Tuesday, August 18, 2015

A Summer Eucharisteo

I woke up this morning to what has now become my 4 am alarm clock. Baby Katherine announces she is done with sleep with energetic kicks and flips, her insistence that the night is done and it is time to start the day scarily matching the fierce intensity with which her big sister will begin the day in just one short hour.

I laid in bed this morning, of all mornings, and gave thanks to God for the healthy life, the wonderful check up she (and I) received yesterday, the growing baby that is just two days short of 26 weeks. When we found out we were expecting last December, I circled this date excitedly in my calendar. August 18th. Baby #2. I back tracked through the months, writing in trimester start and end dates, filling in each week advancement. August 18th. Another summer baby. A baby that would share my brother's birthday. Or maybe RB's mom's.

For the next few weeks, our lives revolved around August 18th. Travel to that wedding? I will be 36 weeks. Nope. By the time RB is 33, he will be a father of two - even if the youngest is just two weeks old. It was always the first thing we told our friends "We are expecting! August 18th!" and the one concrete piece of information we had about the little one.

The pregnancy didn't last, though, and the baby we were planning for was lost. Our lives rerouted once again, I still couldn't erase all my writing on August 18th. It stayed in my planner, circled and in huge letters, the happy anticipation felt in the marks dreamily penciled in months before.

Just two and a half short months later, there we were. Another pink line staring back at us on stick after stick. A new date shaped in our minds. November 26th. A fall baby. The perfect way to celebrate Thanksgiving and a time of year that has become synonymous these past two years with loss and grief.

Those pink lines weren't a replacement for the baby lost. They weren't an instant bandaid over the worry and sorry and heartache from the past few months. But they represented hope. And a second chance. And grace. Grace undeserved and unearned, but welcomed and cherished. They were the start of our very own rainbow baby.

Shortly after my momma's death, a dear family friend sent me Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts. In the chaos and turmoil of returning back to Georgia, unpacking and resettling our lives in this new normal of my motherless world, I had forgotten about it. Days before the miscarriage, I found it again while looking for Christmas stamps. I read a few pages, entranced by her words and her outlook and her seeking of God in all things. Returning home from the hospital, I threw myself into, finding solace in her writing and her purpose.

"I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the hear and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks.

This thanks for the minute, this is to say the prayer of the most blessed of women about to participate in one of the most transformative events the world has ever known. Mary, which embryonic God Himself filling her womb, exalts in quiet ways 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' (Luke 1:46 KJV).'

So might I; yes, and even here.

Something always comes to fill the empty places. And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me. This, this, makes me full, and I 'magnify Him with thanksgiving' (Psalm 69.30 KJV), and God enters the world. What will a life magnify? The world's stress cracks, the grubbiness of a day, all that is wholly wrong and terribly busted? Or God?... I say thanks and I swell with Him, and I swell the world and He stirs me, joy all afoot."

So today, I give thanks. On this August 18th that isn't what we originally planned or hoped or prayed for, I give thanks. For every kick and wave of nausea calming my fears and reminding me that life is beautiful and miraculous. For the smell of the rain and the curls of B's hair as the humidity overtakes her. For the dogs getting further underfoot with each loud clap of thunder and the warmth of our home to wait out the storm. For the baby who gave us so much joy though we never met him. For the ability to draw closer to God and one another with each tear shed. For the grace to even experience today and cherish each minute of this long summer. For a God who is good, all the time. I give thanks and thanks and thanks.

“That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.”  - Ann Voskamp 


“The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.” - Ann Voskamp