Making Up for Lost Time

Looks like I’m neglecting the old blog again, doesn’t it?

A lot has been happening around here.  First, we went on that trip to St. Pete Beach.  We had a great time—I celebrated my birthday while there, we swam in the pool a lot, I went shopping with my mom and sister, the boys played with their cousins (and my oldest got to go fishing with Grandpa).

Halfway through our time in St. Pete, I began to strongly suspect I was pregnant.  So I took a home pregnancy test and was thrilled when it came out positive.   A little apprehensive, for various reasons I won’t go into here, but really really happy.  A new baby!  My boys had been asking for one of those!  And I love being a mom.  Love it, love it.

We returned home from St. Pete, and the two older boys started school on the 24th of August.  The next day, my littlest one turned 4.  He was missing his big brothers, so I tried to make it up to him by taking him to the park, letting him help me make his birthday cake (chocolate, of course—it’s the only kind that’ll get eaten around here). 

At two o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, August 26th, I miscarried the baby.  I was only 5-1/2 weeks pregnant.  But I knew it was coming; I’d been spotting since the previous Friday.  Unbelieveably, I was also completely at peace with what was happening.  I’d prayed and prayed for peace, for acceptance, and the Lord had seen fit to give it to me just in time.  That morning of Levi’s birthday, when I’d taken him to the park . . . we’d just gotten out of the van, and he went running toward the big slide.  The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing across my face and in my hair; and I just realized:  I am so very, very blessed.  I have three wonderful boys and an amazing husband; a nice house to live in, clothes to wear, food to eat, and the intense joy of my Catholic faith.  God has only and ever taken marvelous care of me and my family.  In that moment, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of peace.  I know God loves me and has His plans for me and my family.  That may or may not include another baby.  Either way, if they are His plans, they can only be the best for us, if we are following Him.

I’d read in my Natural Family Planning book that, in the event of a miscarriage, it can’t hurt to do a conditional baptism for the little fetus/baby, just in case.  I mean, it was only slightly larger than a lemon seed, all red and bumpy, with the clear, fragile umbilical cord attached.  Did it look like a baby?  Not at all.  But from a spiritual perspective, knowing that all human life is created by God, in His image, and that He knew us before we were knit in our mothers’ wombs, there could be no question that this tiny little bundle was indeed a person.  After all, God is outside of time and space.  A person is a person is a person, regardless of age.  Just as I’m not “more” of a person than my 4-year-old—simply because I am older than he is—a newborn is not “more” of a person than a 3-week-old unborn baby.

So anyway, I put some water in a coffee cup and baptized the baby.  Then I put it in a small jar with some water, to be buried later.  When I told my husband what had happened, he was as disappointed as I was; but we were both okay then, and we’re both okay now.  I feel the occasional pang about it—like at church when the pastor prayed “for all pregnant women and women in labor.”  (What about women who’ve just lost babies?)  But things like that are just small little sufferings to be offered up.  At Mass, the prayers for the dead have become especially meaningful to me, for now I won’t only be thinking of grandmas and grandpas and a couple of old classmates whenever we make those prayers.

It’s been such a blessing, during what I thought would be an unbearable time, to have supportive friends, and of course my husband.  It’s also been a blessing to have my writing. 

A little while ago, as I was struggling to write chapter six of my novel, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire beginning of the book was not working.  I’d had plenty of positive feedback from my critiquers, but I knew that what I was writing was not staying true to my original vision for the story.  I liked what I had written, but somehow, it didn’t seem right.

And so, it was kind of like a person who knits, who gets a ways into a project and then realizes it isn’t right and she must unravel the whole thing and begin again.  (That’s how my mom was able to understand how I could cope with this awful process of starting over.)

I began again.  First, by spending several intense brainstorming sessions trying to figure out what I needed to do to return my novel to the vision I first had for it all those years ago.  Not that I am opposed to change.  My book is not going to be the book I first imagined, because, in the beginning, I had really imagined so little.  But there were things there that were good—things that made me long to read this story I’d thought up—and it bothered me that I had left some of those things by the wayside.  I thought I was doing what was right and best for my story; yet it wasn’t working.  I had to go back and find the heart of what I was trying to say in writing this.

There is so much more that goes into a novel than anyone but the author can realize.  So many plans, so much research (thank heavens for the Internet!).  So much hard work.

I’ve begun again, and things are going so much better than they had been.  I’ve got a prologue (which, honestly, is terrible and will probably get the axe).  I’ve got two-and-a-half chapters—good chapters, I think.  They look almost nothing like the first 2-1/2 chapters of my initial version, that I’d been working on earlier this year.  But they feel right to me.  Not perfect, by any stretch, but right.

Here’s a No-Duh Discovery:  typing is much faster than writing things out by hand.  I knew that intellectually, but I love the feeling of writing so much—of sitting with a pen in my hand, notebook in my lap.  I’d been writing everything out by hand first, then typing it.  At that rate, I figured I could probably have my first draft (the one I was working on before) complete in about a year or so.  But now, wanting to make up for the time I’d lost in starting again, I decided to take my story straight from my mind to the computer screen.  Typing.  I’m amazed at how much more I’m accomplishing each day.  Now, I’m thinking I’ll have that first draft finished in a month or two.  Talk about a huge difference!

So that’s what’s been going on in my world.  What’s up in yours?