Nathan Theophilus

Sensitive Content Warning: this is the story of our recent miscarriage.

Last month we found out we were pregnant with baby #3! 

We don't have a history of getting pregnant "easily," per se (although I say that recognizing there are MANY, MANY couples who have endured years of waiting to get pregnant - my heart goes out to you if that is your story). 

Before Samara, we felt like the Lord clearly spoke to us and told us it was time to start trusting him with this area of our lives. I thought we would probably be making a pregnancy announcement very soon after that, but it was 10 (sometimes very long) months before we actually conceived.

With Jemima, knowing it had been a long time and an emotionally exhausting process to get pregnant the first time, I think I anticipated it would be similar, but it actually was only 4 months.

And with both girls' pregnancies, I just knew even before I took the tests what the results would be. I physically felt different, and I just had that gut feeling. Also, I think taking pregnancy tests and getting negatives are one of my least favorite things, so I think I waited a full week after I expected my period to test with both of them.

We love our girls, and have always assumed we'd have "children" (note the plural), but we never set an exact number on it (well, to be more precise, I make many statements about the number of kids we'll have: when I'm pregnant, I regularly tell Gabe, "I don't think I will ever want to do this again. This one is the last one." Gabe always says, "We'll see." And once the baby is sleeping more and their personality is coming out, I regularly say, "I could have half a dozen babies if they're all this much fun!" And Gabe still responds with, "We'll see."). Our usual strategy is to just not prevent pregnancy from happening, hoping it will just happen at some point, and then when it hasn't by a certain time, we start being more intentional about it.

Well, it just happened. And I was a bit surprised because it hadn't been the usual long wait.

But the reason I took the test and found out it HAD happened was because something didn't feel right.

I had an afternoon and evening of intense, low abdominal pelvic-type pain. Knowing pregnancy was a possibility, Gabe and I decided to go ahead and get a test and see the result. But I didn't actually think I would be pregnant - I didn't have that gut feeling about it.

So our excitement was painted with a bit of surprise and also a tint of concern.

I talked to my midwife from Jemima's pregnancy the next day, and she suggested an early scan to rule out an ectopic pregnancy situation. I booked the scan for as early as I could, which was still four days away. I continued to have achy pain for two days but hoped for the best (while knowing the statistics, of course: about 25% of pregnancies end in loss) and began to really warm up to the idea of having another baby.

With both Samara and Jemima's pregnancies I'd been aware that I would love grow to love whichever gender the baby turns out to be, but I really had wanted girls both times. The Lord was gracious and that's what I got! But this time, every time I thought of the baby, "she" just didn't seem to fit. I found myself thinking of the baby as "he."

Before I could get in for the scan, though, I started to bleed. At first I hoped it was just spotting - not at all uncommon in early pregnancy - but as the day wore on, I knew the chance of seeing a healthy, albeit young, baby on the screen at the scan was growing smaller all the time.

Sure enough, when we went into the scan, I told the technician up front: "I started bleeding two days ago - I'm pretty sure I know what you are - or, rather, aren't - going to find." And when the fuzzy grey images came up onto the screen, I didn't even need her to tell me that we weren't seeing a baby - there was nothing there.

When I first realized this pregnancy was not going well after I started bleeding, I made a point to lay down and spend time with the Lord while Gabe took the girls for a walk. I wanted to say a few specific things to the baby (trusting that if he was already gone, the Lord would deliver my message!) because I knew I didn't yet have confirmation that the baby was gone, which meant there was a chance he was still with me. I told him, "I love you; I'm proud to be your Mama; You are welcome in our family and in our life, but if the Lord is leading you to be with Him, it's OK. You will be OK and we will be OK. You can go."

And then I told the Lord that it wasn't so much the idea of losing a baby that made me feel anxious and emotional, it was the idea that my baby might feel pain or fear or a sense of aloneness while it died, and I wouldn't be able to hold it or offer it comfort. The Lord gave me a sweet gift: He said, "Dani, I am still forming this baby. You can't touch it or hold it, but I am doing that right now. I'll be with it. It'll carry it from your womb, through the veil that is death, and into eternity. Don't worry. I've got it."

Gabe and I decided to name our baby because names are important to us. Naming our children is one of the great joys of pregnancy for me. I have a document on our google drive where I record unique or cool names I come across, and I love researching a name's meaning, it's popularity (or lack thereof, ideally!), and connecting the name meaning to the significance of that pregnancy or our life circumstances around the baby's birth.  While Gabe and I choose the name, with both Samara and Jemima's names we've felt like the Lord has confirmed our final choice in specific ways during the end of pregnancy.

So we named our baby Nathan Theophilus, and here's why:

Nathan is a Hebrew name, which is in the Aramaic family line. Both our girls have Aramaic names. I wanted this baby to have a name that "fits" with our girls.

Nathan can mean "Gift of God," but perhaps more literally it means "gift" and it comes from the Hebrew verb, "to give." We intentionally chose Nathan rather than Nathaniel because Nathaniel means specifically "Gift of God." While, of course, that is a beautiful meaning and it does apply to our baby, we also wanted to articulate that what God gives to us, we freely want to give back to him. So Nathan is both a gift TO us, and a gift FROM us.

Theophilus means, "Lover of God," "Friend of God," or "Loved by God," (depending on what website you look at!) and it is the name we chose for if Samara's pregnancy had ended up being a boy. Gabe suggested it right after we found out we were pregnant with Samara. While "Theophilus" sounded like a mouthful to me, I absolutely loved the meaning, and I loved the nickname Theo. Obviously, we didn't need it for that pregnancy! But by the time we were pregnant with Jemima, I told Gabe I'd never be able to use Theophilus as a first name because the name Theo had grown in popularity and I have this thing about avoiding trending names... I just want my kids to feel kind of unique. So we nixed it from the name list for Jemima's pregnancy.

But it just seems to fit this baby. If we had given the name Theophilus to a baby we would raise, it would have been a prophetic declaration of who we hope and pray and intend to direct the child to become - someone who loves God and is a friend of God. But to give it to a baby that will only ever experience life in God's presence, who will never realize its heart has become divided in some way and drawn to other things besides God, and who will never face temptations to let his love for the Lord grow cold - man, it just feels right. Our son literally will be loving God every moment of his existence!

I know everyone processes a miscarriage in their own unique way - and there are many, many factors that probably play into that.

For me, with this miscarriage, Gabe and I are struck with how we don't feel a huge sense of loss. Perhaps that is due to already having two busy little girls that continue to need our moment-by-moment care and that just doesn't leave a lot of time for sitting in grief, perhaps it is due to the fact that it was so early, perhaps it is due to knowing the true cost that we experience going through 9 months of pregnancy and the first year of a child's life - worth it, absolutely, but also not something we enter into lightly. We were and are willing to have more children and walk that journey again, but we weren't expecting it to be right now, and we don't feel like we have a right or even a need to try to hold on to grief about this baby not coming into our family here on earth.

Gabe summed it up well one evening while we were talking: he said, "Man, I feel like if God willingly gave us his son, how can I beg to hold on to mine if he asks for it back? Our children are his to begin with, and I want to be willing to be like him and give my most precious thing back to him."

I feel such peace that our baby hasn't missed out on something - he's fully alive (perhaps more fully alive than I am as I write this!) and he's already gained what I can only look forward to having: life in God's actual, face-to-face presence, in a home that was designed and made for him, with people who love God with clarity and nothing to hinder their worship of Him.

Knowing he is there, though, already experiencing what that whole, full, real-life-as-God-intended-it-to-be existence, it does make me long for eternity a bit more poignantly.

I don't assume I'll get to witness his growing up (I assume babies that are miscarried go through some kind of "growing up" process even in heaven), but I know it will be a sweet meeting when I encounter him as the man God designed him to be. And really, what a gift, to have a son that loves the Lord and is fulfilling the purpose he was created for in eternity.

Jemma is ONE (and Mara was 3 several months ago)!

What a year it has been - it's hard to believe Jemma has passed the one year mark of her birth. Although I knew my life would be changing with the addition of a second baby, I really had NO IDEA how different the world would look one year on from her birth. Although I know some things have changed permanently (ie: our psyche and our awareness of pandemics!), I still hope she'll be able to experience a life in the future that looks more like our world did before she was born.

And get to meet her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins IN PERSON someday!

Jem is... so fun! She's spunky, adventurous, clever, enthusiastic, brave, determined, vocal, and focused.  We adore her.  Sometimes I have NO IDEA how best to relate to her, but I've found dance parties to significantly improve our relational-rapport (seriously. The kid receives love via dance parties... so dance parties happen a lot around here!).

Enjoy some picts of our girl!

And, of course, Mara is growing up and becoming SUCH a capable little girl! Here's some new(ish) pictures of her:

Gratitude Post (My cure for the grumpies)

I believe I can always find something to be thankful for.

Last night (or, rather, this morning), at 1am, I realized Jem had thrown up our dinner of pasta carbonara all over her crib. It was caked in her hair, all over her jammies, and smeared over her sheets. I was up late editing wedding photos in the quiet house after the girls had gone to bed. I was doing my just-before-I-crawl-into-bed check on them and I smelled something funny in their room...

So, at 1am, Gabe took over with a crying baby (who woke up as I was looking closer at the mysterious patterns on her crib sheet) while I stripped the bed and got a wash load started.

How Mara managed to stay asleep through all of the activity next to her, I'm not sure, but it wasn't until AFTER Jem had been changed and fed, the crib sheets changed and remade, and Jem tucked back into her crib that Mara woke up.

I think it was about 3am before we all got back to sleep.

So, today we've been a bit fuzzy. Pre-kids, I would have probably drawn the curtains, turned off my alarm, and then slept until my body woke up, but with kids, I try to keep them on a bit of a schedule so nap times and bed times can unfold normally today, which means not as much sleep as I would have liked.

Gabe had a commitment this morning, so the girls and I were making do, and for some reason, Jem didn't take her normal 90 minute to 2 hour morning nap, instead she woke after 50 minutes and wouldn't go back to sleep... maybe she's still feeling funny?  But to say that the atmosphere of the house was punctuated by tired sounds would be very accurate (sighing on my part, crying on theirs).

I was having a bit of a bad attitude about a number of things (bummed Gabe wasn't around to endure the crying children with me, bummed I was so tired, bummed Jem hadn't slept, bummed we don't live near either of our parents or siblings to try to schedule a little childcare break, etc), but I started hanging up the two loads of laundry that I'd gotten washed, and I had this moment of clarity:

I am really thankful for our front porch.

I think sometimes gratitude is my best weapon against the grumpies, because as I thought about how much of a blessing our front porch is, I realized I wasn't nearly as peeved at the world!

We live in a small space - our apartment is about 450 square feet (about 40 meters square). It's technically a one-bedroom Granny flat/mother-in-law apartment, attached via the garage to our landlords. We also have a utility room/storage room built into the garage that has turned our one bedroom into a one bedroom plus enough space for the girls to have their own tiny sleeping zone in half of the utility room.

I don't mind the size of the space - I like being able to keep it clean pretty easily, I like that it forces us to prioritize what we have, I like that it provides a challenge to constantly keep improving, refining, and reorganizing our space. But I also so appreciate that we have a covered front porch at the entrance to our house.

Our front porch adds about another 100 square feet to our space - it is where we leave our shoes if they are wet and dirty, Gabe parks his scooter, the girls both have swings, we have a couple chairs to sit on, there are concrete pavers to do chalk art on, AND (by far the best part, in my opinion) it has a laundry line that means our clothes can dry under cover.

As I was thinking about the front porch and all its blessings, I started thinking about how much I enjoy doing laundry in the summer.

We don't have a drier, so we hang-dry our laundry all year long. In the winter, the covered porch is HUGELY helpful to keep the laundry process going, but it can still take a few days to get clothes and cloth diapers dry (sometimes needing to be brought into the house and hung up on a rack in our living room over night or for 24 hours to finish getting dry). But in the summer, man, I can hang up Jemima's favorite blanket - the one she struggles to sleep without - at 10am, and it's dry and ready to be back to work for her afternoon nap.

That got me thinking about how much I appreciate our yard - our landlords have a beautiful, big park-like yard, and it is so nice that the wind can blow through the front porch and dry our clothes, and the sun can shine on our front porch and expedite the process.

And THAT got me thinking about how wonderful our landlords are, and how they interpret Kiwi-isms for us, drop off excess food, let us glean plums and lemons and oranges from their trees in the back yard, let me plant a garden, let Samara come chat with them when they come home from work, let Gabe utilize tools from their shed for projects, etc...

And you know what? I'm not grumpy anymore. It's hard to be grumpy when you're brain is wandering down the path of "Wow, I have so much for which to be grateful!"

Birthday Weekend Adventures (Napier)

For about a year I've wanted to go check out Napier in Hawke's Bay.  I thought it would be fun to visit that region for my birthday.... last year.  But I was 7 months pregnant and really didn't want to sit in a car for 4 hours!  So we put it off for a year.

We decided to do a combined birthdays/anniversary event and booked an AirBnB for a couple nights as a summertime family getaway over my birthday weekend.

We stayed in a no-nonsense, family-friendly farm cottage outside of town (but there was a park with a swingset and flying fox 3 minutes drive down the road, so THAT was cool!). There were sheep in the paddock, an orchard full of fruit, a cement pad for balance-bike practice, a gate to open and close at the end of the driveway, and a big front porch for watching the golden grass blow in the wind.

We had a great weekend - bike riding among vineyards, hiking to a towering waterfall, exploring the "Art Deco" city of Napier, attending a vibrant Farmer's Market, and even some on-the-road fun like watching a helicopter put out a forest fire on the way and stopping for a dip in Lake Taupo on the way home.

Summer time fun

I'm trying to spend a little less time and mental energy on social media platforms, so here are a few little snapshots of some of our daily-life moments:

There is a lot of enthusiastic displays of affection between these two - full body hugging (from Mara), head slapping (from Jemma) - and LOADS of giggles and joint screeching.  We really love having these two little people live in our home with us!

Tomatoes reach a high price of $13.00/kg in August, so I am rejoicing in the abundance of recipes I can make with fresh tomatoes while they are in season!  I also have six tomato plants that are starting to produce tomatoes, so I might need to figure out a way to preserve them... canning pasta sauce or dehydrating them or something!

On Christmas Eve we reached the 9 month mark of Jem being OUT of the womb! It's always surreal to think about how much life has changed since the "due date" photo on the left.

Mara and her Abba are always coming up with fun, unique ways to play together.  Sometimes I'm not sure which is enjoying an activity more - it's such a blessing to see the people I love the most loving each other so well!

 

Stone Fruit Season Returns

 

It is stone-fruit season again!!

Jemma is loving plums, Mara is crazy about avocados, and I don't think I'd ever get tired of the flavour of fresh nectarines! Summertime at its finest ;)

Heads or Tails: A fun story of hearing God and detail management

Last week we took a call from a missionary family working on building their support team that asked us if we'd consider being a part of their monthly support.  We love what they're doing and catching up with our friend, and promised to pray about whether God would lead us to start supporting them.

Yesterday Gabe and I sat down for our weekly "detail day" prayer time - a time when we try to just make a space to listen to God together about whatever he wants to talk about, but specifically anything we've put on our list of things we need to hear God about for direction.

When we got to asking about supporting this family, I was curious to see what God would say.

We set aside a percentage of every dollar we receive to go into an account we've labeled our "Missionary Support Fund."  We use that money to support missionaries each month - some of whom we've been in relationship with for years.  It's always been awesome to see how God provides what we need and, in turn, for others through that fund.

Currently, we spend every cent of what we put in to that fund each month, plus a little bit more fulfilling our commitments of support.  From a logical standpoint, it would seem like we don't have the money to take on another missionary, but Gabe and I wanted to make sure we were hearing God on that issue and not making a decision based on our own logic.

So, we prayed.

Gabe felt like the Lord impressed on him the verse in Isaiah (chapter 54) about the barren woman enlarging her tent pegs - basically, before something has come to pass, acting in obedience to what God has told you.

I felt like the Lord gave me a verse from Joshua 18 about casting lots for answers.

We shared back with each other about what we felt God was saying and decided we'd flip a coin for confirmation, but we were pretty sure God was leading us to start supporting this family.  So we grabbed a gold coin like the one pictured above, and decided heads was a yes, tails was a no, and we flipped it:

Heads.

So then we prayed about how much to support them each month (one of the things we've learned about hearing God and following his direction is to definitely pray about the details and not just run ahead with our own opinions!).  I felt like God gave me a certain number in USD.  Gabe also got a number, but he felt like it was in NZD.  We plugged the amount in NZD into our handy google converter, and the equivalent in USD was the same as the amount in NZD.

I fired off an email letting the family know we would start supporting them for the amount we felt God specified.

And then I told Gabe, "I guess we need to pray to ask God for more money so we can fulfill this support each month!"  So while I was getting porridge for Mara and Gabe was cleaning up breakfast prep, I just simply said aloud, "OK, Father - can you give us more money so we can give more away?"

I checked my email a few minutes later, and last Friday I'd had an email come in from our friend Carrie - currently one of our monthly supporters - that I'd briefly seen was in the inbox, but I hadn't taken time to look at it in detail.  When I opened it up and read through it, she was writing to ask for information on how she could submit our ministry work to the company she works for to see if she could get her monthly gift matched by her company.  Whoa!  That's cool!!

I told Gabe and we were both encouraged that God was, indeed, speaking to us when we'd prayed and that he was going to take care of the details.

Then this morning, I opened up my FB messenger app and I had received a message from a student that was a part of our DTS a few months ago who, himself, has been doing missions work, and he asked if we had a PayPal account because he'd like to send us a financial gift.

WHOA!!! That's COOL!!

I told Gabe and we were even MORE encouraged!!

Sometimes I have moments of looking at myself and our life, almost from a distance or an alternative perspective, and I think, "Are we crazy?  Like, this is really an odd way of living life, making decisions, and just being.  I mean, this is not a normal way of life - our priorities, our finances, our decisions about where we live, what we live without, everything is just a little bit odd."

But then I have these kinds of moments - where Gabe and I together get to experience and interact with the Creator of the Universe who loves us and cares for us and is more conscientious of detail-management and working behind the scenes than I could ever be, and I'm just so, so thankful that our life - the one life we get to spend - is laced with these kinds of stories and adventures.