I am aware that it has been almost two months since my last post. No, I have not lost interest in blogging, and I have not become lazy (well...maybe a little, but for good reason). There are a number of reasons why I lost steam in mid-January.
One reason is that I have just been so busy. Keeping up with my almost 21-month old takes a lot of energy, as I am sure you can imagine. With each new day, Aidan is more energetic and more mischievous. Some of you heard of our recent toilet incident: we had to get a new toilet, as a plumber was unable to extract a long wooden train from the innards of our toilet, which had been flushed by my little darling one day. It may well have been when I was taking a shower, because God knows that I can't take a shower unless Aidan is in the bathroom with me. I certainly did not know that said train was the cause our toilet problems until it was extracted, once the toilet was cracked in half. The cost of my darling's curiosity? Two visits from plumbers, a new toilet and installation = $850.
Additionally, Aidan is talking a blue streak these days--making sense of his many words, likewise, takes a lot of energy. He inititates conversation quite a bit, but he also repeats anything and everything we say. Earlier this week, we were in the car, on the way to visit some friends. From his seat in the back, Aidan screamed out what sounded like "FUCK!" I was horrified, wondering if he had heard the word slip from me or my husband in one of our rare moments of deep frustration. Luckily, after a minute or two of nostop "FUCK" sounds, I was able to see him pointing out the car window to a flag--for him, "FLAG!" sounds very, very similar to "FUCK!"
Another reason is that I'm busy with school. As some of you know, I am back at Fordham University, only this time, I am taking classes in the Pastoral Counseling program (instead of Theology). Honestly, I am not thrilled with the program, even as I think the pastoral counseling is the right path for me. The class I am taking is painfully easy. For it, I have only one paper (less than 6 pages), a group presentation (which are professors' way of sucking up class time), and an oral exam which counts as the "final" (can you tell that the professor doesn't want to have to grade papers?). Why, then, have I been so busy? Well, it's because I've already read all six of the required books in two months' time. I love the reading: Gerald Mays' Addiction and Grace, Kathleen Greider's Reckoning with Aggression, etc.
The final, and perhaps most important reason, is (as many of you already know) is that I'm expecting another baby, due September 1st. I'm at the four month mark, which means that this pregnancy will likely succeed. The first three months of this pregnancy, as you might imagine, were marked by "morning" sickness (that lasts throughout the day), extreme fatigue, and an even more crippling anxiety that was born of two devastating miscarriages that preceded this pregnancy. Even as I sat in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for the 12-week nuchal translucency ultrasound, I found myself mentally preparing myself for the worst. After all, I had been in the same hospital room of the Methodist Advanced Maternal Care Center more than seven times over the course of the past six months, and in each of those visits, heard only bad news: "The heartbeat is abnormally slow...," ""There is a heartbeat, but it doesn't seem that this pregnancy will be viable," and finally, "There is no longer any fetal heartbeat." Both of my miscarriages were long, drawn-out processes that ended in surgeries. And so when the ultrasound technician squirted the cold gel on my abdomen, I asked, "If this doesn't work out...." Thankfully, she interrupted me: "Let's see what's going on first." And what we saw was a beautifully growing baby, bringing its fingers to its forehead, performing what seemed to be somersaults. With a beautifully beating heart....at 12 weeks.
At 16 weeks, I feel much more energetic--hence my ability to pick up blogging once again (even as I won't make any guarantees that I'll get back into a regular groove). My blog, as you know, is called Grace Notes. I wanted this blog include my reflections on grace, as I think about grace almost all the time. And many times over the past nine months, I have asked myself, "Where has there been grace in my experience?" I am certain that my understanding of this will continue to evolve, but I will attempt (and this is only my first attempt at articulation) to describe my present understanding.
For my pastoral counseling class, I recently read Gerald Mays' Addiction and Grace. The late Mays was a psychiatrist and spiritual director who believed this about the human condition: we are all addicted. It is true that some of us have never been crippled by alcoholism or drug addiction, but Mays believes that addiction is nevertheless a disease that afflicts us all. Perhaps we are addicted to work, to stress, to our own negative self-image, to criticism, etc. But we are all addicted, standing in need of grace. What interested me most about Mays' book--in relation to my own experience of miscarriage-- is his view of how grace operates: when the addicted person ends an addictive behavior, he or she experiences a great sense of loss and emptiness, but it is precisely in that emptiness that a spaciousness is opened for the flow of grace. It is, indeed, an extremely painful space, but one of great potency. If any "addiction" was uncovered in my experience of miscarriage, it was an addiction to my sense of control, over my life and over my body. But the experience of loss--not only of my two hoped-for children--but of that control I thought I had, was extremely painful but nevertheless opened me to depths (especially in relationships) that I had not known. I won't expound on this except to say that one "change" within me is my growing sense of compassion for the millions of women who experience the pain of miscarriage and still, even today when there is so much more knowledge and awareness, do not feel that they can speak openly about their pain. Their pain gets silently buried within them, and they never experience any true healing.
Very sadly, some are told, again by well-meaning others, that they will "surely be able to have another child," when it's very possible that, in fact, they won't. What they need most, it seems to me, is the assurance not that they will have the child for which they so long but rather the assurance that they will be loved and cared for whatever befalls them.
What my own experience has deepened within me is my conviction that our experiences of pain and emptiness can be the crucible of transformation and new life. In a deeper way, I have come to see the "truth" of my Christian faith--the truth that darkness might always be pierced by light and that death is always transformed by new life. What I have just written is a far cry from the conventional wisdom (which often calls itself "Christian") that "Everything happens for a reason" or that our experiences of pain and loss are "part of God's plan." I am sorry to say that quite a few well-meaning people spoke these trite and unhelpful words to me when I shared my experience of miscarriage. First of all, from a strictly medical standpoint, I underwent a battery of tests after my second miscarriage that revealed no identifiable reason for my losses. The tissue showed no chromosomal abnormalities. I tested negative for lupus, diabetes, thrombophilia disorders, autoimmune disorders, etc. The medical reasons for my miscarriages might forever remain a mystery to me and to my very knowledgeable and thorough medical practitioners. Second, I do not and cannot believe that there is some deeper, theological "reason" that these miscarriages "had to happen." I do not and cannot believe that there is such a thing as a "God" who has some kind of master plan in which the details of our lives are already mapped out. My own sense of "God" is that this is simply a word used to describe the mysterious reality that in spite of and even in our experiences of loss and grief, the invitation to a deeper, fuller life seems to present itself so faithfully. "I came that they might have life and might have it more abundantly...." I guess the sad truth of our existence is that so often we fail to see, ignore, or even outright reject these invitations....
I am not sure that I have said all that I wish to say on this....and perhaps there are pieces of my thinking that have been left out....but as I mentioned above, this is the first articulation of what promises to be an evolving understanding.....
