My Freakish Love of Music

I love music! I always have ever since I was a kid. I am one of those people that have to have music playing all the time. I married a man that has a beautiful voice and can play the guitar (and drums). When I first met him he was in a band that was really good. He let me borrow their tape when we were first dating. I listened to it over and over (errr.. .. umm. . .. I still do). I love to go on road trips just so that we can spend hours in the car together listening to CD after CD and I can hear my husband's dreamy voice (so very sexy).

The really weird part is that music is incredibly associative for me. Certain CD's remind me of very specific times or events in my life. This can be both good and bad. Here is a few examples:

• Sixpence None the Richer, "The Fatherless and the Widow" reminds me of my first trip to Hawaii with my parents.
• Vigilantes of Love (several albums but especially the song "Starry Eyed") always takes me back to camping at the Sleeping Bear Dunes.
• Edwin McCain reminds me of moving into my first apartment and getting married
• David Gray, "White Ladder" reminds me of my grandma's cancer and passing (which is unfortunate because its a really great CD).
• Dave Matthews Band, "Crash" is definitely my first year in college.
• Velour 100, "Fall Sounds" is most certainly for that first warm day of spring (ironic, I know).

The list could go on and on. My husband and I even have certain CD's we call Driving CD's that we always listen to during road trips (Bloomsday, Common Children, Velour 100, Seven Day Jesus, Plankeye, and Black Eyed Sceva).

Unfortunately, we both believe that good music has died a quiet death these days (beginning with the bubble gum pop of Brittany Spears and company). We are impatiently awaiting its return. Right now, we are just trying to seek out any music that doesn't sound like everything else out there (and by that I mean Matchbox 20 or the Goo Goo Dolls). I mean enough is enough. So if anyone has any recommendations, I have my pencil ready.

So what are we listening to now?

• Death Cab for Cutie (pretty good if you are feeling mellow)
• The Killers (not the best but tolerable)
• Switchfoot (however just as a disclaimer, we have been huge Switchfoot fans since 1996 and have seen them at least 6 times in concert including back when you could still sit down with the band and talk to them in person)
• Nick Drake (Pink Moon)
• U2 (Achtung Baby--which in my opinion is the best album)
• Coldplay
• Dashboard Confessionals (hey, who doesn't love a little teen angst every now and then and the excitement of first love)

What we would do without music (gasp!)?

Moments

Its been a year now since we named Gabriel. I know this because we named him while leaving my husband's product show for his work. We had gone to the show (mainly because they provide a free buffet) the same week we chose our first adoption agency. After eating, we walked around with full stomachs browsing through all the items.. .. testing out garden swings, collecting free samples of deck stain, hoarding ink pens, highlighters, and mini snickers bars. I remember it was the first time we actually felt peaceful. We were finally putting infertility behind us and moving on. The question was no longer "if" we were going to have a baby, but "when". We actually began to live again. Everything just felt better, brighter somehow. After we had visited all the booths we left the hall (ironically the same hall that hosted our senior prom. .. the whole reason we ended up together). We had just walked out the door and I sputtered, "we should name him Gabriel". My husband looked over at me and repeated the name, "Gabriel. .. . I like that". Everything was perfect about that moment. . .. . the feeling of it. . . the reality of our future son. . . the name.

Today we left that same product show together and while I should have been disappointed that we didn't have our baby boy home. .. I wasn't. You know those moments when everything feels peaceful and just for that one instant everything is all right with the world. I had one of those driving home from the show tonight. I was driving, listening to a wonderful cover of "Wonderwall" by Ryan Adams (not to be confused with Bryan Adams), the full moon was huge and orange riding low on the horizon. I was thinking about my son, Gabriel. Dreaming about what he may look like, imagining his eyes, his hair, his smile. It was wonderful. I wish I could always feel the way I did in that moment.

Side Note:
After we decided on the name Gabriel last year, we drove to Kroger (the local grocery store) to buy coffee beans. I guess you could say the exuberance got the best of us. We were in the aisle grooving and singing to Wilson Phillips "Hold On" playing on the store radio. Thankfully, we were alone in the aisle. .. . .otherwise that would have been a moment we would have wanted back!

Introducing Mr. Pat Christian Answer. . . (please hold your applause)

My husband and I are both christians. We are active members in our church and back in the day (before IF sucked the life out of us) were really excited about Jesus. When IF started, we were still muddling through. We were determined to hang onto God's promises. We didn't want to be those people that bail at the first sign of trouble. In the beginning, even when things started to get hard, we trudged on. We kept praying, we kept reading the Bible, we worshiped and tried to keep a good witness. Faith was helpful in the beginning. It helped us to feel like things weren't happening by chance, that there really was a grand plan in our lives. We tried to operate as if Jeremiah 29:11 were really true.

"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"

As time wore on and the difficulties in our lives multiplied, this became even more challenging. It was hard to cope with trying to understand if God truly loved us, why would he hurt us with all of these things. I began to think that maybe, God's definition of "good" was far different from mine. That maybe the picture the church portrayed of God was vastly different from reality. To make matters worse, I felt as if he had abondoned me. When I prayed, I no longer felt like he was listening. The Bible became just words on a page. You know the little story about footprints in the sand. .. . how there is only one set of footprints when you are walking down the beach with God because he is carrying you. When I pictured this I saw one set of footprints with a subsequent line trailing behind because he was walking and I was holding on to one ankle with my finger tips, while being dragged along behind him flat on my stomach. I became unbeliveably bitter and seriously considered becoming an atheist. In the end, I knew I couldn't walk away from God. .. even if I tried (which made me even more mad).

So where am I now. .. . .well, not much better to be honest. I'm still discouraged and frustrated. Which brings me to the point of this blog entry (sorry it took so long to get here). My husband and I have developed a theory that the church (as a whole, the body of christians) do not know how to deal with hurting people. So many times, I've tried to reach out to other christians and have simply received the pat christian answer. The typical christian buzzwords or phrases that you whip out in times like this when you don't know what to say. Its been unbelievably frustrating. Here are a few in case you aren't sure what I mean:

1.Well, God has a reason for everything even if we don't understand it now
2. All this pain is God's will
3. Just try to understand what he may be trying to teach you in all of this
4. God is in control
5. All in God's timing
6. Just keep seeking him and he will comfort you
7. If you seek him first then all of these things will be given to you

You get the picture. The problem is, I've read the Bible. I know what it says. Having someone tell me these things, doesn't make anything any better. It just makes me frustrated. When people say this to me I just want to ask them, "Are you even listening to me? Do you hear the words that I am saying at all? " Whatever happened to compassion? I don't want someone to give me the solution. I want them to listen to me, give me hug, and pray for me, maybe even ask me how I'm doing next time I see them. When most people share their pain, they aren't looking for advice. They want a shoulder to lean on. Why do christians replace true compassion with these pat phrases?

Secondly, I think the church does a bad job at portraying a life of faith. By that I mean, many will paint it as if once you accept Jesus, everything will suddenly be rainbows and butterflies. No longer are you supposed to have trouble, and if you do you will successfully triumph with a smile on your face. That's just plain wrong! Attitudes such as this, simply set people up for a fall. Once trouble hits, you begin to doubt the very foundation of your faith. I think the church needs to be more honest about the issue of pain. A prevalent attitude among many christians is that you aren't allowed to be depressed or angry, that the only acceptable emotion is joy. Thats crazy and worse, its a lie. Look at Paul in the Bible. How often does he express sadness and anger? Look at Job, he went through tremendous suffering. He said he wished he had never been born. He said, "I have no rest only turmoil" (by the way, if you read it, you'll see his well meaning friends gave him crap advice as well). Job was the master of angst.

Unfortunately, reading this back over again. . . .this entry isn't really explaining what I am trying to say the way I want it to. I'm not even sure its making sense. I've been thinking about it so long that I am having a hard time organizing my thoughts. Maybe I will try to explain it better in another entry someday.

To my son

Happy one-month birthday sweet baby boy! I can't believe I've already missed a whole month of your life. I can't wait to see you and hug and kiss you.

Mommy loves you sweety. .. and I'll see you soon!

"This will be our first child"

Yesterday was the first meeting of a small group we joined at church. It meets every Tuesday for six weeks. Being that it was the first meeting, we did a round of introductions. It was the usual. . . . name, married/kids, what do you do for a living, and what do you hope to get out of the study, etc. People took turns around the table until we came to my husband. I was interested to hear how he would describe our blossoming family situation. He gave his name, mentioned I was his wife (how kind of him) and then he began to describe that we have a son that we've never met. That was all well and good, but what really punched me in the stomach was this statement:

"This will be our first child so we are really excited".

The statement sounds fine on the surface. . . .except that, its not. My gut wrenched and I wanted to interrupt him and state, "No, actually this is our second child, and we were really excited about the first one too". THAT, would be the truth. Except, I knew I couldn't say that. But it felt so wrong, like it was such an injustice to Emma. Emma is our first child. It was all I could do not to blurt that out. I'm glad I didn't, just to avoid the awkward situation it would have created. I've seen it before. .. . when you mention a baby that was and then wasn't. Most people react the same. They look at you pityingly, then down at their shoes, and then change the subject. I understand the reaction, they just don't know how to appropriately respond so they say nothing. The weird thing was, I didn't know how to appropriately respond this time. Ever since, I've been mulling it over in my mind. .. . .replaying the conversation.. .. trying to find the right words to express what I wanted to say. Finally, while walking out of work lost in thought, I stumbled over a better way to express it. We can simply state that Gabriel is "our oldest child".

This wording is appealing to me on a few levels:

1. Its true
2. The statement is benign enough that most people won't catch the subltly of what I am not saying and therefore doesn't lend itself to lengthy explanations and pity shoe looks
3. It gives me a peace of mind that I am honoring Emma

If I would have read a post like this before my miscarriage. I would have wondered, why the fuss? Now being on the other side of miscarriage, it really makes all the difference. Emma was a real, living baby. She was alive inside of me. I can't ever forget that. .. I can't ever forget that she was my daughter, and I was her mother.

Random Updates

Work is kicking my butt these days. I'm not really fond of the 10 hour day (11 if you count driving). I've had a million blog topics running around in my head, which I even went so far as to write the titles down on yellow post it notes. Oh well, I guess every hour of work is another dollar towards bringing Gabriel home. Anyway I thought I would post a few updates since its been awhile.

[Portions of this post have been deleted]

On the adoption front. . .. our dossier was sent to Guatemala on Feb.1 !!!!!!!!!! So they should have been able to officially start our case last week! Hooray, hooray!! It did end up being a bit stressful though (refer to my post "Apparently FedEx doesn't do Shipping"). A few weeks had gone by and we still couldn't track the return package (from the Consulate to the agency). I would obsessively check the FedEx site every hour just for it to spell out to me in giant purple letters, "No information available". Finally, last Monday I called the Consulate and asked them if anything was wrong with the paperwork and she very nicely told me that it was shipped out already under a different airbill. Son of a. .. . . So I called the agency head office and asked them if they received it. She put me on hold to go look for about 3 minutes, while I listed in my head all the ways I would totally snap if she didn't have it. She finally popped back on the phone while I was mentally picturing myself taking a running charge at the glass window and lunging myself down from the sixth floor of our building, while my boss muttered under his breath, "damn, now whose going to do data collection". She said, "yes, we received it and we overnighted it to Guatemala on Feb. 1". I then commenced the happy dance in my swivel office chair. You know what this means. .. .something actually worked out for us. AND, not only just worked out. . .but worked out smoothly. . .well, sort of!

I also took another step towards making Gabriel seem more real to me. My boss and I had a meeting about what I want to do once he comes home. I told him I wanted to take six months off. He said company policy actually allows people who are adopting to take up to a year (a year!) Wow, maybe my company is nicer on people than I thought. They also provide $3000 in adoption expense reimbursement, but unfortunately I don't qualify for that because I am not a "real employee". I'm what they call "supplemental" which basically means part time with no benefits even though I work 50 hours a week. In the end, he said that I was going to take the six months no matter whether he said I could or not (true) but he understood that I was just giving him a heads up. I also told him, that we weren't sure what I was going to do after the six months were up. He said they could be flexible with my hours, within reason. So we are still deciding whether I will stay full time (very unlikely), go part time at this job (possible), or quit all together and stay home during the day and then work a night/weekend job to avoid daycare (very possible). I probably change my mind everyday on this. Everytime someone pisses me off at work I think, "Oh man, I am sooooo out of here. . .and its all your fault". Its kind of fun, like I'm wielding some sort of secret power.

Finally, don't you hate it when unloading the dishwasher turns into a major kitchen overhaul? Anyone. .. anyone. .. .OK, maybe its just me then. Yesterday, I got up after a blissful sleep in until 7AM and started the coffee. While it was brewing I started to unload and reload the dishwasher. This led to a huge reorganization of my spices (I have a lot of spices). I moved them all into a different spice rack (that shades them from light) and removed my other two racks from the kitchen. This freed up some counter space and some wall space above the sink. So I needed something to put above the sink to hide the giant holes where the dry wall anchors were. Then, I decided that the counters were too crowded and I didn't like the jar holding all of my random utensils. I removed the jar and then charged my husband to utilize a cupboard (that is currently only holding plastic grocery bags and cat food) to build me a corkboard rack that would slide out of the cupboard where I can hang all of the utensils. This of course involved a trip to Home Depot and my husband (who was not all that happy about being pulled into my overhaul when all he wanted to do was drink his coffee and do his crossword puzzle). This all led to talk of removing the key rack on the wall and moving the clock so I can buy and hang this awesome cow picture I saw at JoAnn Fabrics (I love cows). Anyhow, the kitchen looks a lot better now.

To My Dear Sister. . . With Love

Sister,

I weep for you and I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. No mother should ever have to lose a baby. My heart breaks for you and I wish that you didn't have to join me in understanding what it is like to miscarry. I wish I could say something to make it better. . .impart some sort of been there done that wisdom. . .but I can't. The right words don't exist.

I know your heart is grieving right now for this baby boy. I know that no other baby can take his place. I know having two other children doesn't make this any less painful. Its OK to be sad and to grieve. Its OK to cry and then shake your fist at God. He can handle whatever you throw at Him.

Please know that you will get through this and that with time it will get easier. Know that we are praying for you and that we are here for you anytime you need something. If you need a laugh, or a great sob, or even if you want to sit silently on the phone.

You have been so incredibly compassionate and kind to me. Thank you so much for listening to me all those times when I was so despondent. Thank you for all of your prayers, I covet them. Thank you for weeping over my letters and encouraging me always. I cannot tell you how much our relationship means to me and while you are my sister-in-law, I see you as a true sister and a friend. I am continually amazed at your faith and perserverance. You always hold on to God while I am so quick to turn and stomp away. I always feel so much more encouraged in my faith everytime I talk to you.

While I don't know exactly what heaven is like, I like to think that my baby Emma is up there having a wonderful time. I like to think that my grandma is tenderly caring for her, the same way she did me. I like to think that Jacob is with her and they are worshiping the Lord together. . .maybe even hand in hand. Someday, we will hold those babies. . you and I. We will stand before the throne of God with them and worship. And it will be beautiful.

I love you Sister. . . hang tight to the promises of our Lord.