Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Why? Because you have too. The world doesn't stop just because I want it to, so you have to keep moving.

So that's what we've done, however unwilling at times.


Your baby measures up to an avocado, now, and weighs 3 1/2 ounces. (Length: 4 1/2 inches, head to bottom.)

So there. We're having an avocado.

Where are we now?

So. This is the first post I can really make since Linc died.

I'm going to babble, I can feel it. Please forgive any of the following incomprehensible mush. I really just need to put it somewhere.

There are so many things that can happen that don't enter your mind when you decide to have kids. There are so many things you still don't know once you have them. Would I have decided to play the infertility lottery if I knew this would be where I would end up? Probably. Will I play it again? No idea.

I still can't believe that this has happened to our family. I had to take a good long look at the world at large to comprehend how many people things like this happen to. After I had hard evidence in front of me, I didn't feel comforted, I just felt sick. All these people in the world, walking wounded. All of us trying to figure out how to be real, breathing, feeling human beings again. All of wondering how to pretend that things matter, feeling like frauds when we can't make other things matter. Driving ourselves crazy wondering if we are further damaging the other people in our lives when we are locked inside this vicious grief and only see the rest of the world when lack of air forces us out of it.

Nobody is telling me anything I don't already know. I know my faith, family and friends are going to carry me through this. I know that there is always help available. I know, and appreciate, the reminders that my loved ones are there for me. Unfortunately, when it is a quiet moment, time to try to sleep or when I'm waiting for something, I am entirely alone. Everyone is still there, God is still there, but I am stuck with me and sometimes I hear me louder than I can hear anyone else. The me that is still curled up in a ball, rocking and tearing at her hair is screaming "I can't live through this! This can't be happening, because if it is, I have to die." Then I have to argue with myself to keep moving. I'm not saying I'm going to stick my head in the oven, I'm just saying that it's a good thing that people can't will their hearts to stop beating or I wouldn't have lasted through the first day. I sometimes can't remember what I live for, or why. All I can do is realize that I'm about to have a bad moment and watch the world around me fade away. When the grief hits it's like a giant blanket that insulates me inside myself with these horrifying emotions and isolates completely. I can't hear anything, see anything, feel anything but what is inside me. Oddly enough, dealing with the loss of my baby is incredibly similar to my labor and delivery with him. I find that both poignant and obscene.

I don't know yet, in my heart, if I can live without him. Part of me is afraid that my life from here on is just going to be a waiting game. I'll play along, do my best to look like I'm really alive, but I'll just be passing time. I feel sure that wouldn't be good.

When I'm not sucked into this grief, I'm so thankful I surprise myself. I'm thankful that I had Lincoln in my life. I'm thankful that I don't ever have to worry about him again, that he's in the safest place in existence. I'm thankful that I appreciated my time with him so much, and that he knew that I'd rather be where he was than anywhere else. I'm thankful that I finally felt like a real mom with him, instead of the inept, inadequate mom I felt like I was with his older brother. I'm thankful for the faith that is in me, the people God gave me to support and uplift me. I'm thankful for my husband, the only other person who feels almost exactly what I feel right now. I'm thankful for my older son, who has accepted this with a faith only a child could have. I'm thankful for God's promise that Lincoln and I will be reunited, and the faith He gave me to trust in it. I'm thankful for God's power to make life and death decisions, for His wisdom in seeing a picture so big it is beyond our comprehension, and for orchestrating all of life according to that wisdom, not our human wishes. I'm thankful that He made me who I am, and sent me all these wonderful people who help me just by being who they are. I'm thankful He reminds me that we all suffer, and that if we are smart, we will suffer together instead of choosing to suffer alone.

Most of all, even when the only footprint I can see right now is a post-mortem print of Lincoln's, I'm thankful that I know that God is carrying me.

For Lincoln

The Broken Chain



We little knew that morning that God was going to call your name,
In life we loved you dearly,in death we do the same.
It broke our hearts to lose you, you did not go alone.
For part of us went with you, the day God called you home.
You left us peaceful memories, your love is still our guide,
And though we cannot see you, you are always at our side.
Our family chain is broken, and nothing seems the same,
But as God calls us one by one, the chain will link again.



--Author Unknown--

Thanksgiving

Gratitude and thankfulness today. Blessed with the bountiful abundance of love, support, generosity. God has blessed me with the best family, genetic and chosen, that a person could ever wish for. God has blessed me with strength and endurance. God has blessed me with Truth. He has blessed me with His love and sovereignty and made me thankful that we truly belong to Him. He has blessed me with a heart to feel, a mind to reason, a soul that calls out to Him. He has blessed me with an understanding of the true depth of love. I have been blessed with the experience of all the facets of love, both the joyous and the crushing. I have been blessed. God's greatest blessings to all of you.

The latest of the late

So. We've been in the new place for a while. It's sorta coming together. Work is busy. Some aspects of the homelife are kinda hinky.

However, Linc just turned 2! Some pics for you!!











Obviously, Linc liked his cake. He very much enjoyed eating it and fingerpainting it. I've spared you from the picture that shows what that bath did to the tub. He is now a two year old, may God have mercy on us all.

HIYA!

Hey guess what?!?! I'm back! I have really fast internet!!! I will be able to load pictures (if I remember how) and update everyone! How exciting is this?!?!

Yay!! Check it out:



How's that?!?!

Anyway, more to come!!!

I'm Baaaaaaack!

But, unfortunately no pictures for you yet. Two reasons for this. One, my house still has boxes in it. And on it. And next to it. I can't put up pictures until it's pretty. Two, I only have the shittiest of shitty dial-up internet connections and just LOOKING at pictures online takes for-freaking-ever. Imagine how long it would take to actually load them here. I'm not saying it'll never happen, I'm just saying it'll have to wait until I can find the right time. A time when I have a while to sit here and curse and nurture my patience with alcohol. It'll come eventually, no later than the end of the month because I'm a hell of a lot less likely to have such a time after the hubby gets started on school. I have no doubt that he will then turn into the biggest weenie on earth who is SOOOO much more tired than I am, never mind that my new clients are much more inclined to beat on me than my old ones. This has already been proved, incidentally.

So, life here. Yeah, not sure yet. It's pretty. It's quiet. But, it's not without issues. There's the neighbor thing. The work thing. The house thing. The car thing. The being without my friends and family thing. That last one is the current big one for me. My mom came to visit me over the weekend and when she left it was decently rotten. I have thought many times that I'd give anything to turn back time and tell the hubby that he must have lost his frickin' marbles. Not only can I not do that, but I can't in good concience even tell him that I'm struggling with this. It's a little late to throw a big batch of resentment his way. After all, I've put up with his school crap for the last five years or so. I got to spew in a big way after that last shit-storm he lobbed my way. Now? I get dragged to this place, where I'm without most of the important people in my life, in a new job, away from my children most of the day, with a dead car, living in a house that I'm fighting the insect population for, and I feel like I can't do this for five more years, let alone one. I know I'm probably being an ungrateful asshole, but after the week I've had I can't make myself care. I know that the hubby isn't aiming our course in life, and if I wasn't having a weak (and miserable) moment I could chalk this up to the momentary failing of my faith that it is, but I'm just too ground down to do that right now. Right now, this just feels like an enormous mistake that is too huge to correct. It's not a good day for optimism, which for me is really saying something. Hopefully, I'm better tomorrow, because I can't handle feeling like this all the time. I'd go nuts.

That being said, or purged really, I'm going to sign off for now. I'll be back with some photos soon. Lets just hope that none of the photos include anyone I know being burned in effigy.