Some of you will recognize the post below. As I have considered and prayed about how to spend my time during the 40 Day Fast, the post below kept coming to mind. It's a big world, and there's suffering everywhere you look. But this is how God leads me to pray, nearly every time I have fasted, every time I am quiet long enough to ask. Peace to you all.

my turn for the 40 Day Fast

A disclaimer: I worked for several years in Early Intervention, a nationwide program that serves children under three years old with developmental delays and disabilities. This is a description of my first meeting with one of the children I served. In the following (true) story, the foster mother was unimpressive at best. However, I know and love several amazing foster parents. I have watched children flourish under the love and nurturing of good foster homes. So please don’t read this particular character as a commentary on the foster care system. The world is already a better place because of families who have devoted their lives to displaced children. Having said that …


I remember sitting in a clean, dark living room cluttered with porcelain and picture frames. The sun is shining, it’s springtime in the South, and this is my last appointment of the day. I’m ready to finish up and be outside. I have conducted meetings like this a few hundred times, and by now am comfortable sitting in strangers’ living rooms. I don’t remember the foster mother’s face, but I remember her demeanor as cold, indifferent. I talk briefly with the little girl before I open her file. She’s two years old, with neatly braided hair and a clean pink sundress. She and her four-year-old sister have been in foster care for only a few months. They are together in the living room. I notice how quiet they are, how the little girl doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t smile. I open my notes.

I ask her foster mother the usual questions, and she answers politely without elaborating. As I’m completing another form for her to sign, she looks at the little girl. “Go on, now. Go potty.” The girl begins to cry, not with the exuberant resistance of a toddler, but in a guttural wail I have never heard in another context. The woman is undaunted. “Go.” The little girl obeys, moaning as she moves across the room and down the hallway. “Does she always cry like that?” I ask. “Only when she goes to the bathroom,” she responds. “I don’t know why. Something must have happened.”

Something must have happened.

I am not an expert on child abuse, but I know there is only one reason why baby girls are terrified of bathrooms. I try to reason with myself. Don’t respond, I think. She’s already in the system; someone already knows more about this than you do. They don’t even know you yet. There’s nothing you can do about it. Just have this woman sign the forms and you can go home. But it’s not working. I hear her at the far end of the house now, softly wailing in the bathroom. I put down my file. I can’t take it.

“Excuse me,” I say to the woman. She does not respond. I walk to the end of the hall and see the little girl, standing alone outside of the bathroom, still moaning. I pick her up. “Shh,” I said. “You’re okay. It’s okay.” She relaxes against me, resting her braids on my shoulder as I rock her. She is no more or less afraid of me than anyone else. Gradually the wails subside. Her breathing slows to the shuddering sob of a tired baby. When she is calm, I carry her back into the living room. I sit down on the couch, the little girl in my lap, talking quietly to her. She never looks at my eyes.

* 90-95% of sexual abuse is never reported.
* 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually assaulted before they turn 18.
* Among them, nearly 30% will be molested before the age of 7.
* In the United States, three million children will be sexually abused this year.
* 90% will know their assailant.
* 1 in 20 men will sexually abuse a child.
*1 in 3300 women will also become perpetrators.
* When sexual abuse is reported, only 1-4% are false accusations.
* In those instances, 75% are made by an adult, not a child.
* Thirty nine million American adults were sexually abused as children.

They are staggering statistics that we never hear.

In preparing for the 40 Day Fast, there has been a lot of talk about abundance and excess. In this, too, I see my own excess. How easily I trust others, how naively I assume the best because I have never endured the worst of humanity. How often I have sensed that something was wrong, but chosen to believe otherwise. It is so overwhelming to consider nationally that I have chosen to pray specifically for my little corner of the world. I am focusing on the greater Montgomery area of Alabama. My prayer is that a child will be heard and a child will be spared every hour that I pray. I am also praying for adults in my sphere of influence who were abused as children, that they will experience the freedom and peace that only comes from the restoring power of Christ.

In every county there are organizations devoted to catching criminals and helping children and adults heal from the devastation of sexual abuse. I have personally interacted with The Family Sunshine Center in Montgomery and the Rape and Sexual Abuse Center in Nashville. Both programs are run by gracious and compassionate people. If you have time or money to give to your local program, by all means, they need a hand. But if you want to know how to help, just look around. Three million children need us to pay attention, to ask uncomfortable questions and speak up when we think something is wrong. And 39 million adults need to talk.

Silas is starting to wake up. I love how babies, after they are born, take a nap for two weeks. He is nearing the two week mark, and has been more awake today. Let the fun begin.

We went to one of those places this morning that has all of the blow-up equipment for kids (moon walks, slides, etc). This place has a preschool hour on weekday mornings, and since we're vacating, we took Asher. He loved it - loved it so much that I don't have one single good picture to share, because he was too busy playing and our digital camera is starting to show its age. I would love to have the kind that has a zero delay when you take a picture. All of my pictures from the past six months are of the side of Asher's face, because by the time the camera works, he has moved on. Alas.

Anyway, it's been a fun week. Here are some pictures from the past few days.




Playing with his dad. Have I mentioned that Brian is perfectly suited for raising little boys? He's the biggest kid on any playground. When we lived with the Searcys, he used to make up obstacle courses at the park and get the kids to compete on who could make the best time. When we were at the church picnic, he had the kids organized and trying all kinds of stunts on the water slides. He had as much fun as Asher did this morning. And slept just as well after lunch.



Making a cake with me. We're adjusting to me not being able to pick him up. I spend a lot of time on the floor. My favorite part of making the cake was Asher's spontaneous "YUUUMMM" as he ate the batter.



Enjoying the batter.



Look at how small that baby is. You can't see it here as much. Look.



This is Silas, hanging out on the couch. Tiny. By the way, he does have other clothes. Somehow, the only two times he's worn that shirt, his picture has ended up on the blog. Go figure.

adjusting.

We all are. I have other thoughts - real thoughts, about things not related to babies - but I don't think they're going to make it here today. So for today I'll say we're all adjusting.

Silas is easy. Asher, as an infant, emphatically was NOT, though his parents were so uptight I can hardly blame him. Asher ate for an hour, cried for an hour, slept for an hour, for the first six weeks of his life. Also, we didn't know what we were doing. AT ALL. We bungled our sleep, we were anxious about the wrong things, and we put an enormous amount of mental energy into minutia that worked itself out within a few months. Round two has been better. First of all, to have a child that is easily soothed is a blessing, and makes the whole experience more rewarding. I didn't know that was possible. Second, I know more about what matters and what doesn't. Turning blue matters. Nutrition matters. Almost everything else, at this age, does not. Whew. I wish I'd known that the first time around.

Asher is adjusting. He likes to talk about his brother (called "bubba" or "i-as"), point out his eyes, rub his head, and then move on. Most of the time he ignores him. We've worked hard on a "one at a time" rule with baby equipment, and Asher seems to be getting the hang of it. Really, the bigger issue for Asher is his mom having surgery. That's the harder adjustment, and has changed our dynamic temporarily. He's accustomed to me being his primary caregiver, and while I'm doing more and more with him, it will be another month before I can put him to bed, and that has been hard. Otherwise, though, Asher is fine.

Brian and I, for our part, are almost having fun. We're only up once apiece at night, and while it's interrupted sleep, it's still sleep. I'm feeling normal (this is what I'd like to write more about soon). More like myself than I have in a few years, and that's exciting to me. I still tire pretty easily, but otherwise, I'm great. This was a nice surprise for us, so Brian's vacation time is starting to feel like an actual vacation. When we were both working, we used to take a few days off and vacate in whatever town we were living at the time. We'd go out for a nice meal, see whatever touristy things were available, go for a hike. This week has turned into a modified version of that. We went out for pancakes (on a Tuesday!), we spent a day at the lake. We spent two hours in the park. I love vacating.

So there you have it. Life in our little world is good. Don't forget to follow the 40 Day Fast bloggers, and stay tuned for substantial thoughts soon. In the meantime, happy Tuesday. Enjoy your pancakes.

housekeeping

The Forty Day Fast has started. You can follow the links along the sidebar to read each blogger's post about the cause/ organization they are highlighting. I really enjoyed doing this last year, and am glad Kat brought it back.

Also, I've updated my pictures on flickr to include Silas' birth and first week. Again, you can follow the link on the sidebar if you'd like to see what we've been up to, or you can click here. If you don't see anything else, please, band family, look at this picture. Brian wanted me to post it for you, and to entitle it Joey Bag of Donuts. I also added new pictures to the side, right over there. -> I never get over seeing Asher following his daddy around, wanting more than anything to do whatever he's doing.

As for me and my house, we all get a Sabbath today. Praise Jesus. Brian gets a Sabbath from Mr. Mom, and has gone to church and then to paddle (because he FINALLY has his own kayak, after months of shopping. The way that guy shops, I swear. He will seriously spend six months to a year looking for just the right product and just the right deal. It drives me crazy until he pays half price for something very cool, and then I'm really excited about it. Once again, his efforts paid off). Asher gets a Sabbath from transition, and has gone to spend a day in the sandbox at Grandma's house. And I get a regular old Sabbath. An actual day of rest, with just the dog and Silas at home until dinner (isn't it funny how just one baby at home is now rest? SO VERY different from the first time around). I need a day to absorb what just happened, to respond to emails and unpack from the hospital. I'm very much looking forward to my Sunday.

Enjoy.

Ok, this very thing that I am doing right now is utterly ridiculous. It is 2:21 a.m., I have a sleeping newborn, and I am on the computer. Because the house is quiet! Do you know when that happens? Not very often. Also, though I've done pretty well a few nights in a row, tonight I can't fall back asleep.

Brian and I are learning some things right now. Want to hear what they are?

1. REM sleep: we get ours at different times of the night, and we have figured out when that is. We can both function best when we sleep during strategic hours. Me, I need to sleep between 10 pm and 2 am, or I never went to sleep at all. Brian needs the early hours of the morning, or he feels like a zombie. So he stays up late and feeds Silas in the midnight hours, while I wake up in the early morning for that feeding. This way, we both get around 6 hours of important sleep, not just dozing. And a person can function on six hours. It's the 1-2 hours at a time that will make life seem interminable.

2. Iced tea is my comfort food. I can live without (much) sugar, I can pass on french fries any day. But when I was in the hospital, all I wanted to drink was iced tea. And as soon as we got home, I made tea. I have been nauseated during recovery (residual effects of pre-eclampsia, I'm told), and whenever I feel sick, I want - yep - tea. It's a product of being raised in Alabama. There's a sign in a local deli that says, "Put some more iced tea in my sippee cup!" and it would be comical if it wasn't true.

3. I understand this is not the time to be worrying about such things, and we have specifically decided not to make a permanent decision right now. But I'm not sure how many times I can sign up to have a baby surgically removed from my body. This recovery has been much easier than the first (look at that, my doctor was right. Labor and attempted delivery followed by surgery is more difficult than surgery alone), but I can't pick up Asher. Asher and I are tight, friends, and we miss one another. The hospital stay and first week of recovery have led to one anxious toddler and one guilt-ridden mother. Brian and I agree that we absolutely love babies and love being parents, and are drawn to larger (than two) families. We don't feel as though our family is complete, but the process - the whole thing, with the threat of miscarriage (or actual miscarriage), demands of pregnancy, then recovering from surgery - well, there are limits to how many times I can do that. We'll just take it one baby at a time.

Speaking of, Silas is a breeze. Also, I LOVE having a newborn the second time around. If it were possible to combine the time you have with a first baby with the level of comfort you feel with a second, being a parent of a newborn would be the best thing ever. He's a very calm baby, and he has much calmer parents than Asher did, to be sure. His favorite thing is to be curled up on my chest, which makes him like every other newborn in the world. Basically he eats and sleeps in his bouncy seat during the day, then eats and sleeps in his bassinet at night. So far so good.

Quiet time is over. Happy Saturday everyone.

just another ordinary miracle day

Have I got a story for you.

Saturday afternoon I was sitting in the front yard, feet dangling in the baby pool while Asher splashed and poured. I hadn't felt well in several days, and I had this headache that wouldn't go away. But I thought, I'm carrying one full-grown baby in my belly and another on my hip in Alabama in June. How exactly is one supposed to feel? So, you know, whatever. My mom had called earlier in the day and asked if I was in labor, because her back was hurting. The only other time her back has ever hurt like that was when her sister was in labor. I told her to my knowledge, no, I wasn't in labor, I don't know why her back was hurting. Two hours later, I'm generally miserable and basting in the baby pool when it occurs to me that maybe I should check my blood pressure. Just in case.

I leave Asher in the yard with Brian and run up to the grocery store, to find that my blood pressure is 146/93. That's high enough to check with the doctor but not high enough to be alarmed, in my mind. The pharmacist told me I'm very pregnant, and it's very hot outside, so he really didn't think there was any reason to call my doctor. But I did anyway, because I'm just that paranoid with anything that concerns my children. I expect him to tell me to put my feet up and to keep my appointment on Monday. Instead, he says, "Why don't you stick your head in the door up here in labor and delivery? It's a quiet afternoon, and we'll just make sure everything's okay." I told Brian not to come with me. It didn't make any sense to drag the whole family to the hospital for a blood pressure check. But Brian went anyway, because he is a wise wise soul. I packed Asher's overnight bag in case it took longer than I expected to get home, and I threw the camera in my purse as an afterthought as we were walking out the door. Just in case.

So we go to hospital, I pee in a cup, they draw blood, and they hook up the monitors. For those of you who haven't had a baby, labor and delivery is a three ring circus. Seriously. You're in a huge room, mostly naked, with multiple nurses in the room all the time for unspecified reasons. Your baby is monitored, your belly is monitored, and your blood pressure and heart rate are monitored, automatically. The baby is fine, of course. I'm answering intake questions ("yes, I feel safe at home, no, I do not use drugs") when a nurse walks in and asks, "Are you having any pain?" My exact words were, "I mean, I'm cramping a little, but I'm not in labor or anything. I've been in labor before, and this isn't it." The nurses in the room with children all chuckle. One of the nurses says, "Let's check you. Just in case." So Asher and Brian go for a walk around the hallway while they check to see if I've dilated (there is absolutely NO dignity in childbirth, by the way. None at all). One nurse, and then another check me, look at each other, and don't saying anything to me. "What's going on?" I ask. The nurse says, "You're 5 centimeters dilated. You're in active labor." She walks into the hallway and says to Brian, "Do you have someone to watch your child? Because you're about to have a baby."

And that's how it happened. I walked in to have my blood pressure checked, and three hours later Silas was here. Brian's mom went to the movies, and if Laura had not wandered down the aisles until she found her, she would have missed the whole thing. Also, praise JESUS for Nick and Laura, who chased Asher in the waiting room until the grandparents arrived. Praise Jesus for a lot of things, actually.

Since his ultrasound, I have been convinced that something would happen during childbirth that would put Silas' life at risk. Convinced in my soul, the way you know who you'll marry, the way you know about a good melon. I tried to ignore it for a while, and then I completely gave in to anxiety for a while. I finally decided that I would trust God to take care of us, no matter what happened, and began to ask people to pray for his delivery. I am just as convinced now as I was then that my concerns were from God, and that those prayers were answered. It turns out that I was in the early stages of pre-eclampsia, but because I checked my blood pressure on a hunch, they were able to address it before it became serious. It also turns out that I was in labor without knowing it. If I had waited until I felt labor pains (which I finally did, just before they wheeled me in to surgery), I may have seriously had that baby in the car. It ALSO turns out that my just barely 37-week baby was almost 8 lbs, and had a 14 inch head. I'm so glad we decided ahead of time to do the cesarean. All of these conditions, combined with attempting a VBAC, could have become serious quickly. But all of the things that could have gone wrong, didn't. What happened instead is I gave birth to a perfectly ordinary, healthy baby boy. Sounds like a miracle to me.

home, all of us.

I've been trying to write a post for the past 8 hours to tell you the story, but I'm still not done. Not even close. And I'm beginning to think I may never finish a sentence again. That may actually be true. I'll let you know. In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the past three days.







I'm so glad to be home.