Holeyness

Over the past several months, I have poured out my soul to my sister Jennie on her mission. She hears the same stuff that Kevin, my siblings, and my parents hear, but it is in letter form which generally leads to more organized thoughts. I wonder sometimes if I am unnecessarily burdening her with details too far from missionary work, but it is good for me, so I keep doing it.

There is one letter that I now find incredibly ironic, dated July 6th. Here's part of it:

There's something that's been on my mind lately -- the idea of holiness. It's kind of got an interesting start. So somehow, we've become, like, popular. Dessert nights, [invitations to] cabins, game nights, camping, strawberry picking, swimming, bike rides -- people like to have us around! It's weird and flattering and  . . . it wasn't making me as happy as I would have expected. It wasn't that I didn't like the people, or that I was mad they were inviting me. It was just that being on the receiving end all the time made me realize that I was missing something a little bit. I decided what I was missing was "holiness." That all these relationships were about fun right now, not about service, not about charity, not . . .. I don't know. I wasn't giving of myself by being invited to stuff, so it felt strangely artificial.

So, I concluded the letter by telling her I would try and bring holiness back into my life somehow.

§

The next morning, I found it, or at least the beginnings of it. You see, there was one thing about June that I hadn't told her (or anyone except Kevin and Joseph) about -- the one thing that month that truly made me deliriously happy, and it was morning sickness. Just enough to be reassuring but not enough to be debilitating. That plus general exhaustion, weight gain, tenderness, and every other encouraging symptom you could hope for made me look forward to this doctor's appointment more than any other appointment in my life.

My doctor brought in the ultrasound and began to hunt for the baby. A few images printed out, and I saw a perfectly formed little body. In that instant, all those months of frustration -- the months where I couldn't get pregnant, the months following my February miscarriage, the months of impatience and sadness and jealousy and trying to enjoy Mother's Day and wondering why I was still bugged about it -- all didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was this beautiful nine-week-old little baby in me.

The doctor verified that the baby was nine weeks old as it was supposed to be, but she wasn't congratulating me yet. She instead looked harder, twisting and turning the probe, her brow furrowing. Then she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "This must have just happened in the past 24 hours."

"What?"

"We should see blood flow to the fetus. There's nothing, and no sign of a heartbeat."

§

For me, grief comes slowly. Shock comes quickly, devastation follows on its heels, and contingency plans don't lag far behind, but grief takes its time to set in.

In some ways, the grief itself bothers me as much as the miscarriage. In Utah, I wondered why it was affecting me so much. After all, everything had been wrapped up before we headed on the plane. The pricks where I'd had blood drawn to monitor rapidly-falling hCG levels and the bruise from my IV were mostly healed. I was surrounded by family, friends, and fun. Yet it seemed like the loss was just beginning to set in. I had told some of my family, "The second time is easier because you already know what you're getting into." But instead this second time came with new, unfamiliar anguish more pronounced than the first.

After a particularly hard day, I realized that it felt like someone had drilled holes in my heart. These holes weren't always bothersome -- when I was busy talking and laughing with people they weren't noticeable. But if somehow the syrup of sadness reached me at all, it got stuck in those holes, and it took a lot longer to clean it out.

"More holeyness give me," I thought ruefully. I had first made up that pun during a stake youth conference right before I graduated. We were preparing some ground in River Heights for a playground dedicated to a little boy named Ryan who had drowned in Lake Powell the summer before. We didn't help out with construction at all, but we did dig a lot of holes in very rocky soil. As we pulled the rocks with makeshift shovels (mine was a plastic cup), I made up puns about holes instead of thinking about why exactly I was digging those holes.

Back then, I didn't really get it. I didn't really understand why his parents chose to build a park that would serve as a constant reminder of their loss. I kind of understood the sentiment, but it still didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Now I sort of did. There seemed to be some relationship between holeyness and holiness, one that they somehow discovered. But what was it?

§

Although I knew to expect it from my last miscarriage, in many ways I am surprised by grief. I see emotions such as resentment, jealousy, and anger in myself and think, "These don't belong here! I know better!" When I sob within minutes of coming home from church or tear up while listening to music, I think, "I don't need to cry about this. This is silly." Or even, "Why I am grieving so much over a couple of babies I only carried for 9-10 weeks?"

Most of all what surprises me is my self-centeredness. How can holeyness lead to holiness when I'm not even reaching out to others, when I'm thinking only of my own woes?

But what I'm finally learning is that it's okay. All aspects of holeyness -- the sticky sadness, the jealousy, the inability to vocalize my sadness to close friends, the self-centeredness -- can all still lead to holiness if I don't let them define me. Holiness is more than meditating on a mountain or immersing oneself in liturgy. Holiness can be found while laughing with friends, or building "yucky cakes" out of couch cushions with toddlers, or even during mildly irreverent texting conversations (okay, I count that one because it was what got me out of my cryfest, so thanks Kayl). The key is to turn all of it, good and bad, over to God.

And when I do, amazing things start to happen. Somehow, God gives me a bit of His love and peace, and, at least for a while, the holes in my heart get filled in with big, grand ideas. I want to help in soup kitchens and save Detroit and host all the baby showers and clean the house and exercise and be the best wife and mother ever. Although those feelings are still temporary, they stay longer than they might otherwise because they get stuck in the holes. The holiness that seemed so far off at the beginning of July seems somehow closer now.

§

When Kevin and I were driving back from the Logan Temple a few weeks ago, I took a swing around the block in River Heights to show him Ryan's Place Park. It's been too long since youth conference for me to remember where exactly my holes were, but I still feel a connection with the park. I understand more now about the importance of building after a loss, of channeling your energy into something that will help as many people as possible. Although I will never fully understand Ryan's parents' specific pain, I am beginning to understand the holiness they created from holeyness. And I am learning I can do the same.

"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me."
Isaiah 49:16

Note: Although I hunted down a few of these articles the past several weeks, most of them have just shown up in my mailbox or Facebook newsfeed as acts of providence. They've been helpful to me in a variety of ways.

"One Thing Needful": Becoming Women of Greater Faith in Christ by Patricia Holland

Study and the Prayer of Faith by James Cannon (my algebra teacher)

My Heart-Shaped Uterus by C. Jane Kendrick

Healing: Courage + Action + Grace by Jonathan G. Sandberg

What Suffering Does by David Brooks
Does God Need Me? by Bonnie Atkinson
The Grief Linebacker by Andrea R.
Developing a Resilient and Enduring Faith by Alison Davis-Blake (I have the link in Google Drive, but since it was from our stake women's conference I'll wait to post til I have permission)

And, if you are curious about Ryan's Place Park (and want to laugh at how smart I thought I was [none of my puns made it in, at least]), here's this: Building Ryan's Place