to form, he did not disappoint as we sang the night away in Nashville with thousands of strangers.

Attending big shows, I realized last night, is not quite what it used to be prior to parenthood. I stood up for only a fraction of the songs, too tired from a full week of mothering and pastoring and Christmas preparing...you get the idea. Nonetheless, I enjoyed myself but was grateful to be home playing 20 (more like 50) questions with my mom about how their night had gone.

I’d sent a list of instructions that took me roughly twenty minutes to text on our way to the concert in the hopes that my folks would not want for any knowledge when it came to our son’s nightly routine and so that he (as much as a four month old can) knew what to expect.

They’d had a grand time. Laughing through feeding him sweet potatoes, the eating of which is still a skill in the making for him. Playing on the floor with an assortment of toys warranting endless smiles from my mom and funny faces from my dad. Splashing in the tub with squishy dino bath toys. And reading a familiar bedtime story from my childhood. Like I said, they had a wonderful time together.

After chatting a few minutes more, my husband excused himself to bed and my mom and I stayed put, catching each other up on details about work and extended family and holiday plans.

I finally reached a point where I knew that I could no longer keep my eyes peeled open as 12 AM had quickly turned into 2. It had been a long time since we stayed up talking for hours on end, but it was once a fairly regular occurrence.

Over the years, I’ve felt myself put distance between us—physically and emotionally—almost as if I felt like I had to in order to become a “real adult” as stupid as I now realize that sounds and is. It’s been going on for so long that it didn’t even occur to me that’s what I’d been doing until I went to give her a hug goodnight.

Part of that physical distance has manifested in fewer hugs. Not the quick ones we offer people without thinking about them, but the real and meaningful ones. What was intended to be a quick but heartfelt hug to thank her for keeping our son turned into another collapse, similar to the one into the couch I had experienced upon first arriving home from the concert.

I literally couldn’t move as a warmth and a sadness and a regretfulness and an aching of my heart so deep washed over me in what felt like a torrential flood. Knowing of my struggle with postpartum depression, I heard the concern in her voice when she gently asked if I was okay. I nodded, unable to speak.

I held it together at first, moving to an assumption that it would just be a longer-than-normal hug. Until her hand began moving in soft, comforting, and familiar circles on my back. These were the same soft and comforting circles I received from her when I was upset as a child. They are the same circles with which I now soothe my own child when he is fretting. And then, all at once, I noticed the placement of my head—on her chest, near to her heart—and I openly weeped as I realized that is where my son’s head so often resides on me. 

All I could think about was how I hadn’t taken the time to show her just how much I love her and still need her in these recent years. All I could visualize was a time in his life when my son would treat me in a similar fashion. “One day he won’t show me affection,” I thought in devastation. “One day he, too, will think he doesn’t need his mom anymore.”

“Oh my God,” I thought as the black of my eye makeup traveled across my eyes and down my face in currents, “what a horrible day that will be.”

I finally lifted what felt like all 637 pounds of me off of my mother. My collapse into her was not a minor one. Every ounce of my body, my heart, and my spirit—along with plenty of tears and some snot—had fallen on top of her and she couldn’t even pretend to mind despite me being bigger than her.

By the light of only our Christmas tree, I looked thru blurry eyes into hers and gave the most earnest apology of my life, telling her I was so sorry I had pushed her away for so long, that I hadn’t shown her how much I truly love, appreciate, and need her still. 

To which she replied, “Oh honey, I never doubted how much you love me.”

We continued talking...about everything. Our love for each other, stories from when I was little, the amazement we share that I’m a mom to a child of my own, and on and on into the night.

It will forever be one of my most memorable moments with her—one so chock full of love and grace that it’s hard to deny that those gifts we extend to one another originate from a Source infinitely greater than any of us could ever imagine.

I am so thankful for all that my mother is to me and to our family. And I am thankful for a tiredness that broke down my often too-tough, too-stubborn exterior to vulnerably admit that I am indeed a mom who needs (and will forever need) her Mom.

I love you, Mom.

__[That Time I Forgot to Process] the Night You Were Born__ [9/22/17]

I heard the muffled sound of the garage door closing as Bo walked into the laundry room. He'd just returned from snagging an ice cream treat for us to enjoy once the babe was down for the count. 

We now have a nighttime routine: Bath. Feed. Read. Rock. Bed.

We'd begun feeding before Bo left and were done by the time he returned. The littlest Myers has to sit upright for around 15 minutes after eating to help with reflux/spit-up issues and at night, that typically looks like laying almost vertically on mom's chest sound asleep. Tonight was no different. He'd fallen asleep swifter and harder than usual (it's a tough life for a baby, we're learning) as was evidenced by him securely holding his pacifier in place--a skill at which he's only able to excel while sound asleep.

"Do we read or put him in the thing (sleep sack) and put him down?" Bo asked as he rounded the corner into the living room.

Looking down at the tiny, heavy breathing human on my chest, I replied, "We always read to him. Go grab a book."

He pulled one we hadn't yet read from the little one's generous collection. I had packed this particular book in our hospital bag, naively thinking there would be the time, energy, will, and emotional fortitude to read to him in the first days of his life on this side of things. It's called _On the Night You Were Born_.

As Bo read the poetic words to our peacefully sleeping son...and as I glanced down at the snoozing being then back to the colorful cardboard pages depicting how very special it was for every creature everywhere the night he was born, I was overcome with emotion.

The author makes it seem as though the entire cosmos has stopped in its tracks to celebrate another precious, uniquely beautiful life has entered the world. And in that universal pause, word of the blessed birth travels over land and sea as polar bears dance with delight, geese fly home, and ladybugs stay perfectly still as they take in the news. 

How special it was in this fictional world, in this tale geared toward our son that he had come into the world, and yet I somehow never stopped in the midst of it all to give the miracle a second thought...

I'm a "go-mode" person by nature. If I have a job to do, I don't stop until it's done. I'm nearly incapable of having fun or noticing beauty as I'm working on things until the business is finished. And even then, it's usually much later in retrospect, if at all. I guess labor and delivery was sort of like that. 

Sure, it was traumatic and life altering and unbelievable, so it sort of makes sense I'm just now processing the event some odd 6 weeks later. But I also know myself well enough to know I was thinking I had a job to do, so I went into "go-mode" and I did it...took a few breaths, then immediately dove into "go-mode" once more as I began the work of figuring out how to be a parent to this little person I'd brought into the world. And I haven't stopped since. 

I saw plenty of pictures and videos that loved ones took of the event itself, but it didn't seem like me I was witnessing on the other side of their camera lenses. And thus it took 6 weeks and a magical, eloquently written children's book to alert me to the holy and the sacred happenings that unfolded the night our son was born.

Countless warm tears traveled down my face as I finally felt the weight of what happened that night 6 weeks and some change ago, the weight of the blessedness this tiny human has gifted our lives, the weight of just how much I love him and would do absolutely anything for him. 

During our middle of the night feeding, the tears continued as I held him close and rocked him and caressed his tiny hand and ran my fingertips across his soft head and breathed in his smell. I'm struggling greatly (as I presume all parents do) with the thought of going back to work in a week and a half. I feel lost, conflicted, guilty. Though I'm not good at asking for help, I'd appreciate any and all prayers as I prepare to transition back into "life as I [knew] it" and as we finalize childcare for him. It crushes every part of me to think that someone else will be there for his "firsts" and that I will not, that I won't be with him all day every day as has been the only reality we've known. 

Other parents have survived, and I feel confident I will, too.  It just doesn't feel like it yet. In the meantime, please pray that the sacred and holy moments with our son are ones I absorb as they happen, that I wouldn't get so caught up in the "go-mode" of motherhood and soon-to-be pastorhood that I cannot appreciate and revel in the snuggles and the feedings and the rocking and the playtime as they unfold in these final weeks of "just us."

Thank you, friends. I covet your prayers and love in this season of life. 

The Quilt that Gifted Sleep...and Connection [9/7/17]

I gently picked up the part of the quilt closest to me so as not to wake the babe and to make sure it wasn't touching the spit up that was quickly growing cold as it dried on my oversized tshirt in the cool breeze.

It was one of those early mornings where the feedings went well but the aftermath was less than pretty. Fussing, acting hungry but only doing so due to gas/reflux and to fight the gravitational pull of sleep. 

He's strong and will often push up on my chest, lift his 95th percentile head, and look me straight in the eye. During these infamous mornings he does this continuously--up, whine, down, whine, up, whine, down, whine. This is the signal for me that I won't be able to soothe him without the help of movement. Off to PawPaw's rocker we go. For over an hour after the 30 minutes we'd already tried, we worked to find the magic that would lead to sleep. 

Position one failed miserably. Position two quickly went up in flames. Position three was a lost cause. Position four prevailed, dragging him squirming and against his will to Dreamland.

I laid him down.

Two hours later like clockwork, here we go again. Same bit. Ate well, fought the onslaught of sleep tooth and nail. To NeNe's rocker we go. This time there are no positions that will bring peace.

Up on my feet, we gently bounce back and forth. The method seems to slowly be working on him, but I find it's working on me as well. We have to sit...but he won't let me. What will we do? It's a little before 8 now and the sun is up. There's a swing on the back patio. "It just might work," I thought, cautiously hopeful. I unlock the door and begin to step outside when I'm greeted by the unseasonably cool Louisiana weather. 

The swaddle I've wrapped around him isn't enough. I rack my brain and remember that, though I was certain we wouldn't use it, I packed his quilt. I shuffle to the back in rhythmic movements, snatch up the quilt, and swiftly wrap it around the tiny and slightly ornery human. We plop down on the swing as I hold my breath fearing his eyes would become wide and alert, starting our little circus all over again.

I push off the cold concrete with my bare feet and away we go. Construction workers are sawing and nail-gunning and singing and slinging boards next door, so I wait for him to stir. Nothing. I can soon tell he's reached the point of sleep where he will not return to consciousness unless provoked.

I breathe out a sigh of relief and breathe in the crisp air and faint smell of sawdust lingering nearby. I ran my finger down the rough cut arm of the swing, trying not to panic about nor disturb the gecko who was silently keeping us company there. I gazed out at the lake with its water traveling all different directions as the light from the sun glinted off of it and the trees that line the outskirts of the waves and ripples for miles. I listened to the clanging and clamoring of the construction and the whirring of hummingbirds' wings as they fought one another to make their place at the feeder.

It hits me that I haven't consciously used my senses in over a month. Nor have I been thankful for the truth of the Divine to which those senses alert me as they have loyally done so throughout my lifetime. 

For me, it's a season of feeling disconnected...from most everything-- people, myself, God not excluded. No blame to cast, it is merely reality. Thank God for the countless strong an selfless mothers who have come to me boldly proclaiming, "Me too." They are the ones who carry me. 

All energy, power, time, thoughts, feelings I have are being poured into the tiny and slightly ornery human. One day I will learn to reconnect--with people, myself, and God--and while today might not be the day things click on all proverbial cylinders...the quilt gave me a chance to glimpse, a chance to remember what it feels like to be connected and hope for the day when it will consistently be so once more.

For now, we do the best we can. We make sure his needs are met. We tend the circus that is fussiness and fighting sleep. And in the meantime, I think I'll keep the quilt on hand--looking for the next opportunity to use it in the open air, looking for the next time I can intentionally use my senses, looking for the next time I can experience those ever-coveted point(s) of connection. 

Who knew a quilt of all things could be such a gift?

There is a full length mirror that hangs on the back of the bathroom door in one of my churches, and I just happened to catch a glimpse of myself as I was drying my hands a moment ago. 

I tilted my head and squinted a bit, trying to wrap my mind around who it was looking back at me.

She looked like somewhat of an impostor, that person in the mirror...someone standing in for the "real me" in the sense that she looked so young, so small.

Her eyes were big and wide like she was ready for whatever life wanted to throw her way, but an almost scared glint flashed across them as if she was simultaneously not sure of what was to come nor whether she could handle it when it did.

"It looks as though she's been playing dress-up with the contents of her mother's jewelry box," I observed while eyeing first the bright and bulky necklace around her neck and then the matching earrings dangling from her ears. The prominent watch face on her wrist looked much too big for her evident smallness.

My eyes moved downward toward her protruding belly as I began to realize why I assumed her the aforementioned impostor...a phony...a fraud.

It was, in fact, a little girl inside a woman's body looking back at me in my reflection...taken aback by her current reality.

Wasn't I so recently the little girl I now see before me? 

Wasn't it just yesterday I was pilfering thru my mother's things, trying to be older, prettier, and more sophisticated like her?

Who, then, is this? With these wide and uncertain eyes who carries within her another life soon to be born?

"Surely, it can't be me, " I think to myself as I wring the paper towel in my slightly swollen hands.

"Ah, but it is," the wiser part of me replies. "Take courage. Have faith. Rejoice! For very soon you will be a vessel of new life."

As I took one final glance at the mirror, I felt a wisp of a smile ease across my face.

I tossed my paper towel into the waste basket and got back to work.

35: The Week We Weren't Sure Would Be

On the morning of April 21st, we sat in my OB's waiting room making bets on whether or not our son would cooperate with the ultrasound specialist. 

Four weeks prior, we'd had a wonderful and monumental doctors visit in the life of expecting parents where we found out the gender of our child and watched closely as the specialist chased the little human we would come to call our son around my stomach, trying to catch him and get the necessary measurements. 

The three of us laughed as she tried (not without some effort and playfully frustrated grumbling) to take her measurements, snap photos, and point out different parts of his tiny body for us to see. It was incredible to witness, and I think it was hammered home a little more forcefully that day that we were indeed going to be parents. 

Adding to his stubbornness, he decided (no matter what we tried) not to roll over for her to get his spinal measurements, so we'd have to return in a month and hope he'd play nice. 

They called us back as we finished placing our bets and while I kept internally repeating the morning's mantra: "Show her your spine, show her your spine, show her your spine." She no more than placed the probe on my stomach and his spine, like something from a painting, was plastered perfectly on the screen. We all had a quick celebration before I watched the specialist's face change and heard her let out a quiet, "Oh."

Immediately, my antennae went up as I watched her eyes and asked her what she saw. All she could tell me was that my cervix was shorter than it should have been at that point in the pregnancy. I was 24 weeks pregnant at the time, so even though I didn't know what she was talking about, I knew it wasn't good and I knew having a baby at this point would have been dismal at best. 

Seeing my concern, she sadly told me she couldn't talk to me about the details and that I'd have to wait to see Doc to find out more. I slid off the table and into the bathroom to clean up and get changed. I allowed the tears, hot and weighted, to stream from my eyes until I was ready to exit the bathroom and go back into the waiting room, the place where we'd been laughing and joking just thirty minutes prior.

I couldn't look at the pictures the specialist had printed off for us of him. All that ran thru my mind was, "I might never meet him or hold him or feed him. I can't look at these pictures of something that might not be."

The twenty minute wait to be called back was nearly unbearable. Thru watery eyes, I nearly stared a fiery hole thru the door separating us from the examination rooms. Finally, my nurse's face appeared, I had my blood drawn for the routine glucose test and met Bo in a room where we waited for Doc to come in and talk us thru what it meant that I had a shortened cervix. In her professional and cautiously hopeful tone that I have come to covet in recent months, she told us that there was nothing we could do but monitor it...that there was no way to know for sure when this baby would come, only that there was a good possibility that he might. And for this control freak, that was damn near torture.

In somewhat of a numb stupor from a camp chair underneath our garage, I called my mom once we got home and told her the news as I stared out into the rainy abyss and watched tears pour down my face. It was the only time in my life I'd seen tears jump from my eyes due to the force behind them.

Every Friday for the next ten weeks, we would ride the hospital elevator past our OB's floor, up to the floor that housed the office of our high risk specialist in perinatology. Same routine every week: shirt up, topical ultrasound to check the baby, pants down, internal ultrasound to check the stability of my cervix, pants up, chat with Doc about what he saw, cry in the parking garage at the news, collect ourselves, send out the weekly text of updates to the saints who prayed us thru this season, and repeat it all again the following Friday. 

A daily dose of Progesterone to prevent early labor.

A twice-daily dose of Procardaia (a blood pressure med) to relax the muscles around my cervix in the hopes of preventing my water from prematurely breaking.

Modified bedrest for over a month for the same reasons. No chores. No bending over. No lifting. No standing up for more than a few minutes at a time. Leading worship (including preaching) sitting down.

2 steroid shots to prepare his lungs when it looked as though he would certainly be making his arrival in the coming days.

Every week, our high risk specialist would reiterate the milestones: 32 weeks, long term risks are minimized and 34 weeks, long term risks are usually eliminated. Anything beyond that, I'd say in unison with him week after week, "is great." 

And here I sit. On the night of the beginning of my 35th week of pregnancy. Stunned at the love and support and encouragement I have received from the aforementioned weekly-text-update saints, my congregations, our RIM Group, and any person who has uttered a prayer or positive thought on our behalf. 

The greatest saint of all (in my slightly biased book) is my husband who has attended every doctors appointment with me, has washed dishes and vacuumed floors and pulled countless loads of laundry out of the dryer over the past several weeks and never once complained, but instead continually asked me if I was okay or if I needed anything (or told me to sit down when I was doing too much...). Just when I was confident I could not love him more, this season of life has ensured that confidence was shattered.

I sit humbled. Amazed and rendered nearly speechless at the God to whom I prayed, "35 weeks. You're a big God, I can pray big prayers," for weeks on end. Unbelievably thankful for those who have loved and cared for and asked after and comforted and reassured us week after week. Drawn to and heartbroken for the moms or would-be moms whose stories did not end like mine and wanting to hug and pray and cry with every one of them.

My birthday is Thursday. In a very small act of love toward the women who must leave their children in NICUs and hospital beds night after night, I would love to be selfish and ask for a gift from you no matter how long it's been since we last connected. Would you please consider joining me in making a donation to the Ronald McDonald House, an organization that houses parents with children in the hospital at little to no cost so that they can stay close to them? Every bit helps. 

http://support.rmhc.org/site/PageNavigator/pw/Donation_Landing.html

Thanks for considering putting your resources toward this cause and thank you for reading a snippet of our pregnancy story. We are grateful for the countless ways we have experienced God's love and been reminded of God's presence thru many of you in the past several, several days.

"Grateful for another day" certainly has a whole new meaning these days. And I pray it's a meaning and a gratitude that continues to shape my life long after our child is born. Blessings to you and yours in the day ahead, friends. 

I glimpsed heaven in my guest room.

It was time to practice my sermon as I do every other night that comes before Sunday morning, so toward the guest room I strolled.

Shortly after entering, I stopped only a pace or so inside the door, taken aback by the dwindling golden sunlight softly falling thru the window that was only partly curtained onto the carpet that was only partly vacuumed.

As I breathed in the room with my eyes, I said quietly to myself,

"It looks heavenly in here."

Never once in my existence have I used "heavenly" as an adjective, but I feel as though my first time was warranted.

Something about the shadow-clad room itself and the ever-so-slightly cracked closet door made the light seem that much more voluminous, more breathtaking, more sacred...somehow different from every other time I've watched what's left of the sun pour into a room around 5 in the afternoon.

Perhaps when we most yearn for light to shine brightly into our surroundings and into our souls, we are better able to appreciate light for the seemingly simple yet quite extraordinary gift that it is.

For light has the ability to turn every head in a room.
It welcomes us into its space.
It assures us that shadows aren't forever.
It extends warmth into the coldest of corners.
It elicits a peace we didn't know we needed to infiltrate the most hidden parts of who we are.

And thus, we make friends with the light and bask in it as much as we can so that we might remember its power during the shadowy moments of our lives and be it for others during the shadowy moments of theirs.

Where my feet have been...

So many places have my feet been that I wonder where my days have gone. They all slosh around in my mind as though in a jar of miscellaneous liquids--ebbing and flowing toward and away from one another as each moment unfolds.

This week my feet have been in countless places, stepping on various grounds, wearing different pairs of shoes, resting in numerous positions.

Buechner says, "...if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are."

If I am wherever it is my feet take me, this week (maybe more than most) I am a people-er. 

A lounger beside people, a listener to people, a laugher with people, a lover of people.

My feet have been carefully placed on carpeted living room floors clad with the cozy, overcast gloom of the day.

My feet have been loudly clunking thru loyal, love-filled homes with narrow hallways made up of wooden floors and tiny bathrooms with tile that takes me back to a simpler time that was never my own.

My feet have been steadily bouncing on the floor of a meeting space as dreams and ideas and progression move thru the air as easily as the breath.

My feet have been strategically wrapped around the bottom rungs of a bar stool in a clean and crisp burger bistro as business and life and love are shared between friends.

My feet have been determinedly walking up a lengthy driveway made up of pebbles of various shapes and shades where I witnessed the sunshine for the first time in five days... as it reached far beyond the sky, down thru barren branches and gently brushed the water flowing beneath the ground on which I walked. 

There are still many steps to take before the week comes to its inevitable close.
But I hope by grace that I will continue being the people-er I have managed to be this week and the people-er I know that I've been created to be by the Creator, remembering as I go the many places where my feet have been...