Category: miscarriage

Obstacle vs. Victory…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

Statistically speaking, it was seven miscarried pregnancies, a tiny sneak peek of uterine cancer and a medical procedure to eliminate any chances for the same sort of bad, (or much, much worse) to occur…

Humanly speaking, I was a shattered twenty-four year old woman having an emergency hysterectomy after my heart had been ripped from my soul and trampled on seven different hellish times. My body was worn, my womb twisted, scarred and reaching it’s expiration date…

The two perspectives belong to the very same story, but they each tell an entirely different tale.

In the midst of the story is infidelity, adultery, deceit, abuse and so much more. The bad moments, the broken and bloody miscarriage moments last a lifetime- there, shattered and bleeding on that lime green tile floor. By my now ripe age of forty-two I have lived at least a dozen lifetimes, it feels…

And yet.

This humanly statistical story of life and luck-gone-nightmarishly-wrong did not end with the loss of life, loss of womanhood. It continued and holds, within it’s oxygen bound chapters, reconciliation, redemption, reconnection, three lovely little childhood souls without a mother and this aching mother’s heart without children to love. Mine is not a statistical story about loss, but gain. It is not about hopeless longing, though it did contain that then. Instead it is a story of a miraculous weaving, of a family that grows despite the odds. Imperfect and yet perfectly real.

This is my story. We all have them.

We have all had hardships which stood between us and something bigger, something looming impossible. We’ve all known our greatest obstacle- and our stories did not end there.

Rocky is a timeless tale still loved and embraced decades after its creation. This is because Rocky’s story resonates with us. After all, isn’t that why art exists, to connect us with our inner-self, our God, the world around us and each other? Art opens and exposes us…

And just like our own stories, art never ends.

I am really excited to share with you about Creed 2… (like, REALLY excited!)

www.rainydayinmay.com

PRIDE. LEGACY. FAMILY.

This fall, there is more to lose than a title.

In Theaters Wednesday, November 21st

Official Synopsis:  Life has become a balancing act for Adonis Creed. Between personal obligations and training for his next big fight, he is up against the challenge of his life. Facing an opponent with ties to his family’s past only intensifies his impending battle in the ring. Rocky Balboa is there by his side through it all and, together, Rocky and Adonis will confront their shared legacy, question what’s worth fighting for, and discover that nothing’s more important than family. Creed II is about going back to basics to rediscover what made you a champion in the first place, and remembering that, no matter where you go, you can’t escape your history.

Release Date: November 21, 2018

Director: Steven Caple Jr.

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris, Russell Hornsby, Florian “Big Nasty” Munteanu, Andre Ward, Phylicia Rashad, Dolph Lundgren

Writer: Sylvester Stallone

Distributor:  MGM, Warner Bros. Pictures

#CreedII

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What Spring has brought with her…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

www.rainydayinmay.com

When I signed up to Let Go, this year, I really had no idea of the things that would be asked of me.

I would say that, while this is probably a truth that has applied to all of my WOtY’s, this year has all at once stung incredibly and also been so restorative. Now, it is June. We are at a half way point and I find myself reflecting on this journey. Here in Michigan we’ve had about eleven seconds of true spring, following the twenty years of winter… (While you may be learning that I can sometimes exaggerate, this is something I’ve known for a good, long while.)

Spring is nearly out the door, making way for Summer, and I am reflecting along with my favorite Emily, about what Spring has shown me…

The vision/dream my heart has held for so eternally long really can be mine… I’ve read all of the little memes about believing in yourself, I’ve read the books and seen the lectures. But then, at some point this Spring I finally followed through with a project that was two years, (and let’s be honest, a lifetime) in the making and opportunities/possibilities just spilled forth. It took those things happening to make me realize this vision wasn’t a fantasy, it was a grand design. It may look differently than the ways I’ve dreamed, but that just means it will be better and more suited to my truth.

The internet has made me a terrible book reader… Goodness, have I ever written more truer words? It is terrible! I’m trying to change it, honest! I have sat the book I’m attempting to read, on my table every day this week. I naively tell myself that will remind me. I pencil READ onto my to-do list. Instead I spend all of the moments I have on the computer. Yes, it is work, and necessary, but where are the boundaries? Where is the balance? (And why does the internet have so much access to so many great things? (And do I really need to have/learn/do all of the great things right now? NO. And yet…))

People that are loved and trusted can tear us down in their climb up to finding their own worth. Not all of them, but the love and trust doesn’t make them exempt… this is probably the most sad part about my let go journey. Relational losses are always difficult and at first I wasn’t sure it would be a full-fledged loss. I could not imagine it and certainly did not want it. I’d been too close to the situation to see the very toxic negativity that was continually being directed at me. I sat back and trusted the journey that God had me on and daily there was negative opposition that tore me down a little more.Others saw it, my breaking and the reasons, but I couldn’t. Afterword, the shock of the loss seemed incomprehensible, but the sudden weightlessness of the journey felt so free. This is what they call bittersweet, I suppose. I harbor no resentments, as I said very early that whoever is supposed to be here, will be & likewise, whoever is not will not be. There is peace in seeing that I truly did surrender myself to trusting that and in the lesson learned valuable things.

I don’t love rewatching movies as much as I used to… Oh, I really used to. There are a handful of movies that I have watched hundreds and hundreds of times. Now, in this season, I am seeing that I’m growing more selective about watching much, and the concept of rewatching sounds beyond underwhelming.

Stress really does hurt… I have been watching my husband’s stress levels rise to such levels that not only is he no longer able to do that thing which he loves the most (run), but his body is broken down to such a point that he is constantly ill. This man has literally gone years without so much as a sniffle. It is all so sad to see.

Sometimes it takes another person’s difficult season to put our own into perspective… This year I have walked along several people who are in absolutely shattered seasons of their life. I ache so terribly for them, and find myself with wider eyes, freer thoughts and a much heartier gratitude list than ever before.

I really find gratification in an empty DVR… {also- that I don’t need a DVR} I enjoy escaping with a show and snuggle down with the husband as much as anyone. I don’t feel tv is the devil, and I’ve never been anywhere near a slave to my DVR. Even so, I’m feeling much the same way about tv as I am movies…

Tulips are toxic for dogs… I learned this because my passionate love of fresh flowers and my sweet little (almost 1-year-old) Golden Elenor believed they were meant to be her snack… So she ate tulips. And it was intense, and stress filled, and most importantly- she is ok. Thus concludes the story of how this flower loving girl will never have tulips around, again.

So many people are ready to burst, needing to share their journey with someone and continually finding no one who cares… Every single day this lesson grows bigger.

Motherhood is quite possibly the kryptonite, to my life... More than anything, as a girl, I wanted a mother to mother me. More than anything, as I was older, I manually moved whatever mountains I had to, to become one. Miscarriages, surgeries, medication, procedures, foster care, failed adoptions and finally, being a mom… But that motherhood journey, for me, never had a solitary moment of peace. It was one painful struggle after another. I’ve spent an adulthood waiting for it to be that thing I’ve always believe Motherhood would be.

I have never thought I would be the rehome my dog type… And yet, this has become a daily discussion. We have a dog that grows more and more special needs, by the day. With a chronic illness, traveling (for work) husband and limited financial resources- we are at a loss. Many (MANY) nights she keeps us up with her manic behavior, which now consistently all day as well, and it is just growing worse. I am sad, so so sad to even consider. (And so overwhelmed as to how.)

I am tired… which could be the culmination of all the things, and the real blame for why I’m not reading. Truth is, I’m too tired to figure any of that out! Ha!

Include…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay9 Comments

As an orphan, as a failure- both motherless, in relevant ways, and childless in the real ones, you include me.

You envelop me within the warmth of a family that is not my own. You tie me, bind me to souls sharing only the elements of brokenness and abandon. These things both awe me and further break my heart.

Perhaps they are supposed to.

While the world around me shuts me out, unrelatable to the vein in which their lives flow, you include me.

While many decided (and still do) I was not worth their time,

worth their love or support,

worth anything at all really- you breathed within me that I do have worth in you. I am more than their self-seeking destruction, but I am yours. Your daughter, your child, your plan, your purpose, your path taker, if only I choose to take that path you’re on. 

You have included my heart, my longings, my emptiness and my  very core in this path which you have cleared. You have designed an entire universe of purpose around my very soul. You include me within your warm embrace when others shut the door, whispering in my ear to let go and trust. No baggage, no past, not one lost thing to drag me down. I look ahead, make out a clearing and know in my core that if I continue toward you, inclusion in your loving warmth is what will come.

And so, I let go.

(this post is from this weeks prompt over at FMF.)

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

When two young, married kids learned the hard way that starting a family wasn’t an automatic given, life turned harder than either of them had imagined possible. Through miscarriage, bouts of infertility and a traumatically failed foster care adoption, hope became this certain thing they each believed did not belong to them…

Anyone who knows me, or us, knows that this is our story. This is also the story of so many other couples. Maybe a few details would be different but the key elements- the vital heartbreak and hopelessness- that is the same… It was that journey, the one which felt the length of centuries, but was really only the length of seven years, which set the stage for our actual parenthood. When the foster babies we’d believed were the answer to so many Please, God, give us a family prayers were taken, my husband emphatically and protectively decided that enough was enough. He was done, we were done. No more hopes mutilated, no more trying to have faith that my achingly empty arms would soon be full… No more.

And so, fast forward about five years. We had very hesitantly signed with an adoption agency. It was all an awkward and cautious dance, really… Within ourselves, with those around us, with dreams and ideas, prayers, and especially with each other. It is often talked about how the loss of a child is seldom something a marriage survives and I am here to say that infertility treats a marriage the very same way. There are just genetic ways that women tend to process, cope and grieve which often seem foreign to a man. This is also true from men to women.Those times when a couple need to draw together, often leads to them pulling far apart. Immersing ourselves back into the family journey, no matter how delicately we tiptoed, was a terrifying attempt. We were each so jaded and scarred from the time before. Just as we were both settling in to that same-page way of things, and trying to move towards whatever path this adoptive journey led us- a call comes asking us to consider taking a four-year old little girl. She’s unsafe for other young children to be around. She’s been hurt. She’s aggressive and reactive. She’s coming from every imaginable trauma. Please, please take her. Now.

The past bites us viciously when we least expect it. Carnal instincts are there, within us, no matter how hard we suppress them. When you unite a mother with a child who is a viciously shattered, wounded little bird- something happens. I never knew how protective I could be. Would be…

Our adoption of that little girl took far too long. With every investment of thousands of dollars, the path would only lead to an unscalable brick wall, closed-door and the urgings of another avenue followed by double the dollar signs. She was four when she came home to us, and thirteen when a judge finally made us a legal family. For nine years we were bled dry, gave birth to debt and lived in a constant state of fear. Hope sometimes speckled our lifelines, but mostly we waited for the big-bad-whatever to ruin everything we were fighting for. With each closed-door, we would have the talk…

What if it doesn’t work out. What if someone takes her. What if we never get to adopt her. What if? What if? What if? The seeds which had been planted when those twin foster babies were taken, as I lay a mangled mess of salty tears and agony on the floor bloomed, and they bloomed vibrantly. We’d flee. We’d run. We would protect her at all cost, no matter what came her way. We’d face prison. We’d find the money and hire someone to make sure no one from those who had hurt her would ever have the chance again.

There were a lot of frustrations. There were season upon season of sleepless nights. There were a lot of Oh gosh, it’s happening- this is it, type scares. I grew far too familiar with the feeling of blood running cold. I grew far too comfortable with the idea of doing what I “had to”, even if what I had to might be wrong. My ethical compass, typically solid, grew blurred when it came to our little girl.

Thankfully, I never actually had to make the decision. Even now, years later, when I look back I realize I have absolutely no idea if I really could have gone to such extents… What I am certain of is that I gave up everything and devoted my life to give her love and keep her safe. I also know that there is no way I could have made it through even a month of that journey, much less nearly a decade, without a solid faith. God has never promised me that he’d hand over anything and everything I asked for, but what He has given me is a peace when peace seems impossible, and a quiet security and strength when the world around me raged in uncontrollable stormy chaos.

I shared this story as an experience about a relevant time, in my life, when I struggled with my moral boundaries and what I knew was right or wrong, for me. This post is in partnership with the film Wraith from writer-director Michael O. Sajbel (One Night With the King).

Wraith (rāth) noun: a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen
after, or shortly before, their death
Something’s very wrong in the Lukens’ house. After living uneventfully for years in their historic home, the Lukens family have
somehow awakened a ghostly presence. Who is this frightening spirit and why won’t leave their 14 year-old daughter, Lucy, alone? Everything changed when Dennis and Katie Lukens discovered they were pregnant
again. Expecting in your 40’s is always high-risk and dangerous, so when the Lukens
decide all options are on the table – including termination – the unexpected starts to
happen. Sinister forces are now conspiring against the family. But is this eerie,
wraith-like spirit actually trying to haunt them…or help them?
Wraith is available on all VOD platforms and Blu-ray/DVD May 8

Authentically speaking matrimony…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

We scrambled eggs and toasted bread, this weekend. There was coffee in the press, aromatically tickling the best inside of us while the ice blew around outside tugging at the less best.

It is so hard to listen to another when we cannot seem to look over the hurdle of hurts and inadequacies we choose to fence ourselves in with. We have all done this, to degrees, and the letting go is overwhelmingly vulnerable but so necessary.

If I were to ever write a book on marriage, this is absolutely the angle I would take. I would title it something akin to Get Over Yourself, and it would probably be poignantly badass and awesome. Lives and marriages would be changed and the world would bloom brighter because the divorce rate would plummet…

All from my book.

Obviously, this isn’t true. None of that would happen, and I would honestly never write about marriage. The truth is that this isn’t because I wouldn’t be qualified as much as because the world around me feels that I am not. I am asking myself quite a bit lately, how much does the world around me determine my path?

My husband and I married very young, with a very unhealthy support system, very loosely around whenever it fit their needs. We were life-broken and hurt kids, walking down the aisle to some promise of a future constructed by a mix of the 90’s church, movies and top 40 love songs. These ideas sold as ideals were all we knew to look toward, and so it was devastating when they let us down.  None of these things prepared us for emergency medical procedures in less than ideal locations, or badly mannered doctors brazenly promising you a healthy baby, while hours later you lay holding the sixteen week lifeless one in your hands while your husband wails and looks toward suicide to balm the horror throbbing from inside of him. Bloody bathroom baby funerals became the most consistent part about our early day marriage and when we looked up or called out, we were almost always left with only each other to look at.

Adultery honestly, with hind sight, kind of makes sense. Nothing within out lives made sense and everything hurt overwhelmingly, so escaping it for something which felt a little nice and was so separate from the worst life was almost a no-brainer. Of course, anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on knows that this doesn’t take the bad away or really make it any better. It simply piles on top.

Divorce follows broken, blistered years of crash-course-adulthood almost always. In our case, had any one element been different- the support system, the miscarriages, the drowning medical debt- everything else may have changed. Had one tiny sign of life been present, the funeral would not have had to happen.

But it did…

And then a rebirth came. It was painful and gut wrenchingly beautiful and organically everything that should come from a shattered marriage moving forward. Living it was unexplainably complex.  Having grown up in the between helped immeasurably, and for that we were grateful. There was no condoning the giving up and not fighting, but we were attempting to redeem that short coming, and beauty abounded. A family miraculously came to be out of seeds of awful beginnings, and that next bit was real life littered hardships, sometimes discouraging but some how always intoxicatingly beautiful.

Gratitude. Always, there was gratitude.

But life is cyclic and shifts happen. The things which should have stayed most important slowly weren’t any longer and the slow-motion spiral stole our marriage’s breath away. Stole my breath away and silenced my heart. I have never felt so terrified, so incapable, so helpless, so worthless. So numb.

The train wreck following the slow motion fall was instantaneous and blinding. The deafening blows left my senses unable to grasp and be for weeks and weeks. When they did, I reached out to the supportive life I’d grown to nurture and found that the majority of them had been more shallowly inclined to love me than they had actually let on- once my life was shattered and bare. That is how it goes, really. Nearly every time. People love to show up when things are bright, and people love to take credit for the place they stand beside you, but when you fall most of them scatter…

Today I am with my husband. We made eggs and toast. We read a little, together, worked a little, together, and spent a cozy day confined inside while the world of never-ending winter froze just beyond our windows. The journey is long and hard and any one who has been married for any amount of extended time will know this. Not everyone tells the truth and so if someone tells you it’s great, just know they are lying to themselves more than to you.

Marriage is hard and it can be dark. It hurts more than any other relationship. When both people do their parts though, and put the other first, it is the most secure, warmest, most full filling and embracingly raw thing our human hearts can comprehend. Often what makes it so hard is that we cannot make the other person do their part or even want to, when they aren’t, which feels devestating. Sometimes they just don’t want to act on love, with us. And that sucks. When we each want to make the effort, it is so beyond anything I can find words for. Today has been a medium of that, while Friday was a not-at-all. Last weekend was a 10 out of 10.

And that is marriage. It is real, and you have to stay on top of it and protect it and work at it and honestly, there can not be time off. It is intensely 24/7, no day is a guarantee and no moment is scripted.

And when you are honest, in the train wreck times, there are people who will hold this in their memory until their very last breath. While they believe they don’t want you to fail, they also can’t get past that time when you could have. The worst part is that maybe they could have extended love and helped, but probably they didn’t, they just “care” so much to hold those moments against you.

My marriage is mine and my husband’s responsibility, but it is ignorant to pretend like no one else can hurt/harm/help it, because that just is not true.

For five months in late 2015/2016, my husband and I were separated and living in different states.  For two months, leading up to the sudden separation, things were really disconnected between us. Over that time there were counselors and others sought because we each said we wanted to have a strong marriage, and every time we were turned away. Within those five months, other people were DEFINITELY a majorly contributing problem. Those five months were two years ago. The sad expressions and gossipy questions looking for dirt never cease. This is why any book, on the topic, would never amount to anything. The social system around me would squash it from blooming. Can you believe she honestly thinks she has anything to say about marriage? Remember that time…

Allow a micro rant here- Stepping back I see this same exact thing happening in thousands of lives around me, in so many ways. Why are we rooting for the failure of others while masking it as concern? When you “well-meaningly” ignore two years of progress and healing to cut me right back to that time- it isn’t loving and it isn’t support. If all you can think to ask is how my marriage is, since the separation, then perhaps you should stop and think about the 24 years of survival and work we’ve put into it instead of the five months we were flat on our faces- and then ask yourself how you could have actually shown kindness both then and now…  And if you are one of those people and are married- shame on you for taking that self righteous path of crushing down.

Rant over…

When I want to look to someone for marriage inspiration and guidance, I look to the person who has been honest about their rollercoaster journey. THIS shows commitment, not the pretty filter image projected out there. When I want fitness/weightloss inspiration, I look to someone who has actually done it, not the naturally permanent size 4 girl with her own youtube channel. the time for authenticity is NOW…

I made eggs and toast, along side my husband. We had a few little irritations. This isn’t because of any other reason than we’re human, we have outside things in each of our lives that interfere with our thoughts and stresses. We were trapped in our house while an ice storm wailed outside. We are people. I love my husband more than any adjective could explain and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him, within my power. My marriage isn’t great, it isn’t fine, it isn’t anything other than REAL. Just like yours…