I pull the elephant ears out of the water, one and then a handful and then none for awhile, risking dead fish and live snakes to find you. At dinner the little boy asks what miscarriage is and my answer is accurate but brief because why tell a little boy about lost siblings and the trees grown in their place or the way that forgetting is not better than carrying this
This memory of you dark, indelible angel, in the midst of all I hold dear.
The ghost of the girl turns to the ghost of the boy and says something inaudible about grief, the way it can turn up unannounced reminding any real person of the placeholder tree, all previous attempts at triage, some of the missing, the velocity of loss…the age the child would have been
Given the choice between
Chilling with
A flock of wolves meticulously dressed up in sheep’s clothing
Or a pack of sheep
Aiming to pass for wolves
I would always pick the latter
how about you?
After being accused of lying, or at least not stopping? lying, I looked it up–were CPCs nefariously posing as abortion clinics in order to dupe the unsuspectingly pregnant into not killing their unborn children?!
Maybe.
Interesting because it has not been my experience that they did that. I went through a CPC training course many, many years ago and was very impressed by the quality of the training. The leaders emphasized that the CPC counselors were there to
They seemed wise, kind, calm, and their cookies were warm and homemade.
That being said, let us be very straight on this–as far as I can tell (from the internet) not one single human being–ambulatory or prenatal–has ever been deprived of life by the machinations of any Crisis Pregnancy Center.
So perhaps we should ask ourselves this–if your pregnant mother had walked (in crisis) into either a very truthful abortion facilitatory or a very deceptive crisis pregnancy center, which would have given you, the still pre-birthday you, a chance at living long enough to read this blog?
We will all be judge by the sign makers of Auschwitz for we have had the power to speak freely on the behalf of our murdered unborn daughters…
Unwilling or unable to acknowledge which side Harriet Tubman, Corrie Ten Boom, or Anne Frank would take in this brouhaha over deadly truths and life-affirming deceptions.
I can’t help but stare at the picture of this family swept out to sea. I know what it is like to attempt to parent children from “hard backgrounds.”
And yes, I have often tried to assuage my deep grief about the damage caused by my adopted children by telling myself that we have survived (so far).
None of this is fun to talk about, but I did talk–sometimes unsparingly, because I hoped that if people heard our story they could do something to prevent tragedies like ours.
More than the average mama, I can put myself in the shoes of these mamas, and I have two things to thing to say–
Just: a story of the lost and found https://www.amazon.com/dp/1468123459/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_JPNWAbDZT3TR5
I have always marveled at the risk involved in the parable of the lost sheep. In fact, I can actually see the economists in the crowd shaking their heads and coming up to J. afterwards and trying to convince him that it just doesn’t make sense.
One lost sheep? Who is gonna watch the others?
I have a tendency to worry about all the sheep. What if there are wolves? Wolves stress me out. But J is unswerving. He leaves the 99 and goes to find the one. lost. sheep.
Of course he knows some secrets.
Like: the 99 are actually supposed to watch out for each other.
Like: a few stubborn jackasses in the flock help keep the wolves at bay.
Like: I am the one lost sheep. You are the one lost sheep.
We are all lost without him.
For J every last flipping one of us is that solitary-witless-easily-confused-fluffy-lost sheep.
Sometimes the only thing one needs to do to be found is to admit that one is lost.
Real lost
Without him.
She has been a cloud, a curved white wave, a story from a picture, the daughter who won’t answer back, reminder of all I have lost, world is full of daisies, I could find one now, on hands and feet in the night. They are common things, hands and feet in the dark, looking for lost flowers, people we always knew we needed. One million daisies, little flower faces, pushed to rough angles by this lion’s wind, breathing us into impossible life.
It has been 30 years since I made the (not very complicated) decision not to vote for political candidates who support abortion.
Abortion on-demand–at-all-is and will be our generation’s genocide stain. The comparison to other genocidal impulses* is not that difficult to make–
Do you know the statistics for aborted people in your state, country or region? Do you know when it was legalized and who it targets?
You should.
We all should.
We will have to make an account for every one.
*for the purpose of cohesion I have not separated out gendercide, femicide, or the systemic killing of disabled people, all of which characterize abortion and have been components of genocide as well.
I once read about a woman who believed she could dissipate
…the clouds with her mind
but after much thought I have decided I do not want them to go
I see all their stories
As though God Himself were
Finger painting sand art
Casually insinuating angel wings here or the mirror reflection of the map of China in fluffy white
Clouds like babies come and go
Maybe they too grow up
Go to college, stop needing us anymore as we gaze up at them snow-globed in blue sky beneath inky infinite wonder, fields of burning stars,
Called all by name.
The boy-man on the Tarmac in Manaus, Brazil middle of the day on December 27, 1987 was wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt, and the girl inside the plane thought Talking Heads in the heart of the rainforest? Small world, then disembarked to a claustrophobic gift shop, lined as it was with fertility statues and shrunken heads. And jewelry made from river stones, each one small and beautiful and perfect: irreplaceable held in the palm
of the hand.
Carrying Light 