Week 18

In the past week, I have concluded that pregnancy is a miracle. It has to be, because there's simply no other way to describe it. At five and a half inches long, my baby has developed senses. He (or she) can hear my voice. The bones are beginning to harden, and the nerves are making their final inroads and connections throughout the body. It's literally the human form in perfect miniature. The remainder of the pregnancy is mostly for growth.

I also felt my baby move for the first time a couple of days ago. The experience was truly special...and a little sad. My husband will never feel another life moving and growing inside of him. I am in my own world.

I have also concluded this week that not all miracles are necessarily pleasant. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, at 18 weeks I'm STILL PUKING. Not everyday like I was a couple of weeks ago, but close enough. (I puked this morning, in fact. And yesterday. And the day before...) The congestion I've been fighting is also hanging on with a vise grip. I thought it was getting better until two nights ago, when a sudden coughing fit nearly caused my lungs to close up on me. I had to dig my inhaler out of mothballs to find relief.

While first-trimester woes continue to plague me, I'm now entertaining all the lovely ailments of the second trimester--mainly itchy skin and insomnia. I'm also convinced that the baby is nestled right on top of my pea-sized bladder. I'm making at least two trips per night to the bathroom, and I'm quickly working my way up to three. This could get ugly.

The good news? The baby is alive and well despite my barrage of meds, and I will find out its gender in about three weeks. My husband is coming with me to the big ultrasound, and we can't wait!

A Brother in the Band

Writing about my dad made me think more about about my family, which inevitably lead me to write about my brother, Andrew. I'm quite proud of him these days because he recently joined a band--not some silly garage band either, but one that actually has a manager and plays paid gigs around the country. He learned how to play bass at age 12 (without any sort of formal training!) and has since then dreamed of becoming a professional musician. After two years of waiting tables at a restaurant with his wife, he decided he'd had enough of watching his bass (and his dream) collect dust. So he put an ad on Craigslist expressing his desire to join a real band.

He received an email the next day requesting him to audition. He went, did his thing, and was made a member of the band on the spot. Now, at 20 years old, he's on the road doing what he loves most and having a blast.

In a way, I'm jealous. I think the kid has a magic wand up his sleeve. He's got a way of winning over people that would make Dr. Phil green with envy. He's insanely talented to boot, and he just barely graduated high school!

If you ever met my brother, you wouldn't believe we were related. He's about three inches taller and at least 50 pounds heavier than I am, with thick reddish-brown hair and a very pale complexion. Our personalities are just as different. I'm fairly cautious and reserved; Andrew acts on impulse and chatters almost non-stop. Growing up with him was...well, interesting to say the least.

Imagine this scenario: my parents--a meek father and a domineering mother--involved in ministry and constantly worrying about how others perceive them, and I--a quiet, obedient individual with near-OCD tendancies--welcoming into our family a fiery, ADHD redhead of perpetual noise and motion. Needless to say, our mother was soon beside herself.

We quickly dubbed my brother "Hurricane Andrew." One trip through the house, and Andrew left a path of destruction in his wake. Once he reached the age of two, my friends stopped coming over to my house to play with me. Andrew demanded constant attention. If I tried to lock him out of my room for a bit of privacy, he laid down in the hallway, put his mouth up to the bottom of the door, and loudly demanded that I either come out or let him in. When he became older, he discovered he had become strong enough to push (or kick) the door open in spite of locks. I clearly remember him bursting through my bedroom door early one Saturday morning, while I was in a dead sleep, to tell me about some cartoon that was on TV. The force of his entry splintered the door frame and sent a large chunk of it flying toward my head. Waking up to eye-poking projectiles in my own room is not my idea of fun.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg. Andrew always seemed to be getting into something as a child: urinating off of the front porch, punching his best friend between the eyes at school, cutting the corners off of MY school certificates of achievement, shooting his BB gun off of the roof, repeatedly flushing his underwear down the toilet, nearly setting our parents' bedroom on fire--the list is practically endless. I'd need a book to accurately paint the whole picture.

At the same time, my brother taught my family to laugh in ways we had never laughed before. I don't mean a chuckle here and there, either. I mean the kind of laughter that causes people to cry, and gasp, and beg for mercy. This happened most often around the dinner table when Andrew cracked a joke--he was brilliant at situational humor--or when I used my unique vocabulary to creatively recount his latest antic. I laughed so hard because of him once that I shot sweet iced tea out of my nose and into my dinner plate (thankfully, I had just emptied it). And to this day, my dad still laughingly recalls my description of Andrew's front-porch bathroom break: "...and suddenly, I heard this rustling in the grass..." I was only nine years old at the time, and gravely disturbed by my three-year-old brother's lack of propriety.

I'd like to say that I started out loving my brother when he first appeared on the scene, but that's not exactly true. OCD and ADHD rarely make good bedfellows. Yet over the years of having few people to depend on aside from each other, we developed a very special bond that I treasure. He's now out living his own life, successfully married, raising a beautiful daughter, and pursuing his dreams in his own special way. I have no doubt that when he leaves this world, he'll have crowds of people lined up around the block just to attend his funeral. That's just the way he is, and I'm proud to call him family. Way to go, Bro.

Family Therapy

It's amazing to me how the past can come back to haunt a person 5, 10, or even 15 years into the future. That's the situation I found myself in a couple of weeks ago, thinking about an incident from my childhood involving a man named Joe.

Joe was a missionary from Mexico, a rather rotund man in his late fifties with a large, graying mustache that curled up on the ends. As you may have remembered, my father pastored small churches for many years, so my family often hosted missionaries and evangelists in our home. Since Joe had received support from my hometown church long before my dad took over as pastor, he continued to make the annual trek across the U.S. in his tiny, battered camper to collect food and clothes for some of Mexico's poorest families. While in town, he stayed in the church's missionary quarters but came over nearly every evening to have dinner with my family.

One evening after dinner while watching TV, my mom and dad both stepped outside for a few minutes, leaving me and Joe alone. While they were gone, Joe called me over to where he was sitting. He then wrapped me in a tight hug that pressed me against him. While holding me like this, he fondled my chest and asked if I had missed him since his last visit. I don't remember my answer, but I was certainly freaked out. I was only around 11 at the time.

The next day, I told my parents what happened. A couple of days later, Joe was gone. He returned to town a year later, but he never stayed at our house and I never saw him again. However, my parents never told me what happened after that incident. Did they confront him? Did they tell others in the church? I never knew, and not knowing always bothered me.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I had endured the silence long enough, so I called my dad and asked him what happened. Turns out my dad did confront Joe (albeit in his general roundabout fashion). Of course, time is the enemy of memory--he couldn't recall much about the conversation or what Joe's response had been. But what he did tell me was this: By the time Joe returned the next year, my dad was no longer pastoring the church, so Joe contacted the man who originally hosted him at the church--the church's previous pastor and my dad's good friend. The man had no room in his house for Joe, so he called my dad and asked if Joe could stay with us. My father flatly refused. When his friend asked why, my dad told him what Joe had done. A heated argument ensued. The man felt sure that some type of misunderstanding had occurred...and how dare my dad say such terrible things about a man he had known personally for so many years, let alone a missionary!

But my dad wouldn't budge, not even to save one of his only friendships. My dad told me that the conversation upset him so badly that he didn't sleep that night. But my dad was willing to do anything to keep Joe away from me. The sadness in my dad's voice as he told this story--sadness for what I had experienced--was heartbreaking.

I never knew.

Then my dad said something I had never heard him say before. He said I had endured so many terrible things, and he was proud of the way I had risen above them all and made something of myself. At that moment, a new love for my dad flooded my heart, and a great darkness caused by years of doubt and anger was lifted from my mind. It was the best therapy I had ever received.

Some people might criticize my dad for what he did--namely, letting Joe go. Some parents would have called the police or thrown punches or had Joe run out of town. But they don't know what it was like for my father, being such a meek individual, pastoring a small-town church where his extended family comprised half the congregation. My dad handled the situation in the only way he knew how, and--knowing my dad the way I do--that's good enough for me. Thanks, Dad.