On the (belated) Feast of St. Martha

This is a belated post regarding the feast of St. Martha.  Belated, not because I forgot her feast.  Belated, because the more I contemplated what I love about St. Martha, the more I realized how much I still have to learn from her.

My first true appreciation for this saint came the day after Luke's birth, during those early morning hours after he was born and I couldn't sleep, when I picked up my Magnificat and read this:

"Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.  She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him.  Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not know that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?  Tell her to help me."  The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.  There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her."

Amazingly enough, it is from the Book of Luke (10:38-42).

I knew then that this was part of the reason God had blessed us with this child.  I knew parenting Luke would help me stay focused on that One Thing.

Parenting each of my children encourages me to fill my days with love and gentleness rather than the busyness to which I am so prone.  But with Luke being the boy that he is, I often have to slow down, or even just stop to listen, more than I need to with my other children.  God has shown me again and again in recent years, and very much in recent months, that what He most desires from me is "a gentle, quiet spirit" (1Peter 3:4).  It's not what I can do for God or for my children that matters; it's who I am for them.

But lately, my grief over losing our unborn child weighs down my heart, and shows itself through words of anger toward those I love most.  That is not what I want for Benny's legacy; I want his mark on the world to be one of gentleness, and compassion, and love.

So what do I do?

I go into Adoration and notice all of my cares appear as nothing except for one: my ache for my son.  But as my tears flow out, God pours in some more healing, some more grace.

I sit down to pray in the morning, and read words like this from my Magnificat: "O will of my Lord, be my delight and the rapture of my soul," from St. Faustina.  And also, "Hold firm and take heart. Hope in the Lord!" (Ps. 27:14)

I go to Mass; I receive our Lord; I give thanks.

I find a time to go to confession -- soon.

I visit friends instead of staying home and feeling sad.  I clean my home, knowing the peace it will bring my family -- and the opportunity for a restful Sunday.  I invite my husband's grandparents for dinner, knowing the warmth that will come from their conversation and the silliness of my children as they show off Legos and sommersaults.

I try again to share with my husband the swirl of thoughts, and fears, and emotions inside of me.  And when I fall, and get carried away by those emotions (as happens so often these days), I apologize, and try again.

I keep plugging away at the St. Martha blog post, thinking maybe it's worth sharing my struggles if anyone else ever comes across this some day and realizes they're not alone in mourning an unborn child, even long after it seems like anyone else would even suspect you're still hurting.

Like St. Martha, I want to still my heart.  To be in the Lord's presence and to rejoice in the gift that is my family and the time we have together.  I have come far since I read those words on her feast day six years ago.  And with her help, I pray I can continue farther still.

Here is a novena to St. Martha I found a while ago on many different websites; I no longer am sure which one this came from.  It is supposed to be prayed on nine consecutive Tuesday mornings, with a lit candle nearby.

"O admirable Saint Martha, I have recourse to thee and I depend entirely on thy intercession in my trials.  In thanksgiving, I promise to spread this devotion everywhere.  I humbly beg thee to console me in all my difficulties.  By the immense joy that filled thy soul when thou didst receive the Redeemer of the world at thy home in Bethany, be pleased to intercede for me and my family, in order that we may keep God in our hearts and therefore, deserve to obtain the remedy to our necessities, especially the present situation that overwhelms me.

(Mention your intentions here.)

I implore thee, O Auxiliatrice in all needsl help us to overcome our difficulties, thou who so victoriously fought the devil.  Amen.

Recite three times one Our Father, one Hail Mary, one Glory Be, and the invocation, 'St. Martha, pray for us.'"

Kindness Remembered: Luke's birth

Today my youngest son turns six.  For six years now, this day has overflowed with graces for my family.  During my pregnancy with Luke, I said countless times how perfect it would be to go into labor on my due date -- on a Thursday, when my husband only worked in the morning, when he (who is self-employed) would be able to stay with us through the weekend without missing too much work.  Perhaps that was a silly thing to worry about, but with our second child (also a son), my husband had gone back to work pretty much the day after we came home from the hospital, and I didn't want to repeat that exhausting experience.  I just wanted some time to be together as a family.

So, when I went into labor the morning of my due date (did I mention the part of my fantasy that included getting a good night's sleep and then waking up and starting labor?), I couldn't believe God was granting my wish to the letter! Nearly every woman wishes for a perfectly timed, natural labor, but who actually gets it?

The day proceeded with my husband going into work for a while, then taking me to see my midwife, who instructed us to find a mall near the hospital (which was about an hour from our home), and to spend the day walking, and encouraging labor to progress some more.  She suspected she would meet us at the birth center that evening , perhaps break my water, and we would have a new baby!

Once again, things went pretty much according to plan.  We had even been able to wait for my two sisters-in-law to arrive, one from work and one from the other side of our state.  Oh, I did have an onset of nearly paralysing fear when it came time for her to break my water. I remembered how impossibly painful everything had become at that point with my other deliveries, and I wasn't sure I wanted to voluntarily put myself in that position again.  But eventually, I did.  And around 9 o'clock that evening, we delivered a baby.  A son.

But that was where having everything match up to my perfect plan (which, honestly, I never expected to actually happen!) stopped.

Our son was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate.

I can tell you what that means now -- special feeding, surgeries, speech therapy, physical therapy, and an amazingly wonderful, sweet-hearted boy who makes you forget there was ever anything considered "wrong" with him. At the time, I had no idea what this meant for my son's future.  When I tell people about Luke's cleft now, they tend to say, "Oh, well, at least that's fixable." (Which is and isn't true.)  At the time, I had no idea whether it was, or how other parts of his body or mind may have been affected.  I knew nothing about what I was seeing and what it meant for our future -- for his future.  Suddenly a huge question mark loomed ahead of us.

All of this filled my head in the instant I first caught sight of my son through my legs in the moment after I delivered him.  At that exact same instant, something also flooded my heart.

Love.

After I saw my son, I noticed the delivery room became quiet.  We'd had no idea about Luke's cleft ahead of time, so everyone, our moms, my husband's sisters, the nurses, my midwife, they all took a collective breath.  With the next breath, my midwife leaned up to me and said, in such a compassionate voice, "Heather, your son has a cleft."

And my voice broke out in a sob that broke the silence, so unnatural in a delivery room, "I know! I don't care! I love him! I just want to hold my baby!"

And with a smile, she handed him to me, and that's just what I did.

I held that baby, and I smiled at that baby, and I cooed at that baby, and I loved that baby.

I will always count those moments among God's greatest gifts to me.  I could have been filled with fear.  I could have been filled with uncertainty. I could have been filled with anger.  Surely any of these emotions could have filled our delivery room that evening.  But instead, God's grace showered upon us and flooded us in its warmth and peace and love.  The uncertainty that was there -- for we still had no idea what this meant for our son, practically speaking -- was kept in check by the peace of knowing God was walking, and would continue to walk, with us through our son's journey.  That peace was a gift that continues to overwhelm me whenever I remember it.

There was additional heartbreak with Luke's birth.  I was not allowed to even attempt to nurse him (as it turned out, he was incapable of nursing). One difficulty with him being born in the evening is that the doctors who perhaps would have told everyone it was OK to go ahead and feed this poor child, because he wouldn't need any immediate surgery, had already gone home.  So after we'd held him, not nearly as long as we wanted to, they took our new son to the NICU and gave him fluids through an IV while he wailed and wailed at his empty tummy, his inability to suckle, and his not being held -- along with filling diapers, the only things a new baby really wants or needs.

Back in our room, my husband and I passed our mostly sleepless night thinking of names for our new son.  It's funny, the two things that happened, I think to both of us, as we first looked at our son and fell head-over-heels in love.

One, we remembered an experience I'd had in adoration just a week or so before.  I had been so afraid of how I would handle life with three children.  I grew up with one younger brother and, although I'd always had an affinity for babies and children, I'd had no real experience with them.  That afternoon, though, I felt like God spoke to me: "Thank you for being open to this life.  Everything is going to be OK."

I felt humbled and amazed by the experience, and a peace filled me.  When I got home I told my husband about it, and then I added a sidenote -- which turned out to be much more than a mere sidenote -- "But of course, God's OK can be quite different from our OK."

When we saw Luke, my husband and I both knew this was the reason God had granted us that reassurance.  He wanted us to know He would be with us, through whatever the future held for our son.

There was grace.  There was peace.

Although less profound, the other thing we knew was that neither of the boys' names we had picked out were quite right for this son.  I think there actually was a moment where we both looked at each other and said, "We need a new name!"

So that's what we did as we woke up repeatedly from our fitful sleep that night.  We thought of names. And when we finally came upon Luke Patrick, we just knew it was right.
Patrick, to honor my husband's grandfather and to invoke St. Patrick.

And Luke, because St. Luke was a doctor, and it seemed our dear son could benefit from an intercessor with experience in that area!  In reading the baby name book, we also saw Luke's Latin origins mean "Light."

And we knew, even then, that this precious, new child would bring much light to our lives.  He already had begun to fill our hearts with so much light!

And, in the six years since, he has continued to do so, every day!

I love you, Luke Patrick! Happy birthday!

Today we will head off to a nearby Lego store, since Luke is fascinated with all things Lego and Star Wars.  Then, to Red Robin for dinner, where I'm certain he will order "a hamburger with salad (really just a piece of lettuce) and a pickle!"  And I will delight in watching his joy!

Finding Joy

"Find joy everday."  Those are the words I carefully chose from etsy, and painstainkingly rubbed onto the wall above my kitchen sink just before Christmas.
Those were the words I needed to see again and again -- hence the placement in my home's highest-traffic area.
I was nearly five months pregnant with my fifth child, sixth if you count the miscarriage I'd had a year before (and I do count that child!).  The pregnancy had been so hard -- filled with a fear I'd never really known in my other pregnancies, the ones before my miscarriage; filled with headaches and struggles with blood sugar; and sometimes, even with unkindness from the most unexpected people.
Of course, there was kindness from the most unexpected people as well.  And our children's enthusiasm.  And grace, so much grace, knowing this child was a gift of JOY from the Lord.
We'd prepared a room, our hearts had long been ready.
But then, less than a week into the new year, we discovered our child had died.
I'll never forget collapsing into a heap of sobs on the shower floor that night, as it sunk it for the first time that my child, with whom I'd been carrying on one-sided conversations since late summer, could no longer hear me.
I felt so alone.  So empty.
And the next day, in the hospital delivery room, as we waited for doctors, and I fumbled with a hospital gown equipped with slits for a nursing mother (a constant reminder of what I would not be!); and I tried to relax through the contractions that were so strong and went on for so long; and I listened to the nurses remind me that there was no point in trying to have a natural labor, because there wouldn't be a happy outcome; and as I finally accepted that although I wanted to give this child a natural labor like I had done for my other children, the pain in my heart was just too great to bear this burden unassisted any longer; and as the medication slowed me down and left me tearfully pleading with my husband not to leave my side, because I feared I would stop breathing; I wasn't alone.  Grace was there as well.
There was a crucifix on the wall directly across from my bed.  Oh, the time I spent looking at it, feeling like this was my Calvary.  All the time, knowing that since He walked this way first, surely He carried me even at this most dreadful time.
I know he carried me, because somehow there was joy, even amidst our despair.
My midwife arrived in the evening, after her working hours.  She asked everyone else to leave the room, and dimmed the lights.  And when I was ready, when the contractions slowed and there was only one thing left to do, I pushed.
And then we saw him: our son.
I held him, and my husband and I marvelled at his perfection, at the way his feet and his facial features reminded us of our other two sons.  There was such an ache, for how could that perfection end in this?  But there was joy, too.  And peace.  Here was a life, and in heaven, we trust, an eternal soul.  What a gift that we were able to assist in his creation, to share in his journey, if only for such a short, short time.
The night I learned I was pregnant, I found myself on my knees before my statue of the Blessed Mother, praying that I would get to hold this child.
Well, I did.
Although it was not at all how I would have wished, I did get to hold my son.  And I will always be grateful for that gift.
During the days and weeks immediately following our son's birth -- Benedict Pio's birth -- I often turned to those words above my window as a reminder of what I must continue to do if I would honor Benny's life.
"Find joy everyday."
Sometimes I would search and search through tear-blurred eyes, but always there would be something, a smile from my four-year-old, a hug when I least expected it, simple books and cuddling on the couch.
As those weeks have turned into months, I'm sometimes less deliberate about looking for joy, and my heart gets hardened from tears kept down, and I think we all suffer.
I know real joy -- the deep, abiding kind that's with us no matter which direction life's winds blow -- is a gift.  God became man so He could live for us, die for us, and rise again, so one day we may be with Him for eternity.  With faith, we can trust He loves us, and He works all things for our good, even when the evidence around us makes it difficult to see how that could be so.
I know that's real JOY.  But without training our eyes to see His gifts in these smaller joys as well, it gets hard to hold on to that JOY.  These small gifts also are evidence of His Love; and if we keep looking, they are always there to be found.
With this blog, I hope to record the struggles, not only related to miscarriage and stillbirth, but also to the myriad other challenges that pop up day-to-day, because it helps to know we are not alone.  More importantly, however, I hope to record the joys found along the way.
I hope you join me on the journey!

On a side note ... This weekend we are finding joy from a "staycation".  We're having a campfire (outside), roasting marshmallows (outside), and sleeping in a tent in the living room. (It's just way too hot outside!)  My four-year-old thinks it's "the best day of (her) life!"  And despite the occassional scuffle from someone's feet crossing over to the wrong side of the tent, the other ones seem to agree!