my jumbled thoughts.

It's a strange day. One year ago Olive was born.

The birth wasn't the beautiful birth experience that I was planning for, but one full of fear, tears, and panic.

I remember getting to the hospital and them telling me I was already dilated to six centimeters. I remember thinking it was all just a bad dream. I remember feeling relieved that Olive had at least cried at birth. I remember thinking she looked like a little blue old man and Libby telling me she looked just like me : >). I remember laying on the delivery bed after the birth, talking on the phone to rusty telling him she was at least breathing.

My thoughts today feel so scattered and jumbled...just like this post will probably be. Part of me doesn't even like going back to the day she was born...brings up so many feelings that I'm not even sure how to process through and anxiety remembering the day after.

I'm wondering how things could have been different...if only I would have listened to my gut sooner. If only this...if only that...

Wishing I could go to her gravesite...sit there...talk to her.

Rusty's sister Stacia and her family drove down to Olive's grave last night and wrote messages on balloons and released them. My aunt put flowers on her grave this last week. Mom and dad visited her grave, and I've been hearing about a few others who have stopped by. It means so much to us. Especially when we are so far away.

I'm wondering what Olive is doing today in Heaven. Wondering who is caring for her. Rusty thinks his grandma Polinder is taking care of her...maybe my grandma Laura. The other week we had a conversation with a close Akha friend of ours named Joe and he said he thinks his mother (who died 4 years ago) is also taking care of Olive in heaven.

Death doesn't seem scary anymore. Eternity doesn't seem so scary either...it feels much more tangible...a place that I will go and get to be with Olive again.

Wondering what life would be like if Olive was born term and healthy. Wondering what her life would be like if she were still alive after being born so early. Wondering if her life would have been as hard as the doctors were predicting...and if it would have been I'm thankful she is no longer suffering.

Wondering when this longing to be near her will ease up.

Thankful for the support of so many who love us and who also loved our little Olive Hope.

She changed me in more ways than i thought possible for someone so small.

one year ago.

books i've been reading....

Here are some books I've been reading over the last six months--or a few of the ones I would recommend out of what I've read. If you are looking for a light read, then avoid every book below.

"McCracken, calls her astonishingly candid memoir “the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.” When she and her husband Edward were nearing the end of a 2006 writing sojourn in southern France, and she was in the ninth month of her pregnancy, her unborn baby boy died. Now teaching in upstate New York, and raising her second child, McCracken says she wasn’t ready for her first “to fade into history”—hence, this therapeutic memoir. In amazingly insightful chapters, she shares her acutely sensitive thoughts about how she and Edward dealt with their initial grief, how friends and family coped, where the couple placed their futile blame, if any, and the emotional strings attached to their decision to attempt a pregnancy so soon after this tragedy." -Deborah Donovan

"Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to "let her babies go" — she knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins — the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children." -Amazon review

"Birth, like death, can be a messy affair. Though we all wish for beautful, healthy nine pound babies, we know that isn't always the case. Premature births pose all sorts of problems that present medical and moral dilemas for doctors, nurses, interns and parents, as well as for the little babies struggling to live, to fill their little lungs with life's breath or get their hearts pumping blood through their little bodies.Some of the babies whose stories are recounted in ALMOST HOME make it all the way home, others do not, but the stories collected here simply must be told. Some are unbelievably sad, and you will cry when you read them; others tell of babies who survived and did well against seemingly impossible odds; still others are embarrassing, as Dr. Gleason chronicles her tentative early years as a doctor-on-training. Taken together, however, the stories celebrate the miracles of modern medicine, mourn its failings, and marvel at the strength and resilience of the human body and spirit so evident in these little babies, their families, and the dedicated people who staff the intensive care units. ALMOST HOME is a remarkable debut book, the power of which lies in its abiding humanity and its intensely personal portrayal of the often fragile beginnings of a human life."-Amazon review

"If you have lost someone you love then this book can really help you understand and put your loss in perspective. The author lost three generations of his own family in one auto accident, his mother, wife and daughter. His Biblical wisdom and thoughtfulness has me going back to read and re-read often. One quote, in particular, I keep going back to and back to is, "I did not get over the loss of my loved ones: rather I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am." This book has helped me immensely in dealing with the lose of my husband. I have also shared the book with many others. Right now I am reading it with friend who lost both a newborn child and her mother both within a year. I truly think this book has helped to give me a peace about the loss of my loved one that I could not have had without this author's uncanny understanding and willingness to share his thoughts."-Donna Williams

"Pete Greig, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie' s fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow...even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope and love beyond all understanding."-Amazon review

lately.

some of the aydc kids playing a game where you jump as high as you can...you have to touch your foot to the rubber-band rope (far above their heads) to stay in the game.

Anyone who knows Luka,(the director of the Akha Youth Development Center (where we live), knows his infectious laugh very well.

Joe (Ae's husband) throwing fertilizer on the field.

This week all of the AYDC staff put fertilizer on the rice fields. Ae has her super protectant sun gear on. She kept laughing at what a touristy foreigner i look like in Libby's hat that she left behind.

Joe and Vittaya.

Wipada