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Join me at Grace for Moms today!

11/6/2013

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I'm both excited and honored to be guest blogging at Grace for Moms today! I share my story of two births and whether one was "better" than the other. Please join me there for a conversation about labor and delivery and the grace-filled choices that we can make. http://www.graceformoms.com/better-birth/

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Shin guards and stubborn hearts

11/5/2013

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In the last eight weeks, I have become what I once thought I would never be allowed to be.

A soccer mom.

My five-year-old daughter joined a soccer team this fall, and we have had the fun of twice-a-week practices and Saturday games, and I've had the privilege of being on the sidelines cheering for my girl and remembering my childhood days of playing soccer and thinking I am becoming a little more like my mom everyday.

But along with the fun of soccer, we've also had the regularly-scheduled frustration of shin guards. Every practice, every game, it has been the same."

"I don't like them. They don't feel good."

And my response, like every good mom, has been, "Stop whining. I didn't like them either. Wear them anyway. And be ready in five minutes or you're not going."

After about five weeks of this, I did something new.

I listened. Why didn't my daughter like her shin guards? It was because these newfangled ones have a elastic strap-thingy that goes under a players foot, then the sock over that, then the shoe on top. Perfectly designed to keep a shin guard in place - and to completely annoy a sensitive little girl who hates to have bumps in her shoes.

So we went off to the sporting goods store, found an old-fashioned pair shin guards without the strap-thingy, and tried them on.

She loves them. "They feel wonderful!"

No more fights, no more lengthy "Get dressed or else" battles. No more tears. Peace. Smiles. Fun. Ahhhh.....

I'm all about training our children to obey their parents, and I know we have plenty of battles ahead. But I don't ever want parenting to turn into a power struggle instead of a relationship. The Battle of the Shin Guards reminded me never to stop listening to my daughter's voice, and that sometimes the stubborn heart that needs to give way is not hers, but mine.

What lessons have your children taught you lately?

A link to this article was shared on Mama Moments Monday.

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The thing about rainbows

11/4/2013

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Four years ago yesterday, I sat in an ultrasound room getting the worst news of my life...again. My baby had died. I was eight weeks pregnant, and this was our third ultrasound already. We'd had a couple of scares, but we'd also seen a heartbeat - twice! - which was supposed to mean that our risk of miscarriage dropped drastically.

Someone should have explained that to my body, because once again, we were on the losing end of the statistics. Seven months earlier, we had said goodbye to our daughter Naomi after I developed an abdominal infection that threatened my life and took hers in my fourth month of pregnancy. This baby was supposed to be our rainbow, the light after the storm. But no - not this time. It was good-bye again, and we'd barely said hello. There were no photographs this time, no funeral, no evidence that she'd ever lived except for our three ultrasound pictures and our broken hearts.

But the thing about rainbows is...they don't have to stick around long to make an impact on your heart. I remember on our honeymoon during a few days in Yellowstone National Park, the weather was misty and we were on the lookout for rainbows. It didn't matter if they we're brilliant or faint or if they lasted a few seconds or several minutes. Something about seeing rainbows filled us with joy and hope, as we remembered God's promise of future faithfulness, to never again overwhelm the world with a flood.

The same was true of our little rainbow. We named her Kyria Hope, assuming she was a girl, like our first two. "Kyria" from 2 John, when the apostle refers to the "chosen lady". We believed with all or hearts that God chose to give Kyria to us, that her brief life had a purpose, and that we will someday get to speak with her face to face (2 John 1:12). Her middle name, Hope, was because God used her life to fill me with hope - not in another pregnancy, but in the reminder of the lessons I had learned when we lost Naomi, that even when we despair of life itself, we can have hope in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:8-11).

Kyria often gets overlooked in our story. Naomi was our first loss, our most traumatic medically-speaking, the one we got to hold and take pictures of, and the one we named our Naomi's Circle ministry for. I some ways, my missing of her was more intense, and for a while I felt guilty about that. Losing Kyria, though, taught me an important lesson - it's okay to grieve different losses differently. It doesn't mean you love one baby more and another less. It doesn't make you a bad mother. I knew Naomi longer and losing her changed my life so drastically, ushering me into the pregnancy loss community. Kyria's passing was more of a "normal" miscarriage, but God has used her life to show me what so many other women go through, and that no matter how far along a loss occurs, it's still your child.

So today, I am thinking fondly of our little girl who, if she had lived, would have been three on our anniversary this past June - our third child, our inspiration for Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Sunday, our little rainbow. I can't wait to meet her in Heaven!