Beauty From Ashes

I'm taking a break from the marriage study to post some other things that have been going on in my life. On the 18th I had a miscarriage. I didn't really know I was pregnant- well, I knew in my heart and my instincts. But I hadn't tested and I had slacked off on charting. I figured my late period was just due to breastfeeding making it all irregular. I knew, but I never allowed myself to say "yes, I'm pregnant" and just accept it.

So, when the miscarriage happened it took a bit of emotional juggling to adjust. First, having to accept the fact that yes, I really was pregnant and then immediately having to deal with losing the baby. At first I thought it would be pretty easy to deal with since I never got the chance to accept that I was pregnant and get attached, and since we weren't trying to get pregnant anyway. It quickly became a lot harder than I would have imagined.

I've really been on a roller coaster of emotions this last week. The most difficult thing has been the regret I have for not listening to my body, my heart and the Holy Spirit telling me that I was pregnant. Baby Joslyn lived inside me for 8 weeks, yet in that time I never acknowledged her, never told her I loved her, never put my hand to my stomach to think about her or say a prayer. So, I have regrets and also a surprisingly deep sadness at her loss.

I've been shocked to discover that people who I thought believed that life begins at conception, really don't believe that losing a baby at 8 weeks is the same as losing a baby at, say, 8 months. Though you can bet that if I had an abortion they would! I understand that it may not be the same emotionally for some women. It's like saying, "Is it hard and painful when a grandmother dies?" Well, that depends on the person and their relationship with their grandmother. Certainly it's gut wrenching for some people and other people might not even have known their grandmother. So, in the same way to say, "This is how it feels when your baby dies," won't be the same for two different mothers.

For me, even though I didn't get a chance to know Joslyn, her death has been hard on me. I've shed more tears this week then I have in the last year. I miss her and I'm sad that I won't get to see her grow.

At the same time, I feel a strange sense of peace about her death. I'm not angry about it at all. Her death brought an amazing power of healing, renewal and life to some other areas of my life. There's so much more to this than I'm willing to say on a public blog, but trust me when I say that healing and peace can come from anything, even death. YHVH had a purpose in bringing Joslyn home to him, and while I grieve my child, I'm also rejoicing at the way he has blessed me with healing. I know that I will see Joslyn someday. In the meantime, I hope she has fun playing with the angels!

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose.

Mice, ants, grasshoppers, and worms

After the death of Arasa the mouse, E has been trying to find herself a pet. We have promised to get her a pet for her birthday (probably a rat, but she might also choose a fish or hamster or guniea pig), but until then she's been improvising.

She found some ants outside the library, and asked to bring one home. I had a tupperware container in the car, so we put the ant in it. Unfortunately it died on the way home. So, I helped her find another one in our yard and we brought it in the house. Then I accidentally squished it while transfering it from one container to another. So, we went back outside and found a worm. She kept it on the table in a bowl for a few hours- until L got ahold of it. We think she ate it! It was a *very* tiny one. E ate one a lot bigger when she was L's age! LOL

She had a pet grasshopper a few months ago. It rode home on our windsheild all the way from our garden co-op! She let it go in the grass and later found a dead grasshopper on the steps. We don't know if it was the same one, but she think so.

Most recently, she had a pet spider. She asked me to catch it for her and I put it in a glass jar with some little holes poked in the lid. When we went to bed that night, she gave the jar a hug and told her spider goodnight. Then right before we went to sleep, she asked if the spider could sleep in the bedroom with us- so I put it's jar on the tv by the bed. She tried to give it a spider friend, but it ate the friend. She caught a bug for it to eat, but it wouldn't eat it. I told her that if the spider didn't eat, it would die and that it would probably be much happier outside. It would raise up it's front legs and bang on the side of the jar if we bothered it. So, she let it go outside and is hoping it will build a web on our porch.

She said "Mommy, all my pets die! My rat died and my grasshopper died and my worm died and my ant died! I don't want my spider to die!" And every day she asks "Is my spider ok?" and say "I hope so, but it's outside so I don't know. I'm sure it's happy to be outside."

She keeps trying to catch squirrels, which I'm not concerned about because they are way too fast for her. However, I did have to discourage her from catching the raccoon that lives in the creek behind our house. It's half her size and has stood on it's hind legs and threatened D before, so I don't want her near it.

I'm looking forward to getting her a pet- she's going to have so much fun with it!

Arasa the Mouse

One of our residents brought us a live baby mouse today to let us know that they are in his apartment. At first, D was going to kill it, but it was so cute we couldn't do it. We tried to feed it some rice milk in an eye dropper and to keep it warm with a rag in a box. E really liked it, she named it "Arasa" and called it her baby. It looked like it was doing ok for a while. It slept some, and then perked up and crawled around the box. We held it a few times. It was hard to tell if it was drinking any of the rice milk, but I thought it might have gotten a little.

I thought about pumping some breast milk for it, but I didn't make it to the shed to dig out the pump soon enough. It died this evening. I don't know if the breast milk would have helped anyway. The whole day was probably just too much shock and trauma on it's little body. I'm sure it was still nursing, so being away from it's mommy was just too much. Poor little baby! E was a little sad when it died and held it for a while. At first she thought it was going to come back to life. I told her that it's body was still here, but it's spirit is in heaven with Yeshua.

Then she started asking a bunch of questions about it's body, it's bones, it's heart, it's skin. So, call me weird.... I asked her if she wanted to dissect it. A few weeks ago she saw a deer get skinned after being shot, and she did really well with that. I was a little hesitant about the whole thing, but we explained that we only kill animals to eat and that it wasn't in any pain. She was happy to eat the meat when we got home, so I guess she wasn't traumatized.

She said she did want to dissect the mouse, so we looked at it's intestines, skin, bones, heart. For the record, I never even dissected the frog in high school, so this was all new to me. It was slightly disturbing for me, but really fascinating for her. She's been interested in everything about the body for a while now. She's been watching DK Eyewitness movies- the Human Machine and Skeletons- over and over.

Ironically, we had just watched the movie Ratatouille this morning.



This was after it died- it was a lot cuter when it was alive. I'll try to remember to take pictures of the burial tomorrow.