Coping with the Clueless

Ya know, I just don't know what to say sometimes. People can be so frigggin clueless and self absorbed.

I understand that the dynamics of online buddy groups will often mean that many gals will take more than they give--it's human nature and a lot of folks just don't think too seriously about online chat groups.

But in my loss world, my buddy group is all I have left--of friends and motherhood. So I stick with it as best as my tattered little heart can muster simply because I love my friends and it's my way of giving back the mothering I can't give to my deceased children.

Well, this gal comes in yesterday--she never was a very big contributor. After all she has a busy career as a doctor and a young child at home. Well, she had her rainbow baby several months ago, and naturally there's little time for the buddy board. But yesterday she stops in to post the picture of her kids--the one she used for her Christmas cards (lucky me; I never have had opportunity to include either of my girls in my holiday cards except through images of angels or butterflies, and don't those Christmas card pics just add some wonderful salt to an already gaping wound).

Anyway, on top of her picture posting, she shares how she'd touched her tummy the other day and gotten real sad cuz she wasn't pregnant anymore, and she wasn't planning on being pg again...and boohoo she sure wishes she'd enjoyed it more when she had the chance.

Never mind the post I'd made earlier in the day lamenting all I've lost in burying two babies, and how I have no choice but to be out of the pgcy game thanks to my age, health, uterine surgery, and prior loss history. And yet, here's this woman, in her mid-30's, financially and physically sound, who has CHOSEN not to be pregnant again in her life, but then stops into our bereavement board to lament how sad she is over her CHOICE.

Excuse me, but if you don't like the choice you've made, then change your choice. Have another baby. You're healthy, able and young. What's to stop you?

And if you're "happy" with your CHOICE not to have any more children, then don't pop in to a bereavement group after months of absentia with your boohoo sob story about how you're so sad...all showing off your perfect rainbow baby pictures while mine is dead!

She kept saying, I know I must sound so selfish seeing as how so many of you would love to be pregnant again too, and so many of you are still trying for your rainbow babies, and I have my perfect two-kid family and my busy career... yada yada yada. She obviously hadn't read my post about how astonishingly crushing it is to bury the rainbow baby--or my own lamenting the fact that I CANNOT be pg again or else I will die.

I mean, good grief, I wanted to bitch slap her till I collapsed. Instead I just cried and cried. If I could trade skin with her for a day...

I hate these "pro-choice" women who seem to think that they own the world. I get NO choices in this barren, baby death, God forsaken life of mine. One woman choses to kill her baby and then claims she lost him to trisomy 18. She didn't lose her baby to trisomy 18--she killed him before the trisomy ever could. And then she boohoos her loss and tells the world she had a stillborn. May her lie eat her soul.

Another woman choses her career over a larger family--her token two kids are all she really wants for her mantlepiece portraits. And yet she boohoos the loss of more children as if she had a clue about the what it was like to have a lifetime of barrenness or medical struggles with infertility. May the cluelessness of her boohoo life eventually bite as hard as it's bitten me.

Yes, today is a "people suck" sort of day...

Weary Winter Weekend

It's been a clipart sort of day. Yahoo mail has been backlogged, so it's given me a chance to get caught up on correspondence & blogging. Funny thing is that even though I've had the time to write, and even the gumption to do some typing... I haven't really had much to say. I've been hormonal and grieved. What's new, right?

This week I got quarterly taxes done, the bills paid and the laundry completed. I even did some cleaning on the kitchen and part of the bathroom. I have a new exercise video that I've been meaning to get to. I wish I could get addicted to exercise...

I ordered a couple new Mary Engelbreit calendars for 2007. Yes, I know I'm running a little late... I'm hoping to scan a bunch of calendar prints for my clipart groups to play with. I'm still so newbie at PSP, but my email buddies will appreciate the scans once I get them done. I've always loved Marjolein Bastin, but I discovered Mary Engelbreit not long after Abigail died. My first calendar of hers was 2004--the year we tried for and were pregnant with Anne. I have several Marjolein calendars from years prior that I need to dig up as well--and lots of beautiful greeting cards... I just need the energy to stand at the scanner for a couple of hours!

And I did work a little more on my PSP tags. I made a couple of simple butterfly ones that I need to deliver. I need to figure out font color, layering and how to add animation/glitter. I feel so behind with technology. I need some online classes or tutorials. I need to learn my webdesign program too--yes, more of that being behind on way too many things. To be certain, my "behind" has gotten just a little too big to manage--I'm working on fixing that. I just don't quite know how. Maybe my doctor's appt on Monday will help me have some answers for feeling better. To Feel Better=To Get More Done. And that would mean multiplied contentedness and a better handle on grieving with more options for moving forward. Everyone wins.

If I could start a new career, I'd publish a couple books on grieving baby death. I'd learn all manner of graphic arts and webdesign--at least the basics of html (which still seems to allude me no matter how hard I study). This grieving thing has really interfered with my ability to concentrate and learn. I feel like I spin and get no where. But I persevere. I will get there. Off to practice my PSP

Overlooking the Plank to Pull the Speck

Tuesday check-in. Time seems so fleeting; I'm so tired all the time and get so little done. I go to the dr to discuss different thyroid options. I sense that it's dangerously low and yet my response to the recent synthroid nearly killed me outright. Hopefully (prayerfully), I have other pharmaceutical options with which I can move forward. At this rate, I'm quite worried that I'll not see fifty.

The neighbor's had their electricity turned off again today--it's like the 12th time in just as many months. It's none of my business except we share a well--the electricity to run the pump for the well is on their electrical system. Thus, when they get their power cut off, it results in our water also being turned off.

Excuse me, but we pay our bills--no matter how poor we've been. Why do we get our utilities turned off cuz someone else doesn't pay their bills? What sort of alternate universe is my life destermined to be grounded on? Thankfully, I'd already had my shower. But it meant I couldn't flush all day.

And I'm unsettled with their irresponsibility. These people are older than we are, have three grown children and two teens still living at home. They support a new Saab wagon a Dodge king cab truck, and a little beater Mercedes they just bought for their teen girls to use.

And yet they have their electricity turned off so regularly it's embarrassing. How can they do this to their children? I mean, these people have their power turned off more regularly than I pay quarterly taxes. How is such a thing even possible? It's all rather perplexing.

I suppose but for the grace of God, go I...

Great Groaning Grrrr

I'm so bummed. Well, I'll get over it, I guess. But I'm still bummed. I organized all my clipart hosting and broke many of my direct codes. I knew I was doing it; I thought it was for old stuff that didn't matter--what was I thinking?

As it turns out, I messed up many pages in my journal of Abigail's third birthday and the holiday season---ugh! I guess I'll live. Does it really matter to anyone but me? After this last week in my journal, I've concluded that it doesn't matter anyway.

I've got all the best birthday & holiday pix uploaded to yahoo, so I have that there even if I did ruin it all on my journal pages. And let's face it: no one gives a crap about a bunch of cemetery fotos but me anyway.

The pages go on and who looks back anyway? I'll repost the important things, eventually. I suppose I could go back and replace all my photo codes, but what a pain. So for now I let it go and embrace yet another aspect of loss that's associated with my baby. I seem to live my life doing things I wish I could undo--things with permanent detriment that can't really be fixed.

Gearing up for another hard week. Returning smoochies for my special angels out there... you know who you are...

Discerning Priorities

Went to bed with such frustrated anguish in my heart. People are betrayers by nature--just look what happened to Jesus (and what the world continues to to do). Oh they say they care, but when push comes to shove it's an "all about me" (AAM) world.

But I woke up today with a new commitment. First to God and then to my husband and children. The last couple days of buddy board bullshit has really made me take stock of who it is I'm investing my time on and who it is that really deserves me.

Over the last many many months, I've given the best parts of me to total strangers--some of whom have valued me & cared, while others are merely rubberneckers in the train wreck of my life.

All I know is that I went to bed last night very disturbed that I've sacrificed so much family time on people who don't value the gift (not that my family time has been all that rewarding seeing as how dh falls asleep in a chair in front of the TV before 8:00, and ds is working and living his own life).

It's just become very clear to me that I've turned to cyberpeople to help fill a vastly deep void in my life, and many of those people have become very dear friends who have carried me through the darkest months of my life. But every now & then there's a cyber asshole that makes the whole thing seem pointless. Believe me, it really only takes one bad apple to ruin an entire vat of beautiful fruit.

It pains me that in spite of my horrific woes in baby loss, ill-health, and a life time of various troubles, there's always seems to be a rotten apple that comes along and feels it's their duty to make sure they bite me even harder than I've already been bitten by life. I've grown so weary of the world that's cast away God. I've known more ugliness, meanness and utter ignorance from people on this planet to last several lifetimes, and yet they have the nerve to blaspheme God for the world's troubles. I cling to the Lord and His Word as my Final Frontier of hope for our civilization.

Anyway, my commitment is to do a better job of being discerning of how I spend my time--who am I really seeking to please: some innane asshole on a buddy board? My first Love is God and He needs to always come first. And then my spouse and then my home & family.

The way my health has been my whole life, and then how much it's deteriorated these last couple of years, I figure I'll be lucky if I see sixty. I've been worried that I might not even see the end of the decade. That's fine. I'm ready to leave this horrid place.

But in the meantime, am I making the best use of my time? Will I leave this planet with everything done that God has asked me to do? or will I have frittered away valueable moments on some Internet retard who felt it important to hurt me deeper than I've already been hurt?

My aim is to use my Internet contacts to minister to those who are in need of His cool drink of water. My aim is to minister unto the "least of these" so that when my precious remaining moments are completed on this planet, I will meet my Savior (and my girls), and He will proclaim, "well done, thou good & faithful servant."

But will I have really done a good job according to what HE wanted me to do? There's where I'm committed to putting priorities into place; committed to pulling away from idiots that don't matter.

I believe it's our duty as Believers to know the Heart of God and seek to do His will--it's all found in the Scriptures if only we will take time to look & learn rather than making it up as we go. God really does give us all we need for life & godliness and He tells us time & time again in His Word that we are to shun cultural values, ethics, morals, etc. Some would say, "live & let live"or "don't judge another until you've walked in their shoes" blah blah blah.

But the bottom line is that God does want us to judge evil in the world. He does want us to know & do right from wrong. He really DOESN'T want us to go with the cultural flow. And there really ARE good reasons why God's Law is the RIGHT Law. To be certain, our civilization is suffering the more we reject & abandon the Heart of God. But in some ways that's okay because it takes us one step closer to His Return.

Dearest Lord Jesus, please help me be patient and forgiving as I seek to discern & practice all that you have taught me through Your Word...

Psalm 1:1-2
Blessed is the man that walketh NOT in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the Law of the Lord; and in His Law doth he meditate day and night.

Proverbs 1:15-16
My son, walk NOT thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

Proverbs 4:14-15
Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.

Ezekiel 20:19
I am the Lord your God; walk in MY statutes, and keep MY judgments, and do them.

Titus 2:15
These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

2 Timothy 4:1-4
I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His Appearing and His Kingdom; Preach the Word; be prepared in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke , exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

1 Timothy 5:20
Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. KJV

Hebrews 5:11-14
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. NIV

A Distinct Difference in Worldview

Troubling scenario. One woman loses her baby to incompetent cervix (IC), specifically a failed cerclage. She's in the middle of her second trimester. She & her physicians do everything they can to save the child’s life. The child doesn’t make it. She grieves deeply.

Another woman chooses to terminate her child mid-second trimester. She & her physician feel it’s for the “best” in light of a poor developmental diagnosis. The possibility is such that the child may have certain disabilities (albeit the child is not dead yet, and could prove quite promising given all the unknowns). Nevertheless, she makes her choice, and then she too claims to grieve deeply.

However, is it really fair or even plausible for the second woman to understand the deep grief the first woman experiences? In reality, isn’t it fair to say that they have entirely different modus operandi - one woman doing all she could for her child no matter what the outcome, and the other woman choosing to end the child’s life early based on the possibility of a poor outcome?

Their experiences are like night & day. Their worldviews are on very different ends of the life spectrum. By virtue of their diverse positions on death, it’s impossible for the second woman to know the grief of the first. Woman A is profoundly grieved after having done all she could do to save the life of her child, and yet Woman B would dare claim to have had the same experience.

Excuse me, but Woman B did not fight for her child’s life. She gave her child’s life up for dead---before it really was. She concluded that there was no hope for her child, so she terminated her child’s life early so as to move on to the next baby---a better baby than the one she carried.

Conversely, Woman A would have taken her potentially brain damaged, developmentally delayed, special needs, NICU preemie baby -just please do all you can so he doesn’t die. How can Woman B possibly know the crushing agony of Woman A as she has the last bastian of hope torn away from her? Woman A desperately hopes her child will cling to life, while Woman B casts all hope aside and calls it quits. She even assists in the child's untimely demise.

To be certain, their worldviews on living & dying are so vastly different. And thus why it's so very disheartening that those in Group B fail to understand just how offending their stance is to many of us in Group A. And thus why my hide is quite chapped when Woman B then runs around a pregnancy loss forum claiming to have experienced a similar loss as Woman A.

Excuse me??? What on earth could Woman B possibly know about what Woman A has been through as she fought for her child’s life??? An induced abortion is NOT the same as a failed cervix, PROM, cord constriction, placenta abruption, or any other unassisted intrauterine demise diagnoses.

I guess Elizabeth Kubler Ross (infamous grieving guru) would say that I have some grieving anger that needs to find expression. And rather than sniper off idiots in traffic, I’m finding good use of my freedom of expression. My words will certainly change no laws that give a woman the "right" to kill her child, but I can certainly express my grieving fury over my own violated rights. Do you know how many "rights" me & my daughters have given up just so the pro-death industry can survive???

All I can say is how dare Woman B lie about how her baby died in order to justify her guilt or buy sympathy from others. How dare she claim her baby was stillborn when in fact her baby had been very much alive up until the point when her dr killed him shortly before his medically induced premature birth.

Sure, Woman B very well could have had a baby that didn’t make it to or through birth. But she sure didn’t wait to find out what her baby was made of, did she? She didn’t love & cherish that baby as long as she could have and should have. And she sure as hell didn’t go to the ends of the earth with injections, bedrest, cervical staples, emergency c-section, or gobs of hospital monitoring in order to SAVE his life, did she?

No. She didn’t believe in her child enough to fight for him. She ruled out any form of hope entirely. She just opted out and now spends her days slithering around a loss support board claiming that her baby was stillborn just like mine. And nothing pisses me off more than those who terminate their trisomy children and then go on to tell the world that their child died of said trisomy. What a crock of crap.

A child who is medically killed in utero or via premature abortive induction did NOT die of trisomy. The child died by a series of horrific medical procedures intended to end the child's life--a life that had, up to that point, proven itself capable of living with his trisomy.

What really sucks is that Woman B will get her rainbow baby just like all the other Women B’s on the pregnancy loss forum have gone on to enjoy theirs.

Angry & bitter?
Fuck yea, I am! And good golly I need to express some of it in raw, honest, eye-opening, thought provoking words. So spare me the lectures & flames about how I sound intolerant & mad and should get some help. Mad. I’ll give you mad.

All around me people are getting away with legalized murder. Such a thing should make a lot more people angry! And yet somehow we’ve become a people who finds acceptance & sympathy. We’ve actually deluded ourselves into believing such murder is a RIGHT. Whatever!

Someone please explain to me how the child molesters are so much more heinous than the baby killers??? Do you realize how much we PAY licensed, certified baby killers in this country?! Does no one but me see the outrageousness in this? Maybe so.

Nevertheless, one can certainly envision the vast sea of people who would have killed my daughter rather than rally her to live. Good golly, how many had written her off as dead before she really was. How many would have flushed her sooner; how many would have denied her those two precious months---and we won’t even talk about those who are instrumental in denying her even more time, or those who had even lesser regard for her sister...

As far as I’m concerned, my children were victims of legalized, certified medical murder, and yet I’m not supposed to be outraged & angry with a cultural institution that’s so vastly over-paid for their so-called services??? Our medical, legal, and cultural ethos have been reduced to the same primordial ooze they insanely think we evolved from. Yes, I'm mad. Tell it to Kubler Ross

All I know is that an episode of Entertainment Tonight or the Nightly News or even a casual stroll through a pregnancy loss forum profoundly illustrates how our entire cultural worldview is worthy of nothing but utter condemnation, and yet we seem to think we’re somehow entitled to blessing upon blessing...

When was the last time we used our so-called “right to chose” to make the choice for blessing the Blesser?
When was the last time we put aside our own bigger-better-deal agenda and sought to be a blessing to our Creator: The Maker Whom we ALL will meet in due time?