Easter Lily

The past couple of months have been tough.  Lots of sadness and wondering why things happen the way they do. 

Uncle Les Died. 

What should have been a big first birthday party for our cousin’s baby was a toy drive for friends he 

will never meet because he celebrated his birthday in heaven. 

My grandma died. 

My friend and coworker lost her 54-year-old husband very suddenly. 

A church member lost her 49-year-old daughter suddenly. 

A church member lost her brother suddenly.   

A friend’s young son is struggling emotionally. 

Friends have been hospitalized for heart problems and sat through surgeries on their children and tended to ailing loved ones.  There has been illness and pain and tears for people I love and people I don’t even know.  There have been many hard conversations with three little boys we are trying to explain all of this to. 

Then… in the middle of it all was Easter.  In the middle of it was the reminder that this isn’t all there is.  That death doesn’t get the final say.  That things will be hard and we will be sad and there will be loss - but God is there to walk with us. 

In the middle of it all there was even family time.  There was connecting with cousins I hadn’t seen in years and family friends who we had lost contact with.  In the middle of it all was sharing memories of our loved ones and joy of being together.  In the middle of it all was the reminder of how very loved and supported we are even on this earth.

So - this is my personal reminder.  While there may be pain in the night, the joy will eventually come in the morning. 

We are Easter people.  

Mine, mine, mine!

A recent online conversation with a friend really made me think (watch out).  It's funny how we sometimes think of infinite things in super finite terms.  Some things are finite.

If one seagull eats Dory and Marlin, the others can't.
If I cross of the last thing on my list, it's done.
After the last dodo bird dies, they're extinct.
When polio is wiped from the earth, it's eradicated and not coming back.

But why do we think about infinite things this way?  Love?  Relationships?  People?

My three boys often argue with me about having to do something their brothers didn't have to do.  Or why one got to do something special and they didn't.  And I ask them to explain it to me...  How on earth does your brother getting ice cream take away from your happiness in life?  Why in the world are we fighting about why you need to practice piano and your brothers don't - you take piano lessons and they don't, that's why.  Boys - do you realize what how silly that sounds?

I am really good about explaining this to them.

I am not very good at living this way myself.

Exhibit A:  I recently went on a mission trip to Nicaragua.  It was my second visit there.  A few years ago, our church made a decision to support a community in rural Nicaragua.  As part of that campaign, The McBs sponsor a family there.  We have their picture on our fridge, we talk about them, we pray for them, we love them and, last July, I got to meet them!!

 It was awesome.  I got to spend a week loving on them, especially these two cuties.

Imagine the joy I felt when I returned and they remembered me six months later!  Mama sought me out in the crowd, gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said she was looking for me and was hoping I was part of the team who was coming.  Big guy, Yalber, was excited to see me  - even led me by the hand while he was showing me around the community!  It was such a blessing and I was so touched.  I have pictures from my last trip that I look at daily and I think about them all the time.  I knew who I was looking for.  I was touched they remembered me.  And not just remembered me, but were happy to see me.

 I even got to meet Dad on this trip!  He was out of the country working when we were there last summer.

Baby Margine is a Baby - it was neat to see how big she was getting! She is so cute!!!!  But of course, an 8-month old doesn't really "remember" someone they saw more than half of their lifetime ago.  

 Then there was this Little Guy, Steven.  Steven liked this Big Guy.  He wanted nothing to do with me.  I was not as fun as this other, brand new person on our team.

And it bothered me.

This was MY little buddy.  Mine.  Not someone else's.  This is the boy from the family MY family sponsors.  This is the kid I met in July who was hanging all over me and trying to impress me.  This is the kid whose picture is on MY walls and who MY family talks about and prays for.  So it became a joke, but really was painfully true, that Steven liked someone else better than me now.  And I was mad at Colin - he doesn't get to do that.  He doesn't get to swoop in and start loving on some boy that I already had a relationship with.  He doesn't get to replace me.  Very, very uncool.

So fast forward a few weeks to last night when I posted this picture of Yalber - the one who held my hand while we were there.  I commented how much I missed him.

A friend from the trip commented, "Oh, that's Colin's buddy!!"  To which I replied,  "NOT TRUE!  Goodness don't take this one from me, too.  This is Steven's big brother who actually still thought I was a little cool."

This was right before bedtime.  So I went to bed thinking about it.  I prayed for all 5 of them like I do every night - but I was frustrated about the fact that I couldn't get out of my head that someone else had a connection with them now, too, and that everyone knew Steven liked someone else more than me.

And then I realized how ridiculous that was.

I was jealous because someone else loved kids I loved.  How in the world does this make any sense?   What am I, in second grade?? Someone else loves and cares about and prays for someone close to me and I'm bothered by it.  I would ask my kids if they came to me saying something so ridiculous, "How does this effect you?  How does someone  praying for and playing with and loving on someone you love take away from your love of them?  ... Guess what, it doesn't."

I would have done a really good job with this "teachable moment" with one of my 11-year-olds.  I could have made a really good case for how selfish they were being and how crazy they sounded.  Love isn't finite.

I could explain this well as a parent.  I often hear people who are expecting their second child say they are worried how they will have enough love to give when they are so incredibly in love with their first.  And then the second one is born, and there is plenty of love to go around.  It doesn't take love away from the first one to give it to the second, the love grows to accommodate both.

What about friendships?  If my best friend has other good friends, does that mean she loves me less?  Is there a finite amount of friendship which says she only has a certain number of friend space in her heart so, if someone else was in there, there was less room for me?  That's insane.  Yet I find myself feeling that way from time to time as well.

So I started praying for Colin.  "Lord, thank you for the love Colin showed to those boys and all the other people in the community while we were there.  Thank you that this family who I love has so many people caring for and rooting for them.  What a blessing it would be to have even MORE people love these boys just as much as I do and how much support that could bring to our lives.  God - please help me get over myself and realize this is a good thing."

My hope is that I can start to see other relationships in this light.  How wonderful it would be if everyone in the world loved the ones I cared about as much as I do.  Maybe I'm the only one figuring out this basic concept at nearly 40 years old.  But I'm committed to working on it.

Shared experience

Wow.  I just got off the phone with a terrified mother who is in the hospital pregnant with the second of her twins after delivering the first last week at 24 weeks, 1 day.  It brought back so many emotions - I remember being there.  I remember not wanting to connect with the baby in the NICU for fear my heart would soon be broken if he didn't come home.

Whew.  Rough call - I had no idea what to say.  I wanted to ask her if she had named him yet.  I wanted to tell her that she needed to be attached and spend some time and take that risk - because if he doesn't come home, she will never forgive herself that she won't have the opportunity to do it in the future.  But I wouldn't have been ready to hear that a week after giving birth to Chomps.

Mr. was such a rock-star.  He loved that boy and cheered him on and it was all but miraculous how calm Chompy was when he was around.  I sometimes feel guilty that Mr. basically had to go through that alone because I was so unavailable obsessing on how I can take care of the two boys inside since that was all I had control over.

How I wish I would have had my Faith then.  Big F Faith.  Not "I was raised in the church and went through the motions until I was old enough to rebel" faith.  But the "I know God will be with me no matter with happens" Faith.  How much more comforted I would have been.  I pray she has that.

Background

After years "off" - I am going to start blogging again.  I am going to try to do so as anonymously as possible to protect my family.  I won't be using my kids' names and I would hope that in the comments, those who know us won't either. 

Let me introduce myself... I am Mrs. McB, Married to Mr. McB.  Mr. would say it was love at first site.  I thought he was weird and gross.  For a while.  We were married in 2002 at a wedding we heard over and over was the best ever.  I tend to agree.  :)  We moved in to our house on our first anniversary and life was amazing. 

It wasn't long into our marriage that we wanted a baby and tried for a year or so to no avail.  With very minimal infertility treatment we found ourselves pregnant in May of 2004.  We were thrilled that, after seeking help from a doctor, we were pregnant so quickly.

On May 23, 2004 Mr. McB was in an accident at work.  This accident could have been very, very bad (as in me raising this baby alone or much more serious injury) but he ended up with a severely injured left leg which was amputated above the knee later that night.  Four days later I went to my first ultrasound alone at 6 weeks pregnant and we found out we were pregnant with triplets.  At any other time in our lives I'm not sure how that news would have been received.  But we desperately needed some good news after Mr.'s accident and this was 3x the good news as far as we were concerned.

My pregnancy was riddled with complication and Mr. was obviously dealing with his own recovery from his surgery and new life with a prosthetic leg.  We took turns puking and feeling sorry for ourselves the summer of 2004.

Chomps, our oldest, was apparently really eager to meet us.  He was born at 23 weeks 3 days (a healthy pregnancy lasts 40 weeks) in September 2004.  At that point we were really unsure about the future.  Mr.'s take was different than mine and he was confident Chomps would make it.  I was the absolute contrary and didn't think there was even a chance we'd bring him home.

Eighteen days after Chomps was born, at 26 weeks, Cream pulled a similar stunt and got himsef delivered.  My primary OB was actually out of town at the time and the standing doctor decided my pregnancy was over.  Though Train tried as he may to remain warm and safe, he was born by c-section half an hour after Cream.  To this day it is such a blessing that Train is a healthy, happy, developmentally appropriate little boy or I would second guess myself daily about the fight I didn't put up to delay the delivery a third time. I was so ready to be done with being pregnant.  Or rather, ready to be done with feeling miserable on a drug called Magnesium Sulfate which effectively fends off labor - but makes you feel like you've been run over by a truck; ready to take a shower; ready to use a toilet for the first time in 21 days; ready to sleep in my own bed.

At the point of Cream and Train's delivery, Chomps was three weeks old and doing "well", considering.  We were confident that Cream and Train would do even better.  We were right.