Our Stories of Motherhood {...I'm sharing mine, over the next four weeks...}

It was April of 1987. It hadn’t taken long for me to discover that I had better lay my pregnant body on its side, while reclining on the exam table, waiting for my monthly check-up. This was my first pregnancy, so before last month, who knew? No one had told me.

No one said a word until I began breaking out in a cold sweat inside a hot ultrasound room, warm jelly on my belly, straining to make out the image on the black and white screen, while also seeing dark spots and pinpricks of light floating into my vision.

Then, the nausea came quickly. The nurse practically shouted, “On your side! On your side!”

This time, I was prepared. This time, I knew at least one motherhood secret: “Lay on your side.”

Other than that, all I knew was that I looked forward to hearing the heartbeat again.

I was not even 21 years old. And my wedding day had been less than 6 months before. The people who didn’t know me very well were giving me the side-eye. The people who did know me well, knew that this pregnancy could not have been conceived before November 8th, 1986.

What they didn’t know, was that it was conceived the morning of November 10th. It had taken me that long to be able to rest and relax. On November 8th, 1986, I had married a patient man.

A month after said wedding, with the Christmas season in full swing, I went to see a doctor. I was fully and firmly convinced that the stress leading up to my wedding had knocked my body for a loop. Confidently, I told the nurse all my symptoms, letting her know that I wasn’t worried, but that she should probably do a blood draw or something, and then adjust my birth control medication. Because it was working too well. I hadn’t had a period since late October.

She handed me a tiny cup, and told me to please pee into it. Impatient to head back to my bank job, I complied. I then sat upright on the exam table, waiting for her to come back with a needle. Looking at my watch, I became annoyed with the crinkly tissue paper under my pencil skirt.

The door opened, and in the nurse came. All she said was, “Honey, there’s nothing wrong with you. You are pregnant.”

I remember her looking strangely triumphant. After all, nurses know things.

So there I was. My first spring as a married woman, and I was with child. My stomach was slightly swollen, much like the buds on the East Tennessee dogwood trees. I looked at my watch, impatient to get to my bank job.

This nurse came in, sweetly asked all the usual questions, checked my bloodwork…

….and immediately called in the doctor. I wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

With some degree of alarm, the doctor let me know that it seemed my blood sugar was slightly elevated. He then took the special stethoscope out of the nurse’s hands to do his own listen to the heartbeat. I wondered how he could hear; it felt that my own anxious heart was pounding a little too hard.

The nurse suddenly snapped to attention. Without realizing it, she even placed her hand on the doctor’s arm, stopping his movement. Looking at him oddly, she said with big eyes, “Dr. Brown, did I hear another heartbeat?”

Condescendingly, he answered, “Not at all. I’m standing right here listening, and I don’t hear that - and besides, she’s had an ultrasound.”

It’s amazing the moments that get pressed indelibly into your memory, though at the time you do not understand why.

The nurse shrugged her shoulders, but still looked exceedingly uncomfortable. The doctor decided to send me home, but told the nurse to have me return a little sooner than a month away. Just as an extra precaution. He was completely sure that I was fine. My weight was great, but he wanted to monitor my blood sugar and find out if the protein in my urine was just an anomaly.

….to be continued…

Holy Week {...and I've been sitting on a big secret...}

I have been sitting on a big secret. I have a story to tell you that you might not believe.

It is a story of perseverance, and connection, and the arts. It is a story that can't be explained by natural terms.

Some years ago, I wrote a piece and titled it, "The Inescapable Laws of Creativity". I worked so hard - persevering through much resistance - to get these thoughts down about it. I published them to my blog…

…to very little response. This didn’t bother me, because I write for the same reasons I make art: to scatter seed.

My personal symbol of creativity (you can ask The Preacher, because I want to get it tattooed on me, but he won't let me) is the dandelion. (Arrows, too, but that’s another metaphor.).

Maybe it is because the mature dandelion and I have the same hair. But more than that, they speak to me of influence. Dandelion seeds float out into the world, and you have no control over where and how they land, take root, and FLOURISH. Like the mustard seed spoken of by Jesus, the dandelion seed is invasive.

Come to find out, that small seed “The Inescapable Laws of Creativity”, floated unbeknownst to me, while this middle aged woman slept and cried and laughed and “grandmother’d” and cooked and ate and made art and prayed and lived my life - that seed floated far and wide and landed in the heart of the unlikeliest person I could have imagined.

A few months ago Mujahid Ur Rehman, a young Muslim man, living in South Africa, a nature photographer, was out walking alone. As he walked, he was pondering his own creative practice. Suddenly, the words "inescapable laws of creativity" kept coming to his mind, over and over.

Those words would not leave him. So he went home and googled them...

...and MY words came up, first in his search!

So he clicked on the link and the link took him to my blog. My piece on "The Inescapable Laws of Creativity" moved him so much, that he contacted me via Instagram to ask if he could use my words for a creative project of his own.

I know, right? Who does that anymore? Well, Muji does. (I can’t tell you how many times I have had my words {word-for-word} ripped off, or concepts that I have worked hard to develop are co-opted by someone else and passed off as their own “special idea” or their new “project”. I have also had my art closely copied. Usually by Christian women.) The level of respect that Muji communicated to me has given me so much hope and even courage.

So, as I said, Muji contacted me via IG’s “messaging” feature. Now. You need to know something about me: I never (as in n e v e r) open a DM from a man I do not know. ha. But for some reason, on this particular early morning, I did. I tapped the notification - and cringed, not knowing what would come up.

Instead of something awful, I read the most respectful, polite request to use my words in a creative project.

I visited Muji's Instagram feed, and right away I saw his gift. He is a very gifted photographer and video story teller. So I anxiously gave him permission, not knowing what would happen.

What has happened has been the beginning of a sweet creative friendship.

And a gorgeous, dramatic creative collaboration.

The result of seeking to walk out our art practice in an ethos of respect and permission and trust has been a greater, deeper, better understanding between a young Muslim man and an old(er) Christian grandmother.

That, all by itself, is an unbelievably good story. But. It gets better!

Muji enlisted his wife Naseema as the actress in this video. Dear, dear reader…watch the video.

I don't know about you, but I feel like can see into her spirit in this video, and it makes me cry every time. What a precious woman. She just so happens to be an ARTIST....and a physician. (Naseema, I am in awe. You are amazing!) And she graciously took time off to help her husband with his project. The two of them (plus someone they paid to work for them) traveled quite a distance to a remote location...

...just to tell this story. Using my words. Using his dramatic ideation. Using Naseema’s delicate, detailed watercolor art.

Please watch, and if you can, tap the "thumbs up" on this video. (Please sign in on YouTube and even start a YouTube account, if you haven't already, JUST to be able to click the "thumbs up" on this one video!)

It is a labor of love - no one has been paid one dime or dollar to create it, except the helper that Muji and his wife Naseema paid, out of their own pocket.

Friends, here is my point: THE LIVING GOD is using the arts to bring people together in ways we cannot imagine.

Hey, you. What have you been sitting on, too afraid of small beginnings, or too afraid to surf the learning curve it takes to start blogging? What have you left unsaid, because you are playing a deadly comparison game, or because you think you can’t stomach the anonymity of pouring your heart out, only to have no one read?

Allow me to show you my early blogging analytics. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and no one read for years. I can give you fifty solid reasons to blog, even if no one reads - but this post is already too long.

If I may challenge you one more time: Put your words out there.

Blow the dandelion. Watch what happens. Your words might just land on the heart of someone on the other side of the world, and gently lift them out of a creative rut.

Sharing your words will for sure get you out of a creative dry place.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for watching. Thanks for SHARING THIS POST. Please share it widely and with great love.

By doing this, you and I and Muji and Naseema can collaborate together - each of us a part of what God is doing in these days!

PS. the art Naseema painted will MOVE you...but it's mine. I am purchasing it from her - so step off. ;)