Our dear, sweet friends from Bolivia are here again for a visit. Pablo lived in our city years ago, going to Bible School day and night, and eventually returned to Bolivia to become pastor and teacher at our bible school there. God has blessed the work there, and knitted our hearts to those of the Bolivian people, even those whom we have not met yet. Pablo is like family. His sister, Carolina, is a dear friend. His wife, Pamela, is a sweetheart. I have been looking forward all week to their arrival and hugged them with joy as soon as I spotted them this evening at church.

(I must admit that part of my anticipation in seeing them again, has to do with having Pablo play piano on the worship team. Man, that guy is gifted. I never fail to be inspired to get off my lazy behind and practise playing piano when he is around. He is not only talented, he is a worshipper – and his music is pure ministry to God’s heart. I long to be able to play like that.)

When Pablo lived here, he was a twenty-something bachelor. Now he is married, and father to the two cutest little dark-eyed, chubby-cheeked, curly-haired children.
I met his eldest, Valeria, two years ago when she was a contented little baby a few months short of her first birthday. Jenna had fussed over her with all the maternal feelings that a three year old could muster. I can still see her bending over Valeria’s carseat, “talking to the baby”, whilst stroking her cheek. (Pamela left some comments on the Jenna page, you can read what she said about how Jenna loved on Valeria at comment number 9.)

Now Valeria is a gorgeous little madam, almost three, who has her mommy and her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

I am in a quandry as to how to handle Valeria. I can see that my hubby is too. In one sense, we want to stare at her and lap up all her toddler sweetness, because we are missing the unique little mannerisms and movements that so many girly-girls around the age of three have in common. Did you know that little girls have a similar way of tilting their heads when they are intent on charming you, they have this singular little bounce when they run, their hands are often poised in quite the same way? I try not to stare at toddlers, but sometimes I can’t help it (hubby says sometimes he wonders if people mistake him for a pervert when he cannot help but stare). I see Jenna in girly toddlers, so often.

I saw Jenna in the body language of Valeria this evening, as she tried to coerce her daddy into going somewhere with her. And later, as she threw a temper tantrum.

To stare or not to stare. At some point, staring too much either alerts people around me of my longing or causes feelings to rise to the surface that are best controlled in public, so I have this very ambivalent response. Stare, or ignore. And whichever response I choose, I cannot help but be painfully AWARE.

Oooohhhh. So I sit here tonight, having been reminded by another sweet girly girl, of the little one that isn’t here with us right now. And as the tears roll down my cheeks, I post this little lament. I miss Jenna.

I reach for Jenna’s picture and stare at that sweet little smile, look into those expressive eyes framed by those gorgeous eyebrows. I smile into them and as I always do, I remember that she is very much alive still, just not in a place where I can touch her and draw her close. So I do the next best thing.

I take her picture, and cradle it close against my heart.

I am LOVING the fall weather that unexpectedly dropped in on our corner of the US. It is my favorite time of the year as far as weather is concerned, with Spring running a close second. It seems that I can never quite enjoy spring to its fullest though. It coincides with one of the busiest seasons if you are a school teacher. Plus, things always seem to thwart my spring enjoyment. Like the year we spent almost our entire spring (it is short here) cooped up in a hotel thanks to a house fire. Or the year we moved during spring and I was too busy packing and unpacking to enjoy the outdoors. Or last year, when the sky seemed wide and empty and time seemed to last forever and the birdsong reminded me too painfully that Jenna was gone.

Yup, I like Fall. I love the Thanksgiving Holidays, and the way that the weather slowly turns colder until we can make cozy fires in the fireplace and burn spiced cider fragranced candles. My students at school love it too – on Wednesday I taught two of my four classes outside.

I am enjoying my classes this year. I am blessed to have my own classroom – it makes a huge difference, and I feel slightly more organised as a result. I say ’slightly’, because I still don’t feel organised enough (I wonder if I ever will?). I took on an extra subject this year – Earth Science for sixth grade, and together with helping the middle boy adjust to being at our school for the first time, I have my hands full. I only feel now, after 6 weeks, that I am starting to get my stride.

My journalism class is wonderful. I have half the students I had last semester, and it is so much more manageable and so much less frenetic. We have two weeks to go until publication date, and almost all the articles are ready for layout! That is a first. Hubby says he can install Publisher on my school computers for me – so, instead of me going nutso once a month, I can teach the students to do the job themselves! Now I just need to get the man in my classroom and to work on those machines…

Otherwise…I’m doing fine. Challenged to ’step it up’ where responsibility is concerned. I was talking to God the other day about how tired I was of going around the same old mountains again and again and again, and he reminded me in his tender, full-of-mercy way that everything I want requires some kind of sacrifice from me. I need to remind myself that the things I long for so much are there for the taking, provided I am willing to invest the time and the effort required. Do I want more of Jesus? I don’t need to try harder, I need to make time for his presence more. Do I want growth in my marriage? I don’t need to resign myself to the status quo, I need to put down my own needs and ask Jesus to help me to minister to the hubby better. Do I want to be a worship leader? I need to pick up my guitar more. (Duh)

OK, so it is so simple, but I often tend to think that everything in life should just happen automatically! (Double duh)

When I look at my life I see so much wasted time and opportunities. But there is a grace stirring in me, and I know Jesus can redeem even my failures and use them for his glory. Sooo…here’s me, stepping out…

I have had a rough week. Or two. I cannot quite put my finger on one single reason why, but I reckon it has something to do with back-to-school craziness and adjusting to teaching again. There are lots of changes around here but I don’t feel like writing about them now. They are nothing serious, but it always takes time to get used to doing new things in new ways. Add a good dose of the old hormones to the mix, and you get a pretty emotional Sumi.

I am not typically given to mood swings, but my emotions have certainly been running the gamut here. Loneliness. Anger. Melancholy. Frustration. Depression. Missing Jenna. Being weepy for no discernable reason at all. I do think that as I approach my mid forties those hormones are stepping up a bit. So I am not taking my current state of mind seriously. I realise it is transcient and I will be myself again very soon.

I found it hard to enter into worship at church tonight though. I have made several faux pas this week, blurted out something that I shouldn’t have, lost my cool with a rude driver in a really over-the-top way (with my kids as witnesses), nursed anger towards my hubby for not being here more, struggled to find my stride in a new class I am teaching at school. My house is a wreck, our family is in desperate need for a better routine, I am not getting around to everything that demands my time. To top it all, I have not been yoked with Jesus and drawing on my relationship with God to see me through. I have been (moodily) going it alone. And failing desperately.

I arrived too late at church to secure my regular spot on the worship team. We have been missing a microphone ever since a concert we had at the church two weeks ago, and there are only three mics for four singers. Until we can get the situation rectified, the one who arrives last misses out, or has to share a mic with another singer. I decided not to share tonight, but to worship off the stage where I could fling my arms out wide and sing freely without the constraints of being a part of the team.

As always, I could feel Jesus tugging at my heart and wooing me to enter into that place of intimate worship with him. But I felt too sullied, too broken, too useless to give in to that tender call. What could Jesus possibly want from miserable old me? Someone who keeps failing at the same old things, over and over and over again? I told him such. I told him that all I could give him was this pitifully weak and unfaithful heart of mine.

He whispered back:

It’s all I want.

You’d think by now that we would be getting used to the change that came into our lives so abruptly on February 17, 2008. For the most part, we look like any normal family doing normal things. (Although, perhaps calling us normal looking might be a bit of a stretch. We are a peculiar lot. )

Still. Life will never quite be as ‘normal’ and simple as it was before. Sometimes it gets downright complicated.

I have been bitten by the redecorating bug, and am in the process of reorganising the tv room, which formerly doubled up as Jenna’s playroom. I want to turn the room into a cozy den for hubby and I, or for the kids and their friends, and since color is the thing that speaks to me most when I am decorating, I have wanted to move everything that ‘doesn’t go’ anymore, out.

I am grateful to be able to pass Jenna’s big pink dollhouse on to her bestest friend Joseph’s little sister. I didn’t want to pass it on to a stranger. I am really OK with letting it go, though it took hubby a little longer to agree.

It is the colorful plastic drawers that I moved into the walk-in closet in that room that bites. It would be so fine if I could reorganise the stuff in those drawers to make space for the the pairless socks that I stubbornly hold onto, or the growing pile of sheet music that hubby drags home after each church service. It could hold a sizeable chunk of all those other little odds and ends that spill out of their baskets or off the shelves and cry out for better organisation.

It bites, it really does. I am not ready to empty the contents of those drawers, or even to move the contents into another space. They contain the teaset and slice-a-rific sets we had given Jenna for her last Christmas with us, the dolls that went with her dollhouse, a miniature princess castle that enamoured her the moment she laid eyes on it. I pulled open one drawer, and at the very top was a teacup she had played with a few short days before she left this house for good, the inside still encrusted with sugar.

Untouched.

I sat on the floor and sobbed. Part of me was angry because if Jenna were here with us I would have no qualms about moving her stuff around. But she is not, and I am so torn between wanting to keep everything the way it was and moving on. Seeing her things spark memories, and I don’t want them to fade. If Jenna were here her things would mean little to me, but now they are all I have.

I am letting go, little by little. There is a bag of soft toys downstairs that I will be taking to Goodwill soon, but I arranged them all together in groups and took their picture before dumping them in the bag. For memories’ sake.

Sigh.

I will be taking pictures of her teaset and dolls and castle one day. But right now I am not quite ready. And part of me wishes that I was.

It’s insanely late and this may just turn out to be an experiment to see how coherent I can be past midnight. Heehee!

Today I:

Swallowed hard and watched the oldest boy go off with his youth group to visit the same water park we visited earlier this month. I didn’t swallow hard because he was going (I prayed instead). I swallowed hard because I was not going. I really wanted to go too.

Tried on an insanely expensive dress just for fun whilst hanging out with a sweet friend. We were at the ‘droolingest’ store in the whole wide world. (Anthropologie, if you must know.)

Played Bejeweled Blitz on facebook for much longer than I care to divulge.

Listened to the hubby teach at bible school. He did good.

Walked down memory lane as the two younger boys reminisced about a long-standing and very silly game they used to play with their stuffed animals. It was a classic. Maybe one day I will tell you more about this game. (Appropriately called Funny Animals.) My kids don’t read my blog and they will never know.

Stopped by the school to decorate my classroom, only to discover that there was a leak in the ’storage’ classroom and everything had been moved from that classroom to mine. Murphy’s law, I tell ya.

Hung out at two bookstores and didn’t get what I went there for. I did walk out of the one with a teacher’s discount card though. Cool beans.

Wished I could go with my son and my friends to a waterpark. Did I say that already?

Stayed up insanely late to write this little bit of trivia.

<3

Right now, I am going to clean the cat litter in my room. After that, my nose and I will be able to go to sleep.

She does. Like her mama.

I used to be so enamoured with Jenna’s eyebrows. They were the perfect frame for those big blue eyes, and I loved staring at their exquisite shape when she was asleep next to me. But most of all, I loved them because they could talk. Those eyebrows said a lot. On the video that a sweet friend took of Jenna and I at a park day a few months before she left us, I noticed that my eyebrows talk too. Go figure.

I like to think that Jesus is just as enamoured with little Jenna, including her eyebrows, as he spends time with her up in heaven.  Perhaps she tells him things that he already knows, just like any child tells his/her parents, but because he loves her and loves being with her, he arches his eyebrows and says: “Wow! That is so cool! Tell me more.” I can’t imagine what heaven is like, but I know that there are relationships there and I am sure Jenna and Jesus are enjoying theirs.

I sat next to Sarah at the back of church yesterday and watched her ‘talking’ with baby Zoey. Here was Sarah, in her grown-up fullness, totally capable of having scintillating and eloquent conversation with her peers (when she isn’t making fart jokes, that is ), taking the time to reciprocate the adoring gaze and precious coos of that helplessly dependent little girl on her lap. It was such a picture to me of our great and glorious and mighty God who steps down from that lofty place to meet us face to face and who takes the time to whisper sweet words in our hearing. And he delights when we return that gaze, and smile up at him.

So I did just that. Right there in church, sitting next to my Sarah friend, I turned the mental gaze of my heart to Jesus and smiled at him.  I could feel his pleasure in that simple act of worship, as he smiled back at me. Oh, sometimes I get so complicated and think I need to do this or do that to win God’s approval. But at times like these, I realise that his eyes are on me, his little sparrow, and he simply longs for me to have a relationship with him in spirit and in truth. And he knows every quirk about me, and (gasp) even likes me for it. He is probably enamoured with my eyebrows too.

What a precious God we serve.

OK, I am seriously musing now. My intention was simply to post a happy birthday greeting to Jenna. And to tell her that I miss her eyebrows. I miss her.

I cuddled the two younger boys in my big king sized bed this morning. As we lay there, the youngest piped up and expressed something a friend told him at church this weekend. He thought it was weird to celebrate the birthday of a little girl who is not getting older here on earth. I told him that we are not celebrating how old she is, we are celebrating that she WAS born, she WAS here, we were blessed to have her.  (We celebrate Christmas, don’t we?) I went on to tell the boy that just about everything is weird about losing a little girl so young. Her things are here, she is not. Her friends are growing up before our eyes, she is conspicuously absent. There is nothing normal about that.

I suspect there are people who think we are making too much of a fuss on Jenna’s birthday. Whatever. We would be remembering her today anyway. I’d rather do it with laughter and ice cream and friends, than alone in sackcloth and ashes.

So, we celebrate. We praise God for a little girl who danced into our lives and sprinkled laughter and love and plenty of pink into our home. We miss her, but we are glad that she came.

Happy birthday, my sweet little Jenna girl.

It’s been almost two months since my last post. Whew! I am askeered to look at my blog stats. I think I am staying away from that page for now.

It’s Jenna’s 5th birthday tomorrow and I am experiencing the familiar roller coaster of emotion that precedes a big Jenna day.  I announced at church this morning that we’ll be having ice cream in her honor at a Baskin Robbins tomorrow afternoon, and I couldn’t keep the tears from flowing as I did so.  It surprised me. Once again I have misjudged the way this thing sneaks up on you when you least expect it. I felt fragile and teary all through the service, so much so that I had to leave my seat next to hubby in the front and go and sit at the back in order to compose myself. 

Still, I am really, really OK. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes it feels like my heart is ripping in two and the pain of missing Jenna  is searing and sharp. But I am OK. I will be OK. The acute, searing pain is temporary. Underneath it all is a peace I cannot explain which carries me.

We have had a long , hot, lazy summer here. I feel slightly ‘consternated’ (I just like that word, even though I don’t expect to see it in a dictionary, so there) because the remaining weeks of summer are starting to slip through my fingers at an alarming rate. Once again I didn’t do half the things on my wishful thinking  to-do list. Soon school will be in full swing and will consume my time. Why didn’t I use my summer time more wisely? It’s the story of my life!

I did have fun though – going to a waterpark with the boys and a friend, playing canasta with girl friends until the wee hours of the morning, reading some interesting books, painting a room and furniture, visiting with sweet friends.

I appreciate all the sweet little notes I have been receiving from you all, to check in on me and see how I am doing. A friend asked me at church why I haven’t been blogging. When I told her I feel like I have nothing to say, she told me that I ALWAYS have something to say. Hmmmm. I am not so sure anymore. My life is what it is and it has become pretty un-profound lately. Nothing new, just me pressing on and trying to walk with Jesus. Boring, actually.

I do sometimes feel as though I have a book churning in me. It is not about Jenna. I might share what it is about some time.

Well, there you have it. I haven’t written in a long time, and here I sit, wondering what to say. I think I will end this post, but first I want to share two things. First(ly), baby Stellan needs your prayers again. He is back in hospital and his SVT is dangerously high, his little body is growing tired of it.

Secondly. We went to see My Sister’s Keeper last week. I am surprised that I even went. It promised to be a disturbing movie, after all that we have been through. As it turned out, it was sad, but cathartic in a way, and the story was sufficiently dissimilar to ours to not spark too many painful reminders. (There were a few.) I HAVE to share with you the last few words in the movie though. It is somewhat of a spoiler, so if you want to see the movie without knowing what happens in the end, don’t read what I am about to type, OK?

The movie ends with a narration by the younger sister’s character:

I had a sister. She was fantastic. I know I will see her again. Until then, our relationship continues.

I could so quote those words:

I had a little girl. She was fantastic. I know I will see her again. Until then, our relationship continues.

My dad always tells the story of the guy who got a flat tire on a lonely highway. Far in the distance, he could make out the lights of a farm house. He set off across the fields to go and borrow a jack from the farmer, and as he plodded on he rehearsed in his head how he would ask the farmer for this. He realised it was quite late in the evening. The farmer probably wouldn’t take kindly to being disturbed.  These farm folk are quite set in their ways and the farmer probably wouldn’t even open the door to him, never mind lend him a jack. By the time the man reached the front door of the farm house, he was fuming. When the farmer opened the door the stranded man shouted one sentence to him: “You can just take your jack and shove it, then!” and stormed off.

LOL! I can so be like that man! I have always had this propensity for painting scenarios in my head before anything actually comes to pass. I did not get stranded on a lonely road, nor did I need to ask anyone for help, but the last week or so I had tried to figure out the next valley that I thought God was bringing me to, and tried to see the good in it.

I had, what I thought, (and a nurse friend agreed) were swollen lymph glands. Then, last week I noticed an unmistakeable lump in my side.  I’ve been feeling tired lately. Full of tiny, unexplainable aches and pains.  OKKKK…I thought, so my next test would be a real battle for my health. I envisioned myself losing my hair…getting painfully thin…watching my kids and my hubby worry about me…blah blah blah. I know that God doesn’t delight in afflicting his children and that everything he does is redemptive, so I was trying really hard to keep my chin up and trust him, in whatever he does and wherever he leads me. I know everything works together for those who love him and who are called according to his purposes.

But I was scared. I was in a mental battle.  And in the midst of this niggling worry, I hit a real low emotionally.

I went to the doctor today. The “swollen lymph glands” are actually just knots in the muscles around my spine. The lump is a simple fatty deposit thingy. The aches and pains are probably just the beginnings of  arthritis, and I am really very well.  Talk about getting myself worked up over nothing!

The emotional low lingers though. As I left the doctor’s office, mentally exhausted and deep in thought, a lamp post jumped into the parking lot right in front of me and ding-ed my car badly. Sigh.

I am just a bit out of sorts and find myself missing Jenna and bursting into tears at odd moments.  I guess I should take the advice I wrote to a bloggy friend yesterday: We all get weary and feel tapped dry sometimes. Even Jesus got weary and had to sit down to rest. When he did though, he sat on a well. I need to go and sit on the well of God’s living water and allow his sweet presence to wash over me and restore my vision. Everything I need is in Jesus.

In his presence is fullness of joy.

Isa 41:17-18When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none; their tongue fails for thirst, I Jehovah will hear them, I the God of Israel will not leave them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

Thanks girl, for asking me how I was doing yesterday. And then, for replying to my perfunctory “I’m doing well”, with a flat out denial. You told me that no, you could tell I was not alright, so I promptly burst into tears and called you a ”sharp” girl.  Thanks for making space for me to sit down next to you on the bench and tell you my woes. Even more than that…thanks for praying for me as much as I now realise you have been doing, despite the fact that you are going through such a dark valley yourself, being racked with pain constantly.

I realise you probably don’t read my blog. Still, I just want to put it on paper this computer screen that even though there was this part of me that just wanted to run and hide and not be vulnerable, you were the hands and feet of Jesus to me yesterday. I felt his soothing presence washing over me as you allowed me to open my heart and pour its contents out in your hearing.  You are one strong woman, Phyllis. You reminded me yesterday that it is a good thing to press in and allow the Jesus inside us to minister to others even when we are in the midst of our darkest trials. May he bless you for your faithfulness, and may you find your healing soon.

Love, Sumi

Yeah…so I had a low week. I have been facing a battlefield in my mind which is quite unrelated to missing Jenna, but it has triggered an acute case of  “the missing”  in me.

In the middle of this battlefield though,  I keep seeing glimpses of Jesus and of his faithfulness and I hear him telling me time and time again: “I’ve got it. Don’t you worry. Do you realise how much I love you and how much you can trust me? “

So I bow and say, “Yes Lord. I will trust you. I KNOW you are a merciful God and you have my best interests at heart. I will walk through this valley if you want me to.” 

And I praise God for all the sweeties in my life that he has so graciously surrounded me with. For real people who love me and pray for me and allow me to cry on their shoulders once in a while.

Phyllis is not the only one by a long shot.

So, I am on summer break – and now that the school yearbook is a wrap I can start to feel like it! I say start to, because it will take a while for this poor house to get on a level where I can feel like I am truly on holiday.  It is showing the accumulated neglect of 9 months of teaching.

I have been so busy I don’t even know where to start blogging again, but I realised I needed to sit and write here at my computer again when I commented on a friend’s blog last night and started spouting all kinds of stuff that didn’t even have anything to do with her post. LOL!

Soooooo…here’s a quick status report from me:

1. Did I mention I am on break? Woot!!!

2. I cleaned out the pantry today, and my kitchen feels like a happier place already. Tomorrow I will hopefully tackle the fridge to get rid of the science experiments growing in there. My bedroom is a disaster area, with books all over the floor. I am pricing them for a homeschool curriculum sale coming up on Saturday. I had sorted them yesterday, but ran out of price stickers. So they stayed on my floor in their neatly sorted piles for hubby to stumble over in the dark when he came to bed last night. I’m just kidding, I was a good girl and cleared a nice path for him but if he veered off course somewhat in the dark he might have tripped. Praise God he has a sure sense of direction.

3. I am tickled pink that I managed to figure out SOMETHING, anything, on Photoshop. I couldn’t figure out the very basics before, but I was working on the yearbook in tandem with a lady who is a Photoshop guru. I decided I simply HAD to copy her and try to make the lovely photo collages she was doing, and thanks to some great Youtube tutorials, I DID it!! The endless possibilities photoshop offers has me salivating and I can’t wait to learn more. I made the photo collage header for this blog last night – d’ya like it?

4. Shutterfly (where we made the yearbooks) offered me a free photobook, and I spent much of last night putting together a little memory book of Jenna. I had to redeem it by today, needless to say I went to bed LATE last night! I placed some of Jenna’s favorite clothes over the scanner and used my new found photoshop savvy (whoa, that sounds good ) to build the pages for her photobook. I’ll share a few at the bottom of this post. It was bittersweet rummaging through her things, and I discovered all the precious cards that many of you, my wonderful blog readers sent last year for Jenna’s birthday.  They moved me to tears. Such sweet, thoughtful words from people whom I had never even met…almost a year later, they mean more to me than ever before.  Thank you, all. I’m missing that girly tonight.

5. I am reading through the book of Isaiah. The final chapters of Isaiah are some of my favorites in the bible, but I have never read the entire book chronologically. I LOVE reading about how redemptive God is in everything he does. That is what this book is about for me – even God’s judgment is always redemptive, with a view to purifying and refining his people. His mercy always triumphs. No wonder David expressed that he loved God’s judgments, that to him they were sweeter than honey and more precious than gold. He knew that everything in his life, even the trials, worked together for good. If he yielded to God’s correction in his life, and allowed it to do what God intended, he would find his heart’s desire realised: He would dwell in the presence of God.
One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

6. A friend’s house burned down on Sunday while she was at church. She got home to find everything gone, and her little dog dead. I am slightly consternated (even if that isn’t a REAL word, it sounds nice, so I am going to use it) about how to help her. I realised after Jenna went to heaven that few people really understood what it was like to lose a child because they hadn’t gone through it. Likewise, I don’t know what it is like to lose everything to a fire, because I haven’t been there. If any of you have dealt with this, or if you know someone who has, could you please give me some advice on how I can best help my friend? What would her most pressing needs be right now? How can I make things easier for her? Please share any advice you have, and feel free to point me to helpful links.

I’ll stop there. Boy, I am really out of it as far as blogging is concerned.

Here are some of the pictures I put in Jenna’s photobook:

This was Jenna’s favorite shirt. You can see the glitter that she managed to get all over it in the bottom of the picture. 

I scanned in a sweater I bought for her on our last shopping trip together. She couldn’t get enough of its softness, constantly rubbing her cheek against the ‘fur’.

Couldn’t resist this one…Captain Underpants!!! Jenna called it canteloupe-a-pants. Tee hee!