Saturday, July 30, 2011

Yipeee!!


I remember my first day of school pretty well for some reason. I had on a super cute dress, was sporting my freshly permed-chlorinated from the summer of swimming at the YMCA blonde hair, and I had my paisley notebook and school supplies ready to go! My house was not that far from school but my mom let me ride the bus anyway. The dawn had just broke across the sky when the bus showed up to get me for the first time and I was finally able to step on Mr. Scott's bus.

I still feel that excitement, now as a teacher, every year that we return to school. I am just like a kid when it comes to picking out my office/school supplies for the year. I make sure that my first day outfit is perfect and sets the tone for the year (yeah I know...I have come a long way in fashion from pink shorts!) (that's another blog soon on it's own.) I make sure that my classroom/office area is set up perfect with just the right amount of material on the walls but room enough to allow student work to be displayed. I love it.

Bigger than that excitement is the thought of a new group of students. The possibility that you might meet one of those students who changes your life forever. The chance that you might get that student that truly allows you to be a part of their transformation into young adults. They will transform you and stay with you a little bit but there's always that handful that leave their mark on you in a special way (hopefully not a creepy way that would make you the Fox5 News Headline story at 6:00.)

I am so excited for a new year. A year of partnering with other teachers as their co-teacher to help students with disabilities succeed in the regular classrooms. I am excited about a caseload full of students that I can help show their abilities and not just focus on their disabilities. A year full of learning a brand new school and becoming part of a new family of teachers. Pep rallies, football games, dress up weeks and plays.

So here's to a new year, a new start, a new excitement.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Forever God is Faithful

When you have what you want or desire does God all of a sudden become faithful?

That question, phrased a little differently, was asked to me by my pastor after our second miscarriage. In other words, when you finally do have a child, is God all of a sudden going to become a good and faithful God to you?

My answer to him was something along the lines of.... Well Shit... why did you have to go and ask me that question. (Yes I cussed to my pastor. Yes he was ok with it. No I am not going to Hell and if I am you are going to be beside me for judging. Moving on!)

The more I have thought about that question the more that I am reminded that God is faithful in day to day things just as He is faithful in the big things. There are of course a few big things in life that Brandon and I are holding out hope for but there are so many things along the way that we have been blessed with that we can't complain about what it seems like we are missing.

I don't ever want to become the person (that I see on facebook...a lot) complaining about everything that is wrong (or like members of our family for that matter.) Sure sometimes you need to bitch and gripe but save that for your best friend (sorry SB for all the ranting) or for a date night with your girlfriends or better yet just put the big girl panties on and build a bridge.

God is faithful. I am healthy, I am taken care of emotionally and physically, I have a husband to share my life with, I have a job, I am not struggling with bills or whether I can put food on the table (hell I'm having to go to weight watchers because there has been to much food on the table.)

Bottom line: He is faithful and I am blessed.

Friday, July 08, 2011

Grief

I know this probably isn't the post that you expected since I told you I would be back with one about my experience in Nicaragua. I have written that post a dozen times and never liked the way it felt. There was so much on my heart coming home from Nicaragua that it literally has taken me this long to figure out how to express it. But tonight as I thought about what our family is facing once again it all came to me.

Grief is a funny thing. Sometimes we grieve the loss of love ones that are precious to us. We grieve what we will miss about them, what we loved about them, everything that we hold dear.

Sometimes if a person dies that we have anger or issues with, we instead grieve what we never had in them. This was the case with my dad. I loved him but he wasn't always the greatest dad in the world. I think that left me to grieve the dad that I longed for him to be.

It wasn't until I graduated from Judson that I realized that we sometimes grieve the lost seasons in our lives. I still choke up thinking about being the last person to pullout of Judson the day that we graduated and hearing the "I try to say goodbye and I choke, try to walk away and I stumble," song. I grieve the lost conversations between friends, the appreciation for differences in opinions and beliefs, the sisterhood of dorm life.

Through every episode of grief in my life the stages of grief have followed me. Shock, denial, begging and then the rock bottom place of brokenness and tears.

So why did I have to come all the way to Nicaragua just to experience grief yet again? Unfortunately this episode started way before I ever left for Nicaragua. It actually started when Brandon was in Nicaragua in March on his mission trip and I found out that I was pregnant.

I never once thought that I would ever have trouble having children. My birth mother popped out 5 of us and left us to fend for ourselves. Since I am a responsible adult (most of the time), care about others, have the means to take care of a child, ya-dah-ya I just always assumed that I would be able to look at my husband and get pregnant. Instead, I have only been pregnant 2 times in the last 3 years and both of those times have resulted in miscarriages.

The last time we found out we were pregnant Brandon was in Nicaragua. I now know the exact spot he was sitting in when I Skyped him the news. Because we had had the previous miscarriage I never really allowed myself to believe that I was pregnant and stayed very cautious throughout the entire ordeal. When Brandon returned home, I started miscarrying.

I went through a few of the stages of grief. The shock in the doctor's office. The denial in the pastor's office. The begging at home in my bed pleading for God to just make it right. But instead of allowing myself to go through the remaining stages of grief I somewhere decided to shut it all down. Better to feel nothing at all than to feel the weight of that grief.

I sucked it up, charged on through, got through another end of the school year and boarded a plan to Nicaragua.

The trip was like any other mission trip. Lots of poor people, poor towns, work to be done. You grow attached the kids. We loved on them as hard as we could knowing that we would soon leave and rejoin our comforts of home. By Thursday I was ready to be home, to be cool, to be clean, to be in the arms of the one I love, so Friday was going to be a piece of cake when it came to leaving. Right? Wrong.

It was on the steps of an orphanage in Nicaragua that God chose to break me and usher me through the brokenness of the miscarriage. As I watched our group say goodbye to all the kids they had grown to love I began to weep. Somewhere in their goodbyes I found my goodbye for the child that we had lost. It's hard to lose something so small, something that never really was what it was intended to be.

I wept for the first time since the day we found out that we were miscarrying. It wasn't a loud, Oprah, ugly cry. It was a slow stream of hot tears accompanied by a painful feeling in my gut. But once the moment had passed, I realized I had done something that I had been afraid of doing all my life...I had said goodbye. I said goodbye to our child that day, along with the other faces and moments in life that I have needed to let go.

I never imagined that moment would come in a foreign country but I am so glad it did. I am so glad that I didn't check out on my emotions and become bitter with life. I am so glad that I went through that hard and painful moment because I know I can survive the pain. Does that mean that I want to go through grief ever again? No. I am no fool, I know it is a part of life. But this time I know that I am strong enough to handle whatever may come my way.

So there it is. Not the itinerary trip, picture slide show, you were probably expecting but somehow writing it has been healing and that's all that really matters.