SUMMER: take 2

7 / 20 / 15

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.

Weig’s reclaim the day

6 / 25 / 15

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.

Shep and Pete — Pistol Pete arrives on the scene. If you were 8 or under, this party just became legit.

Parents meeting swim teacher — My family meeting Megan, the fabulous swim teacher.

Party- babies — Prayer group girls…all the babies and their crazy “look over here” mommas in the mirror.

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.

Anticipating one year

6 / 12 / 15

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.

The comeback

1 / 14 / 156 / 29 / 15

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.