What Annie Meant To Me

When I was a teen, I knew about the music of Phil Keaggy. Songs like, Little Ones and other songs that pointed to the hope of God lifted my spirits. But, I never knew that years later, it would be the words of his wife that would keep me from losing my faith. And, these words would be handed to me by a dear amazing ray of sunshine of a woman named Annie.

Today I learned that Annie lost her battle with a tumor in her stomach. I am devastated. I am still in disbelief. I know we all live and someday die, but no! How could it be Annie's time to go? She was a ray of sunshine to everyone she encountered.

I met Annie at The Magic House, which is a children's museum in our town. I actually became a member of the Magic House so I could attend Annie's music and art classes at a discounted rate because I loved her style of working with my children so very much. But, I did not know that she was put there for a reason.

My son was 4 and my daughter was barely 2 when we started attending these adorable arts and music workshops.Annie made us feel welcome. I loved her smile, and I loved her optimistic approach to hands-on learning with the kids. What I didn't know at the time was just how instrumental she would be in my healing, emotionally and spiritually, after I had lost my 3rd baby through miscarriage.

We had stayed late after an art class, and we were helping her clean up the brushes. She said her cordial goodbyes while we went to explore the museum to let our art work dry. When I appeared to pick up my child's art work later that afternoon, something prompted a deeper conversation. I mentioned that I had just had a miscarriage. I'm not even sure how it came up in conversation that day, but I know it was a God-directed moment. She stopped me and asked, "Did you say you had a miscarriage?" I responded that I had. What she did next was pivotal.

She told me that she, too had lost a child to miscarriage - At 21 weeks, I believe it was. She went on to say that she then gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. They were her miracles after loss. But, she didn't stop there. She proceeded to ask me if I was familiar with a Christian artist musician named Phil Keaggy...... OF COURSE! I loved Keaggy's music. But, it didn't stop there.

She, then proceeded to tell me that she was going to bring me something special the next time she saw me.  It was probably a few days or maybe even a week before the next time we attended an art or music class. But, Annie remembered. She handed me a book called A Deeper Shade of Grace . It was written by Phil Keaggy's wife, Bernadette. It told of Bernadette's tragic multiple losses of babies.

Annie had marked a page deep into the book. She told me that when I read about a woman named Annie on the pages that she marked - That was referring to her and her loss.

She had known the Keaggys when she attended a fellowship early in Phil Keaggy's conversion to Christianity. Annie's husband was a guitarist, and they had played worship music at the fellowship where they met the Keaggys. It was during this time that Annie and Bernadette had losses during pregnancy. Bernadette wrote about it in her book. She explained how Grace was all she had left to fall back on. It was through these deep, heart-wrenching painful moments of loss that God was able to step in and allow her to experience a deeper shade of Grace.

It was this book that pointed me back to the scriptures asking, "Where else can I go, Lord? For, you have the words of life!"  Knowing that Annie was awaiting my returning her book and giving her a full report as to what I thought when I read about her story on the marked pages is what kept me reading. I plugged away reading even when the story sounded hopeless. I held on. I slowly regained faith and hope.

My story had a happy ending with a miracle baby who is now 9 years old.  A lot of healing took place through the one action of Annie hearing and responding to my mention that I had experienced a miscarriage.

It's amazing how God crosses paths with people. I give him the praise for that.

Today, my heart is sad at the loss of Annie. My heart does not merely ache for the memories I hold, but my heart aches that a ray of sunshine and a voice of hope is now quiet in this world. For those who knew her, you will be forever blessed to have encountered such a person filled with the love that Annie possessed but didn't selfishly hang onto. She was constantly looking for those with whom she could share the love of her Savior, Jesus Christ!

Thank you, Annie! You will never ever be forgotten for the healing you allowed to come into my heart. My love goes out to your own children, whom you so dearly loved, and all of the children whose lives you touched!

About Me - My Personal Story: Tere Scott From Teachable Scotts Tots Homeschool Tells All

  NOW ON A PERSONAL NOTE: 

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Click here to see Tere's Message of Hope if it has trouble playing.
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After multiple miscarriages, we were blessed with a healthy pregnancy and beautiful baby.  During the pregnancy my prayer was for a well-spring of life to spring up from my desert, barren womb.  Our Lord, Jesus heard my prayer.  I don't want to be selfish & hold tightly to my beautiful little baby. I want her gift of life to me to be a reminder that God wants all people to be refreshed with his gifts of only good things. What do I do now? Through an organization I have chosen (Samaritan's Purse), I sponsor auctions using Mission Fish on select Ebay auctions I now give a wellspring of life to others in the form of clean water to those who are in need - whether it's from hurricane Katrina or the Japan Tsunami or a daily life situation of living in a country where no clean water is available. I want these people to be refreshed with living water as well as drinkable water.

Tere is also a homeschooling mother of 3 and a freelance writer for an online publications, including CBS Local St. Louis.

In addition to maintaining Puddle Jumping, Tere also maintains a general educational blog entitled Elephant Ears Education!

You can read more about me and how I came to homeschool here!

(UN)HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY?

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers in the world!  Though, I have to say it for those who are less than giddy when this day rolls around each year.

I will admit it - Today, I sit content and happy to arrive at this holiday.  Though, this wasn't always the case.  This day has not always been a joyous occasion for me.

I remember my first Mother's Day after losing, what would have been my third child, during pregnancy.  The day was bitter sweet.  I would go on to experience three more similar "celebrations" after losing two more babies in my womb.

The good news is that emotional healing does come if you allow it to.  But, I sat here thinking this morning about all of those out there in the world who are uncomfortable or downright angry at the thought of anything close to happy on this day.

Here's what I wrote:

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

To: Those who are giddy with the glee of welcoming a new life of a baby who will call you mommy!

To: Those who have a mother to hug and shower with love

To: Those who mourn a loving mother who has left this earth

To: Those who have a mother still living, but she is far from being called a "loving" mother.

To: Those who never knew their biological mother

To: Those who have taken on raising and loving children from another's womb

To: Those mothers who have lost or given up a baby from your womb

To: Those who cry and wait for the opportunity to feel a baby kick and move inside of them.

To: Those who grieve the realization they never will, or ever again, experience growing life inside.

To: Those who have held a living baby in their arms and later grieved the loss

To: Everyone who celebrates the day and to those who wish the day would hurry up and be over already because the pain is too much to bear!

MAY YOU FIND THE LOVE YOU NEED TODAY!.......By: Tere Scott

The Rabbit Ate My Tulips and Other Not-So-Happy Mother's Day Stories

Happy Mother's Day, and if this day finds you feeling sad - Happy "Not-So-Happy-Mother's Day" to you! I hope you find something to make the day sweet and blessed. If not, maybe you will by the end of this blog post.

I'll start from the heart of it and not mince words.  For every woman, Mother's Day is not a day she feels like celebrating.  Some are grieving, and some are still hurting from childhood, teen, or adulthood memories that have left them angry, hurt, or numb.

Though I sit here typing today feeling completely beyond blessed.  My Mother's Days were not always quite so happy.  What I want to share are three stories:

1) My story
2) The rabbit ate my tulips
3) Watching my flowers bloom

Here's my story:

(If you are on a mobile device, or have trouble clicking below - Here's the direct link!



 

 I realize not every story of miscarriage ends the same way, and I want you to know that I've walked in the shoes of thinking my story would end only in grief.

Along the way, I made a decision to make the most out of my memories of the babies that I lost.  This decision did not come lightly, nor did it come rapidly.  After the loss of my first baby, Micah, I felt the need (I attribute this to God speaking to me) to read the book of Micah.  I'm still somewhat puzzled as to why I felt the need to read this book, but I did.

Mostly, the best I derived from the book was Micah 7:7:

"But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord,
   I wait for God my Savior;
   my God will hear me."

And, that's what I did.  Even in my anger, which oddly enough came mostly after the second loss - Not the first, not the third - I pressed into God, even when I felt numb, sad, or emotionless - Because, as in the words of the disciples later, in the New Testament:

"Where else can I go - For only you, oh Lord, have the words of life!"

One Mother's Day, my husband gave me the sweetest gift ever.  He brought me tulip bulbs to plant.  See, I had decided, unbeknownst to him, that tulips would represent the babies I never got to hold in my arms.

Tulips have to be planted in the ground, in the form of a bulb.  They require staying in the ground through a hard frost before they can bloom.

I felt it was representative of how my babies were inside my womb and were cut short before seeing the sun and allowed to bloom.  Plus, I love tulips.

I planted those tulip bulbs and waited for them to bloom in the spring.

In the spring, they did bloom.  Oh, they were beautiful blooms.  I was so happy.  Every day I saw them, I knew the names of the babies they represented.  It was as if I got to celebrate a small bit of life.

For a short while.

One day, I came out to look at my tulips, and I noticed the blooms had been chewed off of one, two, then several, and finally all of them.

The culprit?

An adorable bunny.

As adorable as this bunny was, it made me mad and sad.  I grieved all over again, yet somehow saw in it a strange coincidence.

When a woman is pregnant, the saying goes:  "The rabbit died".  I found it so ironic that my babies were not allowed to be placed in my arms this side of heaven, and even in my small celebration of their attempt to be represented by a tulip bloom - A rabbit wouldn't allow it.

I felt as if rabbits were out to get me.

Since I couldn't enjoy my attempt at relishing the beauty of life, even in the form of a tulip, I turned my focus toward the blessings God has granted me:  My three living children.

As I watch them grow, blossom and get ready to break out in a full-fledged bloom, I'm reminded of how great our God is.  While there are just some things I will never understand this side of heaven, He gave me the desires of my heart by filling my empty, dead womb, with a living, growing baby.  He had done this twice before my miscarriages, but it wasn't till after my losses that I would understand the fullness of how rich these two blessings were.



Today, my husband left six orange roses for me on the table in a vase.  He has no idea how special that is to me.  I'm sure he chose the roses according to what he could afford and what he thought was pretty.  But, those six roses represent the six babies that I once held in my belly:  3 gone, 3 living and blooming in my house and in my arms.

So, to those reading this who are suffering and mourning - some grieving the loss of a child they did get to hold but never allowed to bloom fully, or the loss of a mother, or the pain a hurting mother caused, with eyes fighting back floods of tears this Mother's Day, I want to wrap my arms around you and I hope you know that I still weep with you.  I hope that your joy is one day complete.  Until that day of full-bloomed beauty comes into your heart, that even a rabbit cannot kill - I hope you press into the arms of a Savior who seems to have abandoned you, but is really wanting to walk with you through the Valley of the Shadow of death into a garden of life.

My Personal Sanctity of Human Life Pro-Life Story

 

NOW ON A PERSONAL NOTE:

Today, January 23, is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It's a day set aside to honor life. For many, it's also a time to give praise to the creator of Life! For many others, it's a day of horror as thoughts from the past come back to haunt about decisions made to end a pregnancy. For others, it's a day of anger or disbelief as they shake their heads and insist a baby is not a baby until it can survive on its own, outside of its mother's womb. Perhaps to others, the day simply holds indifference.

I am very humbled and a bit embarrassed to admit that until a couple happenings in my life, I fell in the category of indifference, perhaps even bordering on anger that people would interfere with someone's personal decision. Years ago, before I married the man I have been married to for almost 19 years, I was engaged to another. My initial engagement turned into a disaster with a series of many red flags including my first fiance' impregnating another girl. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was purely selfish. But, I will humbly admit that I never wanted to see that pregnancy come to term. In fact, I had wished the whole thing had never happened and that I didn't have to face some harsh realities. Many emotional details of life later, the two gave the baby up for adoption to give him the best shot at life which they had chosen for this child.

Fast forward time with that relationship long over, and me married to a different, much more wonderful man, we discovered we were expecting our first child. We very much wanted the child and had no thoughts other than bringing this life into the world. But, the reality of my indifference to abortion (no doubt from earlier experiences) came to light as I gazed upon an ultrasound of my own son. I was 8 weeks pregnant, and it looked like nothing more than a blog bouncing about as the doctor pointed out the head and the body which I could not make out on the black & white screen back in the fall of 1999. I left the office just happy that the blob on the screen was my developing baby but holding onto nothing more than faith that it was truly what the doctor had seen - The eyes, the head, the body that all looked like a blob, make that two blobs connected, to me.

BUT THEN........Something happened - two things really - that changed my perspective on abortion and about life inside the womb.

One - I went back to the doctor just a few short weeks later. This time, when he put the ultrasound wand on my belly, up on the screen popped a full skeletal outline of my son. It was no longer a blob bouncing about. I could see his heart, his bones, etc. It was jaw-dropping amazement! I was flabergasted that this came about so quickly. From the first visit until this one, just a few short weeks later, this blob had formed into a miniature human form. I left the doctor's office staring at the ultrasound pictures. I could not take my eyes off of them as I could clearly make out the form of a completely formed baby inside my belly.

Two - The next thing that happened to change my view of life inside the womb was that following my son's birth, I enjoyed another healthy pregnancy of a daughter. I then, endured three miscarriages in two years' time. Honestly, I believe there was at least one more that was not diagnosed. But on another fall day, I found myself in the same doctor's office where I had gazed upon my son's ultrasounds, and healthy ultrasounds of my daughter. I now, however, sat in front of a screen that showed a slowly beating heart of a developing baby struggling to survive. Something was wrong, and the doctor told me that all I could do was wait and see what happened as he had seen similar pregnancies carry, but he has also seen them fail. We waited, and one week later, I had completely lost the baby through miscarriage. I was at a point in the pregnancy where we were just getting excited about announcing it as I had almost entered the second trimester at the point of loss. This sounds early, but still there was a beating, though feeble, heart and a baby struggling to continue development inside my belly. There was a delivery complete with labor pains similar to my other two labors. And, even the strange, out-of-place feeling of elation upon the "birth," that still baffles my mind. In the course of the next two years, I proceeded to conceive and lose two more babies. Then, our miracle happened!

I will credit God, because I believe the next part of my story is truly miraculous in not only the life, but the details of how the life came about. I was able to enjoy another full-term pregnancy and the birth of a healthy baby girl. I was also able to tell my miraculous story on The 700 Club. I would love to share it with you!

My Personal Story of Hope!