The Wounds of our Past Meeting our Present

 There’s something that’s been weighing heavy on my heart that I felt called to write about.  I’m not sure if I’ll share it or not but I am praying for the holy spirit to guide my thoughts and writings so that I can process this move past it.  I want to see it as a part of a healing process, as part of the journey of my life that doesn’t hold me in the past or in past hurts, but allows me to grow and learn.  I also know that it fits into the ongoing healing that my heart has gone through for many years related to grief and loss and life after it.  

I don’t want to get into too much of the details of this hurt here as I do think I’ll share this publicly and I don’t want to call out this person publicly.  This wound hurts deeper than many I’ve had over the years because it attacks something I’ve been passionate about for over 13 years, honouring my twins and their journey through giving back.  I recently learned that someone who once meant a lot to me as a friend made a horrible accusation about something we were doing to honour our boys and told a few people that they believed we weren’t being honest and honourable at all.  While they were corrected and did, eventually, come to realize our intentions were completely honourable and there was no wrong doing, no dishonest or fraudulent activities on our part, it absolutely guts me that someone could say such things about us. Taking this act of generosity, of goodness, of love and turning it into something dishonest and fraudulent honestly makes me feel sick.

And so now I’m left wondering why anyone could ever think and share such horrible things, why some people can do such horrible things and people just accept them and continue with their friendship (and actually slowly shut us out of their lives) but most of all, I wonder why past wounds of our hearts can be ripped open so easily.

My thoughts and prayers over the last 2 weeks have lead me to some understandings about some people and some friendships. And slightly diverging and wandering within my head and heart to the work I’ve been doing to see how our childhood forms our personality, it has also made me look at my own character, my own personality type and traits and see how some people can turn a trait that I have, and have sometimes used in selfish and self serving ways, into something extremely toxic.  

My recent journey into hard internal work has led me to see that I am a caregiver and helper in my heart and that this began in my childhood.  It usually begins as a way for a child to understand the world and things that happen around them,  For the caregiver, it often begins because they don’t feel they can be loved for who they are and want to be loved so much that they become ‘little helpers’ to feel they are earning that love.  As they become adults this can manifest into thinking they know what’s best for others, that it’s their job to help others and to fix situations.  It can also manifest itself into a more toxic situation where the ‘helper’ is building a favour bank, building up a stockpile of those they’ve helped so that those people will pay this back later in life.  Sort of ‘I’ll scratch your back but someday I'll expect you to scratch mine’ without telling the people they help.  They also can get very upset with others who don’t accept their help, often because they see things in a way that ‘they know best and others should see that’.  This can cause relationships to break down in their lives, usually because the people they try to help get tired of their ‘I know best’ attitude.

Now I do not completely fit this personality type for a variety of reasons  but i definitely have learned that the feeling I’ve always had of not being enough, not measuring up, not meeting people’s expectations and feeling I never can (nor will I ever be great at anything, only good at some things) has lead me to doing many things for others to fill the void I felt.  I also have figured out that this same feeling of inadequacy has lead me to make poor choices, especially in my dating years, because I just wanted to fill that void, to be loved and appreciated by someone and yet at the same time feeling that because I wasn’t good enough that I should settle for relationships that weren’t best for me because those were the people who would accept my flaws more or not see them because they had lots themselves.  Messed up right!!!!

Anyway, I’ve diverged again. This helping personality type, in it’s unhealthy state, is what made me think of this person who has hurt me so much.  While I don’t know if he’s the same type as me, I now see the extreme side of this type.  He fits the classic ‘I know best and you should accept my help’ attitude and he, most definitely, gets upset when others don’t accept his help. When he helps, he becomes very controlling and extremely critical of others.  Actually the extremely critical part exists most of the time in his life.  I am now able to see that this is where our friendship began to fall apart as he was very eager to help us with a major project when I was pregnant with the twins but my husband wasn’t keen to have him help because he knew that this guy would take over the whole project, want everything done his way and make judgements on any decisions we wanted to make about the project.  

So that is what started the distancing in the friendship but what could possibly bring someone to the point of saying horrible things about something we did to honour our boys and their journey?  How does anyone even bring themselves to the point of thinking something so awful and then sharing it with others? 

And why, oh why, am I letting this bug me so much when it happened so long ago and he was, obviously, proven wrong as we went to continue to honour our twins in similar ways for years and years to come (and still do today)???

The answer is because I’m human and because the core of this wound is actually one that I struggle to be healed from.  This incident rips open the wound that relates to one of the most significant trauma experiences of my life and the wound of losing one of your children isn’t a wound that ever fully heals, it just gets to be a smoother scar as the years go by.  

So while that wound may always be one that can open a little more easily than others, the wound of someone saying hurtful things, even 13 years ago, is one I can bring to God in prayer and ask for guidance for.  

My therapist and I talked about it this week and she told me something very valuable.  Being a Christian means that I am called to forgive but forgiving is a me thing to do, not an us thing to do.  I don’t need to have any conversations with this person and I also can not expect him to have the same perspective on this, nor the same reaction or same way of moving through it because he isn’t a Christian. All I can do is pray through it and pray for him.  Pray that God may open his eyes and heart to see Him and that, in time, he may come to see and know how the wounds of his own heart have hurt others.  

My dearest friend and sister of the heart has also been chatting with me this week about this situation.  She was hurt for me to have heard these things and had wise words she shared that came from her own devotions….

The devotion was in reflecting on how the Hebrew people had been in bondage for 400 years.  They were slaves in Egypt and slavery meant they were not free to do God’s will.  When Moses came to tell the Israelites how they could experience freedom they were more concerned about the reaction of their taskmasters than they were about pleasing God.  Freedom would mean the Egyptians would be mad at them and might attack them.  They were afraid and this fear made them feel that freedom from their bondage did not seem worth the hardships they would endure.  

‘When God sets out to free us, there will often be a price we will have to pay.  Grief can form a terrible form of bondage, yet we become comfortable with it.  We can grow so comfortable with fear that we don’t know how to live without it. As destructive as our sinful habits might been, we may prefer living with the familiar, rather than be freed to experience the unknown.’

Living life after loss is hard enough but having people question your actions, your integrity, your moral compass makes you angry.  I know that i will continue to have work to do on living through my grief and I thank God often for all that he’s done to help me to find a way through it and to live without fear…fear of accepting this trauma as part of who I am, fear of forgetting my son and the experience that changed me forever, fear of the judgment of others on how I’ve chosen to publicly grief or openly talk about infant loss and how it’s affected me…so many fears.  Now I ask him to help me to love people who’ve hurt me through this journey, people who have judged, people who have said things that hurt without realizing it and, now, people who’ve said things they knowingly knew were hurtful and unkind.  

My dear friend also shared this that was a reflection on this devotional for herself but applied so much to me, to this situation.... 

‘Sometimes it is hard to love those who have hurt or wronged me….In those moments I ask that You give me the strength to choose love.  And I pray that because of this others will know that I belong to you,’

And so I will continue to ask God to give me the strength to choose love for this person and to move this situation to a place of healing and forgiveness in my heart.  And I encourage anyone reading this to pray for me for this but also to consider this in your own life for situations that have wounded you and continue to sit heavy in your heart.  

Peace and love my friends. 

The Day that Changed Our World

This morning I laid in bed thinking of how I woke 14 years ago with such optimism, so sure everything was going to be ok because I had felt strong kicks from Cole's side of the womb just as I woke. I was so very unprepared for the news that would be delivered to me just a few hours from then.  

Have you ever had times where you wish you just go back and relive moments and then just stay there in them...not move forward?  I know over the years I've definitely had lots of those moments and I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit to wishing that I could relive only that moment from December 13/08 and not the rest of that awful day.  

But that's not who I am, it's not what I do on this day.  I have a tradition of sitting in those memories and of reading back through blog posts and facebook entries from that day.  It's definitely an emotional time for me but I feel like I need to go back to all of them memories of that day that involve Cole and cherish them, even if they are hard,  

I was about to write 'because that's all we have' on the end of that sentence above but I stopped in my tracks and was thinking 'WHAT?  Why would you even think that?  It's so not true'. Sometimes I think my fingers flow before my brain engages.  

We have so much more than just the memories of that day and, while it's important to remember them because it's such an important part of our story, the story didn't end there for us and it didn't end there for Cole either.  

Remembering the pain of that day, and when I say remembering I mean vivid, deep visuals of the room we were in, the clothes the doctor was wearing, where I was, where Geoff was, the look on his face, the colour of the wall I turned to face....so many of those memories are very deeply etched in my brain. But remembering the pain of that day is part of remembering the pivotal moments that change your life, change the course of your life.  For those in our family who got to stay on earth that day, life became about cherishing moments, giving back, helping others and becoming empathic humans who listen and share their hearts with others.  For Cole, that day became the first of his eternity.  

A friend commented in response to one of my blog posts last week that she stopped thinking about what her son, who passed from TTTS complications, would be doing here on earth years ago.  She said that living in the what ifs and whys is to hard for her and, since death is inevitable for all of us, living for what could of been just doesn't make sense.  This life here is temporary and our forever home is in heaven.  So she thinks of him there instead and imagines his life there...who's he's met there, what he does.  

And I guess the older I get, the  more this is becoming my mindset for Cole too,  The more family and friends who leave us, the closer we get to our return to heaven, the more my mind focuses on Cole being in the arms of Jesus and not on him not being in the arms of his momma.  Cole changed the world the day he left it.  One tiny baby, who's grown up in heaven, changed the world by inspiring his family and those around them too.  

I'll always miss him, part of me will always feel sadness for this day.  I will always hold on to the memories of it.  But I will also hold on to the memories of what we've done on this day and many others because of the moment where our life changed, of the moment when we learned he was gone.  Our lives are fuller because of it even if our hearts and arms have felt empty at times.  

We love you Cole, we always have, we always will and we'll always remember everything about this day that shaped us into who we are today.  

Just I was finishing this post, my dearest friend in the world sent me this...

It seemed like such a fitting way to end this post.  No words needed.

 

Darkness Into Light

 This exploration into sitting in the dark of my emotions that this season of grief always evokes has definitely been a very eye and heart opening experience.  While I know that this time of year will always have it's moments and I know that tomorrow will be another day where I shed some tears as I remember my sweet son, I also know that God carries me through it all.  

I am still left with some questions that take time to work through.  While I know that God gave me the gifts I have to helping others and for sharing my heart in words that seem to resonate with others, I do still ask, at times, if I really need to be in the places where the healthy side of twin pregnancy, the healthy and ideal outcome, hangs out.  Do I HAVE to suffer through the visuals of all that 'could have been' in order to be where I'm needed to help others.  Isn't there another way?  

The simple answer is that I can choose to do whatever works best for me. I can choose to not be there.  I can choose to hide those groups, to avoid seeing all that 'lives there'.  And maybe there are days that I should do that.  

But I also think I need to rely on God to walk beside me on those harder days and I need to trust that he puts me where he needs me when he needs me. I take so much of it on myself and dwell within myself on dark and painful days.  I don't take it to the one who understands my pain enough.  If I've learned anything through this exploration of emotions it's that God is listening to my heart and he'll provide me peace.  I just need to sit in it and talk with him, share with him, poor my emotions and stop taking it on alone.  

And so tomorrow that is what I'll do.  I won't shut anything off but I also won't take what I'm feeling on alone.  I'm coming through this darkness and I'm doing it with joy in my heart.  

Why this Time of the Year?

 Earlier this week I talked about some of my why's that I still seem to sit in and I had a prayerful moment and quite a revelation from the Lord the other day about one of them, 

I've always wondered why our loss had to happen this time of year.  As I said a few day ago, I had already experienced some pretty significant losses in the Christmas season and it just seemed to be added more pain to my already broken heart.  On Thursday I look it to the Lord in prayer and I found the song Joy to the World coming to my heart, specifically "Joy to World, the Lord has Come" and "Let every heart prepare Him room".

At first I thought it was just my usual distracted brain at work but then suddenly I was thinking of other messages we hear this time of year regarding advent, about preparing our hearts for Jesus and it made me think about what advent is really about.  

Through advent we prepare our hearts for the birth of our savior, we remember the time before Jesus came and the promises that were made to God's people and the hope they had for him to come and save the world.  I've learned in more recent years that it's not just preparing our hearts for him to come but to remember what he did when he was here.  Jesus came to serve, he is the ultimate guide on how to help others in need.  

And during advent we also prepare our hearts for Jesus to come again.  To fix what's wrong in this world and to take those who believe in him back to heaven...or bring heaven fully here perhaps.  

And so when I sat with those thoughts in my heart, I realized that having a tragedy that happened this time of year that seems so easily triggered is no accident.  With the sights, sounds and smells of this season triggering you to remember days gone by, days that were hard and dark and lonely, you can't help but think of where you've come since then.  

Jesus came to earth as a humble and innocent baby.  He had to grow and learn like every child.  He had to overcome what he didn't know, what hadn't developed yet.  As he took his first steps he stumbled just as I've stumbled taking steps out of this grief.  Once he grew to a boy who could learn from others, he took it all in.  He listened to teachers and preachers and became a humble servant of God his father.  And then when he became a man he began to teach himself.  He began to reach out to others to help them to see the way to his father.  

My experience of journeying through grief has been similar.  The early days were so hard, so dark and lonely.  None of it made much sense.  In time I began to meet others who could relate to some of what I was experiencing.  Not all of them were families who experienced loss of life but all were families who experienced loss of what felt normal and safe, all of them had a life altering experience with pregnancy complications.  Some of them became a lifeline to me.  They showed me there was hope.  They inspired me.  

Jesus' life began at Christmas and grew from there and this week as I've journeyed through some of these emotions I have this time of year I feel God telling me that I, too, began a new life at a Christmas season and it grew from there.  I'm not saying I'm anything like Jesus.  So far from it most days. What I'm saying is that a new life began for me 14 years ago and it involved heart changes that made life different from then on.  It spurred me to use the gifts and talents that God gave me to help others.  It moved me to become a person with empathy and compassion.  

Just a few weeks ago, when I went to my principal to request Tuesday off (because for as far as I've come, I still know that the anniversary of Cole leaving us is a hard day and not one I am ready to face the responsibilities I have at a work....in a school with 1 set of identical twins and at least 4 other sets) I shared something I said to a principal a few years ago about the loss of Cole and the journey we've taken.  "I am who I am because I've been where I've been".

The reaction from her, from my current principal and from so many others over the years has always been 'that must have been so hard and I'm so sorry to hear that happened'.  While I've often been able to express that it changed me forever, that line "I am who I am because I've been where I've been" really does sum it all up.  

It's not lost on me that we remember what Jesus came to do this time of year and I feel quite certain God gave me the timing of our loss to do the same.  To remember what I am here to do.  That I am his servant and my heart needed to break and be mended by Him for me to do his work.  

Pondering the Memories

 I've often wondered why I have such a phenomenal memories for things that happened long ago, things I've done and experienced, things said to me...and yet I can't remember to do tasks that need to be done without reminders LOL!  

God has definitely blessed me with a strong memory and usually I think that's a good thing but this time of year those memories can evoke such strong emotions and almost be overwhelming.  The start of this project to sit in my darkness and work through what I'm feeling and wrestling with as it relates to our journey came from a facebook fed memory.  It was only I'd posted about 2 weeks before our TTTS diagnosis and was about wondering about the gender, yet again, of our twins.  Reading it chocked me up.  The emotions of that time in my life became raw again and since then I've had such vivid memories of that time in our lives.  

The strongest of my memories are tied from the moments before my unofficial diagnosis up until the days after we lost Cole and I struggled to survive.  They all have strong images attached to them.  I can remember what I was wearing. I can picture doctors talking to me, picture what I gazed at out my window at Mt. Sinai, clearly see Geoff's face as he crumbled against the wall when we learned Cole was gone.  

I have all those vivid visuals attached to my memories but I yet my mind doesn't produce images of Cole in any way except his ultrasound photos and some images from the day he was born.  I think that I've worked through this enough to understand that memories with strong emotions attached to them don't fade and I think it's a bittersweet thing,  

Sometimes I pray God will ease my memories and take away the pain that can come with them.  He's definitely eased some of the pain and I can clearly see where this season of memories is much easier to walk through but I do still wonder and vivid imagery attached to them.  

It kind of bring me back to wondering why I don't have images of Cole in my brain and heart, why I can't imagine him here.  As I pray and think about it, I believe it's something God has given me to help create space between my reality and the reality of others,.  If I was stuck in those places of imagining what life would look like then I would not likely be able to help others walk through their own journey.  If I could imagine having him here then my heart might not be able to handle to actual images I see in the groups I support others in.  

Perhaps something to keep pondering.....why does God make some things so clear in our minds and other things remain dark and imageless.  

Until next time.....

Sitting in the Dark

 So yesterday I reflected briefly about wondering why God has placed it on my heart to be involved in twin groups online, in supporting others as they walk through the stressful times that come with being pregnant with mono di twins and, even more so, walk with them through possible diagnosis, surgeries, premature deliveries etc.  I know the answers to some of that and experience moments often where I know I was where I needed to be to help someone in need because God wanted me to be there.  I know that God gave me the gift of empathy for this mission.  But I do still find myself asking if Cole really had to leave in order for me to become the empath I've become?  Could it have happened any other way?  

And yes I do know the answer is no....but that doesn't mean it's not a place I sit in the dark and take it up to God with..  Thankfully he doesn't leave me sitting alone.  

I know that I am that someone sitting with others in the dark and I also know that God sits with me in my darkness.  He's there and he's listening to me as I work through the things that sit heavy in my heart.  

Another of those things is another why I guess.  It was actually something I had already written down in my journaling but a friend, my very first TTTS momma of one here and one in heaven friend actually, commented about yesterday when I shared my blog.  This why is something that relates to the why's of being a twin mom who can't imagine herself as one.  Why is it that I can't really imagine my life if Cole was here? Why don't I have visions of Cam and Cole doing things together, of our lives as parents to twins?  Goodness knows I spend enough time in these groups where people share photos and stories of their life with two that I should be able to imagine.  And yet I can't. I don't see what we missed out on...I can imagine other peoples twins in the scenarios I think about for us but the images I see are never of my boys together.  

So many loss moms that I've gotten to know over the years talk about having these images that flood the brains and hearts but they just aren't there for me and never really have been,  I know that I've faked it through the years and said I missed those moments.  I know I cried at times for milestones that didn't get to be met.  I know I talked about imagining what Cole would be doing today.  But in full transparency that wasn't always and accurate view of what I was feeling or imagining but more what I wished I could when it came to the things they would be doing together and it was just images of Cam hitting those milestones and wondering what it would be like to see Cole do the same....not an image of it happening if that makes sense.  

And I just wonder why God has never given me a vision of Cole,  And I guess why I have a gap in this area where other loss moms don't?  I actually think it's likely another gift God has given me, a place he's put me in so that I don't sit in the what ifs?

Definitely something to ponder.  

And now definitely time for me to go and pray and prepare for my day.  

A Light In the Darkness

 At the start of the advent season my dear friend and pastor spoke to us about waiting in the darkness, about looking at the small light given off by the candles on the advent wreath and sitting in the darkness around it waiting for Jesus to come, waiting in the emotions that come with...well with waiting.  Anticipation, yes, but also anxiousness and sometimes confusion.  We spent a long time talking about where our focus is while we're waiting and what it feels like to be in that darkness.  Later we prayed as a group and I asked for prayer as I began to walk in this season of memories that happens every year at this time.  And my friend said to me, "Maybe this year Jod, God is asking you to sit in the darkness and explore the emotions that you feel this time of year.  Not to just push through them and find my way to the other side of this darkness but to really sit in it and feel it all, reflect on those feelings and pray through it".

And so yesterday I began to work through some of it.  I am journaling my way through so I thought maybe I'd write it here too because, God knows and so do many others, that I'm not the only one who feels this stuff in these seasons and God also knows that we can use our deepest pain and suffering to help others, to walk with them through theirs.  

So I yesterday I wrote about sitting in the darkness, in the waiting, so full of mixed emotions, wanting to be happy, to be filled with joy at all God has blessed us with, in all the gifts God has given me that have come out since Cole passed away.

And I can see the light.  It flickers up a head, guiding me forward.  

But right now I know that I need to spend time in the darkness, in the now of my emotions.  It's time to explore them, where they are now and not where they have been or where they will take me as I often have.  I need to explore how I feel about the journey God has taken me on and be honest about how it feels.  

My biggest question has always been WHY?  At times I can find answers to that.  I can see and feel the things that have come from this journey and know they are so good.  But right now, right here in this darkness, this feels hard.  It feels like too much.  I want to ask God why me? Why then? Why does something that was meant to grow my heart have to hurt so much?  Why does it have to hurt so much so many years later?  

God why did you give me this desire to help others pregnant with twins because being in those places, those groups where they are makes me hurt so much sometimes.  It feels like I'm a glutton for punishment this time of year especially. And why this time of year?  Why did we have to lose our son 12 days before Christmas when Christmas already came with some really difficult emotions from losses in the past.  For those who don't know, I lost my friend, a boyfriend actually, to cancer on Christmas day in my grade 12 year and also lost a little boy I worked with....ironically, 26 years ago today.  (I didn't write about this part yesterday so once again God has worked to have me explore this emotion on a day that really matters).  Christmas is truly a horrible time to lose someone because it's such a season of memories anyway...and therefore a season of memories.  

I have some many moments this time of year that spark a memory that brings tears and sadness.  I want to push them aside and feel others want me to as well.  People expect that we'll be happy this time of year and people think that a loss that's almost 14 years old won't still sit so heavy in our hearts.  And people suck someitmes!!!  Sorry but it's so true!

I've diverged a bit and I feel like I'm needing to pray to come back to a place to continue exploring so this may just be it for today.  I will admit that it feels strange to just bring out these big feelings and let them sit but I also know God wants to bring me through this darkness so I need to sit in a bit and process and come back to it later.  

Thanks for following along and for praying for me as I walk through this.