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Dealing with End of Life Care Before/After Birth and Other Uncomfortable Dilemmas

With stricter abortion laws rolling out almost daily and an overwhelming amount of misinformation about the so called “Born Alive” bills making an appearance, I wanted to take a moment to address the complexities of the situations that lead to these decisions and hopefully provide a voice to those families faced with the worst dilemmas they are likely to endure.  First, let me say that I am personally a follower of Jesus and would like to believe that I would carry a terminally ill child to term despite the massive amounts of physical, emotional, and psychological trauma that decision would necessarily create both for me and for my family, but no one can truly say what they can endure until they are faced with the reality of such a painful situation. If you have never been so unfortunate to find yourself in this tragic place, I beg you to try to empathize and also be thankful that by the mercy of God, you have been spared.  There is a significant amount of misrepresentation ...
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The Thing Is

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9/11 was on the minds of most Americans this weekend. Never forget , people say. While everyone waved their flags and my Facebook feed was filled with old photos of the Twin Towers, I was thinking how much I don't really care about something that didn't really happen to me 20 years ago. Not very patriotic, I know. When I think of September 11th, I'm really thinking about what I will have to commemorate on the 12th and the 13th- what every parent fears- reliving the last hours of my son's life. No, instead of recounting where I was when the towers fell, I'm trying to remind myself of that final Saturday where everything was so wonderful we didn't even stop to take a picture. Everyone was having a great day- a lovely morning walk, a mother/son car ride to drop off gear at a friend's house and pick up some groceries. Good naps and persimmon adventures with dad. If we had been told our world would be turned upside down later that evening, I don't think we co...
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What's happened, happened: Science Fiction and Grief

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Note to the reader: This post includes a lot of science fiction themes and may be unsuitable for linear thinkers.  Just kidding- you should read it anyway.  😜  It is hard to believe, but as August sets in, we are only weeks away from the 1 yr anniversary of Liam's death. There are days when I hold my breath as I open Facebook because I know I will be invited to relive the weeks and days leading up to that wretched weekend. And like any parent who wishes things had gone differently, I begin to pick apart those days and moments, wondering if perhaps I could have done something that would have altered the course of his future. The answer is neither yes nor no- the alternative endings live only in a foggy space in my mind.  As a great lover of literature, specifically Science Fiction (SF), I have been processing my grief through that lens recently. This confession may turn me into a nerdy caricature of myself in the eyes of my readers, but I don't mind. Regardless if yo...
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Location: Cumming, GA, USA
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Year Zero

Before Christ (B.C.) and After Death (A.D.). Your first living memory. Your last tragedy. Our lives are all marked by a series of Year Zero events. It’s the point in which life as we knew it is obliterated and a new world order takes its place in our minds. The clock does not turn back and “the time before” falls away behind a shimmering, impenetrable veil of what may never be again.  Liam’s death marks a Year Zero in our lives. In my mind, I will now and forever mark an event as happening before or after we lost our son. Some of the readers here also mark time from this point, mostly family and close friends.  For my 1 yr old, Josie, this period of time will fade naturally behind the veil of baby memories and her only touchstone with her brother will be in photos and videos. How grateful I am that we have those methods of sharing the love her brother had for her. I am constantly impressed by Eliza’s memory, but as a 4 yr old, her memories of Liam will likely fade as well. I...
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Jesus Wept. Why Can't We?

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     In the US, when someone we love dies, there are a myriad of ways we convey the death of a person to those around us: They “passed on.” They are “no longer with us.” They are “in a better place.” It’s all very sterile and removed from the reality of death. The way we speak about death points to the way we expect the family and friends of the deceased to act. We should be sad, but not too sad. After all, the person we loved is “in a better place.” We should feel sorrow for a certain amount of time, but then we should “move on.” To someone who has experienced the death of someone very close to them, all of these cultural norms feel insane, but surrounded by a homogeny of expectations we start to feel that maybe we’re the ones who are a little bit crazy.             But we’re not crazy. Our Western traditions are not random- we’ve been indoctrinated into a culture based on a massive misinterpretation of Christia...
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Mother's Day: It's Complicated

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A lot of money and energy is spent on and around Mother's Day to promote the celebration of mothers. When many think about Mother's Day, images of breakfast in bed and presents surrounding a grateful and gracious matriarch come to mind.  It's the one day universally recognized as the day moms don't have to cook, clean, or pick up after their children. What a gift.  Under the cloyingly sweet surface is a myriad of complex emotions that most of us feel, but don't feel comfortable outwardly expressing. After all, Mother's Day is supposed to be happy, like Christmas. The truth is that Mother's Day is layered. For everyone observing the holiday, it could be that the relationship to their mother is estranged or difficult. Perhaps they are remembering a mother who died many years ago- or just last year. Melancholy can be the overarching emotion on such a day. There are women who want to be mothers, but only have losses or piles of negative pregnancy tests to show f...
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Jesus and Buddha Walk into a Bar

For a while now, I've been working through how I feel about my faith. At first, I wondered if I was experiencing what many people call, "a crisis of faith," but that didn't feel quite right. And then I read a beautiful book about grief and I realized my crisis wasn't about my faith but about my culture. The truth is, most people are so ignorant of grief that all they can do is stand impatiently patting their pants leg and then say something completely unhelpful like,  "Everything happens for a REASON,"  or, "God has a PLAN,"  or my personal least favorite, "HIS WAYS are higher than our ways." What do any of these popular phrases even mean when submitted to or around people experiencing deep grief? Sure, you believe God has a plan for you and your family . But when we sit down and bear this out logically, what does that mean for our child? Did God not have a plan for Liam and that's why he died? Did he get bored and decide on a sh...
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