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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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this is a love story

9 Comments

Today I will rise early.

I will slip downstairs before anyone else stirs. I will open the front door slowly, without a creak. I will step out onto the dewy grass with bare feet. I will listen to bird song and tree wind. I will close my eyes and try to breathe.

Tonight I will go to bed late. I will pull out the small box in the bottom drawer of my desk. I will read the sympathy cards, trace the edge of the picture, run the rosary beads between my fingers. I will whisper a prayer under my breath for a baby that was never born.

I will be the one who remembers.

. . .

Tomorrow he will rise early.

He will creak open the bedroom door to spy through the sliver. He will brighten when he catches our sleepy eyes. He will shuffle bare-footed to the bed and slip between us in the still-warm sheets. He will smile thank you when we sing a quiet happy birthday.

At evening’s end he will curl into bed with a new book and a gleaming baseball bat leaning on his nightstand, waiting for the next game. He will grin when I remind him of the cards and calls that came for him. He will whisper I love you when I whisper a bedtime birthday blessing.

Everyone will remember.

. . .

If I am honest, I want to forget today.

I want to pretend this un-anniversary never existed. I want to rush headlong into tomorrow, the easy delight of wrapping presents and frosting cake and singing surprises and celebrating the sweetness of my growing son. I do not want to sit here and remember loss.

But for the rest of my life, these two days will fall together like dominos knocking in a row. The calendar catches all of our living and dying, pinning down grief and hope on helpless dates. Each year we have to face them all over again.

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Today is the anniversary of the day we lost a baby. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day we welcomed a son. Memories of miscarriage and memories of birth, labor that brought death and labor that brought life, swirling in a blur of emergency room and maternity ward, stacked on top of each other in the same hospital.

One day rolling unrelenting into the next, meeting in an almost-unbearable moment at midnight.

Each year I will sit in the tension between these two days: the mourning of the past and the celebration of the present. I will find the fullness of my motherhood somewhere in between – sorrow and joy, private and public, broken and whole.

Each year these days teach me something.

That we all have these love stories. Harder than we imagined. But building us, broken, into something holy and unknown.

. . .

The night we came home from the hospital, we looked at each other wearily before trudging up to bed.

I stopped him. “We have to hang the birthday banners.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“You really want to?”

But it wasn’t a question. It was tradition.

We stretched dancing flags across the doorframe in the dark, tripping over toys on the floor. We taped pointed pennants over the stairway, low enough so the birthday boy would have to duck with delight each time he passed.

The chintzy decorations made me smile, even in the dim light of August 2nd, 11:30 pm. Even with puffy eyes from long-gone crying.

Tomorrow would still be his birthday. Still sacred, still celebration.

Even if the eve would be forever changed.

. . .

This is a love story.

Motherhood is a story that stretches self, body and soul. It is a story of incarnation and resurrection. It is new life and strange death. It is an ancient story. It is fresh with each child.

Today and tomorrow are part of me. I will neglect neither. I will greet each day, each year. I will hold it. I will let it pass.

For a flashing moment of gut-felt gratitude I will hold each heart, whether still-beating in the sun-tanned, mosquito-pecked child in my arms, or long-buried beneath the ground in ashen dirt.

Because I am not the only one who remembers. I am not the only one who has these hard-edged days.

This is a love story. And it is ours.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kathleen Kelly says

    2 August 2015 at 9:04 am

    My love to you and Franco and your much loved children, all.

    Reply
  2. Katie says

    2 August 2015 at 9:48 pm

    Oh my this was lovingly and beautifully written. Thank you for taking us into that moment through your eyes to hang the birthday banners – every mother knows that feeling, though a far few number knows what you went through before you got home. Such a selfish account of the most devastating loses ❤️

    Reply
  3. Katie says

    2 August 2015 at 9:49 pm

    Selfless not selfish

    Reply
  4. jeni says

    3 August 2015 at 1:03 am

    really very beautiful and poignant. Thank you for sharing this. <3

    Reply
  5. Larry Patten says

    4 August 2015 at 12:34 pm

    Lovely, truth-telling thoughts, Laura. I passed this reflection along to my boss. I work at a hospice with a program entitled “Angel Babies.” Some of my colleagues work with parents dealing with the death of infants. Sigh. Hard, hard work. But essential work . . . and I feel your words add to the necessary “public” conversation. Too often, we remain silent about these times. But people always need to know they are not alone . . .

    Reply
  6. Nell @ Whole Parenting Family says

    5 August 2015 at 10:35 pm

    I love this and love your voice. Thank you for being here for all of us. Thinking of you!!

    Reply
  7. Rachel Cueva says

    6 August 2015 at 5:59 am

    Thank you for sharing this, it touched me in a special way. We lost a precious child on my eldest sons birthday. My husband asked if I wanted to cancel the birthday party for friends and family, and not knowing what to expect, I said “no, I’d rather be with friends and family”. It was a blessing to share such a powerful, yet bittersweet, life changing moment on a special day with special people. The voices of those the loved filled the house, reminding me that we have many blessings. It brought comfort in a time of great pain.
    This time, I have been praying for a miracle. This morning, there is more bleeding. pleaae pray for me as we endure another miscarriage, and surrender another soul to our Lord’s arms.

    Reply
  8. Nancy says

    13 August 2015 at 9:52 pm

    this is so beautiful it made me ache. Ache for the ones I have and the one I lost. Thank you for writing this.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. the other baby - Mothering Spirit says:
    8 August 2016 at 7:01 am

    […] The day arrived, gaping hole in the calendar. I busied myself with birthday preparations for the living breathing growing boy, itching to celebrate his day next. […]

    Reply

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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