A short picture journey: the first 5 weeks

Sweet early moments at the hospital with mommy and daddy

The ride home: a peanut in a carseat (Look how big those clips are! They take up her entire body)

Early help with the bilirubin, grandma’s remedy J

Strawberry sweetness

Daddy time:

Morning snapshot by Mommy:

 All smiles!

To Infinity and BEYOND!

And finally…the future blackmail pictures! 

Naming Our Daughter

What a joy to name a human being. What a responsibility! As we pondered many names for this coming little lady we did, as some other parents probably do, run it through the “junior high make-fun-of-me name list”.  We ruled out names that could have a nickname that sounds anything like a body part, or sounds that a body part could make. We ruled out names with the same first letter as our last name. Penelope Pelletier.  It doesn’t sound right, and again falls into that category of sounds a body part can make (“PP”). We ruled out ex-girlfriends’ names, and the name of those girls you just hated in high school, no matter how great the name sounds you just can’t name your child after someone you thought had a horrible attitude.  We ruled out the super popular names, because we are ornery and rebellious in our hearts ;-)  And we ruled out making up our own name out of the wild blue yonder as some feel very comfortable doing. We just don’t think that highly of our brains to do such things to other humans. Really.

We do, however, love to name based on meaning. We enjoy our children’s name telling a story. Jonan Eilam, as many remember from that post: Jonan – God is a gracious giver; Eilam- Eternal. These tell of who God was to us through Jonan’s life, giving us precious time with a precious son. And also that he is eternal, we must await heaven for our reunion and finally getting to know him.  So with our daughter we based her name on the story she arrives into this past December 2011.

Let me explain with a bit of uncomfortable transparency.

Jeff and I have had an abundance of challenges since the beginning of our marriage about 4 ½ years ago.  The beginnings offered us a diagnosis of Panic Disorder with a side of PTSD.  Time away from work and some sizeable bills as a garnish.  Long time job loss, losing our home, and both cars unexpectedly failing within months of one another for the second course. A painful separation for attention to personal matters as the main dish.  Followed by a wonderful reunion leading to the life our firstborn.  Early pregnancy scooped in some unrelated sickness dishing out a stepping back from the long-time dream of graduate school.  Months later the first fruits of our reconciliation, and my womb, would turn out to be a precious life short-lived.  That briefly sums up the fall of 2007 until winter 2011. 

In the midst of what would be a 26 month job search, without cash & certainty, with new life dying there was God in the midst. Our gracious giver offering more than we could have asked or imagined. Birthing in us life through death, again in 2011 as He did 2000 years ago. The deepest places of surrender we had known, though we thought we had let so much go already, we laid down yet one more dream.  

Light came in with the steadiness of a surgeon’s hand and at the pace of awaiting a Chicago spring. Certain but long-awaited. Surrounded by meals, resources, community, and hope God flooded us in our flood of tears.  And before the tangible answers of jobs, steadiness, and new life would come He filled us with joy. The unforeseen surprise of joy.  Deep, healing joy. A greater vision of who He is and how He loves us. Served with contentment & trust as a dessert.

What does Elsa mean? “Joy or joyful.” Jenae? “God has answered.”  So the story our little one enters into, where her story begins…”Joyfully, God has answered.” Or you could say “God has answered with joy”.

Our story will continue and it will have new wonderful things God does and new challenges, but our baby girl, Elsa Jenae, is set in her time. Set in our story. Proceeded by her brother who was graciously given us for a time, but who we must wait for eternity to meet fully.

Joyfully, God has answered.

The first three weeks or so I learned:

·        The midwife (or doc) will not just take the baby by the ears and pull her out just because they can see hair, no matter how hard you beg and cry out to God.

·        If I am not relaxed, she does not relax (it is much more difficult to feed an anxious baby)

·        It does get easier after the first two weeks.  My emotional break downs significantly lessened after she was two weeks old, I felt like I knew her a bit better.

·        It is possible to miss holding your own baby, even though you did for 22 out of 24 hours just yesterday.

·        Making up cute songs for every diaper change, bath time, or clothing change does not make her stop crying...but yet I don’t stop singing them…

·        Even though I told Jeff I was sorry we were only have one child (during and after delivery), my mind has since changed, though I was pretty darn certain it wouldn’t…

·        Possibly some of the most sincere prayers I have ever prayed have to do with bowel movements (mine, not hers…any postpartum moms? For real.)

·        I have never googled different types of poop as many times as I have these weeks…yellow, green, frothy  seedy…(hers, not mine J )

·        Being a mom-at-home does not mean you have any free time at all (I definitely thought it did prior to this new vocation). Not that I thought it was a walk in the park, but at least emptying the dishwasher I thought would be easier.

Awaiting the Baby

(This post was written December 10, 2011, I have backdated the posting date)

Eagerly, patiently, we await a baby. Honoring, we celebrate the Baby. What a magnificent time to be swollen with anticipation. Advent, the season of reflection as we await the birth of the Christ child. God made flesh. God, grown in the womb of an unwed mother, gaining life from her breast. What an unlikely story this is. An unlikely way to redeem a broken world.

Here, within the same year as laying down our firstborn, we carry our second, thankful most of all for Mary’s firstborn. Life with Christ living within us is everything our hearts are made for. Peace, joy, goodwill.  The seasonal songs have always recalled these themes, but the familiarity has oft rendered them unheard, even amidst the loudest of chorus.  “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” “Joy to the world.” What of these words, these now cultural clichés that ring throughout shopping malls as the season becomes about bustling streets rather than a bursting womb.  Odd, because from that womb birthed Peace, Joy. The antithesis of what most experience this time of year.

This season seems to incur stress, impatience, frustration. Is it just me or are many angrier folks on the road, and less likely people to look you in the eye as they try to beat you to be the next in line at the store.  Gift-giving is wonderful and can be a joyful endeavor. I don’t judge or offer alternatives of cloistering away and despising all around us. But what of the Baby, what of Peace, Joy?

As we anticipate the Baby, celebrating the birth that offers us all new birth I am acutely aware of longing this year. Not for the books I want (thought I do J ) or the blender I of which daydream (neurotically so), but for the longing of all the Baby offers us. Remembering, entering into the remembrance of the first Advent of Christ is to remind us, partially, of the second Advent of Christ. For those of us who have put Christ as Lord, believing He is at work setting all things right, making all things new, we await the fulfillment of that. Don’t we?

I am confronted, in this season, by how our challenges can lead us toward the Baby, the Christ, whose coming is to make all things new.  The strained family relationships, the broken ways I relate to those I love so much, the death of ones dearly loved that is remembered during this time, the death of those lost too soon, the injustice of children starving, civilians dying, unjust rulers.  Some sickening, others saddening. All broken by sin.

What do you long to be made new?

I don’t suggest that Christ is coming to us for a to-do list that he can check off like a celestial Santa Claus, but what if some of our deepest longings matched His? Culturally, God is often passé, or at best well-meaning but out of touch.  “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men” the angels sang that night of his birth.  The depths of this meaning we could watch unfold our whole life.  “Joy to the world.” Maybe he knows more than we think. What prayers can we offer him this season, what relationship to be healed, what wounds to bind up, what comfort to the mourning?  Out of touch would not be my first thought of our God. But deeply in touch with our pains…so much so he comes. He lives with us. He cries with us. He brings good news. He dies to rise again. And we await his second advent.  For now we live in the tension of his first advent and his second.  

My deepest pray is that this Baby brings to you all the peace and joy for which your soul longs this season. 

Big Life

As of late I have been considering why the life and death of our son was a doorway to such things that could seem, at first step, antithetical to such an experience. Healing, joy, gratitude…things like that. Seems like the wrong doorway to those types of things.  I have been asked, at random, why this wasn’t the straw on that overburdened camel that finally broke me after years of difficulty.  Legitimate question. My answer, until now, has been a simple one: God. The presence of whom transforms and fills, tirelessly loving His own.  God is real, He is not my “faith”, as in my “faith” gets me through tough times. My faith is in Him; He is alive. Real.  The Someone who journeys with me, ahead of me, in joy and in devastation. I get to share it all with God, or maybe God shares it all with me.                                                                                                     

But my answer has just been God. God helped me in this time. True. God brought healing to my bleeding soul. True. God gave me peace that Jonan lived the life he was called to live. True. All true.  But me, Kimberly who pondered why God gave us two hands at 4 yrs old, you know, instead of just one hand. (I determined one day after a visit to the bathroom it was so we could wash them, in case you were wondering as well.) That Kimberly wants to know why. Why, 8 months later, is the realness of the healing, the joy still alive and deep? Why? If you have read much of my writings you know that while I love to ponder and understand, I am also at home with mystery. The works of God will always be mysterious on some level, I am certain, so delving deeper this one I will either find more of God, or I remain in just as much wonder.  Well, by all means then, let’s forge ahead!

I am writing in the center of this revelation, not fully formed theology…yet…And these thoughts are of no instigation of my own. I am reading again this morn the book “One Thousand Gifts” and receiving from the author’s sustenance. Her thoughts strike me deep this morning, so I write.

“All wonder and worship can only grow out of smallness”.

Eek. Smallness. Not a culturally-esteemed word. Smallness. Become less, don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought. Humble yourself and the Lord will life you up. Oh, she writes “don’t I often desperately want to wriggle free of the confines of a small life?”  Yes. That’s my answer. I want to be loved and known for great things. Great creativity, great love, great thoughts, great writing (a-hem). Eek. Smallness? Confession: for years I have hated that word, despised the teachers who have taught of Christ becoming small so we could be healed, have salvation, be with Him. I love that Christ did that, for it changes my life constantly, but I don’t know why we have to focus on the smallness of it…is that really essential? Can’t we talk about how powerful He is and how He has defeated death and sin? Yeah, let’s talk about that. Not smallness, that makes me uncomfortable.

About ten years ago I was reading from John 13 of Christ as He kneeled and washed the feet of those who would betray and lie and clamor for position and as I entered into the story of Christ becoming small I had a significant epiphany: smallness does not equal meaningless, purposeless, uselessness. Smallness, akin to humility, is simply true estimate of oneself.

What does smallness offer when I look at the Milky Way smattered across an unending cosmos? What does smallness create within when I feel my daughter’s hiccups in my swell? What of smallness when we are rendered still, hemmed in by feet of white powder on a January day? Awe. Smallness ushers in awe. And “awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee”…

“All wonder and worship can only grow out of smallness.”

These moments remind me of my true place, my small place in the cosmos. Not insignificant, not useless, not meaningless, just small. And small ushers in joy. Like children are small, they do seem to ignite joy more than those of us big. We wonder at children’s joy and their love for life, for us. They are small, yet to know big. We know big, and we clamor for bigger. Joy disappeared. We demand, expect, claim our rights, sue, hate, rage, take, despise. I do as if I have a hand-written invitation. But, author writes “is it only when our lives are emptied that we’re surprised by how truly full our lives were?” Is it? When we lose something dear to us, perspective changes.  View of smallness enters, joy ushers forth. Maybe that’s why St. Peter wrote in the 5^th chapter of this first book, “Humble yourselves before God.”  Humility, seeing rightly, seeing who we truly are, that opens the doors for God’s gifts.

“And what humbles like and extravagant gift?” my author continues.

What? What can humble like that? For each of us to answer. So back to my original question: why the healing, joy, gratitude from the life and death of our son? Why so many gifts from one small life? …Maybe the increased capacity for smallness it created in us. The smallness that ushers joy. The reality, again, that God is God. Though I would clamor for control and bigness…in all the earth it would offer me the same as it offers our narcissistic world…emaciation of soul.

Accepting that within my rightful place of humility before Him I am offered great gifts directly from the Big Himself. God. And so through Jonan we were yet placed small in our world. Not in control, chosen to be humbled, and choosing humility. Big offered joy and healing to small. God, who loves and offers to all who humble themselves: Big Life.

So as I began at the beginning, the simple answer is God, the rest of the answer is the smallness it created. The short story would go something like this: Big used small life to create Big Life in those who thought too big of their life. Big graced the thought-too-big-of-their-life with small life to show them what Big really is. And they learned they were small, too. Big now brings Joy and Healing as they live their small life within true life. Big Life.

The Ghost of Grace

I feel conviction this morning as I read the book I am enjoying (One Thousand Gifts). As I consider my life I don’t feel full of grace. I feel I am missing my call here at home. I have, at times, repelled my call here at home…confused by the many voices, within-without, of what the “role” should be. So I’ve neglected role altogether for some bastardized version of freedom. Agenderized myself for the illusion of something greater. Deeper than work or home, education or educating. It’s calling I consider. Calling. What is my call and how am I living it…or not?

Today I am keenly aware of my ability to make grace a ghost in my marriage. Interacting more heinously than the offense for which I feel so dignified in condemning.  First things first: Where has been my own encounter with Grace? Why the closed Bible so many days? Why the closed heart? The pursed lips?

I have a hunch why I miss my call at home and grace becomes a ghost: I wait for another. My life contingent on someone else to go first. If I am to seek God, to know Him, I must act regardless of my perception of another. God at work within me is revealed in my simple desire to even know Him; He has clearly gone first. Is there any other impetus I need to “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”?

So I must act if I am to call Grace to life in my home.  As I decipher my call as wife and mother, this certainly is part. I don’t have to wear a “role” in order to accept a call. To live grace as a wife in my home will look specific to my own home. But if I neglect it and say, “but he…” I am still responsible for bringing death where I was called to bring life. If I am to invite life into my home, my marriage, my womb I must make space. New life cannot come without making space. And without grace, no space for life can be.  Mostly true within my soul, which is where life within my home must begin. For I am called to be a life-giver, my expanding anatomy reminds me of such a call.  There are no days I look to my husband and wonder why he is not bearing this child in my stead, there should be no day I look to him and expect him to live the call I feel in my own heart.   

So, my prayer today:

Lord, help me redeem the word “role” that my culture has bastardized and lied to me about.

Help me joyfully accept my call from You, that Grace may walk these halls. Alive.

And, Lord, place blinders on my eyes that I may see only One, and thereby truly see.

Amen.

Space Invaders: thoughts on continuing motherhood

It was just weeks after Jonan died. I called a friend who lost a baby too soon many years earlier. I was lying on my bed crying telling her I am not sure I can have another. I mean, I want to. But what if I get weird. Like, I love Jonan more? Or I have a new baby inside of my womb and I feel ambivalent about its existence...another should be in your place. You are a space invader! What if I only can love one child? What if I get stuck like some people do when someone dies? When they just cannot move on and they only think about that person and just sort of get…weird.  I felt in myself the capacity for weird at that particular moment. I mean, it would be easy to romanticize this child. He never cried all night, blew out the third diaper in one day, spilled something again, talked back to me, came home late…and he never will. He will always be my sweet little Jonan who went straight into the presence of God. Only knowing Love. That is just the reality of it.

My dear friend, being the wise woman that she truly is, assured me that I was not on the path to weird. She did assure me, however, that should I find myself on that path, that there are people in my life who would love me enough to let me know…she being one of them. Thank God for those who will truly love us! She said, if how we are walking through our grief and pain with openness and trust in the Lord is any indication of what is to come…we will heal. I will heal. I will move, appropriately, forward in my life and in my love.

I couldn’t see this place of “forward” at that moment, but the shallow breathes did became deeper as my crying waned and I leaned into her faith in me.

During those long, dark days of winter, it felt like unending months before the cycle of life would begin anew in my broken body. In reality we were pregnant again in just 7 weeks. Cleared by the doctor to “try” again, we chose to move forward. I took the test on my own, without Jeff even knowing. I don’t know why. I just needed to be alone with God this go ‘round. I had taken numerous negative tests to prove to myself that should it ever turn pink after  I wetted that stick that it was in fact a true positive. I was not up for games or false hopes. And even knowing the empty stick would reveal what I already knew during those trial negatives, it still reminded me of death each obsessive time until I blessed with those 2 precious pink lines.

But that was my moment of truth. Two pink lines. Would I just vomit because of my nerves? Would I be angry? Resentful? …Joyful? Weird? What was in there? Honestly, I was not certain. I knew how much we prayed for two lines, but sometimes we are a mystery unto ourselves, known only by God fully. And many times I had given myself over to Him again and again. “Lord, search me, know me. See if there be any offensive way in me…leading me to life everlasting.” It is easy to think we know ourselves, and I think we can grow greatly in this, but there will always be places of mystery in our own souls…and I truly didn’t know how I would respond. The rivers of my brokenness, though healing, were deep. Known by God alone. Trusted to Him alone.

I waited the recommended 2 minutes for a line to appear (or not) and there it was. Two lines, that test line was one very faint line, but I knew a “line was a line” as my google searches has assured me.  And then what, you may be wondering?

Joy! Overwhelming non-weird joy! “I have two precious babies” was my actual first conscious thought. Of all, I am so blessed. I sat on that bathroom floor overcome with wonder at a God who knows us and gives us good things. My friend was right, there was room for more. My heart, in all of its mystery, did expand. It had.  For the God who loves me, the husband I love dearly, and the baby I now carry in the same space as the other one I love forever.  What a beautiful mystery.  

You are He

I was reading Psalm 71 the other morning before work and was caught off guard. I wanted to read the entire thing but when I got to verse six I couldn’t budge…I kept reading it over and over:

“Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;
   you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.”

I know this prayer was written thousands of years before me and Jonan, and clearly this person lived through their birth to write such prayers, but it still stopped me that morning. There is a profound timelessness about Scripture when studied properly. And though I didn’t study this in depth, taking it at face value reading it over and over, it still proved timeless:

“Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;
   you are He who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.”

For me, that morning, it was as if Jonan wrote that Psalm himself. “Upon you I have leaned from before my birth.”  I remembered all the mornings I was still carrying him when I would read the Psalms to him, and the hunger I had for worship while I carried him. It was so deep. And, as a dear friend reminded me, it was as if Jonan was the one giving me these cravings. Just like I craved orange juice because I needed vitamin C, so I craved worship and God because Jonan desired His presence. As I have oft written, these are mysteries, I know. But they still are.

Continuing on in the verse is the part that hooked me like a baited fish… “you are He who took me from my mother’s womb.”  Strictly speaking, the writer was likely referring to the day of his own birth. But generally speaking, God did take Jonan from his mother’s womb. He took Jonan straight into His arms. It was not that I had never considered this before that is struck me, but the strength it conveys. There are those who, inappropriately, take children from their mother’s womb. But this is different. This verse conveys a strength, a timing, and beauty to the taking. A taking by One who’s wisdom transcends my own. Who’s power brings me fear and comfort. Who’s timing I can ultimately trust. And who’s beauty I have yet seen.  “you are He who took me from my mother’s womb.”  You are He.

Then this little-known verse concludes “My praise is continually of You.”  And isn’t that the truth? Among the many unknown things Jonan is doing right now, the one I am certain of is praise. Praising He who took Him.  And what a great thing that is as I get to join with Jonan and the angels each time I praise that One.

So as I walked along the road today to this coffee shop I am sitting in I felt the breeze and saw all the people enjoying the glorious weather….I thought of Jonan.  He will not know a beautiful day as this one. He will not be here to play with the puppies. Or taste the ice cream.  And, oh, how much I wanted to show him the trains that zoom by countless times each day just feet from our house. In all honesty, the days are getting easier; acceptance (along the stages of grief) is finding rest in the Pelletier Home. But each new season brings new things for me to miss and dreams to allow into the grave. And as I wish this verse made it all go away, it doesn’t.  But what I do have is He who took Jonan. And He who took him, well, then…He must have Him. And in there is peace, trust, and a strange sort of beauty.

You, Lord…You are He. 

Rest

Hello, my life has been full (my happier word for “busy) since we got home from California. I miss my blog, I miss writing, but I am just so darn busy…..excuse me… “full”, and without space to create. But I figuring out how to change that. In fact, I wanted to put a quote I found from Alicia Britt Chole for the blog today. This is really good. Really, really good:

In our culture we view rest as a reward for faithfulness. We plan on resting after the project is complete, after we get that promotion, after that busy season, after we retire, or after...we die?!

However, as I study rest in the bible, it seems that more than a reward for faithfulness, rest is a prerequisite for fruitfulness.

Now some may challenge that and say, "But, in the Creation account, God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh."

True.

But what was God doing before Day One?

Thoughts on Jesus' Journey

So one thing I did on my retreat was to “walk around” inside some Scriptures of Jesus on his way to Jerusalem the week before He would be murdered by the ones He loved most. A fitting exercise for this season of Lent. On recommendation from a mentor of mine I walked around Luke 18:15-17: 

" Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying,  "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.^” Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

By walking around it mean something like reading it very slowly. Picturing what it may have been like for each of these people in that culture, time in history, part of the world.  There is a crowd gathered around Jesus, usual for him, people generally couldn’t get enough (his teaching, his transformational conversations, his healing, his grace).  Here Jesus reveals his affection for children. Deep affection. He scolds those who hold them back from him. Like…”Here is this important guy, a Rabbi, someone many people want to meet and see…Can you not bring the kids along and try to get close, please? He has much more important things to do, folks. More important people to talk with. Back away.” Yet, Jesus, in his usual manner of confusing the disciples, rebukes them and says, in effect…”Hey guys, let them come to me. All that I am doing here, it belongs to them, too. In fact, not only does my Kingdom belong to these ones that you want desperately to keep away from me because apparently they are not important enough, but you actually need to become more like them in order to receive my Kingdom.”

This interaction has a poetic-ness to it, but I ask myself…how does a child receive the Kingdom of God? (important note: big different between being childlike and childish, I believe this is a call to childlikeness, not childishness).  Well, for any of us who have spent any time at all with children we certainly know they are not innocent. They would love to take that cookie when you are not looking, among their first words is usually “mine!”, and the list goes on. If it is not innocence...what is it? They more easily give and easily receive. Emotionally and otherwise. It is difficult not to feel loved by a child. And, even the more awkward of souls can give love to a child. There is something more open in their hearts that becomes more beautiful the older I get. They are also much more simply themselves. Unless by unfortunately strong influence, children are themselves more naturally. They do not  need personality and interest tests to tell them who they are. They know, and freely act like it. It is not until this begins to grow out of them as they “mature” that they often lose this freedom in order to conform to some standards of approval. Children love to learn, every opportunity is chance to play and learn something new, and this is natural for them. They are unashamed of dependence, unlike us strong and wise adults who can take care of everything ourselves. Thank you very much. And they are often more joyful.  Innocence is not what Jesus is talking about here. But there are so many other beautiful characteristics that we can seek. And I noticed that Jesus said we must receive the Kingdom like a child. Not that we should seek it like a child, or love it like a child, or understand it like a child, but receive it like a child. So back to my first example, children more easily give and receive. “So, my dear disciples who are trying to keep these little ones away from me, let them come, and learn something beautiful from them. I have much to give, receive it like they do.”

Is my heart open to receiving today? Do I come to God with my answers and plans or am I receiving from Him? When these children came to him, you know what he did, he likely put his hand on them and blessed them. He touched them, maybe gave them a little kiss on the forehead. He blessed them.

Another thing I saw when I walked around in that crowd was that Jesus did not have children of his own. He would never, in fact, have his own biological children. True, he forewent many possessions to gain this Kingdom, so he would not have had a monetary inheritance to pass along, but children were still a legacy, for the men especially in that culture. I had always just thought of Jesus has a single man living his life automatically in the calling he was given by the Father. But as I see Jesus struggling in other parts of Scripture, that he was tempted in every way, it does not seem far-fetched to consider that he loved children and maybe wanted some of his own, but knew his calling on earth was to forego that desire in order to fulfill the will of God.  This was something he likely had to offer to the Father at different times on his journey. And, in having to lay down this desire, he did not shy away from children but welcomed them close to him always. And interestingly, in this instance in Luke 18, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to Palm Sunday, on his way to the Cross…the reason he had to lay himself and his desires down through his whole life. And now, we all can have the inheritance of the Kingdom because his decisions.