If you saw us today and thought "What kind of mother makes her toddler walk half-way around a huge lake in wet clothes and a stinky diaper?"...this would be my answer:
The kind of mother who feels terrible about the fact that her son's pants and boots are soaking wet and probably very cold.
The kind of mother who's son walked the first half of the lake dry and warm, and then disobeyed her and sat down in a stream at the exact mid-point of the hike so that she couldn't simply run him back to the car to change him.
The kind of mother who carefully dressed her children in warm clothes and boots suitable for mud stomping. The kind of mother who made sure to put a whole bag of clean clothes and diapers in the back, for just such an occasion. Only she couldn't get to her car when she needed it.
The kind of mother who never, ever properly gauges the amount of time it takes to walk nearly 3 miles with 3 boys who want to stop and look at every hole in the ground.
The kind of mother who was thinking about this because "What kind of mother...?" is a thought that often runs through her own mind, and a comment that she often sees and hears leveled at other women. Being a mom means it is incredibly easy to look bad to others, very difficult to look good to others (since there are so many ideas of "good mothering"), and easier than I'd like to forget that other mothers also have whole lives that lead up to and include the one bad moment I may see.
What kind of "What kind of mother....?" are you?
Next week comes what would have been the due date for the first baby I lost. Six months ago I was thinking "Wow, I could be holding our new baby at the Thanksgiving table! But with my history, it'll probably be closer to Christmas, darn it". After that miscarriage, I forgot about it until I turned the calendar to November, and saw where I had written BABY!!!! in big block letters at the bottom of the page. I scribbled it out.
The next time, I knew better. Just after Josiah left for Ethiopia, I found out we were expecting again. But I only marked the weeks on the calendar page I was looking at. I knew the due date was around the boy's birthdays in May, but I tried not to think about that much.
At 8 weeks I was spotting and cramping, but it went away and I decided to ignore it. At 10 weeks, the midwives didn't hear a heartbeat. I was super sick. The last time I was that sick, I was pregnant with Asrat and also had stomach parasites at the same time. Surely, being that sick meant the pregnancy was going well? At 11 weeks I was spotting again and was sent for an ultrasound. "There's no easy way to tell you this..." said the nurse, but I already knew. After three kids, I know what a heartbeat sounds like and how very wrong the silence in that room was. Not only was there no heartbeat, but there was no form of a baby either. At that stage (and there was no question about the dates), there should have been. One of my regrets from last time was not having had even a glimpse of my baby, even by fuzzy ultrasound picture, before I lost him. This time I had the chance to see, only there was no baby there to see. Only a mass, which after a miserable day at the hospital, a D&C, and various and sundry tests, it was solidly confirmed that what had been growing in my womb was a molar pregnancy.
This left me hanging in midair. I couldn't crash, because there seems to be very little information about molar pregnancy, except that sometimes conception didn't happen but cells multiplied and grew in a wrong way, or sometimes conception did happen but growth was so immediately deformed that there was no possibility of a little heart ever beginning to beat, or sometimes in the midst of all the deformity there grew a little body that simply couldn't compete with the fast-growing molar cells. Even so, that's all googled information, and who's to say what's true or not, or what happened in my case? Was there ever a baby? If there was, did it live and then die, or just never lift off the runway in the first place? It's hard to fall apart when you don't know what you should be falling apart about.
I couldn't feel relief either, or closure. Molar pregnancy carries with it a risk of serious and long-term health problems, even cancerous growth. So every week for a while, and then every month for a whole year, I will go to a lab and have my blood drawn and look at my three little children around me and remember that I'm there because the fourth left early and the very existence of the fifth is in question.
I guess, at least, I can grieve a dream smashed, and hope crushed. That will have to do for now.
Thanks to LitFuse publishing for providing this wonderful book for review.
Due to address change issues, I didn't get this book until after the official blog tour was over, but it did finally arrive, I read it eagerly, and I am so happy to let you know that Tricia Goyer, along with Mike Yorkey, have provided avid readers with yet another fabulous historical novel to enjoy.
The Swiss Courier is a well-researched and excellently written piece of historical fiction (with a little bit of romance) set in August of 1944. Hitler's Third Reich is in full gear, having overrun some nations and threatening others, including Switzerland. Young Swiss-American Gabi Mueller works for the American Office of Strategic Services, but she soon finds herself at the center of an important mission to rescue German physicist Joseph Engel, after his Jewish heritage is discoverd by the Nazi's. And so, a pastor's daughter becomes a "courier", delivering a pivotal "package" safely into the hands of the Allies. She finds herself wrestling with her own heart along the way, as she considers the excitingly employed men she works with and the humble farmer she left behind. In her adventures, Gabi Mueller consistently finds that looks can be decieving, and that is one of the main themes of this novel, which provides our heroine with a few devastating blows and several happy surprises.
By itself, the story line of The Swiss Courier is thrilling and captivating. It has great drama, suspense, and feeling. The romance is down-to-earth, realistically rendered, and not at all cheap or tawdry (no torrid love scenes, thank God!). But aside from the plot, this book gives the reader food for thought. Gabi Mueller's father is a pastor, her family is staunchly Christian, as are many of the others resisting the Nazi's in this story. Yet in many cases, successfully opposing evil requires violence on some level, and sometimes killing. People who sought to rescue those being killed by Hitler's minions were often faced with two options, both requiring them to sin (lying vs. allowing someone to be arrested and probably killed, killing a Nazi soldier in order to save a person from death vs. not committing "murder" and thus allowing an innocent to be killed). These seem like simple questions to those of us with the benefit of hindsight (6 million killed, there's no ethical dilemma, do whatever it takes to save them!), but it is important to remember that very few people at that time had any idea of the magnitude of Hitler's deadly operations, and sorting fact from rumor was difficult, especially when the facts were so horrendous that it's difficult to believe even now that humans could be capable of such evil. This moral quandry has been an issue for Christianity since very early on, and is still an issue today: Can Christians involve themselves in politics to seek change for a nation? Can Christians ever participate in violence for a greater good? When it comes to sin, are there "greater" and "lesser" evils, and if there are, how does God view the act of committing a "lesser" evil to prevent a greater one? The Swiss Courier does not seek to answer these questions on a deep theological level, but it does provide insight into the choices of some Christians facing one of the greatest evils in human history.
Readers will enjoy the pace of this novel, a few heart-stopping moments, and the faith and courage demonstrated by a simple young woman who's life has fallen under the dark shadow of Hitler's Third Reich.
Do check out the reviews on the blog tour and also listen to an interview with Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey, available HERE.
While living here with my parents, we are blessed to be within close range of three beautiful state parks. That's a lot of lakes and forests and trails to explore, and that's what we've been doing with these beautiful fall days.
Grandpa comes along on a lot of our hikes. What made this one particularly exciting is that it was a Real Forest Trail, and apparently just what the kids had been envisioning when listening to The Hobbit at bedtime. So Asrat gave us all characters from the book. He was Gandalf. Biruk was Bilbo Baggins, and the rest of us were dwarves. We tracked trolls through the forest (they leave colored rectangles painted on trees, doncha know!), we were careful not to run into any goblins, and Gebre got his stick-sword and bravely fought off the brambles that threatened to take mommy down. The most thrilling part of the trail was a very rocky portion, requiring us to leap like mountain goats from stone to stone. Gebre's comment on that: "WOW!!! THIS IS FUN!!! WHOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
This is a different park, one with a huge lake. We like to go there and bother the fishermen. "Hey, whatcha doin'? Are you catchin' fish? How do you do that? Why do you have two fishing rods?....."
This park also has yurts.
Oh look, there's me!
Sometimes, you have to laugh at the tough stuff in life just to stay sane. Other times, kids present you with something so ridiculously funny that you don't have to work up a good attitude...you have to work at getting a breath in between the giggles.
Yesterday will go down in infamy, at least in my oldest son's mind. I think my definition of successful parenting has change from raising perfect children to raising children who don't need extensive therapy when they're grown. Days like yesterday make me worry.
Yesterday was shots day. All three boys got one. I was not anticipating a happy time, by any means. However, one of my children went completely off his rocker when he saw the syringes. The oldest one, at that. The other two were more reasonably unpleased with events. They did the "boo-hoo...OOOOWWW!....Waaaah!" thing, and then were fine. Asrat, however, just went bonkers. That's the only way to describe it. He was yelling, jumping up and down in a corner, fighting, angry, and screaming bloody murder (and that was before the needle jab). I'm sure he could be heard all the way out in the waiting room. It took three of us to hold him and when it was through he yelled at the nurse. Needless to say, I was mortified.
But my reaction to this embarassed me too. After spending six years helping him learn to be brave (he tends to be fearful anyway), preparing for this shot and practicing controlling emotions, and then agonizingly long minutes of his over-the-top behavior in the exam room, I had exhausted all capacity for being sympathetic. I had zero soft fuzzy emotions for him at that moment. I hugged him tight and held his arms down, told him it would only hurt for a second. He still screamed the kind of scream a person would normally use when having his toenails pulled out slowly, one by one, with red-hot pincers.
And I laughed at him.
We may never go back to that office again. Between his outrageous behavior and my outrageous lack of parental empathy, I'm convinced that everybody in the office must have believed I was "one of those" parents who should have been denied a liscense to have kids. We certainly turned a lot of heads as we tried (and failed) to escape discreetly after the ruckus we'd just made.
I have confessed my motherly failure to as many people who would listen, hoping, I suppose for some assurance that I haven't scarred my son for life. Surprisingly, though, polls indicate that I am not the only parent who has done this sort of thing, and that most people don't seem to think I'm the most evil mother in the world because of it. Whew!
My mom asked me what I thought a Good Mother would have done in that situation. I realized I had been feeling so guilty because I had a truly silly image of a Good Mother in my head. A Good Mother would have gathered her insane child in her arms, and gazed into his eyes, and emanated calmness and peace with such force that he immediately calmed down, smiled, hopped up on the table and said "I'm OK now. Go ahead and stick me!". Ha! If that is a Good Mother, I guess there's no hope of me ever being one.
Like I said, at this point all I'm hoping for is that they don't spend their adulthoods filleting their souls (and my character) in a counselor's office.
This is a cute poem my talented dad wrote after watching Biruk obsess about being a pirate. Enjoy it and share it, but please be sure to attribute it to my dad!
October 2009
Voddie Baucham is known for his teachings on family and the church. We have enjoyed many of his sermons and appreciated his willingness to speak out boldly with Biblical truths and precepts.
I just found his sermon on racial issues this morning, and I highly recommend it. Pastor Baucham goes through the reasons people insist on separating "the races" physically and theoritically. He teaches the Biblical view of race (there is one race, the human race).
You can download and listen to it for free HERE. I encourage you to do so!