Oi Vey!

Some gals just have no sense of timing. Tropical storm Faye is one of them. She is expected to give us a direct hit as a minor hurricane around Thursday.

This is my week y’all. This week I have to cram in: a meeting with the friend who is going to tutor the middle boy next year, a trip to the school uniform store, haircuts for the whole caboodle, a visit to the shoe store, the book store, and more. The house is gasping for a good clean, my carpets upstairs are begging for a vacuum. I need to get my classroom(s) organised for the school year. The grocery store beckons, I need to get school supplies and non-perishables.

I did run to the store to get drinking water this evening. When hurricane madness hit Florida in 2004 there were times when water flew off the shelves at an alarming rate. Since we consume plenty of water here anyway (hurricanes or no) I didn’t want to be left high and (literally) dry .

Have you ever tasted Florida tap water?  It is enough to put you off drinking water for life! I marvelled at the sweet taste of the tap water in South Africa. I had forgotten how good it tasted, until this last trip in February.   

Anyway, off to the store I went for some store bought, decent tasting water, with two very eager and hopeful boys in tow. Ever since my mom gave them each a $20 bill, they have been champing at the bit to go shopping! They have asked me daily when we would be able to go, and those bills have been wearing a hole in the boys’ pockets. 

I didn’t want to take them, y’all. The middle boy is Mr. Decisive. He fears that he will miss out on something good if he settles on something else. A simple trip to the jiffy store for a candy bar is an exercise in patience for me, as he flip flops from one decision to another, and back again.

We went into the crowded store, and made a bee-line for the water (I’d love to tell you that there were fist fights over the water in the store but it wasn’t quite that bad) before visiting the toy aisle. The boy looked around a bit until he realised that his money had been left in the pocket of the jeans that he had been wearing before we left the house.

Poor kid. It was at this point that the hubby called me to tell me that an unexpected expense would be going off our account tonight and I had better wait to do the rest of my shopping tomorrow. I had to promise the disappointed boy that we would be back, pay for my precious cargo of water, and leave. Out of curiosity, I checked out the camping aisle before leaving. There were no flashlights left.

I suppose people remember those power outtages in 2004 vividly. I do. I remember the stickiness of my floors most of all. It wasn’t dirt-stickiness, it was the humidity that seemed to seep up from the floor and cling to your feet. The humidity clung to everything, and made the paper timeline in my homeschool classroom curl up. The heat and the inability to do normal, taken-for-granted things made tempers fray. 

Sigh. I am not ready for the world to stand still, languishing in sticky humidity while the clock keeps marching on to Monday, THE-day, the first-day-of-school day. I’ve got to have my power this week. Power to clean, power to use my computer so I can prepare my last few worksheets and do my last bit of research.

Faye, Faye, go away…(don’t) come again another day…Faye, Faye, go away, little Sumi (literally ) wants to play…

Six months today…

 

We said goodbye to you six months ago, little Jenna. We miss you today but our hearts are filled with hope and a deep peace. You have left a great void in our lives and yet we can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that God is good.

May Jesus hug and tickle and kiss you and cuddle you on his lap for us, sweet little princess.

Always your ‘mama’,

Sumi

At the airport

Going to the airport is almost worse than going to Walmart. Thankfully I have only been there twice since March of this year.

I will probably always find the memory triggers and what-if triggers at Walmart. The Barbie/doll aisle still makes me take a wistful glance, and then look the other way. The candles still beckon me to smell them but there’s no muffin who begs to sniff them too. The lobsters at the seafood counter don’t have a little Jenna to visit with anymore. I can’t pose at the check-out counter, while Jenna takes my picture with the little princess cameras on display, and tells me how beautiful I am, anymore.

But I have gone to Walmart umpteen times since February this year and I am no longer compulsively pulling out the toddler seat in the shopping cart for Jenna to sit on. I don’t stop at the little girls’ shoe displays anymore.  I press on, and do my shopping, with the inevitable thoughts of Jenna my familiar companion. It really isn’t as bad as it was in the beginning, now. I am used to it.  

I am not used to going to the airport. I am not used to walking that same route down to Departures where the little muffiny dragged her multi-colored suitcase behind her until she got tired, and her brother pitched in to help. 

I am not used to hanging around in that same Departures hall where we had lingered on the rocking chairs, unwilling to say goodbye to the half of our family that was staying behind in America. As I sat there today, unwilling to say goodbye to my mom, I remembered that we were in the very spot where Jenna’s daddy and two of her brothers saw her alive for the last time.

The boys were emotional today. Being at the airport made them miss Jenna too.

This is the last picture Jenna’s daddy took of her:

She was off on a real journey, alright. And we are on a very different journey ourselves, as a result. It is a strange journey, and one I don’t wish on anyone. Still, it is a journey that has forced us to dig deep and to find those wells of living water that God promises to sustain his people with. I can honestly say, right now, that there has been much good and much fruit on this journey already. I anticipate the future with hope. I know God is doing something eternal in our lives.

Until we see you again, muffiny…

We will celebrate the journey.

Quick hello

Well, knowing me it probably won’t be quick. I get started and then I can’t stop!

I have had a crazy, hectic, exhausting week. Monday heralded the first day of Teacher’s Training Week in preparation for the school year. I had trouble shutting my brain down to sleep the night before and haven’t had time to catch up on the lost sleep, so I have been keeping Folgers (for my South African friends, Folgers = cheap stuff coffee) in business this week.

I was stupid enough to have some gourmet coffee (NOT Folgers) last night, whilst visiting a friend (she seemed dubious and didn’t have any herself) and it kept me wide awake in the wee hours of this morning. Then, I crashed this evening without intending to (I was just supposed to lie down for a little while - you know?) and when I woke up I didn’t know if it was still evening or if it was the next morning already.

My mom’s visit is drawing to an end, tomorrow is her last full day with us. It feels like we didn’t do nearly enough things together. We never made it to the beach side park that she loves so much, and we only went to see Jenna’s grave very briefly on her birthday. I hope we will be able to go there tomorrow.

I DID manage to take my mom to see a favorite clothing store. My shopping days at Anthropologie are over for now since I have maxed out the gift card I received there last Christmas. A friend and I went on a shopping spree just before my visit to South Africa, in January. Jenna didn’t go shopping with us, but still those clothes are like relics of the carefree days before my life changed irrevocably. I had loved then, having a girly day with my friend, being pampered by the sales ladies, and having my own changing room with my name on it.

I have bagged up the one sweater I bought that day. I wore it on those cool evenings on the farm and in the African bush, with Jenna on my hip. I imagine it still smells like her.

My mom and I also visited the giant JoAnn’s store nearby where we got lost drooling over all the gorgeous fabrics and ribbons and laces and yarn. I saw the most beautiful fabric for wedding gowns at JoAnn’s and it hit me: I will never see Jenna in a wedding dress here on earth. As I walked through the fabric aisles, every bit of pink fleece and sheer organza brought with it a pang. How Jenna would have loved to bury her face in the soft velours and satins. How I would have loved to make her a fleece blanket, or a quilt, or a princess outfit, or accessories for her room with all those yards of gorgeous fabrics.

Anyway:

To update you all on my life, I am getting ready to teach Middle school History, Bible, and Journalism this year. I am excited but also aware that it is going to take a lot out of me. The school I will be teaching at has wonderful, very hands-on parents who have high expectations. That is a good thing but it can surely add pressure too. :-) 

The journalism course is one in which I will be breaking new ground, both for me and for the school. I am a huge perfectionist when it comes to developing a study unit from scratch. I LOVE doing it, but I tend to search compulsively until I find exactly the right approach or activity for each concept that I want to teach. It can be very time consuming, and managing my time so that I can be adequately prepared for teaching and still be able to attend bible school is going to be a big challenge for me.

I have missed checking up on all my bloggery friends (that Google reader counter is way up again) and blabbing my thoughts out over here.

I wonder where my blogging will be once school starts. I might find myself bloggin’ only once in a great while, or this might become a place to regularly pour out all my random thoughts as I embrace all the changes facing me! Whoa, God wasn’t joking when he told me that he was ‘doing a new thing’ in my life!

I am both excited and a bit apprehensive about what this year holds. There will be many adjustments for our whole family. I am going to be busy. I am going to need to be organised (a challenge for me). The boys will have to take on more responsibilities around the house.

I know this though: God has ordered my steps until now and he has already gone before me to prepare my path.  I feel a bit like Moses, who said to God that if God didn’t go with him and the Israelites, then he wasn’t going to go. There’s no way I am going to be able to do this on my own. I just don’t have the goods, folks. I can only tackle the challenges before me if God is right there alongside me. I do sense that he is though, so I can take a deep breath and enter this new phase of my life with confidence, taking it one step at a time.

So much to say and so little blog

I have been too busy to write much but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t written whole blog posts in my head! Of course, now that I am sitting here at the computer they are all gone and so I will just let my fingers follow this random flow of thoughts over the keyboard. Hopefully this post will make some kind of sense by the time I am done.

Our camping trip was fun, but WET! It was nice to play in the water with our friends but when you get out you want to be able to dry off! Being back in my nice, dry, fragrant, un-sandy, tempur-pedic bed was bliss!

On our last day at the spring we saw a little girl who resembled Jenna uncannily. She wore the same color bathing suit, had the same chubby cheeks and curly hair, she even flicked her hair out of her face like Jenna used to. The only difference was her eyes, they were brown and not as striking as Jenna’s were. I could not help staring. I paddled out just far enough for the differences between her features and Jenna’s to fade, and tried to pretend it was really my muffin sitting there on the steps next to the water. Hubby stared too and we shared a few moments of sheer aching to have the muffinny with us again. It would have been so wonderful to see her and her bestest buddy Joseph running around at the campground together.

An acute sense of missing her has remained with me since. Oh she was such a precious little joy-and-laughter-maker in our house. I miss telling her how delicious she is and asking her if I could have just a little taste of her. She’d laugh and tell me: “I am not food!” I would beg her to have just a little taste anyway, and she would offer me her arm, giggling. I would nibble on it and proclaim that it was just as I thought: she was yummily delicious! Sometimes she would ‘taste’ me back and tell me I was yummy too.

Oh, I just miss all those cute toddler games and cuddles and snuggles today.

I do not know how I would have coped without the certainty that Jenna is still alive and well and living with Jesus. I look at her pictures sometimes and it does not feel like I am looking at someone who is no more.  Her life continues, in another place that I cannot see right now but that is just as real as the world I am so familiar with. That gives me such hope! When I kissed her little cheeks and hands goodbye there in the hospital room it was not the end. I will see my muffinny again.

Which reminds me…I received a very valid question via email from a reader and instead of answering her privately, I thought I would blog about it. She wrote:

In the many blogs I’ve read of children that are born and then die, I find that there is often such a focus on the child in heaven, their healing, their joy etc. It seems that the fact the God is in heaven doesn’t really matter anymore.  It seems as though they see God as just another care giver to their children, their children’s healer.  Why is it that God is no longer the appealing part of heaven but their children?  How is it that what is taught in scripture about heaven - where we will no longer know husband and wife, children or any earthly type of relationship -is forgotten?  Why is it that the worship of God is no longer as important as being reunited with their child?

I think this is a good and honest question. I don’t believe it was meant judgmentally, and I think it was asked in an effort to understand something. I am assuming that if one reader asks this question, there are probably many more out there with the same thoughts, who are afraid to voice them.

I thought of a few points regarding this. Firstly, I want to remind my reader that many of the blogs about losing a child are attempts to work through that loss and the blogger will naturally write from that perspective. A blog post is usually just a mere snapshot of what the blogger is feeling at that precise point in time. There are so many thoughts, emotions, and words that do not make it onto the blog page. Just because the blogger writes about their longing to see their child again does not mean that they do not look forward to worshipping God in heaven.

I also think that this is an area where God has tender understanding towards these dear mommies. He knows our frames and that we are dust. He knows how bound we tend to be to the things that we can see, feel, and touch, and how hard it is for us to relate to a world that is unseen, often unfelt, and untouchable. We had our babies here with us, to kiss and smell and hug and now they are so profoundly gone. It is so natural for us to want back what we have lost. It makes us look forward to the restoration that will surely come in heaven.

Of course Jesus will be the focal point in heaven. He is so full of light and glory and majesty, we will find ourselves drawn to him like a moth to a flame. We will be unable to resist him! We will see our loved ones and it will be a huge joy but seeing Jesus face to face will overshadow that joy a million times. But as a mommy with a precious little one in heaven I have two things to look forward to - seeing Jenna, and looking into the glorious eyes of my heavenly bridegroom with an unveiled face for the rest of eternity.

I looked up what the bible had to say about us no longer having any earthly type of relationship. The bible does mention that we will no longer marry or be given into marriage in heaven, but is silent on the matter of children and other relationships. I believe that we will not marry in heaven because earthly marriage is a picture of something heavenly - the marriage between Jesus and his bride. Marriage is an exclusive thing, a contract made between two parties, and there is no room for another person in the mix.  When we are married to Jesus in heaven there will no longer be room for the kind of exclusive intimacy that we shared with our earthly spouses. Jesus will be our all in all.

This does not mean however, that all kinds of earthly relationships will be abolished automatically. I believe we will still know our spouses, our friends, our children, and enjoy sweet fellowship with them with Jesus at the center of it all.

As I pondered my reader’s question, it occurred to me that God himself is the most relational being I know. Everything he does is through relationships. He exists in relationship. The three persons of the God-head are in perfect relationship with one another. All of God’s dealings towards man is done with one goal in mind and that is for God to have a relationship with man.

God, the big, and mighty, awesome God, walked with puny Adam in the garden. He called Abraham his friend. He talked to Moses face to face. He uses words like child, sister, spouse, to talk of his chosen people and he calls himself their husband. He calls David a man after his own heart. Why? Despite all his frailties and failures David understood one thing. He knew how to be real with God. David had a single-minded, unwavering desire to be in relationship with God, and God loved that about him.

In Isaiah God says he would make his home with those who have a humble and a contrite heart. In the new testament he calls himself Emmanuel, God with us. In the book of Revelation he is knocking at the door of our hearts, longing for us to admit him into the inner sanctum of our lives so that we could sup together.

The bible does not only tell us how much God wants us to be in relationship with him, it also tells us what a blessing it is to be in right relationship with one another. (Psalm 133) God talks about his church as a body, who needs to work together as a team to get the job done. 1 Cor 13 talks about love being the greatest thing, and love needs relationships to express itself in. The work of the ministry is carried out in relationship. I could go on and on but this blog is getting long!!

All of this points me to one thing: my precious, relational God who values relationships so highly and made me in his image to value them too, will surely honor the relationship I have with my little girly girl. It might not be the same as it was here on earth, in fact I have no idea how old Jenna will be in heaven or what our relationship will look like.  But I know that she will always be my little girl and I am certain that we will still know one another and have precious times together in the ages to come. You can bank on it!

Whew!

Life has been busy. My Google reader (love that thing!) shows I have 53 unread posts from the various blogs that I follow. That is a lot of reading that I haven’t been doing!

Not being at my computer that much has curtailed my good intentions of replying to some of your very sweet comments lately. It has also kept me from writing about Jenna’s birthday until now. And right now my brain is fuzzy and my bed is crying out to me, but I will try to see if I can capture at least a smidget of that wonderful day for you.

I stuffed all of your lovely, beyond-words-special cards in a big envelope and saved them for Jenna’s special day.  Jenna was blessed with beautiful words from friends she had never met here on earth as well as from people whom she knew well, she received handmade cards, cards from little girls her own age, cards with dum dum lollipops taped on it (if you ever saw Jenna begging lollipops from our pastor after a church service you’d know how much she loved them), a hand-drawn picture of Jenna, and even the print-out of a long lost forum topic where all my cyber friends welcomed Jenna on the day of her birth. (Thanks, Donna!) I opened the cards one by one at Jenna’s party and read it with my mom and my friends. They brought tears to my eyes. THANK YOU ALL!!! I couldn’t bear to tie them to the balloons and send them away so I am going to paste them in a scrapbook instead.

We had a lovely day and it was so effortless for me since my friends were such a help! A sweet friend from church offered the use of her gorgeous pool deck, another dear friend brought bunches of balloons and paper products, and chef friend Holland baked white and pink cupcakes with marshmallow daisies on them.

It was a sacrifice for my church friends to even be at the party since we have had so many church meetings this weekend and everyone was tired, but they came anyway and that really touched my heart.

Everyone was having so much fun in the pool I didn’t want to break it up but at one point I handed out the balloons, and those who wanted to wrote a message to Jenna on theirs. We sang her a happy birthday, with our faces turned heavenwards, and released the balloons, watching them drift out of sight. Sending up balloons will never fail to move me.

We managed to sneak into the cemetary with a full two minutes to go before gate-closing time. I couldn’t fully enjoy being there knowing that we were going to be booted out at any second, but we left Jenna a special little keepsake and a cupcake. :D Her grave stone is in but it was full of sand splatters from the rainstorms. It doesn’t quite look like I envisioned it, but I will take a picture of it next time, when I have had a chance to clean it nicely.  

Thank you all again for the lovely support we received from you all in the form of blog comments, birthday cards and gifts, (Cindy, what can I say? ) and your prayers. The day would have been much less special and a whole lot more difficult if it weren’t for all of you!

I have a lot of ‘blog fodder’ at the moment, there is so much I want to write about, but I will call it a day for now.  I am ‘poegaai’, or for those of you who do not understand Afrikaans, I am pooped.

Happy birthday, my little muffin!

Happy birthday Jenna!  May all the love we are sending your way today make you sing and dance for joy! Our little princess!!! We’ll love you for always…

Sweet sacrifice

We are having a church conference this weekend and after tonight’s meeting the youth was selling gourmet hot dogs as a fundraiser. I was starving, and ended up eating my hot dog next to a dear older lady from our church whose adult daughter died after a long battle with cancer a few years ago. I had been wanting to bounce some ideas around with someone who is a little further than me along this road and who has a real walk with God, so I jumped at the chance to ask her a few questions.

It was sooooo good to talk to her. As you all can glean from my latest posts, I have been getting advice from people lately that I have been trying to receive in the correct spirit. I have been trying to find the balance between following my own heart and conscience and yet allowing friends the freedom to speak into my life. Sometimes they don’t comprehend the grieving process and I get hurt. On the other hand I realise they may see blind spots that I can’t see and I want to have a teachable spirit. It can get so confusing for me sometimes…

As I drove home after our talk I felt encouraged. As far as grieving mommas go, I realise that I am really in a good place. I am truly at peace and I do not wrestle with why this had to happen. I am not angry, nor do I feel like I am lugging a heavy burden of grief with me wherever I go. There is pain, yes. How can there not be? I miss Jenna. Sometimes it is a searing pain that slices right through my heart. But I do not feel anguish or despair. For that, I am thankful.

I remembered the days immediately after Jenna left us. I cannot possibly find words to tell you all of the grace and peace that enveloped us at that time. But more than that, something sweet had happened in my own heart. Laying my most precious possession at the feet of Jesus with the firm determination that I would praise my God regardless of the outcome, had produced in my heart a tenderness I had never known before. Things that would normally irritate me or push my buttons were inconsequential. For just a few days my heart was so sweet and pure before the Lord that there were moments that I thought I would never sin again. Those are huge words and quite presumptuous, and of course it didn’t last long (sigh) but that is exactly what I felt.

As I drove home tonight thinking about the sweetness that sacrifice and suffering had produced in me, albeit for a short time, I realised that sacrifice always brings with it a fresh sense of God’s grace and favor surrounding us. I think that the God who sacrificed it all just so that he could have a relationship with you and me places a special value on the times we freely offer up something (no matter how big or small) that we would rather hold on to. When we do that we are mirroring Jesus’ own heart and I think something about that moves God’s heart. I can picture him looking down and saying: “That’s my girl, how can I bless her?” And his blessing comes, he wraps us with a tangible sense of his goodness and his favor. Sacrifice, like that grain of wheat that has to die, brings forth his life and much fruit in us.

I have to admit to you all that lately, I have been bothered with a sense of ‘dullness’ in my walk with God. I have lacked some of the passion and fire for him that I have experienced in times past. I realised, right there in my car this evening, that I have been praising God with my lips but not with my heart. I have been looking for the easy road and not the road that costs me something. And it has sullied me.

The bible talks about the ’sacrifice of praise.’ Sometimes (and I just gave a big sigh as I typed that ) praising God is a sacrifice. It means letting go of my desire to be in charge and it requires a ’sweet and low’ spirit.

So tonight, I will offer the evening sacrifice to my Lord. I want to turn off this computer and turn my face to see his sweet face smiling down on me. I want to read his word and let it breathe life into these dry bones.

So what if it costs me a bit of sleep.

A picture and some news.

I just love this picture. It was taken a year and four days ago. Jenna picked Kiki out as her favorite kitten as soon as she was told that Kiki was the only girl in the litter. I think Kiki (I don’t know where Jenna got the name from) had many, many days where she secretly wished she had been born a boy. (Click on the picture if you want to see a bigger version.)

I was told today that Jenna’s grave marker is in. I am eager to see it! I will post a picture next time I go to the cemetery.

Other news: It seems like I will be teaching next year! I just LOVE the school where I will be teaching, and their approach to education. I’ve been given some subjects where I can be as hands-on as I like to be, so it is exciting! It has been a long time since I have stood in a classroom so there will be challenges and adjustments, but I think they can only help me grow as a person.

We had a huge rain storm yesterday which knocked the power out, and as the 3 boys and I snuggled and talked on my bed my middle boy told me: “Mom, I don’t know what I would do if you died. I feel like you are going to die soon”. Poor boy.

I told him that it was just the devil lying to him. I explained that the devil’s voice brings fear but God’s voice gives us peace. Fear is the devil’s territory. This is how we know God is speaking: The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits… (James 3:7)

Anyhow, my own words got me thinking. As I considered all the challenges that lie before me this coming year I was reminded that there is no need for worry or fear in anything. In everything I can say like Joshua or Caleb did…surely God is with me, and because of that, I am well able to go in and possess this land.

Something tangible

I recently had a conversation with some precious, sweet friends who had the impression that giving Jenna a birthday party would be a difficult thing for me. They thought that it would open the door to feelings of grief and sadness on that day. They think I am tormenting myself unnecessarily and that it is understandable having a party now since my grief is so fresh, but that it probably isn’t advisable for me to continue celebrating Jenna like this in the future. I tried to explain to them, and I don’t know how successful I was, that simply doing nothing for Jenna on that day would be infinitely harder.
Not doing something tangible for Jenna would be more tormenting for me at this point.

I love my girlie girl. The fact that she has left us to go and be with Jesus does not take that love away. Love is a verb and it always seeks expression. God loved the world so much that he gave…

I love my muffin so much that I want to give something, DO something to show it. Since I can’t hug her and kiss her and shower her with presents I want to do the next best thing: surround myself with some of my best friends and have a fun day in her memory. I might be proved wrong, but I don’t envision many tears on that day at all. (In my experience, the tears will probably come a few days prior, as I anticipate Jenna’s first birthday without us. But on the actual day, the grace of God will carry me though.) We will have a cake and balloons for Jenna and we will send her some love in the form of birthday cards, but we will not mope around and entertain morbid thoughts about what could have been. We know she is with Jesus and that she is happy.

We are going to rejoice in the precious little princess that Jesus gave us, and we are going to express our love for her in a tangible way. We would do it if she were here, why not do it for her still?

My middle son made a comment to me the other day at the cemetery that I felt was very true. “I always feel so at peace here, mom,” he said. I feel that way too. Somehow I can sit there next to her grave and rest in the fact that she is with Jesus. I feel close to her, and to Him, there. Cutting the tall grass around Jenna’s grave and arranging her flowers and trinkets around it is therapy for me. It’s a mommy thing to want to do something for our children and making Jenna’s grave look pretty is one thing I can do for her. I think it makes her smile as she looks down from heaven and sees that her mommy has not forgotten her.

Perhaps the day will come when I will no longer need these tangible expressions of my love for Jenna.
Where I will just be able to love her quietly in my heart. I am not sure I want that day to come though. In the Christmasses to come I think we may find more joy in hanging a special ornament on the tree for her, or stuffing a stocking full of ‘love-notes’ than doing nothing at all. As a family, we will always know that one of us is missing on special occasions like these. I think filling that void with a special token of love might be akin to “putting on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness”.

Remembering Jenna fondly and with joy is something I hope I will be able to do for the rest of my life. I don’t want people to think I am holding onto my grief just because I choose to continue loving my little girl. Love comes from God himself and my love for Jenna cannot be severed, even though our earthly relationship was. I find much more healing in allowing my love for Jenna to flow out in tangible expressions as opposed to throwing up walls around my heart and keeping my thoughts and feelings inside.