Category Archives: baby

Posts about Mother’s Day …

Posted on May 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

and how much we love and appreciate our mothers will likely be abundant.  My mother knows already how much I love and cherish her as I tell her every day.  My daughter tells me regularly that she loves me and shows it in a thousand beautiful little ways.

This post is, in a round-about way about Mother’s Day, and yet along a different vein altogether.

While for many, even those who have lost their mothers to death, Mother’s Day weekend is a time of tearful celebration.  It is a time to reflect on family, on love, on life itself.

But the celebratory spirit doesn’t reach everyone.

My heart is heavy tonight for those that I both know personally and those I simply know of, who have been unable to conceive a child.  A child that would be cherished above all else.  A child to complete the circle of life as far as they are concerned.

Imagine a day where children are celebrating their mothers,  mothers are celebrating their children and yet, for so many, there is no child to celebrate.

No hand print cards.

No artwork on the refrigerator.

No smells of talcum powder and baby shampoo.

Only an emptiness that threatens to consume them; mind, body and spirit.  A brokenness that soon leads to feelings of failure and inadequacy that fill each waking hour of every single day.   Knowing that they would give the last drop of blood in their body for a single moment of holding that tiny life, born of themselves, in their arms.

Imagine the anger and frustration, the anxiety, depression and psychological pain that comes from the anticipation followed by disappointment, month after year after decade until there is nothing left but a hopelessness that destroys everything good and pure in their lives.

It would, I imagine, be all-consuming and destructive on many levels.

Mother’s day, for them, must be like pouring salt in a wound, shattering an already broken heart.

Yes, my heart goes out to them and I am, even as I write this, crying openly for the hopes and fears that they harbor inside themselves.

I wish I could encourage them, hold them against my breast and tell them that everything will be ok.  But in their minds and hearts, everything is not ok.

So I will do the only thing I know to do … I will pray for peace, for hope, for the fulfillment of their dreams and the for the courage  to face whatever tomorrow may bring.  I believe, with everything in me, in the love of a faithful Heavenly Father and while I don’t always understand His ways, I trust him.

I know that such prayers are answered, for I have seen it with my own eyes, felt it with my own heart and rejoiced in the glory of it with my own spirit.

1John 14-15 ~ 14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

Hope is a good thing … and no good thing every dies.

blackandwhite_rainbow

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Posted in a photographer's heart, a woman's tears, anxiety, baby, believer, bible verse, blessings, blog, brokenness, cry, dreams, emotions, Encouragement, faith, God, hope, love, Mother, Photography, prayer, tears, words

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Christmas, to a Follower of Jesus …

Posted on December 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

is, second only to Good Friday and Easter, the singularly most important religious holiday that is celebrated.  It is true that Christmas, to the secular world, has been commercialized with thoughts of Santa, spending money and giving gifts that may or may not have any bearing on the holiday itself.  It has become a day about getting, getting more and then being disappointed in not getting enough.  But to those of who hold Christmas in our heart for what it truly means, it isn’t about getting at all, but giving.  It is the celebration of the Virgin birth of the Christ child.  Now, it is no surprise that there will be many who will scoff at this.  That is not unexpected or taken in offense.  I know, in my heart and soul, what I know in my heart and soul.  It brings me great pleasure to honor Jesus at the celebration of His birth.  To revere  Him for the Savior that I personally know Him to be.

It is a beautiful image in my mind to think of a sweet little baby, wrapped in swaddling clothing, lying in a manger that is normally used to feed farm animals.  As it has been taught to me by wise teacher, swaddling clothes were usually reserved for females in order to depict the suffering that they would endure through childbirth.  To find a male child wrapped in swaddling clothing was simply not done.  But Jesus, more than any woman bearing a child, would suffer.  And not only would He suffer, He would do it willingly.

I can think of none of the children in my life, not my daughter nor my nieces, that I would sacrifice for anyone, much less a sinner, a murderer, child molester, thief.  Not a chance.  I would sacrifice myself before I would offer up any of those little ones dear to me; and only then as a trade.  But willingly?  I cannot fathom.  Nor can I fathom knowing the day and the hour that I would have to turn my back on any one of them, leaving them to fend for themselves while I remove myself from from their suffering because that was the only way to obtain the redemption that their death would bring.   It would be hard enough losing a child unexpectedly, but to know, day after day, that the time was drawing near.  I cannot fathom.  Were it up to me, it is quite obvious that mankind would be doomed to die in their sins for at the last moment, I would balk.  I am, after all, only human.

I find it, therefore, an honor and privilege to revere the Christ Child and the Father who was willing to sacrifice Him for my sins.  I’ve heard it said that God is callous and cruel, but what an enormous amount of love it would take for mankind in order to make Him turn His back on the Son He loved just so that we might be redeemed.  Nothing callous about that.  It is, without doubt, love in its purest form and I can only hope that, as I go along this life I’ve been given, I can give as unselfishly as my Father and my Savior.

starry_sky-19

Luke 2:1-7

2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered

.7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

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Standing still as shattered pieces fall …

Posted on December 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

and cut me over and over is something that I know intimately, but I realized today that though I know it, I only know a little piece of it.  I have tried to imagine, even while I know I cannot fathom such an atrocity;  losing a child.  Then to realize that not only have I lost my child, but that nineteen other children were lost at the same time is immeasurable.  I find that each time I think of such a horror, I burst out in tears for those who are facing that situation even now.  Knowing that the world is mourning my loss would be of little or no consolation when faced with an empty bed in an empty room in an empty house in a now empty life.  Knowing that there were nineteen different families who found themselves in the situation I was in would bring no comfort, only more bafflement, anger and grief.  I think I would find it hard not to be bitter even as I was grateful, that there are parents everywhere holding their children safe this night.  There are no words, no gestures, no deeds of goodwill that can even begin to bring comfort after such a senseless and brutal death of a child.  No human words or gestures, anyway.    Losing a child is losing a child, be it from sickness after months of hope and prayers or because that child is taken by the hands of a madman, a stranger, who decided to gun them down in cold blood for sins that the children had not committed. The little children are innocents and because of it, the battle becomes not one against nature or sickness, but of one against evil.  It doesn’t make the loss any less painful, but it does make it different.

I have spent the better part of the evening trying to wrap my mind around what a relatively small, close-knit community must be feeling at this moment.  I have not succeeded.  Each time I picture in my mind’s eye the tiny bodies lying shot to death, I have to remind myself that I live in a country where young children are not gunned down as they attend kindergarten class.  I tell myself that surely, there has been some mistake and that twenty children were not killed for a reason known only to a madman.  I tell myself that it couldn’t possibly happen where I live and then immediately seek out my nieces and hug them so hard that they complain about it.  I find that I cannot let them go.  They squirm and complain, but letting them out my arms before I have breathed in the scent of them, touched their sweet little lips to mine and stroked their downy hair is not an option, not for a while, not until I am convinced that they are real and safe and accounted for.  Something that twenty families in a small town in Connecticut will never have the opportunity to do again.  The sorrow and pain that I feel is no more than a drop of rain in a writhing ocean compared to theirs and that in itself makes me cry even harder.  I want to help.  I want to console.  I want to encourage.  I want to bring comfort.  But it is not in my power.

I cannot comfort them with words or gestures.  Their lives have been irrevocably changed for the worse.  What likely started as a normal day for these families ended in bone-crushing sorrow and depths of despair that cannot be described within the confines of this blog.  The cries and screams of mothers and fathers will echo down every valley and soar above the highest mountains for days and weeks and years to come.  Such sorrow cannot be contained and even though I did not hear them with my ears, my heart breaks at the sound I know is there and I find myself sobbing, yet again, for what cannot be changed.

I will do the only thing I know to do for them and that is to pray for comfort in a time of sorrow so black and so deep, an abyss that seems to have no way out.  Time, it is said, is a great healer, and from personal experience, I know that to be true … but time has never had to heal me from the loss of a child and I find that while I have compassion and a deep, deep sorrow for the loss, I cannot even begin to comprehend it.

Lifting up, in the name of Jesus, those who will be unable to stand for a long time is the only recourse I have.  But stand they will and fight they will and remember they will.  The road will be difficult and strewn with landmines and  obstacles that will take them backwards more than forwards; at least for  a time.  They will never get over it, may not get past it, but hopefully, can one day, come to terms with it enough to get out of bed in the morning.

This night, as the nation and the world mourns the needless loss of little children, may we join together and pray collectively so that a veil of protection can be woven around the grieving families.  Let us tear our clothing and throw ourselves to the ground to wail for that which threatens to suffocate us.  They have suffered enough for a lifetime.  Let us pray that that they can face it tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that.

The little children are in the hands of God, but the hands of their parents are empty and their hearts are shattered.  Join me as I pray that they will be able to find some measure of comfort in some aspect of this tragedy and that in time, the memories that hurt them so deeply now will somehow bring them the comfort they seek.  I don’t know what else to do.

soaringhawk

Romans 12:21 Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

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Watching Gracie Grow

Posted on June 10, 2011 | 3 comments

Down’s Syndrome.  I had heard of it, seen people who had it and been around other folks who had children or grandchildren with Down’s but on a personal level, had no real understanding of it.  At least not until the birth of my youngest niece, Gracie.  Gracie came into the world nearly eight weeks early and spent the first two months of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NIC-U).  She had tubes in her nose and mouth, IV lines in her veins and spent much of her time in a special incubator that kept her body temperature regulated.  There was great excitement at each wet or dirty diaper and each dropper of formula that she was able to swallow.  The doctors said over and over to not get our hopes up, that there could be many things wrong and that she would likely be brain damaged, a near-vegetable.  They told of the horrors of holes in her heart and dysfunctional kidneys, blindness and the inability to walk, talk or do many of the  activities that other children do.  Their faces serious and their prognosis dire, they didn’t know what we did.

gracie smiles

That God was already working in that little life and had been even before she was conceived.  They didn’t know that this child was a miracle in the making, a blessing that would far exceed any of our imaginings.  As her little body rested in the incubator, her lungs strengthening with each breath, her muscles growing with each kick, her eyes, unfocused and blurry beginning to gaze directly into ours, we prayed.  Our friends and families prayed, our sister churches prayed and an ever-faithful, merciful and loving God gathered the prayers together and let His blessings flow, falling like the gentle rains of springtime.  When Gracie came home from the hospital, the nurses rejoiced that she was well enough to leave and cried that she would no longer be a part of their everyday lives.  At first, we handled her like a fragile china doll, afraid that the slightest touch would break her.  So tiny was she that our hands could cover her entire body.  But she didn’t stay tiny for long.  She grew and she thrived, she looked and she learned and she brought joy into all of our hearts that we had never known before.  With each milestone, she would smile and clap, then watch and wait for her fans to clap with her.    Watching Gracie grow is one of our most cherished blessings and I, for one, am grateful that this beautiful child graced our lives.  Not surprisingly, she has made her way on to numerous greeting cards, most recently, a Nurses Day card for Oncology Nurses.   Her love, light and laughter is contagious and I hope everyone catches a little bit of it.  I pray that God will continue to bless our sweet Gracie-Bell all of the days of her life.

a little pray-er goes a long way

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Posted in baby, blog, Down's Syndrome, Down's Syndrome, Photography, Encouragement, faith, family, God, Life, love, Photography, Time

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How Great Is our God – a true story

Posted on August 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Have you ever heard a story over and over through the years and realized one day that you hadn’t really heard the story at all and had no clue what may or may not have happened.  Well, as of today, I have.  There is a story that has been told in my family for many years about a woman who was caught in a flash flood.  I guess all the recent rain and flooding brought it up…  The way I understood it  was that there was this woman who was caught in a flash flood, grabbed her kid, jumped out of the car and ran to a neighbor’s house, just as the car was washed away.  My WHOLE life, I have thought this to be the WHOLE story.  A little scary, but nothing to get goosebumps over.  At least not until tonight.  I was talking to mom on the phone and after exclaiming over the rain and puddles and streams and… well, you get the picture – she mentioned this story.  I said, as I have many times in the past, “yeah”, or something else lame like that.  But this time, I said something about the lady getting wet wading through the  water…It was then that I found out that I didn’t know Jack… or Jill either for that matter… but she gave me the real scoop… There was this lady living with her husband and little girl  up on a ridge over near where we go to church.  Driving down the side of the ridge into the valley, she was heading to work and was taking the little one, about eighteen months old, as she did every weekday, to the babysitter’s house.  It was raining, but, as I understand it, it was April… and around here, it rains in April.  Now, if you’ve ever been over in these parts, (or if you are from Ireland or Scotland) you know what rolling hills are and that often, the valley between two hills, over time and necessity, becomes a road.  That’s the way it is when you live in the rolling hills.  It is beautiful to look at, but, as mom told me this story, I realized how incredibly dangerous it could be.  But, I digress… so she was in the car driving down one of these little valley roads, and i use the term road loosely, when it started to rain harder.  She was mildly concerned but didn’t really worry because she’d driven on this road in all kinds of weather without any real trouble.  There was a creek (or a crick, depending) on one side of the road and the hills, quite steep, were on both sides…Having driven that road thousands of times going to church, I can say that it is a bit like driving in a city where you can only see the sky above you, except that it isn’t buildings on either side of you, it’s creation, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame.  Again, I digress… ANYWAY… it began to rain harder and water, which had been trickling down the hills, began to fill the ditch on one side of the car and the creek on the other.  A little further on, the heavenly storehouses of rain burst open and dumped the rain as from a bucket onto the already saturated ground.  The water running off the steep banks quickly became a waterfall of mud, rocks and debris barreling onto and over the car from the creek side.  Now, if you notice, at no point did I mention that the lady or her baby got out of the car.  They didn’t. The water was coming over the hills and onto the road so hard and fast that it pushed the car backwards several feet.  The car began to slide and turn sickly in the road and she tried desperately to turn the wheel away from the creek.  This is where God steps in… I just love it when He does that and love it more when I get to hear about it…  the tire of the car caught in the ditch and became wedged there, keeping it from flipping over into the creek. The water, even muddier than before and now full of rocks and debris, was pounding onto, and over, the top of the car.  Fearing that they would both drown if the car flipped into the creek, she rolled her window down.  This let in a deluge of water through the window.  This is the moment when she realized she was in BIG trouble.  The river of muddy water wasn’t just going over the car, it was pushing against the car with such force that she couldn’t open her door.  She was trapped, with the baby, in a car that was rapidly filling up with water.  She sat the little girl, who had been sitting in the front seat, (remember, this was over 40 years ago so there were no car seats) on the back of the seat to try to keep her out of the water, and rolled down the window on that side.  The water was running in her window and out the other side.  Hoping to let more of the water out, she leaned over and cracked the door on the baby’s side so some of the accumulating water could go out.  By this tiime, the water in the car was up to her bra.  Outside, the world had gone wild.  Lightning slashed the sky like a blade… before one strike could vanish, another one would be there to slit the sky open.  The thunder rolled down the valley like a bellowing bull… and the water continued to rise.  Mom said that at that moment, and I can just hear her saying this, she told me that we would ask Jesus to take care of us.  Time has a way of fooling you when you’re scared, but not only did the rain have to stop, but the water had to stop flowing over the car before she could even consider getting out.  After a period of time, she was able to push her door open, and get out.  The water she stepped into was a river of mud and rocks that came to her knees.  She took me out of the car, (she said this was the only time I cried… and can you blame me for not wanting to get out in that) and carrying me, walked, WALKED, through the muddy water, unable to tell where the creek or the road or the ditch were.  The rocks and debris that she couldn’t even see were there, were hitting her legs. Even so, she didn’t fall… she didn’t even stumble… God at work!!  There were rocks in the road that were bigger than the car she had been driving… in the road, I might add, where we would have been if the car hadn’t slid backward.  Her dress, underwear and bra were full of mud as she carried me, who wasn’t wet except a bit on my feet, to the house of a woman named Acklin… now it is pronounced just like I spelled it, but I have no idea if it’s spelled like it sounds.  She got to Acklin’s house and called Mamaw Daphne and told her we were stranded.  Grandaddy said he’d come on the tractor to get us.  A while later, Mamaw called back and said he couldn’t make it because there were rocks in the road that were BIGGER THAN THE TRACTOR.  So, in the front and the back, there were rocks big enough to crush the car, there was creek full of rushing water and a waterfall coming down on top of the car.  There is no reason we should have lived through that.  God pushed that car in the ditch because He knew the rocks were going to fall.  He saved us, plain and simple.  Jesus protected us, just as a frightened young mother and her little girl asked Him to.  Now I ask you…… HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD???  As I said, I’ve heard that story a million times, but until tonight, I didn’t even know the half of it. (by the way, the babysitter was Granny Minton) My mom is, by far, the bravest woman I have ever known.  And because of what she told me tonight, I feel brave and empowered myself.  I feel like I can do anything… and with the help of the same Jesus who looked out for mom and me on that flooded country road, I can.

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Posted in baby, blog, faith, Life, Mother, Scott County, story

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