Organizing and light-living.
In: A Quiet Spirit, Celebrating Our Little One, Family Snapshots
I’ve been keeping my mind and hands busy this week – organizing. After basically 14 months of a seemingly never ending cycle of physical fatigue that looked something like: morning sickness/recovery over and over, my poor house has been in a state of “barely surviving”. When we walk into the pantry to pull out a loaf of bread, and a pack of batteries, along with a stack of paper plates (that I had forgotten we even had) falls on our heads – we wonder how we found the loaf of bread to begin with.
Oh, it’s semi-clean, but definitely my cleaning and organizing from day to day has been in a very mere maintenance mode. Enough to keep the bugs out and my kids clothes clean. Needing something mentally and physically exhausting, but not so challenging I couldn’t manage in my barely postpartum state, this seemed to be the trick. I’ve decided to put my eyeballs on every square inch of floor space (and the cubic space above it) and make it spotless. I’m about a third of the way through now. We’ll see if I finish before the end of the month.
I found a few new solutions to some storage problems I’ve been facing for five years.
And I even snapped photos to show you. Because they just might make it to pinterest.
Oh, wait. I got the ideas from there. Nevermind.
But that’ll have to wait for later in the week.
Because I have more Kyle stuff to talk about. I know, I promised “not-so-teary-eyed” stuff. And this shouldn’t be. I just had to share, though.
This has been an interesting week – kind of a week between intense grief and grasping at normal. We started school again this week (Chloe, K5). Only another two weeks before we get to celebrate our “100 Day” in school. I can’t believe we’ve come this far after the year we’ve had. Chloe read several words out of our Bible this week – she was so excited about that! Now her children’s Bible has almost no interest to her. She’s doing so well. It seems she has wisdom and peace beyond her years – and has been such a comfort to us. Even during the Memorial service last weekend, she drew pictures on the programs we had printed for the guests. If you look closely, you’ll see tears that she drew on our faces. She said these were “happy tears” though – because we “got to hold Kyle, and you were so happy you got to do that”.
Kami, though, has been struggling a bit more emotionally, it seems. She doesn’t want to go anywhere without one of us with her. To which we are happy to oblige. I’ll take all the kid-loving I can take right now. She talks about her brother all the time. She wants to go to Heaven. She asks “Is the flower place (the cemetery) Heaven?”
Our family is a one-car family, and she knows that if she wants to go anywhere to do something, it has to be on one of our 2 car days a week. Sometimes she forgets what days are which, so she always runs to the window to check and see if our car is in the driveway (which means it’s a car day for us) or if it’s gone (which means dad has it at work).
She checked outside the other day for the car, and saw it, and said, “Mommy! I just wanna take our red car and drive over seven mountains so I can get all the way up to Heaven and see Baby Kyle. Let’s go right now, please.”
Then there was the time that she said, tearfully, “Mommy, I didn’t get to give Baby Kyle a goodbye kiss and a hug.”
She was looking through my Bible at church this morning and flipped to the back where the various maps of the Holy Land in ancient times are located. She pointed to the full color images and said, “Mommy? Is this Heaven? I think it is. See the blue? That’s just the sky. And Heaven is behind it.”
Like Kami, Chris and I are trying to piece it all together in our minds, too. Sure, we’re surviving, kinda like our house. But we’ve never been closer. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But we’re also still hurting in our own ways.
Remember those lights I talked about awhile ago? We’re still getting them. And some of them are really bright.
We’re hearing from strangers all over who are being impacted by our son’s life. Really? I had no idea 20 ounces of baby could make such a difference. But he is. And every time we hear from another dear hurting mother, or an OB nurse in another part of the country who is sharing our story with her patients, or we get another card or gift from a reader in the mail…it just lifts our spirits so much. (And thank you cards are coming – I promise!)
But the biggest light this week was from my doctor – the really awesome one who gave us all those ultrasounds whenever we wanted. We stopped by to see him Friday, just to check in and take him some pumpkin muffins. (Which, were awesome, btw. Those will be in a new post this week too. Seriously – no crumbs, because they were so moist, easy, delicious, not-to-sweet – maybe they’ll make it on pinterest…)
Anyway, he watched our video and wanted to show it to some of his doctor friends at a big meeting he has next month. Basically, he’s noticing that all of his patients who choose to carry their difficult and rather “doomed” pregnancies to their natural progression seem to fare immensely better emotionally afterwards then those who choose to terminate. (Note: I’m not saying here that our choice was one that was easy to make, or even the one that is always right in a situation like ours. It was just how God led us after several days of agonizing and praying over our options. For many women, this choice isn’t presented as an option.) He wants to get other doctors on board with him to make the choice to carry the pregnancy to term an option to their grieving mothers. And he wants to use Kyle’s story to help him do that?
I thought about the babies that my sweet Kyle’s memorial fund might help save in the next 32 months in South America. And those that perhaps now mothers might choose to save – who, even in light of yet another “incompatible with life” diagnosis, might have the same or greater impact our son is having. And the mothers who have lost before me, but have finally allowed themselves to grieve, and in turn, heal. Because our son, here on earth at least, wasn’t.
And when I think about those things, my day gets a bit brighter. My God seems a bit bigger. And my heart grows a bit warmer and stronger.
“Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.”
~ Ecclesiastes 11:5
3 comments
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Denise Stroud
January 14, 2013 at 1:26 pm
Kim, I love your posts. I love the way you are just so “real.” When it hurts, you say so. But when God gives you those glimmers of light and hope, it is such a blessing to read about them. Btw…you know I would love to one day (when the time comes) hear the story about your donor milk and how you went about finding a source for it. You will become one of those lights for another mother and baby.
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Patricia Holmes
January 14, 2013 at 11:46 am
I am enjoy reading your posts. I know you all have gone through a rough time, but it is a blessing to see you still glorifying God! I also love the organizing tips!
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