The Holy Ground of sharing story

There is something sacred that happens when a person is willing to make themselves vulnerable and share their story and innermost thoughts. Such an experience happened when we had the opportunity to sit down with Rev. Christine Smith who blogs at Shepastor. With her gracious permission we are taking the opportunity with this post to link you to her two part interview with us about our book Still a Mother specifically and more generally about the issues surrounding perinatal and early infant death. Please take a moment to wander over and take a look.

Part 1 can be found here: shepastor.blogspot.com/2015/08/shepastor-highlights-part-i-from-still

Part 2 can be found here: shepastor.blogspot.com/2015/08/shepastor-highlights-part-ii-from-still

A Shadow Sisterhood

In 2003 I was a new, totally green, and yet very eager minister. And, it was, by far part of the worst year of my life.  In a year's span I had two miscarriages and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Even now, writing a simple blog post reflecting on that time causes a flood of difficult emotions and memories.

I imagined the children that should have been. Children that should have been playmates to our son, that should have filled my arms with love, that should have been with us always...Instead I was left with an emptiness that threatened to engulf my very being.

There is no easy way or fast way to grieve the death of a child. It's hard, gritty and lonely work. And, it's a grief that never ends. Certainly my grief was complicated by my cancer, and I cannot think of one without remembering the other. It is a time that profoundly changed my innermost self, the trajectory of my ministry and my relationship with God.

I felt abandoned and punished by God. In response I became angry and depressed. In time healing overcame those wounds, but they remain tender spots for me. I looked in vain for resources that would 'fit' me and to my dismay I did not find what I needed for the care of my wounded spirit.

Many of us have experienced the death of a child--we are a shadow sisterhood, linked together by sorrow, whether we know each other or not. It is for this reason Joy and I co-edited and contributed to a resource for grieving mothers and those caring for them. It is a project born from our own heartache and desire to use those experiences for ministry.

Still A Mother: Journeys through Perinatal Bereavement will be released by Judson Press in February of 2016. It is a collection of narratives, of the tender-most experiences of seven women who also happen to be clergy. Together, Joy and I are in awe of those women who have exposed their most private thoughts of their own grief journey.

Joy and I will continue to provide updates about the book from time to time. We are quite excited about this project and are hopeful it can provide some help for those who have similar, though different, experiences.

This summer we were interviewed by Rev. Christine Smith, author and creator of the blog Shepastor. For the next few weeks she will write about Still A Mother and our conversation together. http://shepastor.blogspot.com/

Fellowship of the Pool

This summer has found me with several opportunities to be at the pool with my daughter. Each experience has been just a bit different based on which pool we were at and if we were there to play or if she was there for swim lessons. One pool experience early on in the summer got me reflecting.

This particular pool experience happened while on vacation. We intentionally had a loose plan with lots of unscheduled time it was bliss. Much of this unscheduled time found us at the pool and because we were at the hotel pools I did not feel a compunction to take the tech to the pool with me. Rather it was kept in the room where it would stay nice and dry. I fully expected that by doing this our little family of three would find ourselves interacting and playing with each other very intentionally. This did happen, but so did something else. We found ourselves talking with the other people at the pool. This is not so new for my daughter; she seems to make friends wherever she goes. My husband coined a great phrase to describe her; she could charm the spots off a ladybug. So her ease in making friends in this tech free time did not surprise me. My husband and I are much more introverted and tend to like to keep to ourselves, so much to our surprise we found ourselves doing much the same thing as our daughter. We were engaging those around us.

This was particularly true in our first stop on vacation in Sedona, AZ, a slower paced more laid back town surrounded by amazing red rock formations. It was here that I began to think about our time at the pool in terms of fellowship. It is amazing what happens when you have a group of strangers gathered together and the cellphones and tablets are NOT present. People begin to talk to each other. It begins simple like what we did that day, any recommendations of places to see or things to do. Then comes the where are you from questions, oh we plan to go there some day, if do you should…. conversations. The moms around the pool eventually turn to the typical mom type conversations. And sometimes the conversations become even deeper, more vulnerable and self-revelatory.

I’m not sure what it is about being around a pool, maybe it has something to do with the very basics of swimwear and the fact that we are stripped of a lot of the trappings we use to distance ourselves from strangers. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we are more relaxed and less burdened by our daily to list. What ever it is that helps this phenomenon, there is one thing that is definite. Community is formed. Even though we knew we would not see each other again most likely, we still took the time to engage and create community. I don’t know if others even knew that was what was happening. The theologian in me certainly was aware of the sacred ground of community I was present to. In Christian circles we often talk about the fellowship of the table; perhaps there is something to be said for the fellowship of the pool.

But then I question do we really need to limit it to just the pool? Is it really the place that creates this, or is it more the intentionality of putting aside our distractions and becoming fully present to our current situation whether it is at the pool or in line at the grocery store. As I have noodled around the experience in Sedona, I have come to the conclusion that yes, this was easier to do at the pool on vacation. But I have also found myself challenged to see how I can find ways to create this on the fly fellowship in other aspects of my life. How would doing so help me to see more of what is good in those around me and find my soul nurtured by these unexpected encounters of community? It is something I seek to explore more and I would invite you on the journey as well.

Messy Grief. Blessed Grief.

Today snuck up on me unawares. Last night sitting in church I realized what day today would be and unlike other years I was not prepared for that awareness. It is July 9^th and exactly five years ago today I was sitting in the neonatologist’s office looking at a large level two sonogram screen and hearing that my second child had a high probability of not surviving to birth due to the intestines and liver having formed outside of my child’s body. Those few moments changed the trajectory of my life and the life of my family. At fourteen weeks pregnant I found myself making end-of-life decisions for my baby that I had not even met outside of sonogram pictures.

Since then this day has always been hard as has July 12^th, the day we gave our child Hope back to God. But for some reason the fact that this is the five year anniversary has hit me particularly hard. I’m not really sure why, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that this would have been a milestone year for Hope, the start of kindergarten and new adventures. So I went out to Hope’s labyrinth to walk it as I often do when grief hits. Out there I found it covered in weeds (it’s been really rainy here) and in sore need of attending to. And I realized in our busy summer life I have managed to neglect this marker of Hope’s place in our family life that was so lovingly built.

GUILT, that was the next emotion. I felt guilty for letting the weeds get so bad. I felt guilty for my thoughts of being so settled into our family of three on earth and not knowing how I would have ever managed work, co-authoring the book Still a Mother, all of my other responsibilities and finding sacred self-care time if I had two children in the home. This bereaved mother stuff is messy. There is no rhyme or reason to the emotions, but I really thought I had it figured out. Then today came and I am back in the midst of it, working through emotions I really thought I had a handle on.

So I did somethingI don’t do very often, I vulnerably put my messy stuff out there on Facebook and asked for prayers. And they came flooding in. I found my community willing to surround and enter into the mess with me again, just because I asked and it was blessed. It gave me strength to walk through my messy, emotional day since I still had to go to work.  My shift as a critical care chaplain called. I still needed to make my rounds on the maternity unit. I could not just go hide under a blanket as much as that was what all I really wanted to do. 

Then something beautiful happened. I made a patient visit. In the midst of this visit my broken and weary spirit heard the brokenness of someone else and reached out. I found words to speak that could only come out of the place of the Holy Ground of brokenness seeking wholeness. I was able to speak blessing in a way I have not done in a long time. The emotion and tear filled holy silence shared between us was soul restoring.  I left that room in awed Holy silence knowing only I will be aware of just how that encounter healed just a bit of my own messiness.

Today is still hard and the tears come unexpectedly and  I know July 12 is coming.  But I have a plan, I have a mommy/daughter date planned with C and we will explore, laugh, play and reconnect in a way that is healing for us. I think this is a very fitting way to honor Hope too, by setting aside a day to be able to just be Mommy, no strings attached and know it is ok to feel completely blessed and comfortable in being content as mommy to C on earth and Hope in heaven.

The Great Summer Spiritual Explore

I’ve been invited, no more like strongly nudged by circumstances to take a close look at how I personally view and engage worship and summer Christian Education experiences. In this experience I have found both great blessing and great discomfort. The blessing has been in the freedom I have found in doing the not expected and getting creative. The discomfort from my own awareness of my inner reaction being the classic but that’s not what’s expected/done/how I grew up doing things mantra. What quickly followed was the wave of clergy-mommy guilt.

The old that’s not what’s expected and guilt stuff came on strong just as summer hit and I realized this clergy parent was not sending her daughter to church camp or VBS.  Yes I know – OH THE SHAME OF IT! The reality was that our summer schedules were just not aligning right. Also my daughter really, REALLY wanted to go to the familiar county parks and rec day camp she attended last year and had so much fun at. I honored her choice, because it was her choice to make. We could have done a VBS, but wisdom and child choice once again prevailed and we let her choose to not go and keep the summer schedule much simpler. 

Then hit the guilt – what good clergy mom lets her kid skip all the summer Christian formation experiences available?! A wise mentor stepped in and set me straight saying so what – do it differently, do it yourself at home. What freedom in those words. And so began our journey together figuring out what Christian formation topics she wanted to explore in the living, breathing community of the world she engages on a daily basis.  VBS became not just a one week adventure, but a summer long daily exploration.

As our summer formation began our church also changed where it was meeting, the day and the time.  We have temporarily combined with another congregation of a different denomination helping them start an alternative worship. With this has come a worship experience that is different from her norm. Some things are the same and yet some things are very different to accommodate the traditions of the congregation our church is partnering with.  All of this put together, I am finding, is very good.

I have been blessed to be forced to put aside my personal and perceived public expectations and create something that has become life giving for my family.  We have become freer to say no to things that just complicate the schedule.  We have become freer to say yes to serving and mission opportunities that we are excited about. Life has slowed down enough that I feel room to sit down and read, study and discuss the bible with my child giving her space to ask her own questions and give voice to her own thoughts.

Being in a combined faith community has opened me up to experiencing new faith traditions, to helping my daughter to see that there is more than one way to experience and do worship. I am excited about what this summer holds for us spiritually and where the journey might take us.  So like Winnie the Pooh, we are going on an explore, not knowing exactly where we are headed, but trusting blessing is waiting at the end and that God is present in this entire adventure.

Coming into the Family of God

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that I was participating in a discipleship class with my daughter. Only I was not leading the class, I was present as my daughter’s mentor. Each day we had a bit of reading and discussion from the book we were using, “Baptism Ahead.” We met for five weeks with a two other kids and their parents. This has been a wonderful journey to be on with C. I am humbled to admit that it was not only C that learned on this journey. I discovered that I too had much to learn. I had to learn to step back and let her guide me and by doing so we went to some amazing unintended places off the curriculum path discussing about diversity of our world and the image of God as male and female, to name a couple. I was blessed to hear some of her deepest thoughts and wonderings. I was also blessed to rediscover some of the simpler, pure, faith filled answers that can come only from the eyes and heart of a child. More than once in this time the phrase “and a little child shall lead them” came to mind. This preparation experience was a sacred meeting of the place where my role as mother meets my experience and training as clergy.

Even at the tender age of seven it became very clear that she had a deep understanding of what it means to be disciple and so I was not surprised when she told us that she was ready to accept Christ and be baptized. I found myself appreciating this at an even deeper level having been present to some of her innermost thoughts coming to this decision. What I was not prepared for was the way my soul jumped and sang with joy as she asked me to be the one to baptize her. Our church has a tradition of doing baptisms in a local lake and parents or important mentors being in the water with the baptism candidate and our pastor. We were to get the privilege of being the ones to do the baptizing. Even knowing this would be what would happen, it was nice to have C acknowledge that she wanted me to be an integral part of this sacrament.

Today we celebrated her baptism. Before we went to the lake we sat down as a family to give C a family blessing and equipping. Her Grammie and Boppa, my parents, gave her a Bible, my husband gave her a CD of music familiar to her from worship, and I gave her a cross that had been given to my mom, who gave it to me when I was in need of a cross. We each spoke words of why we were giving her these gifts, these tools for her faith journey. I spoke about how these were more than just gifts, but our way of equipping her for her ongoing path of discipleship.

Even at a young age, she gets the importance of ritual and how important this day is to her. This was deeply evident by her words in the car to the lake. She spoke about how excited she was to gain so many brothers and sisters in Christ. To hear her connect so deeply to this gaining of family gives me pause. To have such words of welcome and belonging being spoken by her reminds me of the many ways church has been family to me. Hearing it from her, nudges me to remember that more intentionally.

Standing in the water listening to the words of baptism I remembered the day my own father, also an American Baptist Pastor, baptized me and marveled at how I was blessed to do the same for my daughter. The ritual of baptism, as we practice it, is simple in and of itself. When you add the layers of family and church tradition, it becomes more than a simple ritual, it becomes a sacrament beautiful and life giving. The baptism began with our pastor speaking the words of baptism, my daughter making her profession of faith and my husband and I laying her back into the water and bringing her up out of the waters with a glowing, smiling face to the celebratory clapping and cheers of her church family who is so important to her. And much like Mary, I cherished all of these things in my heart.

The service concluded with communion. I was blessed to serve my daughter her first communion. I was even more blessed to be the first person she served communion to. To the accompaniment of Amazing Grace I watched her serve our church family communion with her other newly baptized brothers and sisters in the faith. I got teary and my heart grew just a bit more knowing I was once again in that holy place where my motherhood runs smack into my ministry. I am left with no deep theological thoughts, only deep, deep awe at the grace that runs so fully in this place.

A Second Child Remembered

On this blog I have reflected quite a bit on being mother to my daughter, C, so much so it may seem like she is my only child.  This is not the case however.  I do have another child, one that I think about quite a bit this time of year. That child’s name is Hope. It was around mid April five years ago that I found out I was pregnant for the second time. Only a short few months later in July I found out my child was not going to live to birth. I had to say good-bye and joined the ranks of bereaved mothers.

The last five years have not always been an easy journey. I have struggled to figure out how I define myself as a mother. I struggled with the question of how many kids do you have. I have looked into the face of grief and difficult decisions. In the midst of all of this I had to keep working as a chaplain. I continued to have to put aside my own grief to minister to the grief of others. I shared the whole of my grief with only a very chosen few who I knew would not judge me and could handle the fullness of my struggle. For a long time it was a lonely place to be, and still is lonely sometimes.

One thing I have noticed over the last several years is that the issue of perinatal loss comes to the forefront about three times a year, October which is perinatal loss awareness month, Mother’s Day and occasionally around Father’s Day. But really this is not an issue that is dealt with three times a year, it is an issue dealt with daily. Daily, bereaved mothers miss their child(ren) desperately, daily women may feel like a failure because their body betrayed them through infertility or inability to carry a healthy fetus to term. Daily there are little things that remind us our little ones are no longer with us in body, only in memory.

For clergy who also hold the title of bereaved parent the journey can be even harder. Infant dedications/baptisms, “required” attendance at baby showers and so many other events that are attended to around the birth and life of children in our congregations can be reminders of little ones of our own that will not experience these things. We do truly celebrate these events for they are joyful reminders of the miracle of life. It is just that sometimes, depending on where we are in our own grief these events can have a bit of taste of the bittersweet.

In my own chaplaincy I have discovered that being a bereaved mother does give me a unique place at the side of the bereaved mother I may be ministering to. At the bedside I am equiped with a host of pastoral education but also the life education of walking this particular journey myself. “Bereaved Chaplain Mother” is a unique title  I hold and with it the comes the call to enter into this place of ministry in a way few others can. It is in this place that I have walked some very hallowed ground.

Walking through the hallowed ground of grieving Hope’s death, seeking meaning in it and ministering through it has taken me some unexpected places. This journey has had me sharing my story with nurses and nursing students to help them in gaining better understanding in caring for women going through perinatal loss. It has also found me writing. I have never really considered myself a writer, yet the need to share Hope’s story has pushed me to write through the encouragement of colleagues and family. Some of my writing will soon be published.

Writing has become another part of this journey of grief that eases with time but does not really fully go away. It is both scary and freeing to know that Hope’s and my story is being shared with the world. And perhaps adding my voice to the other voices speaking about this issue will continue to provide healing not only to myself but also to others who share this unique grief journey.