Moments

I was playing dolls with Lydia this morning and just letting her totally direct the play. She got two really cute baby dolls for Christmas that she has hardly played with since she usually just does what Dylan wants to do. She handed me one baby and told me to feed her and then she fed the other baby. I of course start weeping because I had had these dreams/desires of having a real baby and Lydia imitating me caring for our baby through play with her dolls. This was one of the few dreams I had had for Joshua and our family since we knew he wasn't going to make it for most of my pregnancy and I was so focused on me and my career for the beginning part of the pregnancy.

The weird thing is that I treasure these moments, sad as they are. This goes back to what it means to work through grief and heal. I don't want to get to the point when I'm not remembering and thinking about Joshua and not crying. Healing is not forgetting. I hope I have these moments my whole life. Even though they are sad, they are precious and even joyful. Yes, I know I just said something can be sad and joyful at the same time. I believe it can because of the hope and peace I still have in sad moments because of the hope I have in God. Hope in His comfort and salvation. The sadness is only temporary because there will be no sadness in eternity.

Retreat

I had a good time on the retreat. I really enjoyed talking with the friends I drove their with and roomed with. However, it wasn't so much a time of refreshment and renewal as it was evaluating and stirring. You know when you go go go and then you slow down just enough to see that something's not quite right but you're not exactly sure what that is. I'm using my blog here to help me think through what that might be but I could have probably used another 2 days away. On Saturday night I just felt like crying (but that may have been for monthly reasons) but I couldn't really even pinpoint what I was feeling. As far as what I gleened from the retreat, I know I need to be in God's word more and I need to be a better wife to my husband. Again, these are just the vague notions that I see surfacing but much more thinking needs to be done.

Three months

I did go to the cemetary this morning. I ended up taking Lydia with me. We sang Kum Ba Yah and put some fake flowers in the ground and a hanging planter (which I had to make since I couldn't find one in the store this time of year) on a post. The temporary marker still was not there which made me sad but we'll get that taken care of and now that we have some flowers there it won't look like we are neglecting our child....I mean of course his grave but in a way it felt like we were neglecting him.

We are almost ready to order the permanent marker. Going to look at one more draft and then decide. Because we are having a Bible verse engraved on the stone (and not just the reference) the costs are more than we were expecting but as a friend pointed out to me, this is one way you can spend money on Joshua since we obviously didn't and won't have many things to buy "for him" as we do our other children.

Since I've been so busy lately I'm looking forward to the women's retreat this weekend to have some time to grieve and process. I think about Joshua every day and recount his birth and life on most days. But I don't really feel like I'm doing anything intention to heal. I don't want to get the point when I don't think about Joshua and his birth on a daily basis. So I guess what I want is to "heal" from is just the bad feelings I have associated with his existence/birth - like the fact that I can only fit into a small percentage of my pants and skirts and I don't want to be seen in maternity clothes and so I got really upset when the only pair of jeans I have that fit ripped. Losing weight would alleviate this problem but would it really fix it? It's sort of like that things that didn't have so much of an emotional component to them now are big emotional deals when you are grieving. I've also seen this with my feelings about not wasting things. It used to just annoy me when I or someone else in my house wasted something but now it's a big emotional deal. Somehow maybe I'm tying the thing to Joshua and since I don't want his existence to be wasted I don't want other things to be wasted. If Joshua's life has a purpose then so does everything else. So maybe part of healing is untying my loss of Joshua from these other things in life.

Building Museum

I always find February a hard month to find things to do with the kids so I was super excited to find out the National Building Museum downtown was having a Family Day to celebrate National Engineers Week. (And so were a lot of other parents since it was really crowded.) We were there for over an hour and only got around to about 4-5 of the really cool booths they set up. We could have been there all day. Dylan and Lydia made catapults, truss bridges, and Lego towers, and got to meet The Cat in The Hat and Curious George.

This was sort of a Valentines Day trip since Tuesday was kind of a bust. I got sick (something I ate I think) so we didn't go to Cold Stone like we were planning. Martin also didn't get to build me a fire in the fireplace since I just went to bed early so we did that tonight too.

Second Lost Tooth! and Wanting to Drive?