A Thick Three Years

 

 

Three years ago. That does not seem like a long time. Three years… I was in college longer than that. A lot happened in these three years. They were thick years. Full years. No wonder I take shots more often these days. I get it. That girl, in that picture, didn’t take as many for sure, but it was probably because she was too numbed out on the surface to realize a good shot might be the courage to help her dig her heals into the ground and fight. Rightly timed, obviously.

I’d had heartache, three years ago, but I was not freshly acquainted with actually grieving it. Heartache tended to happen like this, or any suffering for that matter- 1. Tragic circumstance unfold. 2. Megin fall apart completely, cry, scream, rave, journal, 3. 24 hours pass by. 4. Megin move on with life, very well, perfectly actually, minding her manners, with full-faith-to-face the world… 5. Megin present under control.

Grief was not something that was allowed to linger. Feeling sad was not okay. No, it WAS okay. She said it was okay. We were supposed to feel. She preached that, but she couldn’t actually wrestle IN the grief that long anymore; she’d figured out different ways to pre-occupy herself or assuage the anxieties and push them aside…. “Trusting God, right? Isn’t that what we do? Trust God?” she said…

Wrong. I just avoided pain, for a long time…. I’ve done it before. I avoided pain for a period during college, and then embraced it and lived abundantly toward the end and in seminary, but after moving to New York, after a while, the hits kept coming, and pain, I couldn’t keep enduring. It was time to check out- Megin out. Figure it out. No more, please. And so I did…. Compartmentalize; be a perfectionist; I was good at it! Literally live two different lives basically in terms of what was projected for the world and what was going on in my head. Meet the standards, perceived and real.

Eli helped kickstart me into feeling again, by forcing my hand… have a baby. That is one way to get rid of a lot of shit in your life. Don’t know what I mean? Try it. You’ll see. (Or actually, wait- don’t try it just to see what I mean….ask me later, or someone else….but please don’t just try it. That would be reckless).

But honestly, even after Eli, I was still numbing myself out, refusing to accept my limitations and just endure the neediness and weakness and brokenness, BE broken and give myself space to just be that- fallen apart- for a while, unable to meet needs, and needing to be ministered to… I couldn’t do that. Where would be my worth? If I weren’t ministering??? What would my purpose be then? Ahhhh- see what’ve I’ve done there… I have gone and made my ministry my meaning, and no longer do I work with God or for God, but I work for myself, my merit, and to name myself Megin, the ministering Megin.

And then, August 16^th, 2017. It was a Wednesday. I was supposed to see my baby’s heartbeat again, and hear it for the first time. I saw it before, but it was too soon to hear. I couldn’t wait…

“Do you and Jesse have to be in Chinatown later today?” -Dr. Chen

“No, we’re off today. It’s Wednesday.”

“So you’re just around here….” -Dr. Chen, while looking around on the sonogram machine, me laying back, hands behind my head, waiting for Jesse to park the car and come in with Eli.

“Yup. Just a lazy Wednesday.”

“Hmm. I see……[pauses…..silence….I wait, no fear, not worried….just normal….and then….] so Megin, let me show you what I’m seeing here…..

[She moves the screen around and begins pointing out the different part of my womb, the ovaries, etc….where the baby is, and where last time, we saw the little beat, but how now, if I notice, it’s very still, and nothing is thumping. It should be over here….but instead……] “and so,” she says, “Megin, what I’m thinking is….” She trails….

And I interject…. “a miscarriage…. ?”

Reluctantly, compassionately, “That’s what I’m thinking….which is why I was asking if you and Jesse had to go into Chinatown or were off for the day…. I’m thinking we need to send you to…..”

The rest is history…. Tests. Confirmations. Sonograms. Operations. You remember the story.

She gave me a minute. I texted Jesse- eyes still dry….shock -utter shock- completely set in…. “Emergency. Come quick. I’m in the room already.”

I don’t remember how I worded it to him. I probably just blurted it out. If I was emotionally unprepared to handle such grief, my husband certainly was. Chaos, a quiet chaos, set in… began…

Three years.

We’d have Eli’s 2^nd birthday party later that week. My mom flew into town. I had my D&C 3 days later. Mom left. We had our first wedding and outing with the family the next week, and I returned to work.

We’d go to multiple weddings that fall, all for which I had baby bump dresses prepped.

In October, we’d travel to watch Elizabeth be born, my sister’s daughter, and though I was supposed to hold her, on my round belly, and say “you’re having a cousin soon baby girl!” I would hold her, on my flat stomach, so thin….very thin. Too thin, everyone said. I ate, but why so thin?

We’d go to Thanksgiving, where I’d planned to tell the extended family. We travel to visit my ailing grandmother in the hospital, where my aunt would ask “are you pregnant? Looks like you are showing…” even though she knew I’d miscarried a few months previous. I guess even when too thin, you still carry a baby bump.

and we’d travel for Christmas. My cat would die while we were gone. We would return to New York, bury the cat, and then my grandmother would die. We would return to South Carolina, conduct the funeral. Jesse would speak. I would provide music and words. We would help entertain the family. We would return to New York. We had one month, to entirely make the plans for renovating our new apartment in the city and PACK UP our apartment in Forest Hills, which we’d lived in for 10 years. Mom would come to help me pack. She’d be here a 10 days. I needed her to be here a month. But she couldn’t stay any longer. She had to work.

We would move, in March, the week the baby would have been due. The moving truck wouldn’t be able to fit all of our furniture and belongings. I’d break down and scream at the driver. Jesse would tell me later how embarrassing and shameful it was.

 I’d struggle through issues with friends because I was certainly struggling at being a friend as of late… and my friendships were unraveling everywhere. I’d contemplate whether I should really even continue on…at all… but what about Eli? He needed me. I knew he needed me, and would miss me. I wasn’t sure about others… I really seemed to f*** up their lives a lot. But family were in town, so we needed to have some family gatherings….SMILE MEGIN. Time for the picture. I just needed to put on some more makeup for this one…it would hide what was going on around my eyes…

We would move, into our apartment, the day before my sister and her family and my mother came to visit for a week. I wanted to see them. I longed for them to visit…. Gosh I needed some comfort- But oh my goodness, where would we put them? We had boxes stacked literally to the ceiling in each room of the 2 bedroom. Ask Evan Ng.

They’d stay in our makeshift apartment, some of them, and the rest at church, on the 4^th floor.

But first, Jesse had to leave for a conference, the day after we moved in, and the day my family was coming… and I was alone, with Eli… and then the toilet broke, and then I broke… literally. I broke. I called him and screamed and yelled and told him I couldn’t believe he left me. I’d asked him not to leave me, and he’d chosen to go to the conference anyway….that I couldn’t handle all this… He had to come back. He’d try to come back. Flights would screw up. He would end up getting home LATER than if he’d kept his original tickets.

Maybe I should be able to handle this, but I couldn’t…. and I would fall behind on responsibilities at work, ask for grace, and get into arguments with my friends, who were also people I had to ‘work with?’ or ‘for’ in some way? Such messy boundaries. I wish I could just have friends. “If this wasn’t your first job, or if you were in corporate America, you wouldn’t be afforded these types of graces. Don’t take things so personally. I get that you are having a hard time, but there is ALWAYS something with you, each month. I feel like I can’t ever say anything. When is a good time? And you haven’t fulfilled this responsibility, and it’s been months. I can’t do my job if you don’t do your job.” -my friend

“You’re right. I suck. I literally should die.” -me, while home alone, without the toilet, with the baby, and the family about to drive up….

“You’re so dramatic. I didn’t say you should die. I can’t even talk to you.” -my friend

“You’re right. I suck. You obviously don’t understand. It must look like I have it together. But I’m dying… you obviously don’t understand. I’m sorry… I’ll shut up… and maybe, I’ll die…” -I didn’t say this. I’d stopped talking by then… I was barely moving, truth be told.

Thank God… I didn’t die. I got help. People helped. Other friends helped. Family helped. Church helped; other churches helped. Other people showed grace. Eventually I showed myself grace. Boxes got unpacked. Toilets got fixed. Family survived not having a hospitable place to stay. People survived my work failures. I then just quit working, so that helped a lot too. It needed to happen, but now we were really going to be strapped for money…

Damn. It was hard. And that was just April…. May would be when I would contract staph on my feet and arm. And June would be when I would literally basically break my knee and have to use crutches for a few months.

My friend was right. It was always something with me. I guess I was the problem, I thought.

God was speaking. God is always speaking, in His word, through our every day lives, and in our hearts and minds…through the context of community- wise community, and wise counselors. I got pregnant again, in September. I miscarried again, in October. October 2018. Death number 2. Or wait, I mean….4. Aden, then my cat, my grandmother, and now this baby, Abel. Death 4. Loss 392348237423. Megin learning. To. Grieve.

You can imagine why, when I got pregnant again, in January of 2019, I didn’t trust it, why I literally waited, each day, to lose the baby, and then endured a pregnancy from hell with hormone issues… wow. And why I didn’t respond well to questions about if I was doing less for church because I wanted to have babies…. And if that was why perhaps the replant wasn’t happening in the projected fashion… Gotta love the concerned commentary, huh? “I’m sorry I’m not doing enough to keep your church afloat. Yes, I am working quite hard to keep myself afloat at the moment. I’m sorry. I forgot that apparently being in ministry, by your standards, means living my life FOR everyone else? I’m confused. Hmmm. Let me know if you want to talk about this…This is me trying, like I did then, and will continue to do… because it’s not going away. Reality doesn’t go away. Our pains don’t go away. We don’t just forget. We can forgive, but we gotta talk….”-me to anyone who feels like this could apply to them. My door is open. I have plenty of apologies ready to be given for all the crap I’ve done wrong. I hope to experience the same if we can converse about this.

After Eden was born, and my body healed, it was literally like I was a new person. I could breath for the first time in a long time, without fear….and had finally experienced some relief, some goodness, from the hand of God again.

Was God not good the rest of the time? I don’t mean to say God was not good. Or that God did not do good….but I do mean to say I did not FEEL good from God. I felt like shit. And anyone with an ounce worth of empathy or compassion reading this would understand why.

So yeah, three years. A thick three years. And it makes sense- the shot. I get it. And so I judge myself a little less. Satan is the one telling me I’m a loser, who can’t hack it, a bad Christian, taking a shot….when the truth is, I am a strong Christian. I have strong faith. Get back from me Judas- Get back from me Satan! I am a Child of God, and I have ENDURED. It hasn’t been pretty. I have flailed out on my back and cried and wept and grieved and contemplated death…..but guess what….THAT’S LIFE! That’s what LIVING LIFE LOOKS LIKE. It encompasses grief and weeping and weakness. The ability to be weak is the testimony that one is quite strong! People who can’t wrestle in their wretchedness are inauthentic and in actuality, missing out on experiencing the REAL grace of what it means to be LOVED by Christ. I have a God that loves me even when I mess shit up and say shit. How’s that?  It’s crazy. It’s UNFATHOMABLE! My God is so big….my God understands. My God is so holy. I cannot even begin to describe. My God has been so patient with me and has lifted my head from the grimiest of spots. My God is the lifter of my head. Aden ushered me into a season of learning to grieve and ACCEPT grief… realize that we can be messy and grieving AND COMPLETELY AFFIRMED BY GOD at the same time. (Why did I ever doubt? Hello- Elijah?! 2Kings 19!! And King David….wow!)

So to all my friends out there going through crap right now, this is my invitation to you to just be broken in it. If you need grace, let me know. I will do my best to give you some because GRACE….grace is what it is all about. This life is going to throw us some dire crap…. Let 2020 be a testament to that. But our God has overcome the world through Christ Jesus and WILL give us strength to endure.

Aden lives on…His life…the depth of meaning. He changed me. He was a catalyst to the person I would become, will become. Aden’s life changes everything, every day.

Suffer friends- be miserable. I will endure with you and for you. We can share shots, in moderation, and deep pains. We can share love, and glorify our God by surviving and thriving through the thick years. Come what may….to God be the glory…. Amen.