THE BALL OF YARN

PURE BOY... PURE RASCAL

I THINK WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH RAIN:)

It has been raining almost non-stop here in Oklahoma. And as you can see in the photos above the kids LOVE playing in it. They came in that day after playing in all of the puddles in the yard smelling like swamp monsters... Ick. They hit the tubs and got in their jammies right away. The weather was starting to make me a little stir crazy and weary. Usually weather doesn't affect me but these days early in the morning I am ready to raise the blinds and let some sun shine in. Praise God, today was the first day in a long while that the sun was shining again.

This morning we awoke to 8-9 new baby bunnies. There were so many and they were wiggling around so much that we kind of lost count. We didn't want to mess with them too much so we will have to recount in a couple of days. They are hairless, tiny and just precious. We knew the mama would have them anyday so the kids were just a buzz about it. They were so excited. I will try to post a picture of them in the next few days.

My new friend Tonya at http://www.tonyatalk.blogspot.com/ had a great post the other day that I just have to tell you about. It was all about a ball of yarn. She too lost her little boy Grady, also a full term still birth, very similar to Samuel.

Every day is such a learning experience for me. How do you go on with the mundane, trivial things in life after you have had such a tragedy occur. How do you practically hear and handle all of the things that people say to you? I don't think that people can understand the depth of the loss of an unborn child. I have had so many people say, "It is so nice that you have your 4 other children." I feel so tremendously blessed by God to have my other children, but I still lost a son, having other children doesn't take that pain away at all. I have told people in a loving way... you have 2 arms and 2 legs, if you lost a leg, would you miss it? Would it hurt? Would you want it back? That is how it is, it doesn't matter that I have 4 living children, there is still a piece of our family missing.

People have also said, "Thank goodness it happened now and not when he was 3 months or 3 years." I now know, I can never judge if someones loss is more significant than another... they are just different, not necessarily more or less difficult. Other's have said, "Maybe God was sparing him from something in his future." " God has a reason and He will work good from it." The hard thing is although that is true, when you are fresh on the heels of a tragic loss, no good thing really seems worth it. You just want your baby back.

OK, back to the ball of yarn and Tonya's post. She was at a bereavement conference. They got in a circle with 6-7 people and passed a ball of yarn around. Whenever the ball came to you, you needed to hold on to that spot in the ball of yarn and say one way that you bonded with your baby before it was born. Then you passed the ball on. There are so many ways that you bond with that child, especially for the mother carrying him/her... hearing the heartbeat, seeing an ultrasound, baby showers, feeling the baby kick or wiggle around inside of you, praying for that baby, feeling hiccups, making purchases for the baby, picking out names, singing or talking to the baby, planning for the future you will have with that child... you get it, the list could go on and on. So the ball of yarn goes back and forth between all of the people. Then they had to raise their arms and see the web of yarn from the underside. It looked pretty neat. Then they had to drop the yarn all at once. What was on the floor was a big jumbled mess, just like grief. It was then explained that this is what someones life is like when they lose a child, even before birth. This is the mess they need to unravel.

They then had to try to wind the yarn back up. Some of it would go together really nicely but there were places where there were knots that needed to be worked through more carefully. You see that tangled yarn is kind of how I feel on the inside. Many may think that I didn't really even get to know Samuel since he died in the womb. That couldn't be further from the truth. I carried that sweet baby boy for 40+ weeks and I knew him well, his movements well. He is my son, a part of me and my sweet husband. So even though some days or some memories might be more easy to work through there will be many rough spots, or knots that need to be worked through more carefully and that will require more energy and time.

I thought that was the perfect word picture for how ones life is after a loss. Sometimes it is really messy, sometimes it is much smoother. This is quite a process. Isn't it great that God can be a part of the process? For me, He really IS the process. I have no other choice but to trust him for the future. We are a work in progress, he is continually growing, changing and molding us... and sometimes that feels good and sometimes it hurts something fierce. I am just glad I don't have to make it through alone.