Good vs. Evil

vscocam-photo-1 — A boy and his Legos. These are Star-wars Legos and Shep will spend hours arranging the good guys and bad guys and then playact both roles. Doesn’t matter that he’s never seen the movie. It’s the sweetest.

Shepherd is in this fantasy phase where only good guys and bad guys exist. This really limits us on what books we prefer to read and what shows or movies we watch because if there is no identifiable bad guy, Shep’s not interested. It’s an interesting perspective to have on life, this constant black and white battle between good and evil.

Summer’s creeping up and to me, it’s a little like an enemy approaching. I have some intense feelings about that day in June that separated my “before life” from the “after.” As I reflect on all that’s happened in these 9 months, all that’s changed for me and Erron, I keep coming back to the question, “Would I do it all over again?” I….don’t know. Maybe? The answer, a lot of times, depends on the day. I can not make this one black and white. I would have never, never chosen this path, not for me, Erron or Shepherd. It hurt so intensely on so many levels…and as June gets closer I am reminded of just how much fear, pain and guilt is still associated with what happened. It’s much better than it used to be, but those feelings, those images… will just never fully go away. That’s the Bad. But on the other side of the same coin there is immeasurable beauty that came from such a horrible event. I have a new tangible understanding of God’s love, peace, and grace. My marriage is different, I understand myself and my husband better than I ever have before, my friendships are deeper and more honest, even this little space on the internet is part of the “Good” that was born out of something bad. And I’m left wondering about all the grey in between….

So, another thing Shep is into right now is questions. Doesn’t matter if he already knows the answer, he’ll still ask them. The harder the better. Today after Sunday school he was working me over……”Did Jesus really die? Why?? Is he still dead?”

“Yes, baby he did die…he died for us, because he loved us, so we could be with him. No! He’s not still dead! He beat death!”

“How!?” he asks me. “How did Jesus beat death?”

I had to sit on this one for a second. Finally I said, “With love baby, he beat it with love.”

And that’s it in a nutshell, I think. The bad can still hurt, it still leaves scars, and if we could change it, most of us probably would try. But as Glennen says over and over again in her Momastery blog, LOVE WINS. And I believe her. Love is the Good Guy.

A wedding

3 / 17 / 153 / 17 / 15

My little sister is getting married this summer and I’m helping her plan it because she’s a first year vet student and only has time to study and sometimes eat. It’s been fun (tiny bit stressful, but mostly fun) and it’s made me think a lot about my wedding. What I loved and what I would do differently. I think I’d keep just about everything but the dress. That dress decision was oddly hard for me to make, and I’d go a whole different direction now. Which is probably a good thing, since I’m 30 something and not 20 something…

Erron and I got married pretty young. We were 23 but Erron looks 16 in our wedding photos. We met at ages 18/19. (I tried to find an early picture however Facebook hadn’t even been born yet and I’m not up for digging through albums tonight.) We went to opposing colleges, but were introduced by a mutual friend when I went to visit her at OU. It was pretty much game-over for both of us in about 6 months. Which was crazy, because we.were.freshman. We had a looong way to go before we could make this thing official. Erron transferred to OSU sophomore year and that’s about the time my friends pretty much assumed I’d jumped off the deep end, and I basically had. In fact, if I could go back and do college again, I’d scale it back a little. Erron is amazing and all, and thankfully, we ended up together, but I think I could have split my time better…girlfriends are a BIG deal, those friendships can last a lifetime too, and I sort of forgot about that for about 4 years. (I would tell Charlotte the same thing.) If the boy is meant to be, he’ll be there in the end. I know Erron would have.

On our June wedding day, it poured. Rained all through the ceremony but by the time we made it out to the reception site we were treated to clear skies and a stunning rainbow. We took it as a good sign from the Man Upstairs. Minutes before I was about to walk down the isle, I realized my Something Borrowed had fallen off my finger. I was literally holding my hand up to show it to my dad, and discovered the ring was missing. Something Borrowed happened to be my mom’s diamond eternity band, so I was panicking as I walked through the doors. (If Dad was panicking, he kept it to himself, sweet man.) As I passed by the photographer standing in the doorway, she deftly slid her own ring onto my finger so I’d have a Something Borrowed anyway, and I spent the first half of our ceremony whispering to Erron allll about how I’d lost my mom’s diamond ring. In fact, I spent most of the ceremony talking to Erron, because I was so nervous having people staring at me, staring at him. Erron just did the nod and smile thing, he was in a tough spot. Does he listen to the minster, or his bride? Nod and smile seemed like a safe way to go. I’m sure guests were wondering “What can she possibly be talking about!? ” (PS, my mom’s ring was found in the dressing room, so this can be a funny story,..not an unfortunate, expensive one.)

Anyway, we got married. And our reception was a blast. Still one of my favorite nights ever. Weddings are so much fun in general, and I loved ours. It drives me crazy that my Texas girls weren’t there because we hadn’t met yet…I’ve been to all their weddings and I’m weirdly sad they weren’t at mine. I’d like to think they would have had a great time, but in reality they would probably have been annoyed because there was lots of sorority and fraternity serenading happening. (Remember, we had just graduated so we were still SUPER dedicated.)

Helping plan my sister’s wedding has made me nostalgic so I’m adding lots of pictures. Erron and I will have been married 8 years this June. I kind of wish I could do it all again at our 10 year, but mostly so I could pick a different dress, which is probably not a good enough reason. So, I’ll just enjoy Sister’s. I’ve seen her dress, I think she got it right the first time.

1909838_514486487962_2406_n — Rainbow in the background…I still think it was a sign, maybe even more than I did that day.

Voices in my ear

3 / 10 / 153 / 10 / 15

He doesn't nap anymore, but he needs to. I tricked him into falling asleep on the couch with me. — He doesn’t nap anymore, but he needs to. I tricked him into falling asleep on the couch with me.

I have been quiet on here lately because I’ve had trouble organizing my thoughts. Nothing major has happened, but a few little things have cropped up in my head that my mind is slowly mulling over and it’s taking me a while to figure out. This post is more of an update of sorts, as I’m still wrestling my feelings to paper on some of the bigger ideas. Also, I took some of my favorite posts from the Prayers for a Pirate Facebook page and just added them to this blog. I wanted to save them here for myself, plus I picked them based on topics I will probably write about again and again, like marriage and friendship and faith… you know, the biggies. If you are a new to this little space, you can easily catch up if you wanted to.

So, last week I enrolled Shep in swimming lessons. They haven’t started yet but I wanted to get them going before our neighborhood pool opened so we could hit the water this summer feeling confident. These lessons are legit. You go a minimum of 4 days a week for at least a month, for short 15 minute lessons. It’s a careful blend of real survival skills, like floating and trying to get to the side, that eventually blends in to swimming but taught without any fear. I’m both relieved to have Shep doing them, and completley dreading them at the same time. We got back in the pool a few weeks after leaving the hospital, and several times as a family after that before last summer ended, but I’m still rattled at the idea of serious lessons. I know the place we are using is awesome, and I know it’s good for him, (and me) but it’s just not my favorite thing. It also brought on lots of questions from Shep once I began talking to him about taking lessons. “Can I wear my life vest?” Will I have to go under? Will you be in the water with me? Will I have to go in the deep deep?”

And then more questions about the accident.

It broke my heart, and it was hard to breath as I calmly and simply answered every question from the front seat of the car, redirecting when I felt it was needed. Thankful he couldn’t see my face.

Shep also had a neuro-phychology appointment where his recall ability was tested. This was the final thing we were super worried about…Shep still struggles to name all his digits 1-10, and occasionally letters no matter what I do to help him. However, he will totally surprise me by randomly naming off all the planets completely unprompted when I didn’t even know he was learning that at Mother’s Day Out. Or, he’ll come home and tell me all sorts of facts about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. I’m finding he will remember it, if he thinks it’s cool. If he doesn’t, he just won’t. Shep is smart, but I suspect he’ll never be that kid in the class who knows all the answers because he’s supposed to. He’s not a pleaser and I kind of love that about him. Anyway, while he was being tested I was in the room convinced he was bombing half of it, but once the doctor scored his results we learned he did surprisingly well. What we are facing stems from a struggle to maintain attention, and less from an inability to recall information. The way I understood it, further into school, the ways you support a child who struggles to maintain focus long enough to actually learn certain things is different then how you would treat a student that has a difficult time recalling learned information. This was great news to us. This is a common issue, Shep is doing well so far in the 3 days he goes to MDO, regardless of if he knows all his numbers, colors or letters. There’s no Magic 8 ball here, no doctor can tell us for sure how Shep will do as school progressively gets harder, but we have a lot of hope for his success as a learner as he gets older.

We are now trying to pick the best path for him regarding the next few years for preschool and kindergarten and I’m learning everyone has an opinion. Some are professional, most of them come from love and wanting the best for little man, but I’ve got to figure out mine, and obviously Erron’s, and then we have to trust it. This is harder than it sounds. Especially for me, because I have felt a little insecure in my motherly instincts since that day I took Shep’s cautiousness for granted. I feel like I owe it to Shep to do just about anything we can possibly afford if it will help him be a successful, but I can feel my lines of reason getting a little blurry so I need to pull away from all the voices for a bit and remember that I am his mom, and regardless of my mistakes, I still know what I’m doing.