Me, headed off to my last Saturday shift at the reference desk of the semester, at almost 33 weeks pregnant.
Stranger in a Strange Land
This is my pilgrim journey through the strange lands i've inhabited.
DPP 2011: December 2
We went to Kelly’s company Christmas dinner tonight and had a lot more fun than last year. Last year he had just started and was still in training and hadn’t been assigned to a crew yet. This year, he knew so many folks that we had appetizers with one table, dinner with another and dessert with another. I drove home early and he stayed for the raffle at 9:30, but didn’t win anything. Apparently it was all won by what one of his crew-mates calls “the carpet people” – i.e. the people who work in the offices, not in the hangars.
DPP 2011: December 1
Waco has an awesome new downtown Farmer’s Market. It started strong two weekends ago and braved the wind and cold of the second week. It’s going to be every Saturday all year round and even though I’ve not been able to make it there yet, I’m so excited for it. It’s downtown, right on the Brazos river, has shade trees, will have live music every weekend, people serving breakfast tacos, community organization booths, all the produce and other agricultural products are local, from with 150 miles of Waco. I’ve got some friends who are joining up with the Urban Gardening Coalition co-op booth and selling their produce that way. It’s so exciting to have a viable farmer’s market in a lovely location in town now. Lots of Waco’s crunchy and interesting people are going and I can’t wait until I can finally not be busy or out of town on a Saturday and can go!
December Photo Project 2011!
I am going to try SO HARD this year to keep up with the DPP. Even if it means taking pics with my phone.
9/11 at church
Those of you who know me well know that I have Issues (capital I) with flag-waving patriotism in the church. I can sit through a lot of dreck in a church service, but God and Country services will make me walk out. My church in Texas, for all of the great things about it, likes America very very much. Perhaps it is the fact that our priest is a former Army Colonel, and veterans abound among the pews. Perhaps it is just Texas (though I kind of doubt that…) Kelly and I make other plans for the Sunday nearest the 4th of July and usually the one before Memorial day as well. My choir director knows I won’t sing rah rah patriotic songs, especially the one that he tried to get us to learn once that basically equated the founding of America with the birth of Christ. (yeah, it was that bad… fortunately, it was a bit too hard for our choir and with a few of us in the choir who refused to sing it, he couldn’t pull it off…)
I was a bit worried about the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 which fell on a Sunday. There are some people at church who would pitch a fit if we DIDN’T sing patriotic songs. I felt very fortunate that our choir director picked this lovely hymn to sing as an an homage to the victims and remembrance of the attacks.
When Sudden Terror, by Carl P. Daw Jr.
(written after the 9/11 attacks in 2001) to the tune of English Hymn by Vaughn Williams
When sudden terror tears apart
the world we thought was ours,
we find how fragile strength can be,
how limited our powers.
As tower and fortress fall, we watch
with disbelieving stare
and numbly hear the anguished cries
that pierce the ash-filled air.
Yet most of all we are aware
of emptiness and void:
of lives cut short, of structures razed,
of confidence destroyed.
From this abyss of doubt and fear
we grope for words to pray,
and hear our stammering tongues embrace
a timeless Kyrie.
Have mercy, Lord, give strength and peace,
and make our courage great;
restrain our urge to seek revenge,
to turn our hurt to hate.
Help us to know your steadfast love,
your presence near as breath;
rekindle in our hearts the hope
of life that conquers death.
—-
I wasn’t feeling too well after the anthem was sung, so I went home. Therefore I didn’t have to deal with the congregational singing of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” after the Eucharist. Kelly and another friend went and started coffee hour early, though…
Update!
For those of you who haven’t seen the news on Facebook, Twitter or been told in person…
Baby Kellen due in late January, 2012!
Waiting
This past season of Advent and Christmas was an emotional roller coaster for Kelly and I, and I wanted to update my friends on what has been going on in our lives recently.
On the first Sunday of Advent, we were very excited to discover that I was pregnant, via a home pregnancy test. We had been trying to get pregnant since August and we were thrilled.
While I could have been doing a lot of thinking and meditating on the theological significance of Mary’s pregnancy and expectant waiting during the season of Advent, I really didn’t. What I ended up doing was having a lot of nausea, trying not to puke at work (and in other public places – unsuccessfully at one point) and waiting more expectantly for Christmas, when we were planning on surprising our families with the news via Christmas presents.
Christmas, and the big surprise announcement to family went off without a hitch. The end of my first trimester (and the wider announcement of baby Filgo’s advent) was to come at the end of January, but I couldn’t wait and did end up spilling the beans to a few friends after Christmas. My extended family, some good friends and well, anyone within earshot of Karen (who told anyone she could that she was going to be an aunt) knew that we were expecting. We were all overjoyed.
However, our season of joyful expectancy ended suddenly on January 5th, the day before Epiphany. When I went in for a checkup, the ultrasound revealed that I had an empty gestational sac. I was officially diagnosed with “Blighted Ovum” which means that for whatever reason (most likely chromosomal abnormalities) the embryo did not develop, and that I would miscarry. I was told at that checkup that I had a choice – I could let the miscarriage happen naturally, or I could have the surgical procedure known as a D&C. Since I was headed out to a professional conference that next weekend, I decided to delay my decision until after I came home. Because the miscarriage could happen any time, Kelly decided to come with me just in case something happened, but also for emotional support.
I realized pretty soon that I was leaning towards wanting the miscarriage to happen naturally, but I didn’t really know why. Kelly helped me articulate why by reminding me that my original desire was for a natural, drug-free, less-invasive delivery so why have an invasive surgery when I could just wait and let my body do what it needed to do. So that’s what I decided to do. To wait.
Little did I know that I would end up waiting more than four weeks – almost as long as we had known we were expecting – for the miscarriage to finally happen. I waited, and waited, and went through a lot of emotional turmoil just hoping for the dang thing to happen. It had even come to a point where I had talked with my midwife and her consulting doctor and gone ahead and scheduled a D&C. However, finally, on February 5, early in the morning (3 days before the scheduled surgery), the miscarriage started. I won’t go into the details, but the short of it was that it was painful and bloody. But I did feel a sense of relief, after waiting so long.
It’s been a long season of expectant joyful waiting and anxious fretful painful waiting. I don’t really have a nice way of wrapping this post up with a nice bow, so I’ll just end it here.
December 17
Taken with Kelly’s phone earlier this evening at his new company’s Christmas party.
December 16
We went to Jack’s school’s awards ceremony tonight, where we learned that he won first place in the History Fair competition at his school in the website division. He goes on to the regional competition at Baylor in February.
December 15
I realized lately that our Christmas lights on our house are so subtle that it’s hard to get a good picture of them. Here’s our Christmas tree in the doorway instead.
Talk