Dear loved ones, (family friends, etc.)

Dear loved ones,

I am struggling. I don’t know what I need from you, and I know how hard it is for you when you don’t know what to give. I am on egg shells, and I feel like you will be too. Even from the greatest of intentions and love, sometimes your words can hurt, even good words, even helpful and loving words. Yesterday I faced an awful truth, I am not excited about coming home, I am anxious and worried. Worried about how people are going to act around us and react to us. We are different. The famous Leah glimmer is burned out of my eyes. I can fight for joy, I can have happy, joyful, giggly moments but they aren’t as full or as deep, and they are followed by exhaustion and tears. Also it’s not just me, Brandon is struggling to dig his way from a dark place as well. We are torn, empty, broken. We don’t want to be here, and as much as we love you, we don’t want to be there either. Please don’t be offended. The biggest reason that we or I, am not excited about coming home is because I don’t know who I will “be” in the midst of our beloved ones. I know that you all say, “it’s okay, be whatever you are at the moment” but there is a huge amount of pressure that we feel to be “normal” to be “us” and to let you know that we are okay. The truth is we are not, and I know we will be again someday, but right now, we are not. The things that have ALWAYS given me hope and excitement and joy (birthdays, Christmas, children, my family) I cannot find that within my self this year. I am not excited. It’s really unsettling. I don’t mean for this to be an uber depressing letter, but I am trying to prepare you, to prepare myself.

I don’t know what we will need from you, or how you should act. Also I understand that you don’t know either. So we’re going to try and give you grace for that, if you will give us some too. I could be wrong, it could be a wonderful time of healing, I really hope that is. Something could snap as we drive through mountains and up the dirt road that leads to home. We might reach yonder mountain, hug my family and get a bit of that joy back, but I can’t even imagine that. I can’t see that happening. I have never been the type of person who would think through upcoming situations and could only see negative. I have NEVER been that person. I don’t like it.

Anyway, I thought I would share somethings that you should and shouldn’t do. We understand that if you haven’t been through this, (even if you have, everyone’s grief is different) you can’t understand and don’t know how to respond. Honestly I don’t know how to respond either, or how to help you respond better. All I can be is honest, and upfront.

1. Don’t dance around our pain, acknowledge it.

2. After acknowledging it, don’t expect us to grieve on command. “okay, I’m here now to hug you..grieve”

So basically, ask about it and then let us respond and then if we answer, good, if not move on. We will talk about it when we want to, if we want to. You might be our therapy for the day, and just by you asking we able to heal a little. If we don’t want to open up, then maybe that is our therapy too, just have a bit of “normalcy”.

3. Understand that going a full day with no crying and without sadness gripping our hearts, is rare. If we’re having a good day, LET US, join us.

4. If you need to talk to us about some of this, and work through your own grief, that is fine. But be sensitive to us, it’s hard to comfort people when you’re hurting.

5. We actually appreciate that people love our Cash and are hurting for us, and with us, so let us know. But again, be sensitive, let us come to you, and if we’re having a good day, if we’re being silly or just wanting to talk about something else, LET US.

6. We love your children, but most of our anxiety is about being around them, we still want to be around you and them, but if we need a minute, or if it takes a while for us to warm up, don’t be hurt or offended. (again I could be wrong, we might react differently)

7. Let us know that you are there for us and love and want to share in this with us, but do it without expectation. Give us comfort without asking anything in return. We don’t have a whole lot to give right now. We need a rest.

8. Validate our pain. Sometimes statements like, “you will get pregnant again” or  “this is the Lord’s timing” or “be thankful it happened sooner rather than later”, do not validate our pain. We don’t know that we will get pregnant again, we hope that the Lord will bless, us, but we don’t know! Also, yes, we are trusting God, but we also know that He is weeping with us and He did not want Cash to die. In general we don’t want or need the cheesy hallmark statements that are meant to comfort us, I don’t what we do need, but I know that is not it.

9. We’re trying not to have to travel around a ton, and our minds might change when we get there, but don’t be hurt if we don’t see you this time. We just need rest.

10. When we feel good about ourselves, we feel better in general, so understand that we/I have been struggling with weight gain and self-image. Don’t go overboard with compliments, but let us know if we’re having a “good” day.

Feed us. literally. spiritually. just feed us.

Please understand that this not a list of complaints, I’m not pin pointing all of the things that you have done wrong. I’m actually analyzing how I have reacted in the past to people’s grief. I know this seems like a list of “don’ts” and it might that all I am giving you is  a list of what doesn’t help, I’m not. I’m just trying to be open and honest. I wish I could give you some magical words or something you could do that would help. But I don’t know. I don’t know what will trigger the tears.

we love you, we need you, we have anxiety and worries about being with you. Love us anyway.

There is a blog that I have been reading that I want to share with you. Molly Piper and her husband had a baby girl that was still born and she writes a lot about her grief and is very honest and open. Her blogs are what have encouraged me to be so open with all of this.

http://thepipers.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/how-to-help-your-grieving-friend/

http://thepipers.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/make-a-decision-to-love-educate-yourself/

http://thepipers.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/the-holidays-15-months-later/

http://thepipers.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/what-does-grief-look-like-at-17-months/

http://thepipers.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/books-on-stillbirth-and-miscarriage/

If you click on the above links they will send you to Molly’s blog. Those are some of the ones that have really helped me. I want to encourage you to read them.

Thanks for reading this. We really do love you all and are thankful for you, and that we will get to see you, even if we are anxious.

The Lord is faithful, and He is good. Give thanks to the Lord.

-Leah

healing…be warned, to understand, you have to read everything.

I don’t know if anyone reads this. I guess I don’t really care either way. This particular post is the way for me to get some of  this out, and move forward. This is one of my first steps to healing.

• So, we’ve suffered a great loss. I think slowly but surely we’re getting back into routine and finding a new normal. Sometimes I hate those words, new normal, but it’s the only way I can explain it. It’s been 4 weeks. Honestly it feels like I had a wonderful dream that ended in a terrible nightmare. We’re learning through our hardest of hurts that for us there is only one response, honesty. All of the things that have been hiding under the surface have come to a head in our life, hurt, sin, homesick-ness, culture shock, anger, resentment, depression and they’re all coming out in brutal honesty. Loss has made us own up to a lot of failures and short comings. A lot of the things I have listed are things that you might think, yes that comes when you lose someone, but all of those things are what we (or I ) felt before this. You might know this, maybe not, but almost 2 years ago God called me and my husband to a very isolated, very northern town in Canada. Being from the south it has been quite a change, quite a shock.

Wikipedia describes culture shock as the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country. It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not. This is often combined with a dislike for or even disgust (moral or aesthetics) with certain aspects of the new or different culture.

• I think that describes what I have felt pretty well. I read about a guy living in Peru and and he uses Oberg’s stages of culture shock to explain.

“After all, the frustration of living in a country where things are different brings about a condition referred to as culture shock. In coping with culture shock it is important to accept that no matter how well prepared you are before arriving in a host country, culture shock will affect you to some extent. While living in a new country, a person usually goes through three different stages of culture shock in order to fully adapt.  The first stage upon arrival is that of the honeymoon period when everything is a delight and  learning the culture and people is something that you studied with much enthusiasm. This stage is usually short-lived. After living in the host country for a while, a person will experience feelings of depression and sometime aggression towards the new culture. This is recognized as stage two of culture shock. I was disappointed at myself when simple incidents triggered antagonistic feelings in me. The cultural, societal and aesthetic differences were now a source of conflict for me.”

• I also read somewhere that culture shocks brings about feelings of self-doubt and self-worth. I whole heartedly agree. To set this up for you, I went from being in high school, popular, successful, well liked and received to university. I had the same thing, a close group of friends who loved me, accepted me, I was well liked and received. Granted I had a lot of issues to deal with during college, being diagnosed with POF and being told I couldn’t have kids, changing my mind 20 thousand times about career and my music. Also I can pinpoint when depression crept into my life the first time when my grandfather (who was a father to me even though I have a great father, I got to have 2) when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Another big change was that  I had gone from being a big fish in a small pond to a fish who was just trying to her head above water, but I was okay. People loved me, I had friends who became family quickly, blood family and support, and a great relationship with my now husband. So even though it was hard, I was able to get through it. My 2nd year at school, I started working a job in retail and I moved up very quickly, it was quite fast paced and I was successful. I am very close to my boss, so again I had amazing support and was successful. Then I got married, moved about 10 minutes from my parents, and started teaching preschool. I had a lot of physical ailments during this time and BOTH of my grandfathers passed away. So I was dealing with the 1st year of marriage, work, school, youth ministry, etc. BUT I was okay. I had support and friends, I missed college, but I was okay. I will say that I think my depression was laying under that surface and would every now and again pop its head out, but I had support and I was okay. One thing that is interesting is that my husband was very unhappy during this time, living in the area that we were in was kinda of like culture shock to him. Our next step was us  knowing that God was calling and leading us to Canada. So we went. We had a “honeymoon stage” where everything is romanticized and wonderful. Then I got crazy homesick, and miss the south, my mountains and my family. Pretty much everything that I knew for 23 years of life, and they have none of it here. None. Also  I couldn’t work for the first year because of my work visa, which even since I have gotten my visa, we have decided that for me to be as involved as I need/want to be in youth ministry it is really hard for me to work, and I have to be careful of stress levels and sleep or it can bring back my weekly migraines ( I do NOT want to live like that anymore, it’s not living).

• Through all of this is when culture shock has come in. Someone spoke into my life recently and pointed out my depression, which is very humbling and hard but true. I have been dealing with, living with, and NOT coping with depression since 2005. Wow that is a lot of info. I hope I don’t just go back and delete this. It’s really good for me to be open about this.

• I also have been writing music and playing guitar for 10 years this year. I know that I am supposed to do something with that. Something important. As of yet, I haven’t. I’ve led worship, I’ve played at coffee houses, but if I died tomorrow, the biggest part of who I am and what I love (what makes me, ME) my passion, would be gone with me. I have nothing to show for it, to show of my self. I have tons of excuses and reasons,  and even though they are justified, they don’t really matter. All that matters is that for the first time in my life I’m being honest and saying, this is not okay. This has to change.

• The loss of our baby, Cash (we named him Cash) has made me/us be honest. Honest enough to admit that before we lost him, I was NOT okay. I was wasting away, living in isolation and depression, and sitting in sadness, self-doubt, etc. The only thing that changed when we lost him is that now I have a ‘reason” that I can put my thumb on to say this is why I’m sad, and before I couldn’t even see that I even WAS sad. So I know that there are a lot of factors in why I have been living in depression since we moved here. I am going to name them (this is really just for me to be able to move forward and to live).

1.Culture Shock-self doubt, loss of identity and loss of anything familiar and being surrounded by people who are “from” here and haven’t really lived anywhere, or at least anywhere all that “different”, so they get offended and don’t understand or even care to understand my culture shock. That is not me being bitter, that is me being truthful.

2.No Support- I keep up with friends and family, but I don’t want to admit, I’m not okay here, I’m depressed, etc. Plus i didn’t even fully realize my depression until we lost Cash.

3. Loss of identity-not having any outlet for my creativity. If you know me then you know that I all I am is my creativity. It’s not just what I do or what I love, it’s who I am, good, bad or in between. I’m not exaggerating, because the truth is so much more real in this situation, but there is literally nothing for me here to pour my self into,  a job or creatively or anything. And the closest place where there is stuff for me is 8 hours away.

4. Loss of purpose- one recurring theme in all of my endeavors before living here is that I was well-liked and received, and successful. Even though people like and receive me well, its’ different here. I don’t know who to be, I don’t what is “appropriate” and how people are going to react to me. That has manifested itself in me going from being an extremely individual person who thrives on being able to “go and do”  and be herself, to being someone who can’t even go to the grocery store by herself. I seriously get anxiety even thinking about it. I have kind of become a hermit. And I don’t have a purpose.

5. Weight gain- I was always “thick” or athletic or curvy or whatever but since 2004-2005 I have struggled seriously with my weight. Like as in I have considered drastic measures, biggest loser, type of serious. When I see myself or look in the mirror I don’t see me, when I think about myself, that is when I see “me”. The college, wedding size Leah. That is who I was for a long, long time. That is who I want to be again. Depression causes weight gain, weight gain causes depression, and so on and so forth. It also has contributed to the self doubt and not knowing how I am going to be received.

• That’s all I can’t think of right now. I think the weirdest or most interesting part of this is what my true nature is, I am a happy person, and people person to a fault, ambitious. I have been told in many times in my life that I take “too much” initiative. Since we have been here, I “hide” out. I flake on people and responsibilities. I am not, and have not been okay.

So now I am going to list some good things that have happened since we got here. I have quite a few health problems. I suffer from monstrous migraines and used to have them weekly. Mostly they are caused from stress and inconsistent sleep.

1. Rarely get migraines.

2. All my warts went away, I know it seems insignificant, but it was a big deal to me.

3. I got pregnant.

4. I just feel healthier…

5. My relationship with God has gotten more consistent and I have been able to work through some stuff…

6. My marriage is much stronger and healthier and we’ve really had to learn to rely on each other and learn to grow up and be responsible…

7. We have been able to reach students, love them and hopefully impact their lives for Christ.

8. I have been able to knock a big chunk of my education….only 8 more classes til my B.S. in eduction.

9. I have realized a ton about my self and am trying to deal with it. For example, I don’t love teaching, I love children. I need to be doing creative things, I need to make music and record/do something with MY music, I have a huge heart for the church, I love worship ministry, and ministry in general and God has called me to do ministry (I am going to pursue a master in worship starting in the fall).

10. I know that God loves us, loves me and that He is enough. I also know that is okay for admit all of this and with out doing it I won’t be able to ‘deal” with and won’t be able to heal. By HIS wounds we are healed.  I don’t know that I am okay, I know that I am sad, lost, confused, hurt, sometimes pretty angry about loosing Cash. But I also think that God has given me assurance that He loves me and is weeping with me and He is enough, and He is good.

• So how do I move forward? I don’t know honestly. I do know that just because I have admitted all of this doesn’t change things. It doesn’t change that I am not really fulfilled in this town. That there is no “job” or “thing” for me to do here that will give me purpose or fulfillment. I know my purpose and fulfillment come from God, so don’t scold me on that, but I have no tangible way, in this town, to fulfill that purpose that God has given me. I know I can be there for students and stuff, but for some reason that isn’t my “purpose”, it’s part of it. I know that we are supposed to be here, our work is  not done yet and God called us here. What do I do with that? Being honest also doesn’t mean that I’m okay or that I’ve dealt with my issues. I don’t even know how to deal with them. (Any psychologists or psychiatrists want to help?) It doesn’t mean that it’s all because of our town, and that this is some horrible, awful place. This is actually a nice place, some fish do great in this water and excel here but for this fish, it think the water might be suffocating me a bit. I can’t be a big or small fish in this pond because I think it might be the wrong kind of water. But we are here, so what am I supposed to do?

• Lastly, depression and all of these things that I have just been VERY honest and vulnerable about does NOT make me a “bad christian” and I don’t need any of that “just trust God more” or “you don’t love Him enough” crap, or  the “just go get a job and you’ll be fine” thing. That stuff is partly what got me here in the place. I only accept sincere, loving criticism and support and if you can’t give that, don’t give anything.

This is my therapy for today. Wednesdays are the hardest for me. Keep praying.

Weeping may tarry for the night…

A lot of you have probably already knew or had read about how my wife was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and told that she would never, ever, ever get pregnant.

She did get pregnant.  We have spent the last 8 weeks really excited about something that we thought we would never get to be excited about.  We praised God for a miracle.  We really couldn’t believe that we had created a baby.

Well, there have been some complications for the past two weeks or so, but we’ve been hopeful.  We had an ultrasound the other day, and the doctor said that there was no heartbeat.  But we were still hopeful.  Quite a few people told us that they had similar things happen and gone on to have a healthy baby, so we still had hope.

But we lost the baby this morning.

I know that most of you may not understand this, but we lost a child.  We lost a child that we loved as much as any parents would ever love a child.  We had already picked out names for him or her.  We had already started planning for cribs and strollers and all that stuff.  We lost our baby.

Its hard to breath right now.  We’re not going to be able to get through this without God.  We’re not going to be able to get through this without our friends and our family.  But we’re 2000 miles away from our families.  But we still need you.  Leah needs you.

We need you to pray.  We don’t need you to tell us you are praying for us if you’re not.  We really need you to pray.

We don’t need a nice hallmark message as you go on with your life, we need empathy.  But we don’t need you to just read this and not say anything.

We’ve got eachother, and we’ve got God, but we feel lonely.  We feel really lonely.

We’re trusting that God will be with us, but that doesn’t make it much easier.

In the midst of grief, in the midst of the toughest trials, God is still good.  God is still enough.  He is enough, but this is still hard.

Some people may think that we should not have shared about our pregnancy as early as we did in case something like this were to happen.  But we don’t regret it.  We wanted you guys to share in the miracle.  And now we want you guys to be there for us in the grieving.  In reality, I don’t know how we would make it if we hid this all away and didn’t tell anyone about it.  Or how we would explain that things are just different right now.

It may take us some time to get back to normal.  Or to find a new normal.  Things feel really dark right now.  So we need your love.  We need you to mourn with us and for us.  We need you to be there for us if we want to cry.  We need you to be there for us if we want to laugh.  We need you to be there for us if we don’t want to say anything at all.

Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”

Right now we are in the night.  We are mourning.  I don’t know how long this night will last, but we both trust that God will bring the morning and turn our grief into dancing.

Keep praying for us.

We love all of you.

-Brandon

This is really hard to say

This is really hard to say.

I had an ultrasound done on Saturday.  The technician wouldn’t tell us anything about it.  So we had to wait until today to see the doctor.  We heard some bad news.  She told us that they saw an eight-week old baby but could not find the heartbeat.  The doctor gave us absolutely no hope.  As you can imagine, this was heart-wrenching.  It was one of the hardest thing that we’ve ever had to hear.  I have had a few complications along the way, but I have not miscarried yet.

I’m having a hard time believing this, and I’m going to have a hard time believing it until I actually have a miscarriage.  Maybe its crazy or naive, but I still have hope that God can work miracles.  Doctors have been wrong before.  Maybe she was right, and if so, we’re going to need a lot of prayer and support in the next few weeks.  But we want you to pray now.  For Brandon and I, but also for a miracle.  As long as this baby is inside of me, we’re going to hold on to hope.  Of course we’ve read stories about doctors missing the heartbeat only for it to show up in a week or two.  In fact, my aunt had the same thing happen to her; they couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat at about 8 weeks, but two weeks later, there it was, and everything ended up fine.

So for now, we choose to hope.  So we’re asking you to hope with us and pray with us.  Pray that God would work a miracle like the one that he worked when we got pregnant in the first place.

it’s real.

read this.

<Please read all the way through and don’t skip ahead or skim>

The coolness of fall makes me miss my ladies.

So, I know I’m sappy, I know that I am open about home sickness (maybe to a fault), but I also know that I have amazing girl friends, many of whom I have not/will not see in the 2009, and even if I have seen them, it was not nearly enough. Around this time of year I really really miss them, so here are a few things about the lovely ladies in my life, you know who you are. Know that you are loved, often thought of, missed incredibly and my sisters.

• I can talk about my really weird obsessions, or new discoveries and they are open to listening.
• They all LOVE the south…imagine that, southern girls loving the south! I find it soothing.
• The aren’t selfish with their faith, they bring me alongside them, especially in the weak times and through the struggles, but also through what God is teaching them, they love me enough to reprimand me and hold me accountable.
• They make an effort to stay connected, even when/especially when I don’t.
• They aren’t afraid of silence. Sometimes, it’s okay to sit in a room and just “be”, especially in pj’s and with ice cream.
• We can always pick up where we left off…no matter what. Some of us (as in ME) are really bad about keeping in touch and some of them are awesome, so we HAVE to give each other grace there, and usually they do. If not it’s because I’m just being a jerk, but they love me enough to call me on it!
• They are generous, with their love, their lives, their faith and their never ending-2600 hundred mile away friendship.
• I know that I can always go to them…about anything…and it’s 100% secure: locked down.
• They are the best people to cry with or to, or to vent to, or to be excited with.
• My ladies are extremely gracious and I can truly say that from my end, I have never been mad (for any length of time) with them. Everything is dealt with immediately. I can honestly say I have nothing negative in my heart toward them, usually the problems are with me and my being an oblivious friend.
• We just “get” each other.
• Before I got married, the made sure to make it abundantly clear that they think my husband is the perfect guy for me, and that they all think he’s pretty dang cool..now their husbands/boyfriends/dad’s all really like him a lot too .
• They’re the coolest people I know.
• They are the most faithful friends I’ve had, and I can’t imagine new sister’s ever comparing.
• It’s awe inspiring to watch them love their families and to see their love for me…just they beautiful way in which they love.
• They are genuine lovers of Jesus.
• They are  REAL and transparent. I don’t ever have to guess with them. I know what’s up, where they stand and where we stand, that’s usually because they’re awesome with communicating and I’m still just learning…thanks ladies for that.
• They have always believed in me.
• They love me, good, bad and in between, they care about my newest weekly obsession, the way I get my hopes over everything, the way my heart breaks over everything, the way I pour all of my self into things, my newest pimple, my oldest irritation, the consistent struggle to keep balance in my life and figure out who I am and what God wants from me. These ladies (you know who you are) are more appreciated than they will ever realize. I wish I see their faces daily.                                                                                     They are my sisters

There was no way I could do you the justice you deserve by writing about our lives in one blog post. I could have made every day of this series about ya’ll and it still wouldn’t be enough. You are  incredible, Godly women. I can’t believe God saw it fit that we should be friends. He has blessed me more than I deserve through knowing ya’ll. I would not trade our friendship for anything. Thank you for being faithful friends and walking through life with someone like me. I don’t deserve any of it.

I love ya’ll

-Leah

Girl’s Nite

So last night I had some youth girls…well some graduated youth girls and some actual youth girlie’s over for dinner and a movie. Brandon drove down to Winnipeg (8hours) with some friend of ours to pick up his mom and aunt who are visiting for a week!

We watched two movies,

Sense and Sensibility  and

Connie and Carla .

Both of which are classic chick flicks and iconic to the person that is Leah.Our first choice was a Molly Ringwald, either Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink which are iconic to being a teenage girl, but our little secluded northern town had no Molly Ringwald to be found so we had to hit my personal movie stash…

Anyway I thought it was really beautiful to see my ladies figuring out the depths of Jane Austen. Most of the girls had read Jane Austen so it was really cool! We are really lucky in that most of our students are the “smart” kids. For the most part they are in band, or have an out of control love of music and I can’t think of one that doesn’t play an instrument. Also, they’re just deep. They would rather sit and talk and fellowship than anything else. They’re crazy funny and sweet. We are SO lucky. In youth ministry, you’re very aware that these are “your” kids. You feel responsible for them, love them, and are intensly proud or disappointed in them. More than anything though, I just want to see these youth, and young ladies love Christ and treasure Him as the center of their lives. To be living lives that are counted as worthy of their Savior. To sit and watch and be apart of my lovely ladies diving into Jane Austen I couldn’t help but reminded that they can HANDLE the gospel. They can handle theology, they handle the Word of God and honestly they CAN emotionally handle the sacrificial love of our Savior. I think they get treated like little kids enough, so why would they listen to me, or us if all we’re doing is treating them like little kids. It really puts into perspective how I need to be discipling these girls, and pouring into them because truthfully, they can handle it…That’s really cool to me…

This seriously cracks me up.

No Tpane’s were hurt during the making of this video.

CHRIS Tomlin!

Awkward side-hug!

His&Hers..it’s official

So official in fact, that we registered for a pure volume account and even recorded our newest song…however we didn’t edit, produce or mix it so it’s like super duper rough….

But we are giving ya’ll supporters a chance to listen to it first. http://www.purevolume.com/HisHers

Ok done and done.

we love ya’ll feedback is ALWAYS loved appreciated(just as long as it’s not about the mix because we already know about that!)

<3