For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 24 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I race through my life at breakneck speed, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

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For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 23 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I race through my life at breakneck speed, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

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We started making “helpful” suggestions about things Noah could be doing differently in his social life, his work life, his life in general. He listened patiently, reminding us ever so gently at one point that he was doing pretty well (really well, actually) in terms of academics and everything else.

Later that same day, Dennis and I were hiking at a nearby nature preserve, when I had a revelation. There’s something about immersing myself in nature that clears my head. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, it was 17 years ago, when Noah was only 3 and had just started attending a Montessori pre-school near our home in Austin, Texas. Although we loved everything about the Montessori method, we would get frustrated when, day after day, every time we asked Noah what he had done at school, the answer would be something along the lines of, “I did hand-washing work.”

Dennis and I—fully in first-child parenting mode—would roll our eyes and obsess over what seemed like a total waste of Noah’s time and our money. How much are we paying for him to wash his hands? Why isn’t he taking advantage of the more interesting “work” that was available? We reminded Noah that when we had been at the open house, we saw a really cool farmhouse over in the corner. We suggested he play with that when he returned to school.

When we picked Noah up after his four-hour stint the next day, we asked how things went, waiting hopefully for news of the farmhouse. Looking a little forlorn for a boy of 3, he told us he had tried to play with the farmhouse, but the teacher told him he wasn’t ready for that work yet. That was for the older children. And so, poor Noah took the correction that rightly belonged to his parents.

I recalled all of this out loud to Dennis as we stood on a wooden bridge, the words tumbling from my mouth like the water rushing over the falls below us. “This is just like what we did to Noah with Austin Montessori,” I said, somewhat stunned by my own realization. We think we know better, but sometimes our children really do know what’s best for themselves, whether they are 3 years old or nearing 21. They live in their own world, in their own skin, and if we’ve done our job as parents, they know what they need to do—or not do.

Both Noah and Olivia, 17, are navigating the difficult path of young adulthood quite nicely, not only acing their schoolwork but steering clear of the pitfalls and problems that often plague so many high school and college kids. It’s time for us to start trusting that, while they might need some occasional guidance and figurative hand-holding now and then, they really do know how to handle the day-to-day rhythm of their own life circumstances better than we do at this point.

A few nights later, with our family gathered around the kitchen table again, we explained to the kids (including Chiara, who at 12 has many years of parental instruction ahead) that we recognize our own misguided attempts to try to live their lives for them out of our own fears for their futures.

We can’t prevent the inevitable failures and heartaches—theirs or our own. And that’s OK, because we only succeed by failing now and then. We’ll all get to the farmhouse when the timing is right.

This column originally appeared in the Aug. 3, 2017, issue of Catholic New York.

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By Mary DeTurris Poust

Noah plopped down on the floor next to me the other day and asked me to read one of his favorite books, “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed,” by Mercer Mayer. As we turned the pages and followed the little boy on his quest to capture the elusive alligator that kept him up at night, I had an eerie feeling that the story was an allegory for what I’d been feeling since that terrible morning a few days before.

The night after the World Trade Center attack, I lay awake in my bed staring at the ceiling, filled with a sense of dread that I could not quite put my finger on. I was scared, but not by the images of horror that had flashed before my eyes for hours that day. Instead my fears seemed frivolous, not at all unlike the little boy’s alligator: Had I left the dryer on in the basement? Was the window over the kitchen sink still open? Were the kids’ pajamas warm enough? I felt a childlike fear of the dark, of things no one else can see, things we parents usually try to hush with a goodnight kiss and a night-light.

When morning finally arrived, I realized that my sleeplessness wasn’t really about what might go wrong within my four walls. It was about what had gone wrong in our world. Long after I had wiped away the tears of sadness that fell as I watched the World Trade Center collapse over and over again on television’s seemingly endless loop of horror, I fought back tears of a different kind — as I rocked Olivia to sleep for her nap, as I kissed Noah good-bye at preschool, as I hugged my husband, Dennis, at the end of a long day. Those were tears borne of fear, tears for tomorrow, tears for a world we don’t yet know. And I didn’t like how they felt.

Despite the fact that I have spent almost two years writing a book on how to help children deal with grief, the events of the past weeks left me in the unusual position of struggling for words. On the day of the attack, when Noah, asked if “bad people” might knock down our house, I reassured him that they would not. When he made a logical leap – at least for a 4-year-old – and worried that they might knock down his grandmother’s apartment building in New York City, I told him he was safe, that no one was going to hurt him or the people he loved. All the while I found myself wondering if I was telling him a lie.

But that kind of thinking leads to hopelessness, and when we lose hope, we leave a void just waiting to be filled by fear and despair and alligators of every kind. Through stories on television and in newspapers, I had seen unbelievable hopefulness in the face of utter destruction. How could I not believe in the power of the human spirit and the ultimate goodness of humanity and a better world for our children?

That night, as a soft rain fell, our house seemed wrapped in a comforting quiet that was interrupted only by the reassuring hum of the dishwasher. With Noah and Olivia asleep in their rooms, I lay down and looked up. For the first time in days I didn’t notice the enveloping darkness but saw instead the tiny glowing stars that dot our bedroom ceiling, a “gift” left behind by the previous owners. As I finally closed my eyes to sleep, I whispered a prayer of hope, a prayer for a world where the only thing our children have to fear are the imaginary monsters hiding under their beds.

Copyright 2001, Mary DeTurris Poust

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It’s amazing to me how this baby I never met, whose little heart was there but had stopped beating before I had the chance to hear it, still has such a powerful presence on my psyche and on my heart. Grief starts with such sorrow and pain, but, in this case, over time, it has blossomed into a blessing and the connection to a completely untarnished little soul who prays for me and her father and siblings from the other side. Grace was definitely the right name.

And now, here is the annual post I run in remembrance of baby Grace:

For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 18 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I drive my other three children to and fro, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

The post Miscarriage: Love and loss 18 years later appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 15 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I drive my other three children to and fro, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

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By Mary DeTurris Poust

Just last month, Dennis and I entered the Twilight Zone of parenting, also known as the Teenage Years. Noah, our first-born, reached the magic age on New Year’s Day, giving us the chance to ring in not only a new year but also a new era.

Fortunately for us, it hasn’t been a total baptism by fire. Noah has been kind enough to ease us into teenage life. For the past six months or so, he’s taken to glowering at us from under half-closed eyelids and responding to just about everything we say — from “Hi, Sweetie. You look nice,” to “What happened to that permission slip?” — in the same annoyed tone. I figure right about the time Noah starts pulling out of this semi-permanent funk, Olivia will be moving in and then Chiara right behind her. We’re looking at 15 straight years of teenage angst here, people.

Of course, not everything having to do with teen life revolves around the teen (despite what said teen thinks). A lot of what will happen in the coming years, already is happening right now, has to do with how we respond to our teen and what kinds of freedoms and limits we give him.

It’s Noah’s job to test boundaries and to pull away, even as he secretly wants our affection and attention. As I roll my eyes and sigh with exasperation every time he growls his morning greeting, I know in my heart that this is how it is meant to be. For my part, I have to do a little letting go while being careful not to leave him in a free fall. He has been very sheltered for 13 years. Now it’s time to trust that what we’ve taught him will get him through some difficult growing pains. I vaguely remember those early teen years; they were no picnic.

And so we enter into this new era together, albeit from different perspectives. As Noah wrestles with the responsibilities and decisions that come with being a teen on the way to adulthood, we wrestle with the choices and reactions that come with being adults in the midst of a new phase of parenthood. It’s uncharted territory for all of us.

Just this week, we talked to Noah about ending the piano lessons he has taken for more than five years. He just doesn’t seem that interested anymore. Rather than the simple responses we may have had as parents of a toddler or young child – time out, for example – we have to find a new way to make an impression. So we asked Noah to think about why he wants to continue lessons and why we should continue to fund them and then tell us without shrugging his shoulders or saying, “I don’t know.”

We got a two-page written response, proving that he can present quite a persuasive argument when he puts his mind to it. The three of us approached the piano problem as adults and near-adult, talking instead of lecturing (on our part) and listening instead of ignoring (on his part).

We know the next few years will be fraught with difficult decisions for all of us. There will be times when we will have to tell Noah he cannot do certain things no matter how ready he thinks he is. And, there will be times when Noah will prove that he is ready despite our fears and hesitation.

As I look ahead to the big events in Noah’s life – driving a car in only three years, graduating from high school in five – I realize that a lot of what will happen in our relationship over the next few years will hinge on my ability to accept that my baby isn’t a baby anymore and on my willingness to step back and watch him spread his wings, even as I am quietly waiting in the background, ready to catch him at a moment’s notice.

To read previous Life Lines columns, visit my website by clicking HERE.

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From today’s post:

“So, here comes Andrew. At four years old, he’s my youngest yet in the program. He’d been in seven placements already. The previous placements were all family members and he’d been abused and neglected in each of them.

“He came into our house one ANGRY little guy. Huge behaviors, spitting, kicking, throwing things, hitting, crying, CUSSING like a serious longshoreman. His tantrums – and I use that term loosely, because they were really rages – lasted up to three hours. For real.

“This went on for weeks. Every single day, at least once a day. Sometimes, two or three times. It was a bumpy ride for us all. We went past the ninety days, and I changed the classification of my home so that he would not have to move again.”

Four years old, seven placements, abuse, neglect. Wow. To willingly take on a child with all the issues that go with that kind of mistreatment is heroic. I complain when my kids bicker, when they forget to put their uniforms in the wash, when they whistle constantly while I’m trying to write. I am so in awe of someone who has the strength and generosity and compassion to parent a little boy like this to a place where he finally feels safe and relaxed.

Well, Kathy had to say good-bye to Andrew, who is returning to his mother. He hasn’t lived with his mother for three of the last four years. Imagine the heartbreak for Kathy. Here is some of what she said about it:

“What matters is that Andrew got under my “professional” foster mom skin. What matters is I love that little boy. What matters is that, when I tried to pack his little plastic forks and spoons that he got for having good table manners, he said, “No, leave them here for when I come back”. What matters is how hard he hugged my neck when he left, and how hard I cried after I closed the door.”

Head over to Mom’s Night Out by clicking HERE and read the full post. My kids are still bickering and the cats are literally climbing the curtains and life feels overloaded, but after reading this I realize that there are other people out there who really have every right to complain and yet they quietly go about doing God’s work here on earth — shouldering another’s burden, bringing a smile to the face of a little boy who has known far too much sorrow for someone of his tender age.

The post When your kids are driving you crazy… appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Jennifer over at Conversion Diary has posted a moving interview with the parents of Sunni, a severely disabled little girl who cannot do anything for herself. Their love for her, their acceptance of their role as parents, and their conversion from pro-choice to pro-life in the face of such suffering is inspiring.

“When asked how he created such stunning works of art, a famous sculptor once said that he instills in his mind a clear image of the form and then removes everything that is not a part of it. In a way, God has shorn from Sunni nearly all of the adornments that would be considered part of a basic human life. She cannot act on her own, communicate, or possibly understand even simple concepts. She is left as a nearly pure example of human life without anything to distract us from its elegant beauty.”

Click HERE to read Jennifer’s full interview with Sunni’s parents about what it means to raise a severely disabled daughter in a society that often looks at her and thinks abortion would have been the better choice.

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