bereft - part 4

You can read the first three parts here: PART 1, PART 2 and PART 3. Still not really sure what i'm doing - but here's part 4...

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"Baby's code name is Cairo. i love Cairo. i love this little one growing inside me." - January 26, 1996

"In three months and seven days i will be Mrs. Neil Beselt. i can't believe it.  Then five months after that we will have a baby and my life will be so very different from what it is right now."  - January 28, 1996

"no other thoughts even crossed my mind other than that i would love and raise this baby to the very best of my abilities. i miss Neil so much." January 30th, 1996

After a humiliating prenatal physical: "i'm sitting here waiting for my voice teacher to get here and just hoping she won't show 'cause i really, really, REALLY don't feel like singing today." - January 31, 1996

Adding up tiny bits of gig money: "They gave me $30 for three songs, i have $40 in my wallet and i have $50 coming for that benefit gig and another $75 if we do the singing at convocation. i think that's just about enough for Neil's ring..." - February 3rd, 1996

"The smell of the old food in our kitchen was making me nauseous. Neil said it hurts him that i have to go through the first four months of prengnacy by myself so i won't tell him i was sick this morning. He said he already signed us up for prenatal classes." - Feb 4th, 1996

And then suddenly... stealing the words of another to express what i couldn't bear to write in my journal myself:

Bereft

Where had i heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
holding open a restive door,
looking downhill to a frothy shore?
Summer was passed and day was passed.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
out on the porches' sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in his tone
Told my secret must be known:
Word i was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word i was in my life alone,
Word i had no one left but God.
- Robert Frost.

My shame kept me from publicly shouting anything other than love and excitement over upcoming marriage and family... but underneath it all... i felt so horribly lonely in those weeks and months before our wedding as i finished my classes - single and pregnant. The nausea was constant and i felt dizzy and exhausted, but humiliated and guilty if i complained...
i turn pages, remembering... and i read again and again in that little journal every combination of words that convey a message that wasn't... that isn't... true, "they don't love me anymore..." 
My heart broke as i believed that lie. i saw myself as unworthy of love - every flaw magnified, every weakness broadcast to the world at large... Unwanted. Bereft.

"Baby, we want to bring you up right. We want you to be happy and healthy and i want to tell you something else. i want to make a promise to you, no matter what happens in my life or in your life, Neil and i will love you with all our hearts (the word 'daddy' didn't slip easily from my pen yet...) - no matter who you become or what choices you make. i know how it feels to turn around all of a sudden and your team ditched. i know it's hard for my family to deal with the choices i've made and it has nothing to do with you... but i need them now more than i've ever needed them in my life. So through this, i've learned one more kernel of wisdom which i will pass on to you sweet heart. We will love you UNCONDITIONALLY. We want you to become a happy, loving, wise person and if in life you make some bad choices or choices that would be different from ours, don't be scared to talk to us about it, we will love you and encourage you and maybe we'll even be able to help you. Anyways, it's getting late and i'm getting ahead of myself. Do you know what? Right now, you are about as big as a grain of rice. You are teeny, but i love you anyways. So does Neil." ...and so did her Creator. - February 7, 1996


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*Disclaimer* These journal entries represent how i felt that winter. My family *far* from ditched. My mom sewed dresses and planned my wedding and my dad paid for it all... Despite their support - *this* is the way that a 19 year old single, selfish pregnant girl might *feel* in her moment of desperate vulnerability. Please don't judge my parents based on these feelings which are really, quite far from the truth. Instead - realize that a girl in the situation i was in might feel like a wild animal trapped in the corner of a room without a friendly face in sight. She might be unimaginably needy. She might be unbelievably selfish. She might be inconsolably sad and lonely. Love her anyway.

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PART 5

PART 6

life - part 3

Typical.
It takes me three posts to get to the positive pregnancy test.
Coward that i am, this undressing doesn't come easily. i have no idea how many parts there are to this exploration, but you can read part 1 HERE and you can read part 2 HERE.
The day after my scrawled prayer, i confided in a friend who comforted me, but wanted to congratulate me on finding my sexual freedom. i knew it wasn't so - and the congratulations rubbed raw on a heart that knew better. Even though my friend tried to sooth my worry and explain it away by saying the chances were so slim and my guilty conscience was just making me crazy... a part of me wondered. The calendar didn't lie. The day after that, i couldn't take it any more and i begged my friend to buy me a pregnancy test because i was too ashamed to buy one for myself.
i took it in the girl's washroom of the college... i still remember reading the directions - feeling my throat closing in as i realized what i was doing. It was supposed to take three minutes to turn, so i glanced at the directions and glancing back was shocked to see a bright blue line.

That line screamed, "life"...

i had no doubt from the moment i saw it blazing - the ink bleeding into the white circle surrounding it - so dark that it seemed to me there never had been a more positive positive pregnancy test - that i was not alone in that bathroom stall. We were two. And i, the stronger - owed everything to her, the weaker.
But so pressing and crushing were the thoughts that followed. How was i going to tell my mom and dad?  And everyone else in the world?
i stumbled from the bathroom, and in a daze continued my day. i sang at a composition annex, and then performed at the drum ensemble, i hurried to another rehearsal i had scheduled - and then finally home.
When i got home, i phoned Neil and my sisters... Neil's response was to propose marriage. He kept any fear he might have felt from his voice and said gently, "i'm excited to have a baby with you, paige..." and i believed him.  i begged him to keep it a secret between us - i felt naked and vulnerable - and i knew i had made myself so. He told me that he would do anything for me, but please not to ask him to keep it a secret from his parents.
i felt like nothing was in my control. Soon everyone would know. i wanted desperately to hide. i wanted to run. i wanted to wake up and have it be last week, last month, last year... i didn't want everyone looking at me with scorn and disappointment. i didn't want to feel mocked or judged or pitied or condemned... i was afraid - and i watched my secret leak from between my fingers as i forced my voice to say the words that brought the avalanche of dread down around me... i knew that it would spread - and the thought of Neil telling his parents terrified me. i thought of the grief and the shame that i was bringing both my family and his...  i recoiled from the thought of my secret travelling through every circle i have ever been apart of.  i thought i would suffocate in it... and i welcomed the thought. How could i have known then that He would create something beautiful from my pitiful offering of repentance combined with His goodness in restoring what was lost?
^"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." ps. 51:10

was worm

was worm

swaddled in white.
now tiny queen
in sequin coat
peacock-bright

drinks the wind
and feeds
on sweat of the leaves.

is little chinks
of mosaic floating
a scatter
of colored beads

Alighting pokes
with her new black wire
the safron yokes.

on silent hinges
open-folds her wings'
applauding hands.
weaned

from coddling white
to lake-deep air,
to blue and green

is queen.

-may swenson

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PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

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Did you know that 40 Days for Life starts today with over 300 vigil sites world wide? You can follow our blog HERE.
It can be no coincidence that our government is also voting on MOTION 312 today... Will you join me in prayer for a softening of hearts in our nation towards the issue of abortion?

rescue - part 2

You can read part 1 HERE.  Still not sure if i'll finish - or how many parts this little journey will document, but pressing on with part 2...

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i have stars in my eyes. Makes me wonder if they cloud and distort my view or make it clearer. - january 1996
i can read... or maybe remember... the doubt in my words. Pages and pages of oozing love, passionate displays of trumpeting affection - and yet this line jumps out at me. It wasn't my love that i doubted i'm sure - because even now my heart beats slowly - almost painfully in my ears when he calls to tell me he's coming home.  It was doubt over my actions, my lack of wisdom, the careless destruction of my character. i force myself to read from the beginning. On these pages, i find fleeting wide-eyed romanticized awe over a random musician, disappointment over a song that bombed and elation over a performance that rocked... little of substance, other than the one small doubt voiced above.
And then... at the bottom of a page that has no other mention of my Father, these verses...

"But i trust in Your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in Your salvation. i will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me." - psalm 13:5,6

"Don't let anyone think little of you because you are young, be their ideal; let them follow the way you teach and live; be a pattern for them in your love, your faith and your clean thoughts." 1timothy 4:11-13

And the battle waged.

My Father spoke truth through His word... He didn't abandon me. i have the proof captured in my own handwriting.
Hey, daughter - you're mine. i gave you a framework for love, for marriage, for purity - not as a stern task master - but because i love you so very, very much...
As i read the parts of my journal that are hard for me to read, i see Him reaching out to me; trying to save me from my own weakness, offering me an alternative, a better way, a straight path.
The whisper in the wind was lost on me.
Hey, Papa? i wish i would have heard you. i wish i would have listened. i know now that You were with me - and You never did take Your fingers off of me.
i turn the page, and it brings me to that old distance. The distance between us - from Edmonton, Alberta to Kelowna, BC - may as well have been the distance across the milky way. Phone calls in those days were excruciatingly expensive, and a full time student and a boy still living with his mama and daddy don't have many pennies to spare... (that said, the phone companies made hundreds off of us in those months). i didn't have my own computer - neither did Neil. It was a different world then - and we were hundreds of miles apart.
Eight pages into my journal, there's an entry written in red ink:
i'm scared. i have no one to talk to except Neil and he's so far away and it costs so much money to talk to him... so i will write a letter to God...
And i did. My childlike fear, my contrition, my agony and shame - i brought to Him - along with an aside that i find interesting:
"if only people knew. i'm not telling anyone. That's for sure."
And now i can laugh - just like He must have - as he orchestrated His answer...
"Do you think I'm going to leave you there, Daughter? Agonizing over a secret shame that you're intent on keeping covered, rotting and destroying you from the inside out? I am your Rescuer - and i will teach you to love Truth just like I do... "
Unbeknownst to me, a little life was already created - Truth was going to be acknowledged and my Great Rescue began...

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PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

courage - part 1

i don't know how these posts will come out. i've got three started in drafts, and i haven't even made it very far into some of what i'd like to explore. i know that i'd like to end with a challenge to unwed mamas, to the churches that surround them and hold them and to the parents, siblings, boyfriends and friends that are in their lives. Maybe these posts will just be lame... and maybe i'll quit part way through... No promises :) But for what it's worth - here is part 1.

i picked up my old journal. The one whose starting date is January 4th 1996. The one that has butterflies and doodles inscribed all inside the front flap. It has quotes drawn around and decorating the broken binding... things like:
"i never wanted to be famous, i only wanted to be great." Ray Charles
"An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit." - pliny the younger
A description of beauty: in the eye of the beholder, self-control, happiness, dainty, gentleness, purity, meekness, honesty, love, fleeting, skin-deep, love, goodness, hope, worker...
It has, written in tidy black ink in the top right hand corner, the address of my first apartment - and a name: miss. retha paige sloan - 1996.
It belonged to a girl i hardly ever think about because my memories are so conflicted. My eyes are tearing up and my cheeks are burning with that smouldering shame just picking it up again.
i don't read it.
A few women have told me about their abortions in the past little while.
Their stories moved me - and even days later, i wonder at their courage in sharing honestly from their hurting chapters. There is beauty in honesty after all - and theirs shakes me from my comfortable middle class mama role - and knocks me back in time to when i was 19 in my second year of music school - and i became a girl who chose not to have an abortion.
Immediately following those days and life altering months that made up the first half of 1996, i attempted as a young woman in my twenties to distance myself from the foolish girl who kept the journal full of confusion, timidity - and just the smallest bit of grit.
Honestly? i've judged that girl... and i've judged her harshly.
And now - i feel the older woman in me murmur comfortingly, "She wasn't so bad... she was young, foolish, hurting, insecure and scared. Don't be afraid of her - she's a part of you - learn from her."
And i crack the cover - the tears spill over - and i'm ready to read ancient unread words. Swirly immature handwriting covers each page - most of it makes me impatient and mortified... but some of it makes me shush the hater inside and title this blog post, "courage"...

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PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

i'm thinking about

i read THIS and THIS this morning and i'm thinking about adding my story.
i'm not crazy proud of a lot of chapters in my life... and this is one of them... i know i've been honest on here about where i've been - and the preciousness of life - but i'd like to share more about what it was like for me with deadlines looming, the future spinning, shame attacking and a diploma on the line...
Those were some crazy soul stretching months...