All posts tagged: #suffering

Love and Loss – a Comparison of Redeeming Ruth and Arrival

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[Warning – this post contains spoilers for the 2016 movie Arrival and the brand new memoir Redeeming Ruth.]   Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all?   I finally watched Arrival, the award-winning, thought-provoking alien movie, starring Amy Adams as a linguist who saves the world. In the beginning of the movie there’s a montage of Louise (Amy Adams’ character) and Hannah, her cherished child who becomes very ill and dies. Later we find out Louise is remembering/forseeing her child, and her fate, before she even becomes pregnant. She chooses the relationship that will create her daughter, and to bear and love her fully, even though she knows the the suffering and loss that lies ahead. I had just finished Meadow Rue Merrill’s powerful new book, Redeeming Ruth:Everything Life Takes, Love Restores. I couldn’t help weaving both stories together as I watched Arrival. Redeeming Ruth is a fresh, clear, beautifully written memoir about adoption, courage, special needs, provision, faith, hope, and suffering.  One day a beautiful toddler with cerebral palsy is placed into Ruth’s arms …

Crows

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Once I was held prisoner in my room for 10 weeks. Preterm labor demanded bedrest if I wanted to give my unborn babies a chance. I lived in fear of losing them. I also lived in fear of crows. ***** Almost every day of my bedrest crows came to haunt me. They curled their talons and straightened their black cloaks on the bare winter branches outside my window. They stared in my room with sinister eyes and cawed menacingly. I trembled. There was no roadkill in my room for them to eat. Whose death were they waiting for? Were they circling over the twins I was desperately trying to grow inside my huge belly? Did they think my babies weren’t going to make it? Did they know something I didn’t? One day I couldn’t take it anymore. I untangled myself from the contraction monitor, subcutaneous terbutaline pump, long white compression socks, and twisted blankets and heaved myself out of bed. I punched at the window with one hand and guarded my babies with the other. “Go …

Scabs and Scars

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At eight years old I overheard a woman say an Arabian prince could only choose a woman with no scars to be his princess. I was devastated. I had scars from mosquito bites, chicken pox, bike accidents, and scraping my feet in Gramma’s big cement pool. I also had a belly button, and wondered if those princes were smart enough to realize that everyone had at least one scar. Did the holes from getting our ears pierced count? I’m an almost albino redhead. I’ve had eight suspicious moles removed. The first one was near my right breast. I was 20, and the plastic surgeon named, I kid you not, Dr. Scarzella, said he didn’t want to do the surgery because the scar might hinder intimacy with my partner. I was not even close to being sexually active, but I somehow had enough sense of self to say, “well, I don’t think I’m going to be intimate with any guy who couldn’t handle a scar on my boob.” He laughed and patted my shoulder. I had …

Kintsukuroi – I Guess We Have to be Broken

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A few years ago my son and I had a very bad day. As I tucked him in, I hugged him, and prayed out loud, “Oh Lord, I put a hole in this dear kid’s heart today. With my mean face and impatient, harsh words. Please forgive me. Would you fill in that hole I made? Will your light and love chase away the yucky darkness?” Enough time had passed since my outburst, so Caleb was in the place to hug me tightly back and I say, “I forgive you, Mom. I know you love me.” I laid there holding him in silence a long time. I hate that I hurt his heart. I struggled to believe God would really fix it. We’ve all been broken. Sometimes we are jerks, and we toss someone’s heart on the floor. Sometimes other people are jerks and our hearts get shattered. My kids have had pieces chipped off by peers, teachers, their own choices, pain, and me. God and I had a conversation a long time ago, when I felt too …