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another, again, anew

17 Comments

When we were dating, then engaged, then married, I used to catch a glimpse of him and think—God, please send us daughters.

Because I had never met a man like him, so strong and gentle all at once, so humble and quietly confident, so genuinely kind and caring.

I watched how he treated his mother, his sister, his friends, and me. And I knew—with all the women who suffer father wounds, who never learn that they deserve to be treated with respect by every single man they meet—that we were meant to have daughters.

That he would be so good to them. That he would leave such a legacy of love to build them up for a world driven to diminish their worth.

Then God gave us a boy. 

And another. 

And another. 

Then we were going to have two girls—two!—but they went home to God as quickly as they were here.

And then we had another boy.

Now we are having another son.

I realized I was wrong about raising daughters. Not that it wouldn’t have been amazing, but that it had to be the way he would change the world as a parent.

Turns out he is exactly the father that these boys need. A man who is loving and tender, who deconstructs everything that is wrong with our culture’s view of men and who builds up everything beautiful about what a father can be.

Nothing takes my breath away more than seeing the impact he has on our sons. They will change lives—of the women and the men they meet—because of how he has loved them.

And yes, we are having one more.

. . .

Our son is due on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th.

Nine months to the day before Christmas, when we remember how the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary with astonishing news of Jesus’ arrival.

Over the past twenty weeks—half a sick pregnancy spent pondering the prospect of an Annunciation baby—I’ve hearkened back to my art major days. All those medieval and Renaissance paintings of Mary being interrupted by an angelic visitor.

She is shown in the act of reading.

I used to think this was a symbolic trope, a quaint custom. She was reading the Psalms, art historians assured us. Or perhaps Isaiah’s prophecies about a virgin bearing a child.

She is part of the story, goes the explanation.

But this pregnancy and this one more boy have opened up a new chapter in my understanding.

She is letting go of the story she knew. She is turning the page on what was. She is dropping what came before. She is letting God write something new.

He is already and not-yet, this expected Annunciation baby. But he has already taught me the same.

Set down the book you thought you were reading. Turn to a new chapter.

This is not the story you knew, or even the version you thought you wanted. This will be ever better.

Behold. I am doing something new.

. . .

People’s reactions to this pregnancy run the range of ridiculous.

(When someone close to me proclaimed with a smile, “You’re just meant to raise all sons!” and I stared at her and asked, “Did you forget that time I gave birth to two daughters?”—it was then that I realized that I can never expect the world to understand.)

Every day people treat it like a tragedy—to raise all boys.

You should see the sad faces they give me, the consoling hugs, the sighs of disappointment. (Nothing turns a pregnant mother into a mama bear of fierce protection faster than that pity face, I promise you.)

Of all the tragedies in my life, I will never count that as one. I get to spend my life with the best man I have ever known, and I get to build a life raising five more. 

What greater gift could I have been given? What greater gift could I dream to give back?

What better story could I help to write, from a book I never expected?

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Claire says

    15 November 2019 at 6:06 am

    Congratulations Laura! I’m so excited for you and your family! I always wanted a daughter, and my only living child is a son. I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

    Reply
  2. Gina FENSTERER says

    15 November 2019 at 6:39 am

    I relate to this in so many ways, I didn’t even realize that I would. Oh how I’d love to sit and have coffee with you and share all the feelings and thoughts about being a “boy-mom” and a mom of girls.

    Congratulations, Laura! What a joy.

    And this “She is letting go of the story she knew. She is turning the page on what was. She is dropping what came before. She is letting God write something new.” Can I be so cliche to say “mind-blown”?

    Reply
  3. Diana Giard says

    15 November 2019 at 6:42 am

    Congratulations! After four years of following your story, I still get weepy and grateful for your posts, vulnerability, and Faith. As it is for all of us, a long and painful journey at times, other times excitement and smiles, hopefully always laced with Joy in its true sense, your Faith is God is such a beautiful reminder to never lose hope. Thank you! After two losses this year, we are expecting our third to hopefully arrive on April 10th – Good Friday. As I ponder a Good Friday due date, I think of all the suffering Mary endured on that day with the Hope and Faith of life renewed. I pray your fifth son remains healthy and you continue to deepen your trust is God. My face is not one of pity, it is a face of gratitude for your willingness to share your story and my heart holds you, your husband, all of your children, including your daughters, Abby and Maggie and the one you didn’t get to meet, in prayer.

    Reply
  4. Stephanie Anderson says

    15 November 2019 at 6:59 am

    Such a powerful perspective! Raising 5 boys on earth and parenting 2 previous and perfect babies in heaven. Your daughters are also shaping your boys into men in their own way.

    Reply
  5. Stephanie says

    15 November 2019 at 6:59 am

    Such a powerful perspective! Raising 5 boys on earth and parenting 2 previous and perfect babies in heaven. Your daughters are also shaping your boys into men in their own way.

    Reply
  6. Heather says

    15 November 2019 at 7:46 am

    As always, I have finished reading your words and my heart feels grounded in truth and holiness. I always thought my story would involve raising 4 boys – it was my dream! Then I became the mama of three girls and that dream vanished and I was so content with our family. After the death of our son, every bit of my body aches to raise a boy, probably because my chance was “stolen” from me. Damn you, new chapter! I really believe God is helping us uncover some very important lessons by intertwining our souls with our beloved children and their gender is only one small element in the grand scheme of life. A million times over, congratulations to your entire family. Thank you for being the catalyst for some much needed inner, personal reflection.

    Reply
  7. Ann says

    15 November 2019 at 7:52 am

    After I became a parent through adoption, not the way I had expected to fulfill my dream of becoming a parent. I found this quote from Garrison Keillor, “Some fortune lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.” And with your sons, may you experience the same blessing that I have with my daughter–of realizing that if I had only known, this is what I would have dreamed.

    Reply
  8. Sarah J. says

    15 November 2019 at 8:00 am

    Congratulations on another pregnancy and the 5th boy. I had 3 boys before a daughter. I would have been fine with another boy. I liked having a girl but being the mom of boys before she showed up made me feel like I was doing something really great to raise good men to be wonderful husbands. It has worked out that way.

    Reply
  9. Maureen says

    15 November 2019 at 8:10 am

    So wonderful, perfect, beautiful! Congratulations, mama. ❤️

    Reply
  10. Kristen says

    15 November 2019 at 8:29 am

    When I was young, I dreamed of marrying my prince charming and having 4 daughters. I’m positive Good laughed at me. My husband and I have 7 sons (plus one in heaven) and no daughters…I laughed every time we’ve gotten pregnant. Of course it will be another boy! prayers and blessings to you. Thank you for your writing.

    Reply
  11. Rebeca Torres-Rose says

    15 November 2019 at 12:24 pm

    Congratulations! And yes, it is so important for us to have men who are raised to love and respect and uplift women. This is a beautiful gift you give the world. The best of luck to you all and wishes for a healthy pregnancy and birth.

    Reply
  12. Kelly says

    15 November 2019 at 7:16 pm

    What a great read! I can so relate to the stranger comment remarks. As a mom of 5 girls, I have heard more times than I can count “5 girls? Your poor husband!”; “5 girls, just wait til they’re teenagers!” I feel my body stiffen when I hear these. Why do people so quickly think of the worst scenario or that all teenagers are awful or that fathers can’t relate to daughters? I have so enjoyed our girls having a father who has shown them what a man of integrity looks like and how a girl should expect to be treated. Thank you for raising boys, who will give a girl all the respect and honor she deserves

    Reply
  13. Marsha Partington says

    15 November 2019 at 11:55 pm

    Laura, your writing grows more and more powerful and exquisite with every piece you share. Congratulations on your pregnancy, and I hope and pray all goes well for a happy and safe arrival. He will be one more lucky boy to have you as parents!

    Reply
  14. Lise says

    16 November 2019 at 10:49 am

    Congratulations Laura and Family,
    What a special blessing! I have 6 daughters. Our son was #7. People always make rude comments about having so many children because we must have kept trying to have a boy!! Not so… every child is a blessing. Enjoy your sweet family

    Reply
  15. Jennifer Mone' says

    16 November 2019 at 5:19 pm

    Laura–

    Congratulations! I have followed your posts for a long, long time. They’d been inspirational and healing. As another Domer raising only boys–and having lost my only girl in my second trimester–AND as a licensed therapist dealing with infertility, grief, and loss, I love how you convey the influence of your husband on your boys. Yes, what an important role! And so true that others’ responses (to loss and to celebratory news) can’t fathom the depths you (we) have traveled.

    I look forward to your continued posts…whenever they come!

    Reply
  16. Barbara says

    21 November 2019 at 3:44 pm

    Oh boy! I love your tenderness for Franco…..
    Keep writing Laura, the world so needs it….

    Reply
  17. Molly says

    30 November 2019 at 10:59 am

    Thank you for writing this. Having just struggled through a terribly hard beginning to our fifth pregnancy, I seesaw between feelings of pain/anger and silent awe/thanks at the miracle of life. Reading this helped re-emphasize to me that it’s all a part of His amazing story.

    Reply

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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

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

Instagram post 2197653351004688513_1468989992 Hope high. Expectations low.

This motto is what gets me through travel, holidays, church—basically 90% of life with kids.

Keep your hope high.
Keep your expectations low.

Because expectations are anticipation-gone-control-freak. Your picture of the perfect holiday. Your picture of the perfect family. Your desire to do anything 100% your way, unfettered by other people’s mess or needs or humanity.

Hope on the other hand? Spacious. Surprising. Sustaining.

Hope smoothes over minor disappointments and major disruptions. Hope lifts your eyes to a wider horizon where plans matters less than people. Hope is a balm to deepest suffering and a boost to daily slumps.

Call it a virtue, a practice, a gift. Whatever you do, start to claim it as your own. Because once you choose hope over expectations, you loosen your grip on everything else. Laughter shows up. Love, too.

If the food gets burned or the show starts late or the weather turns terrible or the kids melt down, you always have a choice—even in the chaos. You can set expectations gently aside and turn to hope instead.

Same for the harder turns through the holidays—the years when we want to wish away the cheer because we’re grieving or suffering or lost and everyone else’s (alleged) joy makes us feel even more alone. Hope reminds us that the surface is not the story and that now is not forever.

Expectations are our own creation. Hope is a higher calling—to lift our eyes up from our desires and plans to remember we are not in control.

So let your clenched fist of expectations unfurl this season. (However low you think your expectations are, sink them even further. To the basement. Trust me.) Then watch your own delight at discovering goodness that you never could have planned. 
Because hope reminds us of holy truth: life never had to be perfect to be good.
Instagram post 2196944524877817946_1468989992 Beauty from brokenness.

At the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, there’s a mosaic tucked back in concourse F, hidden by the bathrooms. I notice it now because it’s the work of a kindred spirit.

A grieving mother.

By chance I read her story when the mosaic was installed. How her second child was stillborn and her world shattered and after months of wondering how on earth to create again, butterflies became a symbol of hope rising from ashes.

I remember her whenever I pass these restrooms, usually dragging a small child of my own behind me before a flight. Today I walked in with a pregnant belly, looking for all the world like a simple story: woman having baby.

My story is not simple. Neither is hers.

We are among you, the bereaved. Walking by you every day. Daring to keep going instead of giving up. Creating beauty from brokenness. 
You might miss it. We learn not to shout. But when we get space to share our stories, strange and sparkling beauty can be found.

Mary Shelley wrote her masterpiece Frankenstein while she was grieving the death of her baby. Prince had an infant son who lived only a few days. I collect these stories now—the artists who created out of their pain.

When something is shattered—a bone, a bowl, a dream—it can never be put back together in exactly the same way again. Cracks, jagged edges, trauma’s hard memory persists.

But an artist catches the glint of hope under the rubble and refuses to let destruction have the final word. Every creation is a mosaic, built from brokenness.

MSP Airport, gate F4. Check it out next time you’re here.

Thank you, @josielewisart 🦋
Instagram post 2195334718010341825_1468989992 You don’t have to apologize for staying in the slow lane.

Took two snowy hours creeping to the airport before dawn to remember this truth. Impatient trucks on my tail, angry red lights for miles.

Feel free to pass, as I fought off the urge of irritation at their too-close-for-comfort. I’m staying right here. Slow and safe.

Call it the Advent lane. The choice to slow down when the world speeds up.

Liturgical living isn’t about doing more, adding extras or achieving. It’s often about doing less. Living at a slower, sacred pace. Letting the world’s frenzy pass you by. Listening in the quiet for the still, small voice of God.

And here’s the secret you learn after years and years: it’s delicious, this discipline of living differently.

You gain time where others lose it: a full season of Christmas instead of one fleeting day. You feel time where others forget it: the weight of weeks before Easter. You notice how nature lives by the same cycles: waxing and waning, dying and rising.

Years ago our pastor preached about stopping at yellow lights as an Advent practice. One simple act, a few times a day, to remind you to wait.

Wait.

Slow down. Take a moment to breathe. Slip back into the living pace where you are no more important or urgent than anyone around you.

In a culture obsessed with success, speed, and endless upward mobility, it can seem crazy to take the slow lane—or the off ramp.

But you can stay here, slow and steady. Peace was never found by speeding up.
Instagram post 2192445717293184648_1468989992 “What if God were helpless?” Her question shook me.

We had sat together for an hour, wrestling with the biggest, hardest questions—suffering and death and grief and trust. But even from where she sat in her rocking chair, hair white with wisdom, eyes searching up at the ceiling for answers that don’t exist, her words shook me.

No, I wanted to leap to protest. God has to be Helper, not helpless. Powerful, not powerless.

Otherwise everything unravels, right? Otherwise what is solid ground? Otherwise who can I trust?

But I caught my own words. It’s Advent, after all. What we celebrate at Christmas is exactly this: God becoming helpless.

A newborn baby: nothing more helpless among us. Born into poverty. Vulnerable among animals. Away from his community. Unable to walk or talk or feed himself. Helplessness Incarnate.

And this was what God chose, the ultimate Power that set the stars spinning. Incarnation was the vulnerable, unexpected, scandalous, unbelievable way that Love took flesh and came to stumble in dirt beside us.

What if God were helpless?

What if it’s not a hypothetical question, but a theological paradox? What does it mean for my life?

It shakes me, as it should.

If you have understood, wrote Augustine, what you have understood is not God.

Advent is not a simple season, chocolate calendars and Christmas countdowns.

This is a time to remember that Jesus’ story is radical, upsetting every neat category and tidy expectation.

It would be easier if God stayed powerful: distant, removed, almighty. The shock is that Jesus becomes powerless, too: intimate, humble, among-us.

What if God were helpless? What would it mean for my life, my faith, my need for surety and solid foundation?

If God can be both—Helper and Helpless—what else might turn upside down? What grace might be waiting in the wreckage of our expectations?
Instagram post 2191564285632887396_1468989992 Anna Quindlen wrote that hidden within each of her grown children is the baby they once were, like the toy duck in the bathroom soap.

I feel the same way about infertility.

Yesterday I curved my sore back over the baby huddled inside, bent and swayed by the bathroom sink, seeking any relief. Nausea, sciatica, normal aches and pains—all of it daily burden, barely worth mentioning after all these years.

But I felt her rise up within me, the one who wanted Exactly This. All of This. Nothing But This.

She is the me inside me, the former and forever.

I see her in crowds, the one in ten walking brave each day through a world that flaunts what she wants (as the world does when we are wanting, filling our longing view with happy couples or pregnant bellies or warm homes or good jobs while we lust for the same). I carry her with me as I have carried each child, the ones whose hands I held and the ones I had to let go.

She taught me what it meant to crave control and to discover that I have none. She gave me the language of lament and the songs of sorrow.

I left her behind eleven years ago, on a cold winter morning like today, when a thin plastic test blurred to two lines for the first time.

I burst through the bathroom door as someone new, someone pregnant, someone’s mother.

I have never been the same.

But she is still me, and I am still her. Every day she prays me back to the place of all who are still waiting and weeping.

I could never call infertility a gift. But her companionship is.

When she whispers, it is louder than any stranger’s sneer, the judgement heaped upon four kids running ahead and a waddling mother trailing behind.

This, she reminds me.

You wanted exactly This.
Instagram post 2191077565846125357_1468989992 Advent is waiting to be discovered.

By those of us who have lived it for a lifetime. By those of us who have found it brand new.

Advent is quiet and calm when the world is anything but.

For those of us who delight in stillness and silence. For those of us who struggle to slow down.

Advent is the antidote we seek.

For those of us who crave radical challenge. For those of us who love ancient comfort.

Advent is never what we expect and always what we need.

The shortest season for the longest wait.

The perfect paradox for the God of surprises.

Advent is already the gift.

You can dip into this current any time, running strong and steady beneath the chaos of December above.

Any Advent moment will bring you peace and joy, which is already Love Incarnate, which is already Emmanuel, which is God among us.

A miracle. Don’t miss it.
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