Raising Char

Dear Char, this story is really about you. I pray we’ll always be close friends.

I had a flash back of Shep’s drowning a month or so ago at church. The sermon was about the royal official who sought out Jesus to save his dying son. Jesus’ first response is not exactly encouraging. So, the man presses further, desperate. “Jesus, come down before my child dies.” he pleaded. (John 4:46-50.)

In his sermon, our pastor used the words “Jesus save my son” to describe the scene. I could feel it coming when he began the story but this was the instant the memories rushed back and the movie reel behind my eyes kicked on.

Shep is laid out on the floor of my parents’ dining room, eyes half open, paramedics kneeling over his small, limp body. His skin is the wrong color. We stood on the edge of the room, watching and frozen. I want to be on the ground next to him but the logical part of my brain keeps me rooted to my spot, I know better than to interfere with their work. A hand, I think maybe a neighbor who’d heard the screams, is placed on my shoulder, I’m assuming she’s helping ensure I stay put as well.

And that phrase, “Jesus, save my son” escapes my lips, without my consent.

Over and over, I say the words. No one else is talking except for the low murmur of medical jargon from one paramedic to another. But I can’t stop. My words are quiet, but deliberate. “Jesus, save my son.” It was not my mind, but my soul crying out for mercy. My mouth is just relaying the message.

Well.

After three minutes of squirming in my seat in the church atrium, I surrendered. I shot Erron a look (he could see what was happening) then made a quick exit to the bathroom, Charlotte trailing a half step behind me. My shadow. I steered us to the nearest bathroom and made a beeline for the big stall at the end. Locked the door and put my hands over my face, no longer able to hold back the tears. Charlotte, momentarily stunned, moved to put her arms around me. “Mommy, are you feeling ok?” she asked, concerned that my crying was caused by the illness that had run though our family that week. “Yes, baby. I’m ok.” I took a breath, “That story reminded me of Shepherd’s accident and it hurts. Even though I know he’s fine, he’s great. But it still hurts sometimes.”

Char solemnly nodded.

Then she gently reminded me of the trick we had created together last spring during an unusual season of negative thoughts that plagued her daily.

She brought her small fists to her forehead, drew out the thought and broke it in two, as if it were a twig. Then she opened her hands, releasing it into the air. I silently copied her movements, moving my hands to my head and breaking my terrible memory in half. She rolled her eyes, I had obviously done it wrong, and when she giggled, I smiled. The moment was over.

But in that minute, hiding in the bathroom stall with Charlotte, I experienced what it was really like to have her as a friend. On the escape walk there, I’d knew I was going to have to explain my drama to Char once we got inside the bathroom and the tears started rolling. But I didn’t really need to, she already got it… and she empathized. Her presence in my moment of weakness was a sweet blessing. “I’m glad you were here Char.” I told her before we left the stall. “You made me feel better.” And I meant it; she was the perfect friend to have in that moment.

I’m a girls’ girl but I’m not a natural girl mom. My instinct in frustrating situations is to deflect and throw sarcasm out like a shield, or a weapon, depending on the situation. This works all right with Shep, but it does not sit well with Char. In the last few months she’s called me on it and reveled some sharp edges I need to soften in order to love her well. Raising Char provides the friction I need to wear down my rough responses. She is relentless in her fight to get what she wants, be it more tech time or another playdate. She persists, until you want to loose your mind. But she is tenderhearted, (and young) and my reaction to her has to be measured, or else she’s crushed before I even know what happened. I fight a constant undercurrent of insecurity raising Charlotte. I’m worried I’ll ruin our relationship with my quick words and lack of sensitivity, but that day in the bathroom I had a moment of clarity. I can just let her in, and the older she gets, the more opportunities I’ll have to do it. As she grows I can grow too; Charlotte is worth it to examine my responses and see some of them for what they really are, defense mechanisms and insecurities. All my kids make me a better person, but Char makes me kinder. She draws out my vulnerability and reminds me how heavy words can feel.

This last year I watched Char become a little momma to baby Shel. She tends to his needs as well as I do, it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to care for him. He lights up for her. The same persistence that makes me want to rip my hair out is the same grit that is still carrying Char through a tough school year where she has to work harder than most to learn how to read. Char will do 1000 round-offs for her coach without being asked; the girl just knows how to work hard. She is a close observer of right and wrong and considers it her duty to inform you if the scales of fairness have been tipped in any way. Almost seven, Charlotte still crawls into my bed at night, then wraps herself around me. We’ve bribed her and taken away her favorite things trying to get her to stop. It doesn’t work. She comes no matter what. Perseverance, she has in spades.

Charlotte has always been my girl, and I don’t know how I got so lucky. I only pray I can love her back as well as she loves me. It’s like being loved by a firecracker. Intense, sparkly, overwhelming, and beautiful all at once.

Happy 7th birthday Char. You are one to watch. I love you more than I can say.

The White Unicorn

11 / 12 / 1511 / 12 / 15

Abbey&Allie — Remember when we signed all our notes LYLAS? I feel like if we dug out thank you cards to one another from our wedding presents, it might still be signed the same way…..

We have been in our new town now for a little over a year and half and we are still trying to find our people. We know a lot of wonderful people, but I wouldn’t say we’ve found our PEOPLE, if that makes any sense. Our experience with Shep took us of out of play for a good 10-12 months and for a long time after I only felt known as “that mom who almost lost her son.” That was fine, because for a while, that’s how I knew myself too, but now I miss being known, and known well.

I crave the type of friendships that pick up immediately where they leave off, where judgment isn’t welcome, and any topic is up for discussion. History and shared experiences dictate the depth of many friendships and that’s just something I don’t have with other girls here yet.

However, over the last few years, I’ve discovered a new common denominator in friendships that allows them to grow and deepen at a much faster rate, but it’s scary to be so vulnerable up front. And yet I have found that friendships where faith is the foundation, where spiritual struggles and growth are consistently topics of conversation, have a completely different feel than other friendships. Sure, you can drink wine and talk about your kids schools, the best type of spray tan, or the fact that you sat in bed and watched music videos the entire time your kids napped…. but you can also talk about how you worry your faith is not always enough to help you raise a challenging child, how starting a new business can make you feel terrified and exposed, or how showing your husband the love and kindness he deserves feels like a tall order….you get the picture. The nitty gritty type of conversations. I miss everyday friendships with girls who ask the follow up questions, the “why do you think this/feel this/do whatever” type questions and then will be brave enough to tell you the truth, gently, even if it’s hard.

You know, the Meridith and Christina type friendship. Your person. Husbands are awesome, but they can’t be your Person. You can’t talk to your husband about you husband. Obviously.

On a Texas Girls’ retreat recently, this type of friendship was jokingly dubbed “The White Unicorn”…we all want to know her, but she’s super hard to find. Especially in this phase of life where tiny little people consume much of your free time and half of the meaningful conversations you start with other women are interrupted to change a diaper/stop a fight/hand out cheerios, never to be resumed again. Some of us girls realized we have one or two White Unicorns in our life, but maybe they are not in the same town, some of us had many at one time…but most of us have moved away from Dallas, and we are all starting over in our new places.

In reality all you need is one or two true friends, and I’m so thankful to have experienced what that type of relationship even looks like in the first place. It’s a high bar to set. Abbey for instance, will meet every problem I throw at her with the pronoun “we”. She says, “Oh no, Allie…that’s not gunna work, we need to fix that. We need to work something out. ” I love that about her, she’s all in, all the time.

Same with the Texas Girls, some of us only see each other once a year, at our retreat. But when we gather together to catch up on our lives, and spend time praying for one another, it’s like we never moved away, and have continued to meet every week for the last 5 years.

Erron and I are starting to realize too, that now that we’ve seen community done, and done well, it may be time to step out of our comfort zone and lead out in what that might look like. You can’t find the types of friendships I’m talking about if you aren’t willing to be that type of friend in the first place. So, here’s to taking a leap of faith…and white unicorns. I hope we all find at least one.

Journey of Sarah: The Choose Joy Project

6 / 18 / 156 / 18 / 15

In a few days we will hit the one-year mark of the day we found Shep in the pool and thought we would loose him. To mark the date, we are having ourselves a little party to re-claim that day for good. Might sound like a weird thing to do, but to me it’s necessary. If I didn’t have something fun to look forward to this weekend, something to remind me to celebrate and feel grateful, I might go dark. So we are choosing joy. Which is exactly what my friend Sarah is doing next month to mark the second anniversary of her husband, Joel’s, last day on Earth. This post is about her and her gift for choosing light over dark and finding ways to celebrate life in the midst of great sorrow.

Sarah and I have never met in person but I count her as a friend. She and I connected after we were both initiated into the “Our Child Should Not Have Lived” club in the same year. Sarah has been on a wild ride the last couple years and she writes all about it over at journeyofsarah.com. To make a long story short, before loosing Joel to cancer two years ago, he told her, with 100% certainty; they would have one more child, a girl. And they would name her Ellis. After Joel passed, Sara decided to use their last two remaining embryos from an earlier IVF treatment and was blessed with sweet baby girl Ellis. Just like Joel said it would be. But weeks after Ellis was born she contracted bacterial meningitis. Sarah and I have mutual acquaintances, and Sarah’s petition for prayer was all over my Facebook feed last December. I remember being glued to her updates, agonizing with her, begging for a miracle, clearly the only way Ellis would survive. Doctors took Ellis off her ventilator and a broken Sarah prepared herself to say goodbye to someone she loved, again. But survive Ellis did, in the most incredible way…. you can read about here, if you haven’t already heard that part of Sara’s story. It’s astounding.

Sarah has gotten really good at choosing joy instead of sorrow. In fact, she has created a whole movement out it with her Choose Joy Project, which will take place July 23^rd. It’s the perfect way to honor Joel’s life and the type of man he was. The concept is simple. On Thursday, July 23, choose to do a random act of kindness, big or small, in honor of Joel. Buy someone a meal, leave an encouraging note for a friend…you get to decide the “who” and “how.” But that’s not all. Before June ends, email Sarah at choosejoy@journeyofsarah.com to get your Choose Joy cards. (Your email info is confidential and will ONLY be used for the Choose Joy Project.) Include your card (which has a link directing recipients to Sarah’s family story) in your random act of kindness. If you can, email a picture of your random act of kindness to Sarah, or post it on your social media using the hashtag #choosejoyproject. Sarah will be posting all the pictures she receives that day on her blog. Last year Sarah had 80 families participate in the Choose Joy Project. Her goal this year is 100. The message you will be spreading is that hope and faith can shine light and joy into hard things. And let’s face it….if you don’t choose to find joy in the middle of hard, what other options are you left with? Choose joy friends, and pass it on.

Check out Sarah’s Choose Joy Project here.

The foxhole

5 / 19 / 156 / 29 / 15

About 4 days after Shepherd fell in, the day before he was weaned off sedation and given the chance to wake from his induced coma, I had a conversation with a dear friend that I still play over and over in my head. It had been a grueling four days, and together my friend and I took a break. We went outside, sat on the concrete, and spent a few minutes trying to catch our breath and digest all that had unfolded in the last several days while preparing for what we would face tomorrow when Shep, hopefully, woke up. The way I remember the conversation going was me, suggesting that something bigger, (and something good) was in control of the hellish situation we were sitting in at that present moment. My friend is a little older than me, wiser, honest, and very, very smart. My friend also has a long, complicated and somewhat confusing relationship with religion; I’m still not exactly sure where my friend stands on the whole Jesus thing. During our conversation I revealed an off-the-cuff prayer request I’d sent out to another friend a few days before Shep’s accident. In a nutshell, the prayer was that I could find ways to live out my faith in a meaningful way, so that some people I loved, people like my friend, could see it and feel it without me needing to say a word. You see, I may be able to put words on paper, but when it comes to tricky topics like Jesus, love, and redemption… I get a little tongue-tied and it never comes out the way I want. I’m always missing the point with my spoken words. So…I cautiously shared this information with my friend. I thought it was worth revealing. My friend respectfully digested this odd bit of news. My friend loves me, and it was killing my friend to watch me and my boy go through this terrifying free fall into the great unknown. After a moment, my friend replied with something I’ll never forget, “Well, everybody’s a believer in the foxhole.” I burst into laughter because I couldn’t have thought of a more appropriate response. My friend is clever and kind, neither accepting nor disregarding what I was suggesting. My friend’s reply was also honest, and frankly, true. Most everyone IS a believer in the foxhole. I laughed because my friend was right, when your whole world is on the line, chances are, you’re going to start sending up some prayers to whoever might be up there if that’s what it takes to have a shot at keeping your world in tact. But what I think my friend was really saying is, “Allie, if believing is what you think it will take, then right now, that’s what I am believing too.”

Our prayers were answered, God graciously allowed me to walk out my faith in front of my friend on a path that led to a happy ending. But what if the answer had been no? What if instead of sparing Shepherd, God had said, “No, sweet Allie. I love you, but no. This is not how I will redeem your story.”

I will never fully know what my response would have been. Yes, I know how I responded in the moment in which “NO” was very nearly our reality, but I cannot say with ANY certainty at all, what walking out my faith would have looked like days, months or even years after crossing an un-crossable line.

However, I do know this… If the God I believe in is real, and the story He tells is true, then God is big, and just as importantly, He’s good. And His story is a love story. A confusing, brutal, beautiful love story. It’s a story full of grace and mercy as much as it’s full of power. So let’s say I had to cross that line… and it tore at my heart and soul, so I was left cut so deep I wasn’t sure I would ever breathe again. In the middle of that anguish, I can only hope a God big enough to hold the past, present and future, the mysterious ways of the universe and all things in it…would be big enough to hold me. Broken. Desperate. Defeated by what’s in front of me. Can people pick up and live life after a blow like that? Yes. They do, and some can do it alone. But what if….you didn’t have to? What if you didn’t have to crouch, alone, dodging bullets or taking hits in the foxhole, and you didn’t have to be alone when you crawled your way out of the dirt, and you didn’t have to be alone when you finally decided you were brave enough to start walking upright again? What if you didn’t have to be alone at all?

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16

So far, life has not been something I want to tough-out alone. I’m not good at quoting scripture, I never have it memorized, and if you’re like my friend, scripture may not carry a ton of weight. Yet, if I could have shared any verse with my friend that day on the concrete, I would have shared this one: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Trouble, we know it’s coming. For all of us. But take heart friend, there’s still a reason to be cautiously optimistic.

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.

Abbey 8/20/14

8 / 20 / 145 / 24 / 15

DISCLAIMER: in this RARE gem of a photo we both just had our hair and makeup professionally done. You will usually find us not showered, wearing our kid's food, and in yoga pants. — DISCLAIMER: in this RARE gem of a photo we both just had our hair and makeup professionally done. You will usually find us not showered, wearing our kid’s food, and in yoga pants.

I’d like you to meet Abbey. She was the other face behind this page, (Facebook’s Prayers for a Pirate) in fact she created it with the help of a few others. She wrote on here when I couldn’t. Abbey has been my best friend since middle school. We went to college together and lived in the same room(s) for nearly 4 years straight. Our parents live next door. Though she now lives in Stillwater, she was across the street at her parents’ house when the ambulance showed up. She ran over. She was the last face I looked at as we pulled out of our drive way.

Don’t be thrown off by her beauty, this girl is gold through and through. Abbey has 4 kids (yes, 4) and she shipped them back to her sweet mother-in-law’s for I don’t even remember how many days so she could take care of me, my daughter and my parents. She stayed in town, and made herself free and available to whatever we needed. She was the liaison between me and countless people offering to help. She was at the hospital all the time. She still calls every few days, to check on me.

I love this lady fiercely. I’d like you to meet her just so you can see the face of someone who has been so vital to me going through this. She knows and empathizes with every joyful and fearful thought I’ve had regarding this, and let’s be honest, any other big life event…ever. She went into the dark with me, and now she gently reminds me of the truth, encourages me, and is always down for a giggle when you just have to throw your hands up at it all.