Some Hard Stuff....

I have had this written out for a while now. I have debated posting this because I am having a hard time putting my feelings into words without everything sounding ungrateful, which is not at all how they are intended. Please be gracious with me as I'm trying to be honest, yet having a hard time finding the right words....
At the same time, I had an email conversation with a friend in the past week that had to do with some of this- and I just want you to know (you know who you are) that this was written out well before we talked and in no way was I thinking of that discussion when I wrote this, as our conversation had not yet taken place when I wrote this, so please don't think I'm addressing anything at you!

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I once read in a book a girl who grew up in the Congo and later moved to the US mention how she would get so angry every time she'd hear someone complain of hunger. Because, she said, once you experienced hunger like what she experienced, you find it hard to fully love anyone who has not experienced that type of hunger. Where your body hurts because it is so protein deprived....
I am feeling that way when I hear people talk about the economy in a way like they know what's going on.
Unless you lost your house(s), your home, your job, your car, your health insurance while you were pregnant and also had a toddler... your 80 acres of land worth tens of millions of dollars that you just walked away from because it became worthless, your several hundred thousand dollars that you personally had invested in that property- every single penny you had made in your life up until that point, your very own grocery money. Unless you really know what it's like- don't pretend to. It's a slap in the face.
And I have to work on that.
People experience things to varying degrees and that doesn't invalidate their experience any less, just because they maybe didn't lose as much as we lost.
I read magazines occasionally and sometimes they'll talk about "How To Live On Less In Hard Times" or something similar to that. They'll say something ridiculous like "instead of buying your coffee on your way to work, make it at home."
Seriously.
If you're able to come up with money to buy a coffee every day (or even once a week!), then NEWSFLASH: YOU'RE NOT THAT FINANCIALLY HURT!!
And who do you think you are pretending to be?
Or "Instead of buying your clothes at the mall, try Target. Cute styles, less on the price tag."
How about- if you can afford to but ANY clothes- YOU'RE SHOULDN'T BE COMPLAINING ABOUT MONEY!!
I think our oldest wore size 2T clothes until they were about to burst at the seams, because $3 a shirt for a few shirts wasn't worth not buying our couple jugs of milk we'd need for the week.
And I know some people live every day of their life with money being such a concern.
For us, this came so much out of left field. I mean, we were going along just fine in life. Better than just fine. Money wasn't came by easy or all around us by no means, but we definitely were not hurting.
We had a boat, a nice house, we occasionally would go away to a hotel as a family here and there.... And we worked hard for those things! At the peak of the market, we only had our house mortgaged for 50% of what it was worth! Because we kept making "good investment choices" and were able to put a huge chunk down when we purchased our house.
And then....
Well, we realized it had nothing to do with "good investment choices"- it had to do with things outside of our control.
If our money was in the stock market, it would be just as much gone as it was by being in real estate by now. It just would have been a slower death.
And if we could have rode out the real estate crash, then we would have been better on the other end.
But for everything we had to lose, it would have taken millions of dollars to ride that out. And obviously, we couldn't ride it out.
And it hurts, so bad.
In a way that shocks me, actually. Like I didn't think all this would affect my emotions quite so much. It's just money, right? Just stuff?
But no, it's our stability being ripped out under our feet. And knowing you couldn't do anything about it. And knowing that everything we've worked hard for could, again, disappear, seeing as it wasn't our actions that made this happen to begin with.
And it's 5 years of our working to create a good financial base for us thrown out. Completely.
It's like we just got married all over again and are starting back at the very beginning.
Back to an apartment.
Back to paycheck to paycheck.
Back to paying all the bills, but there not being anything left after that.
Back to renting a movie being a mini-luxury (well, not quite to that extreme this time thankfully!)
Yes, those are all obvious blessings. (The fact that we can rent a movie! Obviously we're not hurting anymore! We can pay all our bills, that is such a huge, huge blessing!)
But, still back to where we started nevertheless.
And now we're starting over with 2 boys, and one on the way. And we worked so hard to do things in the right order the first time.
To buy our first house before having children. To make sure we could live off only 1 income so I could stay home and raise our children. And only after we accomplished those things did we decide that we were good to start our family.
And that was exciting to work towards that for several years together!
But, now it's like that was all for nothing. What was the point?
We're back to an apartment.
A place that is not ours. That is quite small, and we're going to add a 3rd baby to this mess of a life?
Where's stability? Where's one pregnancy where I'm not having to deal with so much stuff that life seems constantly like it's filled with turmoil and spinning out of control?
In a time where you'd like to be stable and focused on your body, this time for me is always reserved for life's hardest times.
When I was pregnant with E we were going out of town to visit Ben's mom almost every weekend because she was dying, and she passed away 2 weeks before he was born. Talk about unstable. Watching my husband physically lower his mom into the ground, and burying her by hand with his sister and step dad. Seeing death, and yet growing life and feeling my baby kick and twirl inside of me while watching.
And a roller coaster of emotions I don't wish on anyone.
And with Ez, well when I was pregnant with him we were losing everything, grasping frantically at anything that looked like it would be something that might be worth hanging onto for dear life to help pull us out of this mess. And having to find another place to live. And knowing we'd be moving when he was 8 weeks old, but not knowing how we'd be able to afford another place.
And here we go.... this one isn't losing a parent or our home. But we just don't have a home. We know we'll be moving at some point out of this place, but when? The thought of having a 3rd child in this tiny 2 bedroom apartment does not sound appealing.
I know it's a blessing that we have a roof over our heads we can afford. And in no way to I mean to sound ungrateful.
I'm hurting right now. Still trying to recover from everything we went through. From living day to day in survival mode for so long. Putting one foot in front of the other even when the path you're walking on has disappeared. It's not about the stuff- the stuff can all be here, or go, and either way it's just stuff.
It's about the emotions involved in living so scared of today and what it may bring, trying your hardest to trust in our Providing Father, yet knowing that we don't know the future. And He sure doesn't promise an easy life to anyone. And providing has a different meaning to Him than to us anyway.
Praying, crying out, begging for jobs to make enough money to pay today's bills, to put food on the table for today. Tomorrow was never mentioned, because we learned fully to only think about today- tomorrow was too overwhelming.
That was life every day, for quite some time.
From feeling like we've been married for over 9 years and worked very hard for what we had, and yet it definitely doesn't look that way, as we sit on our couch in someone else's living room.
As the 'things' that I have to make my house feel like a home are boxed up and stored away because we have no room for them here.
Home hardly feels like "home" anymore.
Oh it's so not about the house.... It's about the pain of everything. This hurts, this hurts so badly.

Happy Canada Day!!

So now we get the holiday 3 days early... Happy Canada Day!!

This morning we went to the zoo, which was so much fun! Been a while since we've been to the zoo! Of course, the rest of Manitoba was there, too, as it was "Free Admission Day."

Now Ben is at storage getting everything ready for chicken butchering, which will happen again this weekend. Of course while he's there, we find out everything in our storage unit is under water. While some of the stuff is just misc. garage items and probably won't be too damaged by water, there's also my favorite stuff that we just don't have room for- my favorite decor, pictures, all my books, boy clothes that are in between the boys sizes.... Also, our almost new fridge and almost new front loader washer and dryer. That I miss. A LOT. Especially every Wednesday when I do however many loads of laundry this family of 4.3 goes through in a week.

My wedding dress is there, too.

You know, it's all just stuff, but not stuff I want to throw away because it got ruined by water. As far as stuff goes, I love a lot of what's over there.

Anyway, as soon as he gets home, we're packing up and heading off to some friends house where we'll be house sitting for the next 6 weeks. Not too excited for the ordeal of going over there and getting a very busy 1 1/2 year old adjusted into a new place, that's not at all "baby" friendly. So we'll be putting stuff away as he pulls on it for the first few days, but whatever.... If we can help them out and in the process have a dog for them to play with this summer, then it's all good. Since Jaide (our very beloved sweet dog) died last year, we have all been going crazy to get another dog, but we are waiting until we have our own place and our own yard. So hopefully soon.

In the mean time, E will have a 4 legged friend to take care of for the next 6 weeks.

And, to top the day off, it's a friend's birthday, and so we'll be celebrating outside with a bunch of friends and then having combination Birthday/ Canada Day fireworks....

Busy Day!!

We'll be thinking of all our friends and family on Saturday for the 4th, and missing our traditional 4th of July picnic on our boat combined with lots of wakeboarding and then watching fireworks over the lake parked on the boat afterwards at Lake Pleasant... Good memories.

But, now we celebrate July 1st instead of July 4th, so I guess time to make new traditions once we get settled here a bit more and figure it all out!!

Birth & Death

It's amazing how birth and death are so closely intertwined. To give birth is to realize that at one point, death will come for this new life.

You can't have one without the other. I realized this so heavily for the first time when my Mother in law died 18 days before I gave birth for the first time. It's all a circle, you can't have one without the other.

And when conception in and of itself means death before birth.

And to be pregnant means life is growing within my very body. It's quite amazing, miraculous.

The most amazing.

Once again, I am flooded with thoughts of my little angel baby in heaven.

The one that grew in me, had a heart beat, looked like a little jelly bean. I don't believe in having numerous unnecessary ultrasounds, so I've never seen any of my other precious babies so young and so little.

But I am glad we knew this pregnancy had a complication to begin with, because that meant I had to have an ultrasound early on.

And that one glimpse at my baby and the tiny little heart beating is the closest I will ever get on this Earth to holding my baby.

I have been almost obsessing over my little angel lately. Reading sad things, listening to sad things, watching sad things. Anything to nurture my hurting heart. The one that currently beats for my lost little baby.

The baby I flushed down the toilet. Because there was blood, so very much blood, and a baby in the middle of it. And I was so grief stricken I didn't know what else to do. And alone.

Fishing around in the toilet to get out my baby didn't even go through my mind. I cried. I cried, and cried and cried. And fell against the bathroom door sobbing at what just was, at the baby who died that 3 days earlier had a heart beat, at what could have been.

And then my 1 year old needed me. So I picked the pieces of me up off the floor, put myself back together as best I could, flushed the toilet and went to my child.

Because we are first mothers to the child sitting in front of us, we are second mourners to the baby that is gone.

That moment sealed the path of my healing. I would be okay. I feel like I'm in a million pieces, shattered and broken all over the floor and never able to put myself back together. But I'll be okay. I'll put one foot in front of the other, as heavy as my feet may be. I'll allow myself to cry, I'll fall back into pieces at times, but I'll still be able to be a mother. To take care of the little one that is right in front of me.

And having a baby growing in me puts me right back to that open and vulnerable place. That raw place.

The place where I have never, ever forgiven myself for flushing my baby. For not thinking clearly enough to just leave everything alone, think for a bit, and get my baby out of the toilet. And bury my baby, like any once living human being deserves to be treated after death. And me, the mother, couldn't even think clearly enough to do that.

And every time I say it's my 3rd baby, I cringe. No, this is my 4th baby. I have my 3rd baby already, he's 1 1/2 right now. Maybe that's a big part of why pregnancy means mourning my lost baby. But what am I supposed to do, relive this to everyone every time someone asks? Of course not, society would not accept that. It would be awkward. People might not know what to say.

Or maybe I feel guilty at my body's ability to grow and nurture this baby, when I couldn't do that for my 2nd baby. When my 2nd baby died because of my circumstances, not because the baby wasn't healthy.

I chose to have an IUD put in.

I got pregnant with an IUD in.

I chose to take the doctor's advice and remove the IUD while there was a baby growing on the other side of my uterus, but the same uterus nevertheless. Maybe my midwife would have directed me otherwise, or even given me more of an option. But this pregnancy was complicated, and so it had to start out with a doctor, and go to a midwife when the complication was dealt with.

I chose the actions that in the end, made my little baby die, and to make things worse, I then flushed my little baby down the toilet. A burial in the Phoenix sewer system, along with millions of other people's raw sewage.

I went outside of the safety of family 3 weeks after my baby died. This was so raw, so new. I was already trying to hide behind myself so no one would know I was hurting. And I had someone, who was supposedly a friend, ask me "So because you weren't planning this pregnancy, I guess it must be easy to get over it. It's not like you wanted the baby or something."

Excuse me?! Don't pretend to know my circumstances. Don't make comments before thinking. I am mourning my baby. My very real baby. Who had a beating heart and existed, just like you. Just because we didn't plan to have another baby does not mean we didn't want this baby, that we were not already picking out names and trying to figure out moving our 1 year old to the bedroom closest to the street, because I didn't like putting a newborn in the room with the window over the street, we did live in the city afterall. That I wasn't daydreaming at the possibility of having 2 little boys, just like I always wanted. That I wasn't waiting to feel that first kick, or imagining my life with 2. Wondering how giving birth would be again, if I would love it as much as I did with my first.

We didn't regret telling people that we were expecting. I'm not going to go on pretending this life never existed, it did exist. And to pretend that it didn't, that would not have been okay with me.

Maybe you can imagine, then, how being pregnant again... after losing a baby... will never be the same as it was before losing a baby.

It no longer takes birth to require death.

It takes pregnancy to require death.

Easy, Non-Toxic Cleaning

I was asked for my cleaning recipes, so I put them up on our Asher Farm Blog, as well as some facts and tid-bits of information that I found quite interesting that I've found over the last 4 1/2 years of making my own cleaners.

Click Here to go to that blog entry.

I encourage you to read it for the information, if nothing else. I think we can all make little changes that go a long way in the health of our families. And while we can't change everything (like the air we breathe!), we are responsible to ourselves and to our children for changing what we can!

A Story About A Boy

Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was a sweet little boy, or so I'm told, who loved to go fishing in the creek in his backyard more than anything else. Then his Mom would fry up whatever fish he caught and that would be their supper. The boy would be so happy that he caught supper.

I'm sure his Mom was very happy when he caught fish because they had no money.

You see, this little boy had a little sister that his mom also had to take care of. And neither of them had a Dad. Well, once upon a time they had a Dad, but he left them. Walked out and gone for good, no visits, no every other weekends, none of that.

The mom was all on her own to raise these 2 little people. She was a super mom and did it. She made it work and raised her 2 children on her own, surrounding them with love and grace. Many words could be dedicated to this mom, and a few have been said before. But this story isn't about the mom, it's about the boy.

This boy grew up without a dad. He didn't have any uncles or grandparents around either. He had no one to teach him how to be a man. How to be a father, or a husband.

At one point the mom remarried, and thankfully that abusive relationship ended a few years after it started. This man being the only male role model the boy had up until this time, if you could call him that. The boy was glad when this man was out of their lives and they moved far away to start over fresh. The boy was 14.

The mom eventually did find real love and a good man. This man became the closest thing to a father the boy would ever have. But of course, the boy was already older when this happened, not an impressionable child anymore. But either way, the boy was so happy for this good man in his mom's life, and in his life. He finally had someone to go fishing with.

Then a few years later, the boy met a girl and they got married. Even though the boy never knew what marriage really looked like, he was a husband. And you know, the girl never really had 'healthy marriage and family' written all over her childhood either, so they figured it out together.

They waited a few years, and decided to grow their family.

Now, they have their own 2 little boys. And the oldest already loves to go fishing. So, the boy that's now a Daddy takes his boy fishing, because he never had a daddy to do that with when he was growing up. And the boy that's now a daddy, he never knew what a 'Daddy' looked like, but he figured it out pretty quick.

And the boy, the one that's now a Daddy, is the best daddy that these 2 boys could ask for. He's attentive, he plays, he teaches, he guides, he encourages, he coaches their sports, he acts like a kid with them when play time, and a Father to them when teaching.

He's my best friend, the love of my life, my favorite person, my partner in our journey through life, and the best Father our boys could ever ask for.

Happy Father's Day!!

It's About The Journey....

So last night before going to sleep when Ben and I were praying, we both ended up praying for a good sleep as we've both been way over tired and fighting sickness (him the flu, me, well, you know).
Afterwards, he jokingly said now we should sleep twice as good because we prayed for it twice.
I laughed and said "ya, if only things worked that way!"
And as I was starting to fall asleep I was thinking about that selfish statement.
Could you imagine how terrible the world we live in would be if we got everything we prayed for?
Could you imagine if I, with my narrow minded tunnel vision, could pray for big things and then those big things always happened? Without me having the knowledge of maybe all the consequences of that thing happening, or how it fits into the universe-wide big picture?
That would be so scary!
And even when I think I'm using my mature, non-selfish heart to ask for things.
When we were going through all our loss and I would pray for a way for us to keep our home.
Or for Ben to get enough work for the week to pay the most necessary bills and put food on the table (when I say necessary, I mean necessary, not even housing, obviously).
I wouldn't necessarily view those requests as 'selfish.' But really, I guess everything is selfish.

I don't want to leave my home.
I don't want us to ruin our perfect credit scores.
I don't want to deal with the fallout from our losing everything.
I don't want to adjust to a new lifestyle that's different from what we've always had.
I don't want my son to go to bed with a hungry stomach.

Thankfully, the last one never, ever had to happen, even though it was a real fear some weeks that we wouldn't be able to provide that for him. But how selfish is that? Why should my son's stomach be any fuller than the other children who go to bed with hunger pains every single night?
It shouldn't.
And the fact that it is different, that's a blessing. A huge, unmerited blessing. A gift from God that we were born into what we were born into, and there are no words I could use to describe how thankful I am for that.
(And some days, how guilty I feel for that.)
I am just so thankful that I am not the one responsible for the big things. I can do what I can do to move things in the 'right' direction. I can make the choices and follow through with the actions to try and make what I want to happen, happen. But in the end, big things are just out of my control.
What a good point in my life it was for me to realize that and get to the point that not only was I okay with that, but I am actually thankful for that. (I was a CONTROL. FREAK before all this happened.)
A little more growing into what I'm intended to be.... And I can truly say I am thankful for the journey that broke me of that.

Those Couch Pillows Can Hold Themselves Down!

So, I've been slacking. I can't believe how little attention I've paid to my blog in the last little while. It might be that I have been so tired that my arms have been dragging on the floor and my eyes have been only half open the last couple months.
Or it could be that when my arms haven't been dragging on the floor, I've been laying on the couch praying I could keep whatever few crumbs I just attempted to eat in my stomach and convince them that they didn't want to get flushed down the toilet, what a waste of food!!
But, you know, I'm doing a lot better. I think. Well, no, not I think, I actually AM doing a lot better. I just am a little hesitant to say that it's a trend, and not just a few good days.
Thursday and Friday were both good days (gasp!) Saturday was a terrible day, but then Sunday and Monday were both good, and today again! Could it really be?! The end to all of this?!
I'm used to all-day-and-night sickness (you might know it better referred to as morning sickness) lasting quite a bit longer than this.
Like 9 months. Or with my 2nd, only 5 or 6 months, can't quite remember.
And here I am, 13 weeks and actually doing pretty good.
I mean, the math of it all makes sense. A trimester less for each pregnancy. And I do like math. Because that would make so much sense, I hoped all pregnancy so far that this would be the case. And my oh my, I think it might be!!??

So because of my state the last couple months, not a lot of anything exciting has been going on. And therefore, I have nothing exciting to say. Except, of course, that my eyes have been just about fully open and I have been eating quite a bit more normally again, and not needing to hold the couch pillows down 99% of my awake hours. (It sure is easier to keep the little people under control!)

It's amazing how having a few good days can be almost overwhelmingly good after living a couple months of every day misery!