Monthly Archives: November 2013

Who Am I?

Life, Prayer 1 Comment

“(I)t annoyed me that someone else would decide for me whether I could or couldn’t handle following a dream while being a wife.  It was almost as if becoming a wife meant giving up any other part of me.  But I really begged to disagree.  And I was even more determined that it wouldn’t happen.”
My So-Called Life As A Proverbs 31 Wife
Sara Horn

This very accurately describes my life.  Between being a wife and a mother, I feel like I have lost track of who I am.  It’s not a decision anyone else made for me.  Honestly, it’s not even a decision that I made for myself.  Not consciously, anyway.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a Mom.  Kind of strange, actually, because I am really not a big fan of kids.  It’s not that I don’t like them.  I just don’t want to be constantly surrounded by them.  And a mom, unless she is able to afford nannies, is almost always “surrounded” by kids.  I am not sorry that I have kids; these boys are the greatest blessings I could have ever imagined.  Life without them is not something I even want to consider.  I have to share them with school teachers, and that is bad enough.  Last week, one of them asked when he can date—and he is only ten!  My time with them is growing short.  I’m not looking forward to the day when there is another girl who is more important to them than I am.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know who I am outside of being their mom.  I went from Rob and Irma’s daughter, to John’s wife, to Andru, Robin, and Seth’s mom.  There is nothing wrong with any of these roles in my life.  My parents, my husband, my children, they are all very special people in my life, very special blessings that I would not want to live without.  It’s just that I have spent so much time filling those roles that I don’t really know who I am.

Who is Lynn?

I wonder if this is a normal thing.  Does every mom go through this?  Does every woman go through it?  What about men?  Do they have an identity crisis, a time when they just don’t know who they are?

I am in the process of trying to figure out just who I am.  The problem is, I feel selfish while doing it.  This process requires putting a lot of attention on myself.  It means thinking about my needs and my wants, my likes and my dislikes.   I am trying my hardest to balance out what is good for me with what is good for my guys, but it is hard.  Balancing is not something I’ve always been good at, but I am trying.

It’s important to me that I do figure it out.  I want to be the best wife and mom I can be.  My guys deserve that.  To be that, I need to figure out who Lynn is.  There has to be more to the woman I am than just wife and mother.

And I know that whoever it is that I am, God created me to be and do something special.

I just need to be patient while He works out just what that “special” thing is.

The Monster

My Work, Short Stories, Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Monster

                I felt the monster the moment the car turned onto my old street.  I could not actually see the house, but I knew the monster was there.  My heart beat faster, my palms began to sweat, my breath came out in rapid gasps.  I shifted in my seat, craning my neck to look in the backseat, nearly convinced that my monster would be physically there, behind me, chasing me.  It was enough to make me want to vomit.

“We don’t have to do this.”  My babysitter and chauffer, my mother had been against this little trip from the moment I suggested it.  She’d been against a lot of decisions in my life, yet that had never stopped me.  Of course, if I had listened, the monster would not be there, following me, taunting me, keeping me from leading a healthy, normal, productive life.

But this time, ignoring her misgivings was the right thing to do.  It was the only way to ever get the monster off my back and out of my life.  It was the only way to get my life back, to be free.

And I needed freedom.  Needed it more than my lungs needed the air they were desperately grasping for.

“Keep driving,” I told Mom, forcing myself to face forward.  I closed my eyes, counted to ten, breathed in as deeply as I could, imagined being in my happy place—used every calming technique I’d learned in years of therapy to chase away the monster and every panicked feeling his presence evoked.  Nothing worked.  I could run—again.  But I was tired of running.  “I have to face this,” I said, as much to assure Mom as to reassure myself.

She still wasn’t sure, but she drove.  The car inched closer to the house; soon I could see the rooftop, then the upstairs windows, the porch, and finally the front door.  It stood there, innocently, as if the pain and anguish that had occurred in its walls had meant nothing.

DSCF5249The closer we came to the house, the less innocence I saw.  Sadness.  The years, I noticed with a small sense of glee, had not been kind to the building.  The siding was cracked and pulling away in places.  Paint had chipped off the wooden support beams of the front porch, some of which were cracked, broken, barely able to stand up to the weight of that porch roof, which itself was falling down.  If the house could feel, I think it would be feeling sadness.  Because it knew the end was coming?  Or because of the horrors that had occurred inside, horrors the building had been unable to stop?

Mom pulled the car to a stop across the street.  A workman wearing a yellow hardhat and orange safety vest approached us.  “Sorry, Ma’am,” he said gruffly.  “You can’t park here.  Demolition will start soon.”

“How soon?” I asked.

“Soon,” he repeated.  “The car is not safe here.”

I opened the door and got out, ignoring the look of frustration on his face.  The monster followed me out of the car, once again breathing down my neck.  The door closed behind me and Mom drove away, to a spot we had agreed on before making the trip.  She’d walk the two blocks back, to stand with me and watch the destruction of the first house I’d ever purchased, the building that should have been a happy home for me, my husband, and our children.  She wouldn’t be gone for long.  I turned to the worker, whose face still carried a great deal of irritation.  “May I go inside?” I asked him.

“Inside?”  The sound of his voice conveyed his true feelings; he wanted to ask if I was insane.  The answer, quite possibly, was yes.  Perhaps I was insane.  This house, that monster at my back, both had led to my questionable state of mind.

“It’s my house,” I said.  “Or it was until I sold it to the city.  All I want is one last chance to walk inside.  Is that possible?”

I didn’t wait for an answer, just walked across the street, marched up the three steps, and pushed open the front door.  It didn’t take long for someone to follow me, shouting at me that I needed to stop, needed to walk back outside.  I ignored the voice.  The monster was still behind me, but I knew I could leave him behind in this building.  All I had to do was see it, I had to see that room.  His life had ended here.  If I was going to finally put the monster to rest, I needed to see the place where he had died.  I just needed my eyes to rest on it one last time.

It was old, falling down from years of neglect.  Just like my heart.  The house had to be torn down.  And with it, his recliner, the chair that he had seen as his throne, the chair he’d not been able to tear himself out of to get help in the last moments of his sad, pathetic little life.  I needed to see it, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was still there, in its place of honor in what had been the living room, positioned so that the view of the television, had it been there, would have been perfect.

As I looked at it, I began to breathe harder again, could feel my heart beat faster, could feel the monster closing in on me.  DSCF5248Hadn’t felt that level of hatred and anger in years, not since I’d escaped the house, escaped his rule.  But the fear, the fear I had always associated with this chair, with the man that lived and died in it was gone.  I was no longer scared of him.  But I was angry.

I hated him.  He was dead, and yet I hated him.  With every fiber of my being, I hated him.

I allowed myself to be escorted out of the house, back across the street to where my mother was standing.  I was admonished to stay put.

A man climbed up into a large crane, started the engine.  As the crane’s claw reached toward the roof of the house, I imagined I was in control.  It was my hand tearing through the roof, pulling apart boards and insulation, reducing the dwelling to broken bits of debris.  As the engine roared, I roared as well.  I yelled, I screamed.  I allowed another piece of my anger, of the monster that had followed me from this house to escape my body.  The claw tore through the upper floor, and I saw myself tearing him apart, piece by piece.  The way had done to me.  I watched the lower floor come apart, could see his precious recliner pulverized.

When it was over, when the roar of the engine died, I could only stare at the empty lot.  Other equipment was moved in to clear out the remains of the house, and yet I stared.  It was gone.  The house was gone.  The monster was gone.  I was alone.  I was free.

“Are you alright?” my mother asked.

I turned to her.  Smiled.  “I am,” I said.  “It’s over. I am free.”

The Tase of Fear

Books, Life, My Work, Short Stories Leave a comment

So I am in my second of three fiction workshops at SNHU this term.  Week one, the assignment was to write a story that focused on point of view.  I pulled this one out of my archives (don’t worry–for the first two weeks, using previously written work is allowed!)  I originally wrote it from a story prompt about the meaning of fear.  Reading that prompt brought to mind a schoolyard in the late 19th ore early 20th century.  This is what I came up with.  I entered it into a contest, which I didn’t win.  So I thought that using that story for my class would be good.  I’d like to know what I could have done better to help me win a contest like this in the future.  Please, let me know what you think.

Lynn

The Taste of Fear

Bein’ scared ain’t nothin’ new to me. I been scared plenty a times in my life. Like when Mama says she is gonna make a pie. Any man would be scared o’ that. Biscuits, potatoes and carrots, maybe even some boiled meat. Mama makes them good. But she can’t make a pie fit for the pigs.

Tellin’ Mama her pies ain’t no good is scary, too. She asked me once why I wasn’t eatin’ it. Said I didn’t wanna break my teeth. Papa was up outta his chair, smackin’ me ‘cross the face afore I even knew he had moved. Learned never to be honest about bad cookin’ that day.

Don’t tell nobody, but storms scare me, too. It’s not the rain or the lightnin’ or even the thunder that bother me. Can handle all that. It’s the wind. The way it blows the trees outside my bedroom window, makin’ the branches scratch at the side of the house—it rattles me. I always imagine it’s the devil hisself tryin’ to get at me. Can’t never get a good night sleep with a storm makin’ those trees knock on the house that away.

Even with all those things in my life, I can still say I never knew the meanin’ of fear until I kissed Becky.

Didn’t expect to kiss Becky that day, or any other neither. She wasn’t my girl. Didn’t want her to be my girl. Becky was Big Richard’s girl. I may not have been the smartest one in the school yard, but even I knew not to upset Big Richard. Everyone knew Becky was gonna marry Big Richard.

Everyone but Becky, anyhow. Becky said she wasn’t gonna get married. Said she was too smart for that. Don’t know what she thought she would do without a husband. Maybe be a school teacher. She had the smarts for it. Most woulda said she was too pretty for that. I don’t know. She was nice girl, always sharing her molasses cookies in the school yard at lunch. She mighta been a friend, I suppose. But that kiss messed everything up.

I didn’t mean to kiss her. I was just standin’ there, mindin’ my own business when I heard Becky yellin’ at Big Richard. Most people wanted to yell at him, but only Becky ever did it. Teacher never dared yell at him. And all us boys in the school, even the ones actually older than Big Richard, was too scared a him to talk in a normal voice. We never woulda yelled.

Becky, though…. There was somethin’ special about her. She was everyone’s friend, and Big Richard, he didn’t like that. He wanted Becky all to hisself. I think that is why they was fightin’ that day. Big Richard was tellin’ Becky how he expected her to act, since she was his girl. Becky was tellin’ Big Richard she belonged to no man.

“Give me back my book, Richard Taylor,” Becky yelled, chasin’ him across the school yard. She was the only girl in the school who didn’t mind havin’ her skirts drag in the dirt and mud. She woulda been happier if she could wear trousers, like us boys did. “Give it back!”

“You want this book back?” Big Richard said, laughin’ at Becky. He stopped in front of her and held the book over her head. She jumped and jumped, but couldn’t reach it. “Don’t know why you need it for.”

“It’s called ‘reading’,” Becky told him. “Maybe you should try it yourself sometime.”

“No point in you readin’,” he told her.  “Not something you are gonna have time for after we are married.  You will be too busy cleanin’ the house and birthin’ babies for stuff like readin’.”

“I am not going to marry you, Richard Taylor,” Becky said. “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.” She stomped her little foot. “Now give me back my book.”

“You can have it back,” he said, still holdin’ it out of Becky’s reach, “for a price.”

I watched as Becky placed her hands on her waist. “What price?” she asked him.

“A kiss,” Big Richard said. “Right here, in the school yard, before teacher calls us back in. I’ll give you back the book for a kiss.”

“A kiss?” Becky repeated. “Just one kiss, and I can have my book back?”

Big Richard nodded. “That’s the price. Just one little kiss, and you can have the book back.”

Becky looked around her, probably hopin’ to see Teacher nearby. Kissin’ in the school yard was not somethin’ teacher would put up with. But she wasn’t there. She was still inside, gettin’ our afternoon lessons ready. Instead what Becky saw was me. She smiled at me. “OK, Richard,” she told him sweetly. “You win.”

Big Richard smiled. He lowered the book, getting’ read for the kiss.

Instead of steppin’ toward Big Richard, Becky stepped toward me. Before I knew what was goin’ on, my life changed.

Becky placed her hands on my shoulders. Her face was right in front of mine. I noticed that she smelled good, like the rose water Mama washed in on special days. Then her lips touched mine. It happened very fast. So fast, I nearly thought I was dreamin’.

There was a thud as Becky’s book hit the ground. The thud was followed by a scream from Big Richard. “Not him!” he hollered. “You was supposed to kiss me.”

Becky calmly picked up her book. With a sweet smile, she said, “You did not say who I was supposed to kiss, Richard. You just said I would get my book back for one little kiss.”

Teacher rang the school bell then. Becky waved at Big Richard, winked at me, then headed back into the school. I tried to follow her, but Big Richard stepped in front of me.

“Hope you enjoyed that, boy,” he growled at me, “’cause you are gonna pay for kissin’ my girl.”

Yep, I knew what it was like to be really, truly afraid then.

And with the memory of Becky’s sweet lips on mine, I have to say fear tasted pretty good.

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

Inspiration, Life, Prayer 1 Comment

Elaine Taylor passed away Sunday evening.

You will be forever missed and loved, Elaine

You will be forever missed and loved, Elaine

You might not have heard the news.  She was not a celebrity.  Fame was not one of the goals of her 84-year-long life.  At least not earthly fame.  My guess would be that most of the people reading this post didn’t know her.  That is a shame.    

If you had ever met her, you would have loved her.  At least I think you would have.  I know for sure that Elaine would have loved you.  Elaine loved everyone.  I don’t think she ever met a stranger.  Each new person in her life was a friend.  Her smile, her laugh, her hug….  All three welcomed everyone she met, and no one who experienced them will ever forget them.

No one who ever experienced Elaine was ever forgotten by her.

I can’t tell you what her presence meant in my life.  It’s hard to even describe the relationship we had.   Elaine was a grandmother when I needed one.  She was full of love and advice—giving the love at all times and the advice when she felt I needed it, which was not necessarily when I felt I needed it.  She said she would pray for me.  And you know what?  She actually did it.  A lot of today’s Christians—myself included, I am so sorry to say—are good at saying, “You’ll be in my prayers,” and then promptly forgetting the details of who needed prayer.  Not Elaine.  She might not have known what prayer was needed, but she prayed. 

Much of my recent physical recovery I attribute to her prayers.  I gave up.  Not on God, exactly.  Never once did I stop believing that He could heal my back pain and bring back the feeling my leg.  I just gave up on the idea that He ever would.  For whatever reason, I just felt like God intended for me to live with these physical limitations, and I started to look for the good that could come from them.  If this was part of His plan, I wanted to be open to still making a difference for Him.  Elaine never gave up on my healing.  When I told her a few months ago that I knew God could heal me but I didn’t think that He would, she gave me that smile.  You know what smile I mean…the one a mother gives her child when the child seems to be trying but not trying hard enough.  Yeah, that’s the smile.  She patted my hand and said, “I don’ believe that.  It’s just not the right time.  He will bring the healing when He is ready for it, not when you are.”  And when she said she’d pray for me, I knew she was doing it.  I wish I could tell her that she was right.  I wish I’d had the chance to walk into her room, without my cane, and show her how God was working.

But I am sure she knows now.  I have a feeling God has spent a lot of time in the last few days showing Elaine how her prayers have helped bring miracles to more people than we could ever count.

There is a party going on in Heaven this week, a “welcome to your reward” party, with Elaine Taylor as the guest of honor.  From the reports I have been hearing all over Facebook this week, Elaine is just one of many guests of honor at this party.  And you know what?  I think that is how she would want it.  Once she got her face-to-face moment with Jesus, once she was able to hug Him and kiss Him, she turned around to face the others coming behind her.  

And with the same smile she used on Sunday mornings, she held out her hand and said, “Welcome to Heaven.  You’ll like it here.”

Lessons From Genny

Authors, Inspiration, My Work, Short Stories 1 Comment

I originally wrote this short story about 7 years ago.  It’s based on a real moment and real conversation that I overheard at church one Sunday morning.  A few weeks ago, I pulled it out to use in the beginning fiction workshop course that was part of my creative writing program at SNHU.  I went into it thinking that there are always areas of my writing that can use improvement.  However, I am not convinced the changes my instructor suggested (changes that I made in order to make the grade) are really an improvement.  But….

Here is the final draft of the story.  Hope you enjoy it.

Lynn

Lessons From Genny

“I so appreciate you and Toby helping out this week, Connie,” Rebekah said, handing me a small stack of church bulletins.  “You can stand right here and just hand one to everyone who comes by.”

I followed to the place she indicated, about halfway between the front doors and the sanctuary.  My husband Toby was near the front doors, laughing with a couple of other men.  He didn’t notice my glare, not that he would have acknowledged it if he had.  He had addressed my less than cheerful attitude in the car, and I knew him well enough to know there would be no more mention of it that day.

“It’s been nearly six months,” he’d told me when I balked at his suggestion to “put on a happy face” for the day, no matter how I felt.  I just was not ready to do that, to stand in front of our church friends and pretend all was right with the world, not after what had happened.  “It is time to move past it and get on with your life.”

Five months, three days, 4 hours, and—I glanced at my watch—29 minutes.  But who was counting?

Me, that’s who.  I’d been counting ever since that day.  My life was clearly divided into before and after.  The before ended that day, and felt like a far off dream to me.  The after was a dark, lonely place; a place I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to be in but one that I didn’t know how to get out of.  It was a place that I was annoyed to be in alone.  Why wasn’t my husband in the same dark place I was?  Did he really not care?  The way he dismissed my continued feelings of emptiness sure made it seem as if he didn’t care about me or my pain.

“You OK?” Rebekah asked me, her hand resting on my arm.  “You just don’t seem yourself.”

“No, I am not OK!” I wanted to scream.  “I haven’t been OK in months.”  But I remembered my husband’s attitude that morning.  If he didn’t want to acknowledge what the day was, it was doubtful someone not emotionally invested in my child would be.  So I put on my best smile, hoping it did not look nearly as forced as it felt.  “I’m fine.  Just didn’t sleep well last night.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but was called away by an emergency in one of the Sunday school classrooms.  I watched as she walked away, grateful for the chance to be alone.  Rebekah was nice and all.  She was our pastor’s wife.  Talking to her had helped me more than even she knew.  Still, she tended to be overly optimistic about everything.  And this was one morning when I didn’t see much to be optimistic about.  I just wasn’t sure if I had the energy to keep up a conversation with her.

Obediently, I smiled as I greeted the worshipers that entered the church that morning.  I avoided asking, “How are you?” as I knew that would lead to my having to answer that same question.  The smile felt like enough of a lie.  Something about lying in church just didn’t sit right with me.  I didn’t want to tell anyone I felt fine when I felt anything but, and I had a feeling no one wanted to hear what I was really feeling.

I thought I was doing a good job of being pleasant and ignoring the pain eating away at my gut.  A good enough job, anyway.  And then I saw her.  Erin Andrews had walked into the building, rubbing her bulging belly.  My smile faded.  Anger and jealousy bubbled up inside me.  I thought of the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.”  Great, that just added guilt to the ugly feelings swirling around in me.

That commandment didn’t apply to a woman grieving the loss of her child, did it?

Erin and I had been friends for years.  When I married Toby, her older brother, we were excited to now be sisters.  Learning that we were expecting babies—the first for each of us—at the same time was almost too much.  We had plans of how we would raise our girls together.  They wouldn’t be just cousins, but the closest sisters ever.

And then disaster struck.  In the back of my mind, I knew when the cramping and spotting began what the inevitable end would be, but I denied it for as long as I could. The doctor confirmed the miscarriage but offered me little explanation. I sat in the hospital bed, staring at the stark, white sheets, devastated and bewildered, unable to understand how that tiny heart could be so strong one day and gone the next.  My baby, my dreams, and in a lot of ways, my friendship with Erin. They were all gone. Life went on around me.  Erin’s belly grew bigger every day, it seemed, a brutal reminder to me of her successful, thriving pregnancy and my utter failure as a mother.  Every time I saw my friend, I felt daggers in my heart.  Because she was family, I really couldn’t avoid her.  Hate was not something I was accustomed to feeling, but it was the closest word I could use to describe my new feelings building up inside, feelings that grew more painful, more intense each time I saw her.

I felt a tear sting my eye as I stared at her.  She turned in my direction and I quickly turned away.  Her due date was two weeks away.  I knew because hers was exactly 14 days after mine.  And today was my due date.  Today was the day my life should have been so very different.

I should have been at the hospital, in labor, waiting to become a mother.

The physical pain would have been a welcome relief, especially if it would replace this horrible, hollow emotional pain I’d been riding on since my baby’s heart had stopped beating.

“God, I don’t understand,” I whispered frantically.  “Where are You?  Why did You let this happen to me?”

I didn’t expect an answer.  For nearly six months, I’d been asking the same questions.  God had remained silent on the issue.  For whatever reason, He’d chosen to abandon me.  He was not just carrying me, like in that poem.  This was the darkest moment of my life, and God was just nowhere to be found, no matter how many times I cried out to Him.  I wanted to continue to love Him and to trust Him, but His silence made it so hard.  Maybe this was one of those things my grandmother had always warned me about, one of the many things that about God’s plans that I’d not be able to understand this side of Heaven.

The only thing worse than the tears was having to explain them to someone else.  When my own husband thought it was time to get on with my life, I couldn’t really expect anyone else to have even a small amount of sympathy for my sadness.  I reached for a tissue to dry my eyes.  As I did, my hand brushed against Rebekah’s.  I looked up, half expecting to find she was taking a tissue for me.  She didn’t even look at me, though.  My eyes followed her gaze and landed on Genny Fairbanks, one of the older members of the congregation.

Genny’s church attendance had been sporadic for the past few months.  Ernie, her husband of more than 50 years, had Alzheimer’s disease.  He had his good days and bad.  On the good days, she said she felt like they were teenagers, falling in love all over again.  On the bad ones, which came more and more often these days, he was too much for Genny to handle alone away from home.  Still, she resisted all attempts to put Ernie into a nursing home.  She’d promised to love and care for him in sickness and health.  So long as she was healthy enough to care for him at home, that is what she was going to do.

Ernie’s health had taken a turn for the worse recently.  It wasn’t just his memory that was a problem, though I could tell from the way she spoke of him that it broke Genny’s heart that Ernie didn’t recognize her most days.  His body had grown weak, to the point where he couldn’t handle daily tasks like bathing and dressing and even feeding himself.  It was just too much for Genny to handle alone, and she had reluctantly agreed with her children that it was time to place him in a home for the round-the-clock care he needed.  I could see in her eyes that morning the toll that decision was taking on her.  The depth of my own sadness was forgotten and I had this almost overwhelming desire to hug the older woman.  I watched as Rebekah handed Genny the tissue, then gently took her hand.   I stepped closer to hear what was being said.

“He’s not eating,” Genny said.  “Ernie doesn’t like being in a new place—he never did like change much—and he can’t do anything about it except refuse to do what he is asked.  He’s been refusing food and fighting his medications.”  She stopped and took a deep breath to steady herself.  Through everything, she had always been so strong.  She looked like she wanted to cry, yet seemed determined not to do it in front of anyone.  Finally, Genny said, “The doctors want to put him on a feeding tube.  I don’t know what to do.”

“Is that something Ernie would want?” Rebekah asked softly.

Genny shook her head.  “No.  We talked about it before, when his mind wasn’t so hazy.  Ernie didn’t want anything special done to keep him alive.  He said if a machine was doing everything for him, then he wasn’t living anyway.  He wanted to just go to Heaven with some dignity.”  She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.  “I know I should honor his wishes.  I guess I am selfish.  I don’t want to let him go.”

Rebekah was quiet for a moment, giving Genny some time to compose herself.  And then she asked so very gently, “Genny, how would you like us to pray?”

Had I heard that right?  Had Rebekah really just asked how to pray?  It seemed to me that, as the wife or our pastor, prayer was something she know how to do.  If she was asking what Genny wanted her to pray for….  Well, that made no sense to me and, frankly, it sounded like a rather dumb question.  Really, how many was could a situation like this be prayed over?  I wanted to pull Rebekah away and let her know how insensitive that sounded.  “Her husband is sick,” I wanted to say.  “Of course she wants prayers for healing.”  Honestly, what other kind of prayer would she want?  What she wanted, I was sure in my heart, was her husband back.  What she needed was a miracle.

I didn’t know much about Alzheimer’s, other than it always got worse and not better.  But I knew God, too.  I knew that He could give Genny a miracle if He wanted.  Just because He had not given me the one I wanted for my child didn’t mean I stopped believing He could do it.  I wanted to tell Genny that I would pray for a healing miracle for her husband.  I took a step closer, intending to tell her just that.  But she started to speak, and her words caused me to freeze on the spot.

“Just pray that God’s will be done,” Genny said, her voice shaking with emotion.  “I don’t like what is happening.  I don’t understand it, but I know He is in control.  He will get me through this.”  I heard her say that she was angry, sad, and scared about what was going on, but she knew that her life—and Ernie’s life—belonged to God.  “We’ve had 50 good years here,” she told Rebekah.  “But I am not going to let my sadness over the end of that keep me from spending eternity worshiping God with Ernie.”

Her words hit me like a slap across the face.  I suddenly felt like the most selfish woman on Earth.  Six months after losing a baby that I never saw, that had only been a part of my life for a few brief weeks, I was holding tight to my anger and sadness.  After 50 years of marriage, Genny was holding tight to God as she watched the love of her life slip away. Which one of us had the best chance of enjoying life once the season of sadness had passed?

But maybe I didn’t deserve the chance to enjoy life and be happy.  God must have felt that I didn’t.  Otherwise, He wouldn’t have created such a big hole in my heart.

But was the hole in my heart any bigger than the one in Genny’s?  Why did she have such a peace about her, how could she be so accepting?

Probably because all of the sadness and despair were flooding my body.  There just wasn’t enough left for her.

I stumbled backward, expecting to bump into the wall.  Instead, I felt a pair of arms slide around my waist to steady me.  “You OK, Connie?” Toby asked me.

I smiled at my husband, an unsteady, unsure kind of a smile.  The concern in his eyes touched me in a way I hadn’t allowed anything to touch me in half a year.  Suddenly I felt sorry for the negative things I’d thought about him just that morning, and an unbelievable relief that I’d not let any of those thoughts come out of my mouth.  His comment about moving on was not intended to hurt me.  It was Toby’s way of telling me that I needed to give the pain and anger to God.  I squeezed his hand.  “I feel…”  I stumbled to find the right words and finally settled on, “I feel OK.”

“You feel OK?” Toby asked, sliding an arm around my waist and guiding me toward the sanctuary doors.

I nodded.  “Yeah, I think I am.”

He led me toward the row of seats in the back of the room, the seats I had picked to hide out in after the miscarriage.  The seat kept me in the room and allowed me to be technically a part of the service.  But it was far enough away from everything so that I could hide.  As we were about to sit, I saw Erin and her husband slide into a seat two rows in front of us.  I turned my eyes away, not liking the idea of spending the next two hours looking at the woman who had the life I so desperately wanted.

My eyes landed on Genny, sitting on the other side of the room.  It didn’t take long to notice there were two empty seats beside her.  “Why don’t we sit over there?” I suggested, motioning toward the older.

“With Genny?” Toby asked.  My husband was shocked.  Not that I could blame him.  I’d spent the last six months hiding, and now I was suggesting that we move to the front of the church.  It surprised me, too.

But I felt drawn to her.  There was something about the peace she had that I wanted to be near.

A piano began to play and the congregation stood for the first song of the morning.  I sang along, or at least tried to.  Genny’s words played over and over in my mind, making it hard to concentrate on anything.  “We had 50 good years here….”  Was the difference between the two of us?  Was that what made it easy—and if not exactly easy, at least possible—for Genny to let go?  The fact that she and Ernie had spent a lifetime together?

They’d made memories together, memories that would sustain Genny through the rest of her life.  They’d raised children.  They’d enjoyed grandchildren.  They had shared more together than I could even imagine.  Perhaps it was the ability to relive those memories at will that made this transition less difficult for Genny.

Only, I didn’t have any of the memories.  I’d not had any time with my child.  I’d never felt the baby kick.  I’d only once heard the heartbeat.  I’d never been able to count ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, kiss pinch chubby cheeks, or blow raspberries on a freshly bathed belly.  In the game of life, Genny had hit a jackpot, while I’d been cheated out of anything.

And yet, I had this nagging feeling that I was cheating myself.  Memories or no, Genny could have wallowed in her own sadness and no one would have blamed her.  A six month—or even longer—pity-party would have been understandable for her.  No one understood my sadness, my continued pity-party.  As I watched Genny sway to the music as she softly sang to the Lord, I realized that I didn’t fully understand why I continued with the pity-party either.  Really, what was it accomplishing?

The bigger question, though, was how to put an end to it.  How could I find the understanding, the acceptance that Genny was living with?

When the singing ended, the pastor shared a few brief announcements.  One was about the need to volunteers in the nursery.  “Could you spend just one Sunday a month,” he asked, “cuddling the babies and playing with the toddlers?  If so, please see my wife Rebekah after the service.”

See Rebekah….  Now that thought wouldn’t leave my mind.  Was God telling me something?  Not that I really wanted to listen.  After all, I’d been asking for answer for half a year and He’d remained silent.  And yet the nagging feeling that I needed to talk to Rebekah would not go away.  Volunteer in the church nursery?  Could I really do that?  Could I handle holding someone else’s baby, loving on another child for just a few hours?

I wasn’t sure.  Still, at the end of service, I found myself standing in front of Rebekah, volunteering to do just that.

Perhaps I had been cheated out of making memories with my own child.  But there was nothing stopping me from making memories with the other children of the church.