Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Glory Babies of Southern Illinois



I know I have posted a lot about Glory Babies the last few weeks, and I will be continuing to blow up your feed for a while.

But I wanted to take a minute to share my heart behind why I am so passionate about this ministry.

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As most of you know, my husband and I had a miscarriage in 2015. It was our second pregnancy, and our child would have been born May 5th of the following Spring.

However, when I think about why this group, why this topic, why these women walking these roads are so important to me, the pull in my heart goes much further than the baby we lost.

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It was my senior year of high school, first semester. My mom refused to let me take wood shop, so as I worked on my quilt at my sewing machine, I was waiting for the call.

My cousin was in the hospital in early labor with her twin girls.

It was a pregnancy that was long hoped for, long wished for, long prayed for, long longed for. Not only by her and husband, but by all of us.

After countless visits to doctors and a journey to pregnancy that wasn't easy, both babies were growing.

I remember as soon as I found out that she was having twins going to Old Navy and purchasing little sock hats for spring. One was a bunny and the other was a duck, I think.

But now, here we were in September, nearly 20 weeks too early, and our sweet longed for baby girls were coming.

There was an announcement over the intercom for me to come to the office. I stopped my foot pedal and stared at the fabric in my hands. I knew in that moment that the news on the other end of the phone meant our sweet baby girls wouldn't be held in the arms of our family members.

My mom gave me the news over the phone, and as I walked back to my sewing machine hot tears poured down my cheeks and onto the soft fabric in my hands.

Why?

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A snapped photo of a positive pregnancy test sent to a best friend with the words "If you are going to be on this pregnancy train, you better hop on now!"

A text right back with the same brand of test and the words "Already on it!" meant my dear friend and I were pregnant at the same time. I could not have been more excited.

Pregnant bellies, baby showers, sweet newborns, and someday in the future our babies going to church camp together much like me and his mama had years before. The future for our second baby and his or her best friend was glorious.

Then the text message late on a Sunday evening. My 8th week of pregnancy, her 12th. She was rushing to the ER.

Her night ended with news of an ectopic pregnancy.

The next morning I sobbed at work as I erased the previous week's agenda from the white board. How was I ever going to walk through this pregnancy, through this baby's life without my friend and her baby? My heart ached for every way our joys would be reminders of her loss. My celebrations would resound with her pain.

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That Friday evening, I quickly ran to the restroom as my husband was getting ready to leave for a work cookout.

A few spots of blood and my stomach dropped as I knew in an instant our baby was gone.

A never-ending evening in a cold and brightly-lit ER sent me home with news on what to expect with my impending "spontaneous abortion."

I spent the next two weeks waiting for my body to expel the life I so desperately wanted to cling to.

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"We lost Amiah. She had no heartbeat."

The words hit me like a freight train, knocking the wind out of my chest and causing me to fall onto my bed in disbelief.

24 weeks. 24 weeks is viability. Here I was pregnant with our twins at 24 weeks, believing that if something happened, they would both survive outside the womb.

But the words in the text message from one of my closest friends, also pregnant with boy-girl twins, blew out the flame of truth I held in my hands.

She was further along. 29 weeks. Her babies were past the viability mark. This pregnancy, these twins, this successful IVF, after 3 failed IUIs, and an IVF that ended in another baby lost by miscarriage, these sweet twins were supposed to be safe.

But again, my sweet friend would only briefly hold her daughter in her arms before she had to wait for their reunion in Heaven.

What a gift that she has her son in her arms, but a tragedy of his missing half- twins separated between Heaven and Earth...

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Over, and over, and over, and over, and over women have shared their stories with me about their painful walks through losing a child or their journey of longing.

Women close to my grandmother in age retelling the memories of their D&C.

Women saying "We've been trying, no news yet."

Tears of longing, sadness, desperation, anger, sadness, mingled in with hope and desire, these women, my family, my friends, my neighbors, my sisters-in-Christ, my women I meet at the doctor's office, my women I see at the library, my women avoiding the baby aisle at Target, my mothers of friends, my women across the aisle at church, my friend on Facebook, my follower on Instagram, my friend on Snapchat, ....the list goes on and on and on.

THIS, THESE WOMEN, THEY are the reason I am starting Glory Babies. They are the heartbeats in my soul and their babies are the ones I carry in my heart and in my prayers. They are the reason that every month I want to show up for them. To hold their hands, to give them a tissue, to hear their stories, to walk through them down this messy road of motherhood as a part of a club that no one wants to be a part of.

So I implore you, if you or a loved one could benefit from knowing they aren't alone on this journey, please consider sharing news about Glory Babies with them. We would love to have the chance to love them wherever they are on their motherhood journey.


Monday, March 26, 2018

The Musings of a Mixed Girl's Mama

One of my biggest fears in life is not being able to relate to my daughter. Lately, that has manifested as me sobbing over not knowing how to braid. Because while working with my own stick straight texture is something I’m comfortable with, managing Raelynn’s curls is something I’m working on every day. 

I don’t take being the mother to mixed children lightly. I try to continually have my eyes opened to my own biases and privileges, and I am continually learning about the culture and life experiences of my husband and his family.

As a unit, we navigate through small town southern racism, where I have to question the feelings of the person flying the Confederate flag down our street, and where annually Easter reminds me that I chose love over my extended family as my decision to marry my husband removed my seat from the table.

We also, in the same breath, work to keep communication open and real with my husband’s family in the city. Recognizing that their struggles, while different from our own down here, are still largely in part due to injustices of our society.

We ebb and flow from rural to city, southern drawls to language that flows with a rhythm, strict and stressful parameters to an approach at life that is much more relaxed. And every moment of every day I stare into the sweet faces of my children knowing that regardless of my love for them, their walks through life will contain struggles I never have, and never will experience.

Moving back to Southern Illinois has been a struggle.

I have friends, who while they love my children, just don't get it. They don't understand that there is literally no one else that my kids see or play with that looks like them. They don't understand that while we have gained a tremendous amount of family within a few hours, we lost a rich and diverse community that surrounded us at our home in Wichita. But the loss that resonates with me the most is the loss of strong, beautiful, confident, passionate, God-fearing women of color that spoke into my daughter's life on the regular. Women who I entrusted with guiding my daughter on a walk through life that I will never step foot on. It is a loss has left me weeping, desperately praying to God to just send me someone Raelynn can not only look up to occasionally like her family in Chicago, but a woman who she sees and speaks with regularly in her daily life.

It's a loss that has left me struggling to connect with the women of color I have met at places like the library because I am afraid I will start rambling like a maniac of how all my black female friends live in Kansas and I just need someone to be present in my daughter's life, but I don't just want them to be my friend because they are a woman of color, because I am honestly just looking for friends period, but it's great that they are black because I actually do need women of color in my life and in my children's lives because did I mention my children are mixed?

Seriously.

The word vomit immediately starts to build up in my mouth as my inadequacies flood my soul and the fear of never being the mother my daughter needs tears my heart to shreds. So where do I begin? I'm not sure.


But today, I started with trying to teach myself to braid, and with every strand of hair I held, I prayed that Raelynn would see and know how desperately and fiercely I love every caramel colored inch of her and that God would hear my prayers and fill my life with women and children who experience their lives from the perspective that my husband and children do, a perspective that is rich and full of color.