Kiss Your Miracle

Last night I was down on the beach with Adam, Sky, my mom, Aunt Mary, and the two dogs. Everything was muted; the sunset was pale, the water was calm, and the air was still. Lately the emphasis in my family has been on my dad, remembering who he was and all of his funny and best attributes. But last night as I watched my mom and aunt walking along the water’s edge with Sky, I couldn’t help but think about the quality women in my family.

Mary and my mom love the beach and they love to pick up smooth, pretty stones along the shoreline. But because Sky was with them yesterday, they moved slowly down the edge of the water, helping her put rocks of her own into a plastic bag. Later she wanted to throw half of them into the water, and they cheered for her as she tossed them all of three inches ahead of her little tennis shoes. “When you have a toddler,” my mom told me the other day, “the best thing you can do is slow down and go at their pace.” Watching her interact with Sky is a constant reminder to me that finishing my to-do list shouldn’t always be my top priority.

My mom and Mary both have seven kids, and the older I get the more amazing that fact becomes. My first pregnancy was a breeze. I walked several miles every day, right up until I gave birth a week overdue. This time around things are still fairly easy, but I feel more tired. It’s awkward trying to hold my sixteen month old with my belly so big and round. I have varicose veins and my back is sore a lot. I don’t mean to complain – I’m honestly thrilled to be pregnant. I just want to emphasize the fact that this is my second baby and most of the time I feel worn out. My mom and my aunt did this seven times. And not just the pregnancy part, but the sleepless-nights-newborn stage and the temper-tantrum-two-year-old stage and even the rebellious teenager stage. Seven times. And what I remember most about them from my childhood was all the laughing they did, and the way they had coffee breaks just about every afternoon while all of us kids ran wild.

Lately I can’t seem to get over how much I’ve been given when it comes to family. Now that I’m a mother myself, I’m starting to realize how much I have to live up to. I can only hope that God will give me the ability to follow the pattern set before me as I raise my children.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.” – from Luke 12: 48

Since the beginning of October, life has been a bit chaotic, especially since we’ve been away from home. Space is limited at my Mom’s house here in Michigan, so Adam, Skylar, and I have been sharing one room. At this point we’re fairly used to having Sky sleep near us at night, but at 1am the other morning, something woke her up. And instead of going back to sleep as usual, she jumped to her feet and pitifully reached her arms out to us. We were lying in bed just a few feet away from her, and once she realized we were right there she refused to stop crying. After a while we broke down and took her in the bed with us, but that only excited her; instead of sleeping she started crawling all over us. Back to her bed she went, but now she was more awake than ever.

By 4am we were all exhausted, but morning was still hours away. We were tempted to leave her in her bed to cry it out, but it seemed unfair with my brothers and sisters sleeping in the bedrooms all around us. “Let’s go on the other side of the bed on the floor,” Adam finally said. “She won’t be able to see us there and she’ll probably go back to sleep.” As soon as we crawled onto the floor, Sky got quiet. We lay there completely still for a few minutes, afraid to breathe. We didn’t dare climb back in the bed, but slowly and carefully, we reached up to grab a couple pillows. The comforter though, was a bigger problem. It’s made of down and it’s crinkly, and pulling it off the bed would have made a lot of noise. There was a small blanket in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t big enough for both Adam and me. “You take it,” he said quickly. “Okay… but what are you going to use?” Hanging on the closet door was a damp bath towel. “Really?” I said as Adam pulled it over himself. “You’re going to sleep under a wet towel?” That’s just what he did. We huddled together in a tiny space on the floor next to a beautiful, vacant, king-sized bed.

The next morning when dawn came and Sky was up and ready to start the day, I looked down at my round belly and thought, “Well, I guess Sky is doing her part to get us ready to have a newborn again.” And then I thought about how quickly my life’s theme switched from the emptiness of infertility to the exhaustion of new motherhood. Sometimes being a parent is hard. But when I look at my mom and brothers and sisters, and the way everyone has pulled so tightly together through the difficulty of my dad’s cancer and death, I’m amazed by the simple fact that I get to be part of a family – the family of my childhood, but not just that family. The one I married into as well. And the church family where I belong. And now, the family I have with Adam and Skylar and a new baby on the way.

Families can be messy and irritating and flawed in many ways, but when I stop and try to imagine my life without them, I can’t see them as anything but a blessing. In my experience, raising a family is much more difficult that growing up in one. I get grumpy when I’m tired and feel completely overwhelmed at least once a day. But when I get beyond those temporary things, I remember that God has given me what I always wanted. My life is all about family. Every day I get the opportunity to take some of the blessings passed on to me from my parents and hand them down to my own children. It’s a wonderful way to spend a life, no matter how tiring it gets.

If I had to summarize the last month of my life with one word, it’d probably be the title of my last post – grief. But today, God broke into the middle of our sadness again and gave us a beautiful night. After a day of working around the house we went down to the beach for the sunset. My brother Hans and his wife Katy picked up McDonald’s for everyone, and Nelson and Adam built a fire. My mom and Aunt Mary brought the dogs, who always entertain the babies, and Sky ate her very first Happy Meal. A true American, she loved it. A little later she had her first toasted marshmallow, which she also loved, until she realized her fingers were completely stuck together and there was nothing she could do about it. Before Sky’s meltdown though, I did manage to stop and take a breath and acknowledge how nice it was to be down on the beach in the still, fall air, having a sunset picnic with my family.

My family is changing. My dad isn’t with us anymore, and soon Adam and I will have a son. The thing about infertility that many people don’t know is that it affects every other area of your life. If we were still dealing with it, the pain of my dad’s death would be magnified. That sense of change – of saying goodbye and of welcoming too – would only be a sense of loss. The time we’ve spent remembering my dad would be shaded by the fear that my husband might never get to experience fatherhood himself. For me, infertility quietly emphasized every other pain I faced.

Recently I’ve had friends express their sympathy to me that my dad died during this pregnancy. And it is tragic to think about how my father will never get to meet his next grandchild. But at the same time, nothing in my life so far has shown me God’s extravagance the way being pregnant has. I’ve never prayed for anything more than I prayed to become a mother, and God chose to answer those prayers with miracle babies. No matter how sad I am to have lost my dad, I can’t ignore God’s sweetness in my life. I still have my mom, and my brothers and sisters. I have my Adam and my Skylar. And even as I write this, I feel my baby boy – another miraculous answer to prayer – kicking and stretching, each day growing a bit closer to entering the world, my family, my arms.

On Saturday I went to my father’s funeral. Six weeks before his death when he was first diagnosed with cancer, I was gripped with an overwhelming fear that it would kill him. And with each new test he had, those fears only intensified. My parents heard terrifying new words and phrases at each appointment – stage four, pancreatic, metastasized, terminal. At first it didn’t seem real; my father was still putting in full work weeks as a Chicago lawyer. Could it really be true? Was cancer really spreading quietly beneath his skin, throughout his internal organs, his blood, even his bone marrow?

Soon it wasn’t quiet anymore. The cancer attacked my dad’s body in every way and we saw new results of it each day. Within a month he was too weak to stand without help. He completed radiation, which the doctors only said might buy him a little time, and the day he finished treatment, hospice took over.

Over the past few days surrounding his visitation and funeral, my family – my new family, the one without my father – has spent hours talking, wondering, praying, and crying. In the words of a family friend, my dad’s cancer was horrific. We are all shaken by what happened to him, and how helpless we were to do anything to stop it.

At the same time, God feels closer than ever. He may not have physically healed my dad here on earth, but he has answered many of our prayers over the last few weeks. Before the cancer took over my dad’s mind, we had the chance to talk and hug him, to make amends for any regrets. We got to thank him for working so hard for his family. Though he battled intense pain during his last week, he spent his last twenty-four hours sleeping peacefully. We were all together in the house when he died and my mom was holding his hand, something she’d prayed for many times. The funeral details came together quickly, and even the largest room didn’t hold enough chairs for everyone who came to honor our dad. And though it’s November, we ended up standing by his grave under a sunny sky, no coats needed. God held our hands through each phase of the day.

When we finally got home that night, I felt spent. More so than I can ever remember in my life. Just walking upstairs took all of my energy. I guess sadness that heavy is bound to weigh you down. The Bible says that people are like flowers in a field. We’re beautiful, but only for a little while. We don’t like to think about that, but on the day of a funeral, it can’t be avoided. We have to acknowledge that life is temporary and one day we won’t be here anymore. “Your father was told he wouldn’t live very long. He was virtually given a date on the calendar for his death,” my Mom said as we drove to the funeral. “But we all have a date too. It’s just written in invisible ink.” It’s a difficult fact to consider, especially when I look at Adam and Skylar and others I can’t imagine living without.

From where I stand right now, death is awful. I hate knowing that my sisters won’t have my dad around to walk them down the aisle at their weddings. I hate that my mom is now a widow. But being a Christian means trusting the Bible over my own emotions, and it says that on earth we only see things dimly. It also says that God can bring renewal to our spirits even as our bodies are wasting away. So for now, I’ll hold onto those promises and trust that God knows what He’s doing. And while I’m still living in the shadows where life is hard to understand, I’ll do everything I can to love the family God’s given me and appreciate each day I have with them.

“How frail is humanity! How short is life…” – Job 14:1-2a

On Tuesday night, November 3^rd, my father left his life on earth and headed into eternity. It happened around 8pm, just as our family was getting ready to eat dinner. My mom, all seven children, two spouses, two grandchildren, and my Aunt Mary were in the house. A few minutes before, we’d stood in the living room a few feet away from my dad’s hospital bed while my mom read aloud from a sweet card that had arrived in the mail that afternoon. Then we prayed for the food and went into the kitchen to dish up. My aunt and mom went back into my dad’s room for a bit.

A few minutes later, my aunt called us into my dad’s room. My father lay perfectly still in his bed, and my mom was draped across his chest. Her hands were on his neck, her face against his. His cheeks were wet from her tears and kisses as she whispered to him, “It’s all done now and you can rest. You did wonderfully. We love you so much. I love you.” We all stood together and cried quietly.

Then my mom turned to us and began to remind us of heaven, and once again, of God’s blessing on our family. She pointed out how peacefully my dad had died – there was no struggle, no last bit of pain. He simply exhaled for the last time. We were all at the house together, and my mom was able to hold his hand as he passed, just as she’d wanted. We all nodded and kept crying.

We know we are blessed. We don’t grieve like those without hope; we understand that we’ll all be together again in heaven someday. But for now, we are sad. My dad isn’t with us anymore and our family feels very different without him. It seems like any minute he should walk through the door with the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm and a bag of pastries from his favorite bakery, asking us about our plans for the day and sharing a little random trivia the way he always did. But that won’t happen, and knowing it makes us all ache.

I’m glad Jesus cried over his friend Lazarus’s death, even though he knew there was a happy ending in the works. It lets me know that crying for my dad is okay too. As we head into his funeral this weekend, there will be smiles as we remember his life and many, many more tears.

I can’t end this post without mentioning my mom’s blog. I know plenty of you are already reading it, but in case you’ve been missing out, here is a link to her site, www.gettingthroughthis.com. She has faithfully updated her blog every day for the past month, even though some nights she didn’t get around to it until 2am. We encouraged her many times to take a night off and go to bed early, but she never has. “Linnea, it’s an act of worship for me,” she said of her writing process the other night. I am thankful she’s let me and so many other readers in on her worship. Over and over her words have shaped my perspective so that I’ve ended up looking for God’s nearness during this time instead of losing myself in the sadness of my dad’s disease. Growing up, I had plenty of problems with my mom and dad. But lately when it comes to my parents, I find myself unable to thank God enough for putting me in this particular family.