I have a big chalkboard near my kitchen and last summer I made long list of all the fun things we were going to do from June-August. We made it though some of them, Great Wolf Lodge, snow cones…and then our summer abruptly stopped. When it stuttered back up again, 16 days later, I didn’t care about the list anymore. In fact, I think I erased it quickly after we returned home. Instead, our family retreated. Shep was terribly weak from spending so many days in bed, and my brain was fuzzy, my heart felt fragile, and my nerves were shot. We spent a lot of time on the couch. We didn’t care. We were just happy to be there together.
I remember driving out to Stillwater with the kids for a birthday party of my best friend’s oldest daughter. It was about a month and half after Shep’s release from the hospital. I thought it would be a fun outing, and didn’t think twice that Erron couldn’t come with us. In my defense, I had never experienced a ‘big kid’ birthday party before, and this one felt huge. I had totally underestimated what I was in for. Even though it was familiar, the sheer size of my friend’s house was problem number one. Add to that tons of guests and kids running everywhere. Naturally, my two kids went in opposite directions the minute they entered the door. The whole thing felt like an out of body experience. What if Char fell down the stairs, or got hurt in the bounce house full of big kids? And where the HELL is Shep? I mentally couldn’t loose track of him for longer than 30 seconds. The worst (and craziest) part was stressing over everyone’s opinion of me if I didn’t have both kids in my sights at all times. I was doomed, the set up made that impossible for any single parent. Still, “What will they think of me?” was on repeat in my head. Everyone there knew our story and I couldn’t shake it. I was a train wreck. I made it a little over an hour on polite autopilot, then as soon as I could, I said goodbye to my friend, and bolted, vowing never to go to a birthday party without back-up again. It was a humbling drive home, knowing I was obviously not as “fine” as I thought I was.
Yet here were are, halfway though another summer twelve months later and things feel so different. It’s amazing how much time is needed to really recover from a blow like we had, but on the flip side, it’s impressive how much time really has healed us. This summer has been full of wins for our little family. We watched Aunt B get married. We sleep in together, and we move slow, because we want to. We’ve done the neighborhood pool over and over again, and it’s fun every time. (I still avoid home pools, but we’ll get there.) We’ve hit up splash pads, museums and done sleepovers with the Grands. Most things I’ve done with the kids solo, just like I used to, but Erron’s been around for just as many, which means the little people are in family bliss. Shep’s had some personal wins: On the rare occasion Shep leaves the pool steps, he swims, and he loves it. And one day, early in the summer, he looked at his pedaled bike, which had been sitting in the garage for nearly a year, and decided he was ready to use it. This was huge for little man who does these things on his own timetable and cannot be rushed. The new, shiny summer memories have piled up over our broken ones from last year and the season returned itself back into my good graces.
It took a whole year, but it happened. Our Reclaim-the-Date party felt like turning a page to end a long and difficult chapter. It released me to start over this summer, feeling lighter, braver than before. Last year I couldn’t wait for summer to end, I desperately craved a season change to even begin processing what had just happened. This year, I’ll be sad to see it go.
Last weekend was our Reclaim the Date party and it was everything I hoped it would be. Lots of family, so many friends, and we threw in Pistol Pete for good measure. Everyone who came mattered to me: our families, friends who drove in from different cities and states, Shep’s swim teacher and his nurse from Tulsa…everyone there contributed in making this year move forward for us. We had a blast seeing them all in one place, meeting each other, making connections, and enjoying life.
I felt like I was at a wedding, I couldn’t move around fast enough, greeting, hugging, catching up. I was in heaven. Erron and I agreed, it was a perfect day.
The next morning, Father’s Day, and the actual one-year anniversary of Shepherd’s accident, the four of us drove down to Great Wolf Lodge and spent the rest of the weekend playing in the water. I’d like to say it was just as dreamy as our party, but reality kicked in and that actual day was a little more…complicated. Erron and I let the kids go down one of the big slides. In a last minute change-up, I went first, Erron sent down the littles one by one, then was to follow behind. As soon as I got to my feet I turned and prepared to catch Charlotte, who was “iffy” about going down in the first place. Looking up, I saw Erron gesturing from the top of the slide, clearly pointing down, but I second guessed, and thought maybe he needed me to come get a terrified Char from the top of the stairs. I moved a few feet away from the slide, and missed her. I turned around to check the slide again just in time to see a stranger helping her out of the chute; she was scared and confused, caught near the jets. My heart sank and I rushed to get to her. Erron was frustrated; without telling me, he’d foreseen a similar scenario play out in his head and wanted to be the first to go down. He also couldn’t comprehend how I miss-read his cues when they were so obvious. I was….how shall I say… I was not pleased. I felt like I’d repeated a really bad day all over again on a much smaller scale and to say I was ticked would be underselling it a bit. However, we recovered…we worked it out, moved on and enjoyed the rest of our time there. Great Wolf did not disappoint.
And that’s how it goes. Erron and I aren’t perfect and neither is life, but this weekend served its purpose. We had fun in the water, we gave thanks, and we showed June 21st who’s in charge. We survived one hell of a year, thanks to incredibly supportive families, rock star friends, and some amazing people we’d never known before this journey started. Our faith that God is as good as He says He is has been tested, and proven true. Hitting the one-year mark doesn’t magically make all hard feelings about what happened go away, our slide experience is proof of that. But it has brought lots of perspective…we are all together, we have everything to be thankful for and we believe we can handle whatever life has to offer. It’s time to just enjoy the ride.
Pistol Pete arrives on the scene. If you were 8 or under, this party just became legit.
My family meeting Megan, the fabulous swim teacher.Prayer group girls…all the babies and their crazy “look over here” mommas in the mirror.
We are 10 days away from the one year anniversary of Shepherd’s pool accident. I’m not sure how I really feel about it. June burst on the scene with Aunt B’s wedding and hasn’t seemed to stop sprinting yet…maybe I should be grateful. Less time to stew, less free moments for my mind to wander down the dark alley leading back to that day, the worst day of all our lives. We got big plans for the weekend of June 21st. As a couple and a family, Erron and I have made plans to re-claim that date for joy, re-branding it as a day to celebrate what was returned to us, the love that was shown to us, and recognizing how far we’ve come this year.
I’m at a loss to describe the emotions I feel towards hitting the one year mark. I suppose thankfulness triumphs over the other, more complicated feelings. Thank you God, our sweet Shepherd lives, and he is thriving. Thank you God, my marriage is still in-tact….thankfulness for our friends, supportive families….there so much to be grateful for. But underneath that gratefulness, the pain still smolders a bit…the anxiety still pressing in on me when I wish it would just go away forever.
In one afternoon, everything I knew about myself and my life seemed to be stripped from me, and though I’m proud of who I am today, I like who I’ve become, the simpler version of me is morned. I cannot go back, even if I wanted to.
As for Shepherd, that boy seems to be doing great despite what happened to him. He’s still bright, still astoundingly creative and captivating, still complicated. He’s still Shepherd, the one I knew before June 21st, 2014. But as parents, Erron and I continue to worry…Shepherd made his entrance into the world 2 months early which means I was born into motherhood with anxiety strapped to me like a dead-weight. It’s hard to untie the knots of worry, which have since been intertwined with threads of guilt, much more so now than before. I wrestle with this feeling, this anxiety that causes me (and Erron) to stress over Shepherd’s impossibly short attention span, his seemingly intense emotions, and his struggle to retain facts he’s not interested in. When I worry, I feel a bit like I’m cheating on faith. Like I’m failing to recognize the miracle every doctor has told us he is. I remember, trust me, I remember…but I’m human too.
Writing this post has made me realize there is a part of me that is still so, so sad Shepherd fell in the pool. I’m still heartbroken it happened. But that’s ok. It’s not unfaithful to suffer, it’s not weak to feel pain, and today I’m going to let myself be sad. Because the weekend of June 21st, I will have none of it. I will spend it rejoicing over our miracle, and the beauty that was born out of our ashes. I said it last June, and I’ll say it again…God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.
For whatever reason, my first memories of Shep’s drowning have made a resurgence these last few days. It’s unexpected and seems unprompted but still they’ve come, late at night or even in broad day. This Sunday I sat next to Erron in church listening to worship music but in my head I was walking into Shep’s hospital room for the first time. It was loud, from the oscillating ventilator that was pushing air in and out of his water logged lungs at 200 breaths per minute. It made his whole chest vibrate. The room was filled with staff. I remember a nurse walking me in then immediately guiding me to a chair just inside the doorway. Later, I learned she sat me down because my legs were giving out. I never even noticed. What I do remember is asking for a bag and dry heaving into it as I tried to wrap my head around what was happening.
The other night, when the memories wouldn’t relent, I suck out of bed and crawled into Shep’s, wrapping my arms around his breathing body while I begged God to make the movie reel stop. I’m beginning to wonder if I am going to have to write the memories all out. I wasn’t ready to take that on yet. It will wreck me.
But maybe it could heal me also? Writing about the guilt over Shep’s accident was certainly a game changer for my aching heart.
I think the shock of it all was, (and still is) the hardest part. I was just so unprepared, so oblivious to the fact that losing Shepherd could even be in the realm of possibility for my life. Yes, I had definitely felt that fear when he was born much too early….but nothing like the day he fell in. That very day, I’d sat by the pool with my parents and told them about the secondary drowning article that was circulating the internet last summer. I described the symptoms…just so we all knew. What I didn’t know, was that an hour later I’d be back at the pool’s edge, scrambling to reach for my beautiful boy as my mom struggled to drag his body to the stairs. His perfect skin blue, his unusually large eyes cloudy and fixed…staring. I was certain we were too late. That he was gone. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready.
I don’t want this blog to forever focus solely on what happened to Shepherd. I don’t want to forever focus it on it. There is so much other life to write about, the beautiful parts, and the parts that are funny, the hard, the fun, and the pretty, so much more life then those terrifying moments. And I’ve learned I love to write about all of it here. But Shepherd’s accident, his miraculous recovery, and God’s peace in the midst of our pain and panic will forever be a part of our family’s story. So… to move on without really telling it may not work for me.
But it’s going to hurt to like hell to write and I’m still not convinced this is the best medium for it. As painful as it is to write, I know it’s also hard to read.
So in the meantime, I’m going to stall a bit longer with some way more enjoyable things to write about. Things that matter to me. Like sister Charlotte turning 2 next month. And my crazy talented sister-in-law, Chelsea Ahlgrim, will grace this space with some photography tips for the totally untalented moms like me, who are only comfortable capturing little moments with an iphone. The hard stuff will always be there, but right now I’m in the mood for a little fun.
I made this my profile picture the day after Shep fell in. I love his eyes in this picture. The 3 of us were having so.much.fun. We are still having so much fun. And I’m so thankful.
There are currently five people that live in my house. Erron, myself, Shepherd, Charlotte… and Guilt. Guilt snuck in the back door when we brought Shep home. At first, he was a noticeable unwanted guest, his presence was palpable and overbearing, but he learned how to blend into the background….he wove his way into our everyday life so I forget he’s even there most of the time. I’m so used to Guilt’s presence that he’s like my shadow…but he’s poisoning the well.
Guilt sleeps in my bed, between me and Erron. He likes to whisper in my ear, pointing out how different our parenting styles are, and that Shep would never have been hurt like that on Erron’s watch. I believe Guilt. More than I believe my husband when he tells me Guilt doesn’t need to live here anymore. That he was never welcome in the first place. Now, Guilt is so comfortable with me, he’s on me like white on rice. When Shep is super emotional and has a rough day/week(s), Guilt reminds me, “This could have been prevented, you’re his mother, you failed.” When I’m with my parents and Shep melting down, I get tense, they get a little worried,and Guilt asks me , “Why can’t you get over this? Stop over analyzing! You are weak, and hurting the people you love with your grief.” Even Charlotte is not excluded. She’ll be sassifying the heck out of a situation and while I’m trying to deal with her, I hear guilt clucking at me in the background, “…You’ve dropped the ball on her, you focused so much energy on Shep that you lost sight of Charlotte.”
Just when I’m ready to tell Guilt to get the hell out of my house he pulls out his trump card, warning me,“You won’t make it without me…You’ll get too happy and relax. You will drop your guard again and you know what happened last time. You need me to keep your family safe, the next bad thing is just around the corner, stick with me… and you might just be ready for it.
Guilt is full of BS but he’s a REALLY good liar. So I panic, invite Guilt back in, give him some more room. Just to be safe. My head knows Guilt will not protect me, it will rip apart all that is good… but my heart is afraid.
Thanksgiving at my sweet parents’ house was challenging. I brought my Guilt with me so he could have a field day with the Guilt that lives with them, it’s insane. It drove me to hide in my child-hood closet, hyperventilating over what happened, about how close we were to having a Thanksgiving without Shepherd. We’ve all felt a little crazy at different times these last 5 months, but we’re not. Just guilty. Poor Erron is left out of this club, even though Shep is as much his son as he is mine. Since Erron wasn’t there when Shep fell in the water, I exclude him instead of letting him in, which means he usually has to deal with all of his hurt (and mine) on his own. His pain triggers mine, so he buries it. It’s not right and it’s not fair. But Guilt has me handcuffed, he’s calling the shots.
By writing this down, I’m hoping to drag Guilt out of my house and into the light, where I can expose him for what he really is: A liar, manipulator, a thief of peace and joy. Guilt is a dictator and he rules with fear.
It was an accident. It was nobody’s fault, but I’m a pleaser, I’m a responsible person, I feel like this guilt is my burden to bear….but that would defeat the purpose of grace, wouldn’t it?My guilt is already accounted for and discarded, if I can just hand it over. I’m trying, but it’s hard. It takes time, prayer, and more time. I set it down for a bit, then nervously pick it back up.
There is another voice. One that says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls.” Matthew 11:28
This voice is gentle, strong but loving, and it does not lie to me. I’m listening.
He crawls into our bed. Every morning. It’s my favorite thing.
Not too long after we got Shepherd home, I began to have this nagging feeling that I needed to do something. It’s hard to explain, but I felt like I had been given this incredible gift, and people had been so overwhelmingly kind and supportive towards our family that I believed I needed to pay it back somehow. I also felt (and still feel) that I became a different person than I was through this experience, so I needed to figure out who that new person was and what she wanted to do with this path she’d been set on.
Ten months ago, before we moved from Dallas, I was enrolled to go back to school. Slowly. One class at a time, while the littles were still little. Erron and I had agreed that once both kids were in school, I would return to work in some form, and I was not willing to return in the form of a teacher. I was looking at all kinds of options. Dental Hygiene, Speech Therapist, Physical Therapist Assistant. The goal was a job that helped people, but didn’t stick to me when I came home like teaching did, and paid enough to make working part time worthwhile. We moved back to Oklahoma, but even then, I was committed. I reached out to all my friends in all these professions and asked all my questions. I called schools in Oklahoma. I researched saleries. I was going to give myself a year to get our family settled and then I was going to begin looking for classes to take. I love, loooove being a full time mom. It’s my dream job. But I was excited at the idea of learning how to do something new, having some type of outlet, and let’s be honest…. I was excited to someday have enough money to buy pretty shoes whenever I wanted and maybe even go on some trips that required an airplane ticket.
Then Shepherd fell in the pool.
And now, I don’t know what to do. Erron and I feel strongly that right now, my role is here. Fully at home with our kids without any unnecessary distractions. I am so thankful that we agree on this, and that we can swing it. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I can enjoy Shepherd and Charlotte to the fullest while keeping a close eye on little man. His changes are subtle since the accident, but they are there, and I can identify them, deal with them, and seek outside help for Shep easliy because I am home, with a flexible schedule. I know there are moms out there in my position who are doing what I’m doing while also working full time jobs and they are super moms. I’d do it if I had to, but knowing me, it wouldn’t be pretty.
All that to say, I still wrestle with that feeling of needing to do something… to payback this gift, to make something out of what happened to our family. I think that’s part of why I keep writing about our journey. Because for now, it’s all I know how to do. I ‘d heard of other moms with this experience who became advocates for pool safety. I think this awesome, but I dismissed that idea immediately. Too many difficult emotions associated with that for me. Then I thought I’d found the perfect solution with CPR. I could become an instructor! I would host CPR house parties! I’d lure them in with food and wine and I’d teach every parent I know CPR!! But when I chased that idea down, I learned that most people who instruct are somehow in the medical field by day, and becoming an instructor was very hard to do if that was not your route in. (I’m so grateful for CPR though, that I’m still going to host that party in the spring, but someone else will lead it.)
My sweet counselor keeps me in check. She reminds me that A: I am not in control and it will figure itself out. And, B: I’m doing what I need to be doing right now, it’s still fresh, and my greatest role is being Shep and Char’s mom. I’ve finally realized I don’t really care what my future job is. And there’s not really a need to plan it all out, because even though we’ve been working together for 31 years, Life still hasn’t figured out how to perfectly follow my instructions. So, I give.
It’s kind of exciting to not have a plan. This is unchartered territory for me.
I’m all about being prepared. But there are some things you can’t be ready for no matter how hard you try. Plus I’m getting the sense that the master plan is not mine to write, and it’s a lot more interesting if I hand over the pen.
We spend a lot, a LOT of our time doing this. Bad guys are serious business and must be dealt with severely and frequently.Every morning, we do family yoga together….not. I have no idea what they’re doing.Little miss. I get this face alot. She’s still cute even when she’s mad.
Some of you may be surprised to know that much of my life I’ve felt like a faker. I am fairly skilled at being what the situation demands…and this is especially true in the spiritual department. Growing up it was never hard for me to make the “good” decisions. I’d of told you they were based on my Christian belief system but mostly I think I just wanted to be good. Because being good made life easy in every sense of the word. And good is what I needed to be in my family at the time. By the time high school arrived, there was enough “not good” going down in my family that I made being good my J-O-B. It was no skin off my back anyway. Want to be well liked by quality friends? Be good. What to go to college and get a job? Make good grades. Want to marry a nice boy and have a nice family? Be good, so you can land a good boy. I believed in God, sure, but I think if I’m really honest, being good was just a lot more practical. And for the most part, it wasn’t hard to do. I’m hardwired to not have to wrestle with the “Should I?” or “Shouldn’t I?” of most decisions. Making the right one was just frankly, not that hard.
I will admit this: I SO wanted the Christ thing to be real. I really did. I even convinced myself I was all in, time and time again. But I could never fully find common ground between what my heart wanted and the pestering questions of my head. There was still lot that didn’t add up for me and I couldn’t ever settle on the answers. So, I faked it. To others, but mostly to myself. Again, not that hard when you wish it was true in the first place.
When Erron and I moved to Dallas right after we got married, I was basically friendless. Literally, Kidd Kraddick and Kellie Rasberry from the morning radio show became my BFFS on the drive to work. How am I admitting to this? So sad. Anyway, thanks to one of Erron’s best friends, I met a girl, who invited me to a prayer group her girlfriends had. The girls were mostly praying for their future husbands. Well, I already had a husband, but I needed friends….so off I skipped to this ‘prayer’ thing.
Ya’ll.
I can say this, because these girls are now some of my dearest friends. They were the first ones I contacted about Shep drowning and they dropped everything and drove hours to get to me. They are amazing women. But let me tell you about that first prayer group meeting. These girls took their praying ser.i.ous.ly. I was waaaaaaay out of my depth here. There was no amount of “good” that could fake my way into this. I just watched in bewilderment as these girls poured their hearts out to their God in good faith for a long, loooooong time. I half expected amazing godly husbands to just fall out of the sky bearing engagement rings. “It’s raining men….hallelujah…”
Conversations would look like this when I got home from prayer group.
Erron: “Hey! You were gone for a while! How’d it go? What’d you do?”
Me: “Um. We prayed?”
Erron: “Really?! But you were gone for, like 2 hours!”
Me: “No…really. There was a lot of praying.”
Prayer was not my thing. I had prayed HARD in high school for change and hope in my sweet family’s difficult time. My prayers were always met with radio silence. So by college, I had quit. But now here I was returning to this ridiculous prayer marathon the next week. For whatever reason, I could not tell you. Maybe I was tired with my one-sided friendship with Kidd and Kellie. Week, after week, I watched these girls wrestle with the bible, be broken, give praise, trust a God I had deemed untrustworthy, and encourage each other. And I learned a whole different side of Christianity. These girls were fun, smart, they went dancing (obviously this solidified our friendships) and they laughed all the time. But they prayed with a faith and intensity unlike anything I’d ever seen. Slowly… I took the practice of prayer back up again… and year after year, my heart grew a little softer and my soul a little more vulnerable.
A party bus dancing photo, this may have been the night I decided we could be best friends forever.You can tell we are really close because we all have the same lipstick on. The true mark of friendship.
Fast forward 3 years… Erron and I are parents, and I had an angry case of post- partum depression after going back to work with a 6 pound preemie. It was time I took a serious look and what I really believed and what legacy I was willing to pass on to my new family. It was grueling and humbling but I had finally come to a place of acceptance between my mind and my heart. Broken and bitter, I laid down my good and picked up His grace.
I finally began to understand that praying to God didn’t always mean you got what you wanted, even if you were good and what you wanted was good too. Many times the answer was in Him walking me through the valley to the other side. But there was still a lot of faking going on, again, mostly to myself. I am the most undisciplined person in the world…there will always be room for improvement for me on the spiritual front. On anyfront, really. I yell at my husband, I don’t eat vegetables, and I suck at memorizing scripture. I struggle daily with feeling “less than” and this layer of insecurity clouds my vision so I can’t fully embrace where I’m at, or recognize how far I’ve come
But I will tell you, when I was thrust into the terror of loosing Shep it was not a conscious choice to begin praying. It was instinct. “Jesus save my son!” were the first words out of my mouth as I hovered over his blue body. I alternated between screaming at 911 and uttering “Jesus save my son.” Over. And over. And in that hospital, when I wrestled with God about handing my boy over….I didn’t feel ‘less than.’ I felt known. I had a self confidence during those 16 days that I have not experienced in my entire life. It was hell. But it was holy. And I’m not a faker anymore.
I was at a prayer retreat this weekend with those crazy girls I met years ago. How I love them now. One of the girls asked me where I thought God was when Shep fell in the pool. I felt sucker punched because I had to admit I didn’t know where He was in that moment, and if He was there, I’m pointing my finger at him. My son is the most cautious kid on the planet. He’s almost 4 and won’t go down the slide at Chick-fil-a. He knew he couldn’t swim and that his life vest wasn’t on. Shep IS NOT A DAREDEVIL. He hardly jumped in the pool and ONLY if we were there to catch him. There were no toys in the water he could have been going after. It doesn’t make sense. And while I felt God’s presence every minute after I made it to Shepherd, my friend’s question made me confront the painful truth that there is a part of me that feels like God kind of pushed my son in the water to write this story. And I’m a little bit pissed about it. While there is so much beauty and restoration in this journey, there is still a lot of pain. For me, for my husband, for my parents. Our whole family hurt. We are still healing. Why did it have to be our Shepherd? Why did it have to involve my sweet parents?
But there is a difference now. I know my God is good. The REAL kind of good. And not just because I got to keep Shep. But because good is God’s nature and I believe he can redeem the worst of circumstances. So He and I will work out our differences and our relationship will move forward. I might be feeling mad, but my relationship with God is real enough to take it. Because I am not a faker.
Prayer retreat a few years ago…before all the babies. We don’t run races now. We just drink wine, eat good food and sit down alot. Blame it on the kids.This weekend’s retreat. Love this momma.
I have a big chalkboard near my kitchen and last summer I made long list of all the fun things we were going to do from June-August. We made it though some of them, Great Wolf Lodge, snow cones…and then our summer abruptly stopped. When it stuttered back up again, 16 days later, I didn’t care about the list anymore. In fact, I think I erased it quickly after we returned home. Instead, our family retreated. Shep was terribly weak from spending so many days in bed, and my brain was fuzzy, my heart felt fragile, and my nerves were shot. We spent a lot of time on the couch. We didn’t care. We were just happy to be there together.
