LaLune

"I can't wait anymore, I am going to pee on a stick." I told my husband at about 4 am when we both were awake in a peaceful house. But my nerves were strung so tightly I was sure I'd wake the boys just by being in the same room as them.

Walking to the bathroom I relived the last time I did this three short months ago. Even though since then I feel like years have passed. It was another middle of the night adventure.

While Hubs was gone training and I was sure I was having the fifth migraine in a week. Fed up I decided to just pee on a stick to see if that was what was making my hormones rage and flare enough to make me this sick. 

Even though the odds were against me, I decided to test. I hadn't had a cycle since before Pancake was born, and beyond that Hubs had been gone so often chances of actually being home on a day I was fertile were slim to none. I was sure this couldn't be it. So when I dropped the three drops on the test and it began to move across the window showing only one line I wasn't surprised at all. Instead I sat down hard on the ground and cried. Not because we had been trying to conceive, but because this just meant that my hormones were nuts and I'd just have to tough it out. 

I only got a few good ugly sobs out before I heard rustling in the bedroom, so when I stood up my eye immediately fell on the pregnancy test. I made to grab the test and toss it when the whole world kind of slowed and my heart jumped, it was positive. 

Two lines. Two dark purple lines.

The next three weeks were blissful after the initial shock Hubs and I were getting excited to welcome a new child. I enjoyed testing each morning watching the lines immediately pop up on the test window.

Until while visiting our home town for the holidays, Driving to Hubs parents house on our first night home I glanced at the sky, a full red moon hung high in the sky. It felt a little like an omen, a clear warning. 

I had lost our tiny 10 week babe by the time we returned home.

Now three months later the idea of testing has me jumpy and skittish. I decide that I'm going to perform the test then just leave. I walked straight back to the bed snuggled into Hub and surprisingly passed back out. It wasn't until later when we had cartoons blaring and breakfast going that I remembered that I had left it out.
"WHAT DID IT SAY?!" I shouted to Hubs.
I didn't wait for him to respond I walked to the bathroom and picked up the test I left on the window seal.
Two lines. The second was so faint though.
Faint positive or evaporation line?
Dammit! Why did I think not looking within the testing time would be a good idea?!

I walked back to David who by this time was pretty amused at what a weirdo he decided to reproduce with. I showed him the test, of course he shook his head after I explained evaporation lines. "You can't count that one Babe, try again in the morning."
The next 24 hours was difficult but the next test came up positive immediately. Hubs still wouldn't take that as a positive. "You still haven't even missed your period, lets wait until that then see what these tests say."

I remember being frustrated he was so quick to dismiss these clear positives, but now I think he might have been looking for certainty after we had just said good bye to our tiny babe.

Finally, our last test in my stash a dark positive two days past my period. Just days before Hubs left on his fourth deployment.

When I kissed him at the airport, I laughed (refusing to cry) and told him to get ready because the next time he saw me I'd either be gigantic or with a brand new squish. We smiled, both knowing what he would miss, but hoping against hope he could make it home in time to welcome this child.

Eight months later

I anxiously waited as the third and last possible flight switched from a blinking delayed to landed. I decided I would just wait right were he could see us in front of the door to the security clearance. I wanted the boys to be able to sprint to him, squealing and laughing like I knew they would.

Finally after so many prayers and thoughts my husband stepped on home soil, and a weight fell from my heart. I felt our baby girl shift casually in my womb, knowing she felt the anxiety lift too. Waddling after our squealing and running boys I put a hand on my impressive belly thinking, " I know LaLune, I'm ready too."

Bible Study

My prayers lately sound something like this:

Please Lord help us. The roar that those are creating about legalizing gay marriage and how torn our nation is right now scare me. Please help those that are lost to see your love, and your light. I know that there can be no light without darkness, but the darkness seems to encase those lost in its claws. Then they too become the darkness. Please help us Lord.


The more dark the darkness, the lighter the light.



This popped up in my newsfeed today:

If you are going to be brash enough to post this, you are asking to open the flood gates of criticism.

First I would like to point out that there is hardly ever a singular meaning of marriage in the bible.

Want some of the examples of what the Bible defines as marriage?

- An arranged marriage—Genesis 24:1-4 (and many other passages) 

- A levirate marriage (If a man died leaving no male heir, his brother was required to marry his widow and produce children)—Deuteronomy 25:5-10 

- A polygamous marriage—1 Kings 11:3 (and many, many other passages) 

- Not inter-racial—Deuteronomy 7:14; 1 Corinthians 7:39; 2 Corinthians 6:14 

- Filled with sexual prohibitions—no intercourse during menstruation (The woman is unclean. Yet another degradation of women.) —The woman cannot withhold sex from her husband; she has to fulfill his desire for sex when he wants it. (And another example of the Bible’s misogyny) 

- Not allowed to be dissolved, i.e. NO DIVORCE—Matthew 5:31-32; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18 

- Except when the man wanted to because his wife had become ‘displeasing’ to him—Deuteronomy 24:1-4 

- Between a rapist and his victim—Deuteronomy 22:28-29 

- An arranged marriage by a slave owner for his slaves—Genesis 24:4 

- Can be between brother and sister 

-Intended to solely to produce children—Without children a woman was: 

Shamed—a barren woman was looked upon as cursed by God 

Unable to be saved—1 Timothy 2:15

Seriously I could go on and on. And never ever does is say that marriage should be between a man and a woman only. EVER. 

Secondly, I would just like to kindly point out that the Bible itself was written around 500 hundred years after Christ's death. Upon writing it the "authors" took the gospels and picked carefully those that would be included and those that would be discarded. Those that were kept were edited and made to mirror the image that they deemed appropriate at that time.

As far as the laws of God? Who are we to decide what laws God has made for us. I know that you are probably reading this going Dan, the Ten Commandments? Don't fret, I haven't forgotten those and in the Ten Commandments I never saw once THOU SHALT NOT MARRY THE SAME SEX EVER. In fact I am pretty sure the whole set of commandments is based on respect. Respect of God, respect of your lover, respect of your peers.

I am not here to try to change your mind and tell you that your conservative views are inferior to my liberal ones but I would like for you to please think before you tell me that Jesus or God does not condone this movement. This is a movement of love, a movement for equality, this is a movement to break ties that create hate. The son of God I feel in my life, smiles at this movement. He is a man of love, mercy, patience and forgiveness. Or is it perhaps we do not know that same God and His son?

swirly thoughts

I’m a little crazy.

I pray. I know most people don’t know I am a spiritual person. But I keep it fairly low key only because I don’t want to shove my beliefs down your throat. I believe in a higher being that for lack of a better word I call God. Its not the God that is preached about in the religion I was raised with, it the one that I have come to find in my life over and over again.

I see this being in the birth of my children, in the power of my body as a mother; I find this being in the sequences that occur right before death, in the science that I study everyday.  

My gut/intuition/inner voice leads me to this being for whatever reason and I have no problem listening to it. I am absolutely okay with the fact that it may turn out that this being is all in my head. For now it keeps me peaceful, provides me an outlet; and yes carries me in times of need.

So anyways I pray. Not always in the conventional way like kneeling before bedtime or in church hands folded and eyes closed. I am a mother to two boys that on most days run rapidly from one catastrophe to the next. In my home a kneeling person is usually me searching for the missing item that my oldest cannot be without. No, I usually have my prayers in my head, almost always a quick prayer of thanks for these beautiful disaster children. Even when they are hungry, sleepy, and screaming I find myself listening to that intuitive feeling saying be grateful that you know how to handle them while they are hungry, sleepy, and screaming. Be grateful that they only scream when they are hungry and sleepy. Be grateful. Be kind. Be humble.

But while I was in a dark place in my life I found writing out my prayers were the easiest way to deal with the emotions I was wrestling with. I was glad when I read the book Eat. Pray. Love that someone else was as crazy as I am and also wrote out their darkest prayers. I was also glad to see that apparently God was writing back to Elizabeth Gilbert as well as me. This is where my confession comes from.

I was reading back through my prayers and though at the time I didn’t see the response it was there. Plain as the sun in the sky, a response was scrawled across the page in my untidy writing. And goose bumps rose on my skin while tears swam in my eyes.

Forgive.

Holy fuck. After a long prayer written out seeking anything to make my darkest days turn to light I remember writing it out the last thing on the page meaning to continue it with something else but stopped. It shook me to my core to see there on the page the answer I had so desperately needed.

There are probably a good few of you out there thinking, “I don’t get it, Dani has lost her marbles.” Maybe I have, but something in me just clicked when I read that word, and it further opened my eyes to the world. I will never be able to explain the feeling or connection I feel with the rest of the world. I may never meet another person that physically aches for the mistakes human kind isn’t learning from. But I will be able to take this feeling and connection and use it.

I don’t care if this was just me writing, and my subconscious’ neurons firing madly trying to pull me out of a deep rut for self-preservation. My heart felt touched and my mind was blank except for the fact that this was the God I knew, simple, loving, and guiding.

Even for a crazy lady.