12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Without a doubt, Ishi. By the time mid-November rolled around, I had several large writing assignments looming on the horizon and the end of the semester was approaching at the speed of light and sound combined. I was a physical and emotional wreck. Fractious, impossible to please, and panicky. But also strangely unresponsive to the pressing concerns around me. Instead of working or doing anything remotely productive, I would spend hours trimming the split ends off my hair, or playing some ridiculous online game. Then something would set me off, like, oh I don’t know, the sound Ishi’s feet made as he walked into the room? It really didn’t take much. And then I would snap at him, and sometimes cry. I frightened myself.

Ishi was an absolute rock. The kind you cling to in the middle of a raging river. The kind you pray for when you’re hiking and you slip on a particularly steep grade. The kind that gets up at 4:00 in the morning and makes a Timmy’s run for the double-double that will keep you out of bed as you struggle to get just one more page written. The kind who does the laundry, the shopping, and the spontaneous rubbing of tight, aching necks and shoulders.

The kind who holds you when you’re sobbing so hard you’re gasping, convinced you’ve gone as far as you can go and it’s all over, and tells you how proud he is of you. That you make him want to find the money to send you to this school as long as you want. That everything you see as a failure, he sees as an achievement and as another reason to love and respect you.

He outdid himself. It was nothing short of the absolute best he has ever done when it comes to loving his wife as Christ loved the church. He had his own stress and exhaustion to deal with and yet during those crushing weeks, he never uttered one complaint to me. I felt utterly borne up and sheltered, and the love I feel for him now as a result is tremendous in its weight and depth.

Even better, we both felt a hot and intense deepening of our love for God, as though we were being bathed in it. It suddenly felt very easy and natural to pray out loud together, and we’ve started doing even more praying than before. Truly, when husband or wife loves well, the effect is powerful and delightful. No wonder God loves marriage!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t do resolutions as most people know them. Instead, I prefer to renew my commitment to several core principles, most of which seem to fall right in line with the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Especially the part which says, “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Some other core principles I intend to focus on this coming year are the finer points of being a wife who honours her husband, and the idea of giving my expectations to God. Dreaming and planning are wonderful, but I need to be more comfortable with things not going how I expect. Instead, I resolve to focus on my reactions being in line with trusting in God.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but we conceived for the second time ever, in October of this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes… the baby stopped growing and we lost her at almost 6 weeks.

5. What countries did you visit?
Just the US this year. Texas is better than most places I’ve been!

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Money! No, I’m just saying that because we’re so skint right now. It’s been a rough couple of years. In 2010, I would love some stability and peace. I would love some of my exuberance and passion back too, please. I felt strangely numb for most of 2009 and I would really rather not get too comfortable with that state of being.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
January 11 ~ For the first time in my life, I simply could not rally and do what needed to be done, at enormous professional and personal cost. For the first time, I truly gave up and did not even try. For me, it was necessary to know what giving up would do to me. It gave me the impetus to try again later in the year.

March 9 ~ I had surgery to remove an “irregularity” in my uterine lining that was supposed to be the answer to all my reproductive woes. I woke up from that surgery absolutely euphoric.

March 10, 11, 12 ~ Instead of taking time to recover from that surgery, I was forced to clean house and open my door and/or watch as they strolled right in without knocking multiple times a day because the landlords put the house on the market. Watching people traipse through my apartment while I sat in pain on the couch in a blanket was just awful.

June 30 ~ I finished HKIN 190 at TWU and got my first post-secondary A+ ever!

September 16 ~ Two words. Dry. Sockets.

October 21 ~ two days after the one-year anniversary of losing Nathaniel, I got a BFP. I very nearly fainted with shock and joy.

November 2 ~ The doctor called me as we were driving to class. The third beta-HCG fell instead of doubling. The baby is not going to make it. For a little while, I wasn’t sure I would, either.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
All my achievements this year were amazing to me: I quit my 4-or-5-cans-a-day Diet Coke habit, I quit eating several pounds of chocolate a week (yes, that’s pounds… pounds of chocolate), I kicked caffeine for two months and can do it again, I created and followed a menu plan full of healthy meals for 8 whole weeks, and I got pregnant for the second time^[1]. But I think the two that are vying for the top spot are these:

1. I had a major turnaround regarding a huge issue in my marriage. We were absolutely stonewalled and in a very bad place because Ishi wanted to start a business and I didn’t want him to. I simply didn’t trust he would be able to succeed and I wanted him to stay at his job (which has awesome benefits and which was slowly draining him of the will to live). During the few glorious weeks of my pregnancy, I suddenly realized that the little girl^[2] growing inside me was going to have Ishi for a father. That she and her potential siblings would learn about life and living from Ishi and that the way in which he provides for his family would be a fundamental example of a lot of life’s lessons for them. All of a sudden, the penny dropped and I realized I wanted them to not be afraid to strike out and try new things. I never, ever wanted them to trade little pieces of their souls for a job they hated but which was comfortable and paid well. And yet what was I asking Ishi to do? So after almost a year of stalemate and bitterness, I did a complete one-eighty and told Ishi he had my support for the business he wants to start.

2. I managed to stay in school, and stay engaged with my courses, my professor and God despite a horrific experience getting two wisdom teeth extracted which resulted in two dry sockets, and the second miscarriage in a year. I will always believe God carries us when we just can’t go on, because I have no idea how I kept going. In each of the two courses I took, I earned an A-.

9. What was your biggest failure?
You know, I’m honestly not sure. All I can think of are the typical failings I have: forgetting to trust God, refusing to believe in myself, and giving up too easily. However, I made such tangible progress in even those areas that I can’t help but feel I failed a lot less this year than ever before.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
See above. Dry sockets, miscarriage, and then just when I thought 2009 was done kicking my ass, I fell in the shower yesterday. I have a bruise that goes from my ass to my knee and many other injuries that don’t show until I try to walk. But not a single cold, and no swine flu!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Hmmmmmm… we bought lots and lots of stuff early in the year. Mostly furniture, and a notebook for Ishi which he very generously shared with me for school. I would be hard-pressed to come up with the one single best thing, though. Oh! Our car. There you go. We bought our little 1993 Chevy in January and it is awesome.

Oof. I really wanted to finish this tonight, but I am not the night owl I used to be and my jammies are calling. I usually feel like it’s bad luck to spend any time on New Year’s Day looking back, but what the hell. All of my other notions have been turned on their heads; why not this one? So, until tomorrow… bonsoir!

1. You have to realize: this was the second pregnancy in less than 18 months when we have been trying for 9 years!
2. We were absolutely convinced this one was a girl, but it was far too early to ever know for sure.

It’s hard for me to put into words everything I’m feeling tonight. I want to take some time to look back on the year and try to let the maelstrom of emotion distill into something wise and calm that I can take hold of and carry into the new year… I need to be still. It’s hard to though, when you live with someone who would much rather be surrounded by noise and activity!

But I need to take time. Just a moment or two. Just to take it all in. ..

January ~ the year begins with me in a funk and I spend most of the month just trying to show up for class 8 hours a day, five days a week. February ~ I learn the cause of my “lady difficulties” is something growing where only babies should grow, and has likely precluded babies growing there thus far. I’m scared and shaken. March ~ our apartment, a basement suite, is flooded from a leak in the hot water system and the resulting devastation renders us homeless. We spend the month freezing in other people’s basements and looking for a new apartment. We lose all our money, many possessions, and most of our hope. The surgery I need is relegated to the very back of my mind. April ~ we are rescued by God leading us to a beautiful apartment and I get sick with the flu, bronchitis, and a sinus infection, all at the same time. Barely manage to write my exams and papers. May & June ~ the loveliest time with my parents, husband, friends, the most relaxed I have ever been. Pure bliss. July ~ my husband and I end seven years of strife and bitterness, and God joins our souls together in a new marriage. We finally see the OBGYN about the growth in my uterus. It is a polyp. It must come out. We are told we are extremely unlikely to ever conceive on our own. I focus on my health instead. By August ~ I have lost 35 pounds. We are broke, so broke, but so happy with each other and so in love. We don’t know it, but we conceive our first child this month! Will forever believe in miracles. September ~ my husband goes back to school for the first time in twenty years, and I return to school for my second straight year. Increasing exhaustion and nausea prompt my therapist to ask if I could be pregnant. I laugh. We get a test to “rule it out”. At 4:11 AM, September 19, it’s positive. The boundaries of the earth are too narrow for my joy. My entire existence ceases and is remade for one purpose: to nourish and grow our baby. Our baby. October ~ ultrasound! Pure joy, pure love, seeing my baby’s heart beating on the screen. But the spotting is not going away, and I try not to worry because it upsets my husband, but deep down, I’m worried. Thoughts are consumed with trying to determine if symptoms are lessening, if bleeding is worsening. Suddenly, symptoms stop. So does bleeding. One week later, 3:24 AM on October 19, only 13 weeks and 3 days along, I wake up soaked in blood. I deliver in the ER. It was a boy, and he is dead. The bleeding does not stop. I lose too much blood and wind up in surgery. My last thought before the anesthesia drags me under is that it’s okay if I don’t wake up. One week later to the day, my Nana dies. November ~ I’m still in school. I didn’t quit when we discovered our pregnancy, and now it’s too late to quit. I do everything I can. I hurt more than I can believe. Then our car was stolen. We lose what little money we had left. November is a blur. December ~ I go under and don’t come back up again. I cannot think, cannot study, cannot focus. God is with me. My professors are amazing. I file Incompletes on all my courses. My thoughts are silent for many days.

But slowly… I begin to heal. The nights I stay up to see the clock flicker to 3:24 AM are fewer. The days I feel hopeful about the future happen more often. I still get surprised by the undertow of grief every now and then, the sudden flooding of my eyes. I know it will be some time before that goes away. In some far-away little part of me, I don’t want it to.

And now the very active and noisy one I live with is no longer slumbering peacefully on the couch as in the photo, but very much awake and wanting more attention than I can spare while typing, so this will be it for that last post of the year!

Perhaps tomorrow will bring thoughts of the year to come. For now, these last thoughts belong with the last year and I am content to leave them there.