It’s been a long time since I entered this space, but somehow the urge was too strong to ignore this time. The thing that finally did it for me? Muffins.

So much is going on right now (as it always is) but it seems like there’s more to argue about than ever. People pick their sides, draw their lines in the sand, ‘cancel’ and condemn. So what can be the great equalizer in all this division and madness?? I offer you muffins.

Our friend, food
I’d like to offer this as well: food is our friend. It’s possible that food does not need to be a plague, a struggle, an altar on which to sacrifice health or happiness. It can just be.

I love food in the sense that I love a good brisk walk, a cuddle with my babes, a cool lake on a hot day. It’s enjoyable. It feeds me.

I hope for today, you can enjoy with me.

A muffin story
Long before muffins, today we are outside, the dew on the grass is gently warming. We walk up to the field and plant a few experimental seedlings. Breaking up clods of grass from dark soil with spades, our hands. We clear a small little row of bare earth. The kids argue about who will ineffectively use the small shovel, and then we tuck seedlings in and leave them to the elements, hoping.

When we walk back to the house something about the downhill slope, the cool air, sends us all to our own peaceful place. Me to the garden to plant more seedlings, the kids to their own nature adventure. It smells everywhere like growth, like cocoa shells and worms.

All the movement and activity makes us actually hungry and we go inside for fresh eggs and half a piece of toast, a strawberry each.

The kids run back outside while I clean up the kitchen.

It’s almost midday, getting warmer so I don’t know if I should bake. But here they are. Sitting on the counter are two glossy apples as green as the new grass. I take mental inventory. Whole carrots, oats and raisins, baking soda. Out comes the recipe.

Morning glory muffins.

I don’t remember when I first had these muffins, but clearly they left an impression. My recipe is so loved, I’m not quite sure what color the paper was when I first wrote it down.

Many a friend and family member has requested these muffins to comfort their soul or feed their healing body. Many a morning these muffins have brought me back from wandering mental spaces.

First the carrots. I peel off the outer layers of dirt and ribbing into the scrap bowl. Now long, bright-orange ribbons form a pile on my cutting board. Can you see the green apples loose from their bitter shiny skins and become wedges of porous white? Can you smell the aromas lifting from the wood board? Lemon soap, eucalyptus, apple’s tang and carrot’s earth.

The fruit and veggies wait on the board as I wash three brown eggs, warm as my skin, and crack them into a bowl of measured olive oil. Vanilla makes the liquid rich yellow

Now the dry ingredients go into their own bowl. Oats, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon– all their own beautiful neutral. It’s almost a shame to mix it together, but we must.

Then, I chop the carrot ribbons into confetti and the apples become imperfect cubes. All go into the dry ingredients (raisins too). I mix and coat the sticky fresh things, ensuring they wont sink to the bottom of the batter.

Finally the wet ingredients flood the dry. We (I have a helper now) mix it all into a sticky mass. These muffins will be anything but dry.

I paste the sides of the tins with butter and fill each tiny cave to the brim with batter. One spoon scrapes another, dropping in a sweet mound of mix– a motion that I’ve known since childhood. When it’s done, kids lick the sweet spoons clean.

Into the oven they go, and soon the house fills with smells of cinnamon cake and baked apples.

Later, when we bite into these muffins, we get all the moisture and tang of the apples, the sweet bursts of the raisins and cake-y smack of cinnamon batter. We lather our muffins with butter and eat more than one. We give them to neighbors and friends and sometimes freeze them for later. We eat them and remember that life can be simple and good.

These muffins don’t solve world problems and won’t run for president; they don’t even satisfy hunger for long, but their simple goodness is worth sharing.

I hope you enjoyed this little muffin story.

xoxo
Meg

I can’t believe it’s been a year. What grief and trauma do— it’s almost like an alien abduction, a trip to a different dimension. We have lived a lifetime, yet it feels sometimes like we are right back in that room, hearing the words we prayed we wouldn’t hear.

I wish I was exaggerating.

I have thought many times about what I want to say to all of you, the people who hoped and prayed and donated, sent gifts and texts and letters. Some of you we know and some of you we don’t, but we are thankful for all of you. Every single soul.

I wish, wish, wish that today I was thanking you and talking about miracles, showing you pictures of our one-year-old daughter. Instead, I am thanking you and saying YOU were and are the miracle. You showed up as an army of supporters holding us during those dark hours and throughout this past year.

You loved us. You showed incredible love to our baby girl. I believe she knows this. I believe she felt your love.

I want to share a few things with you.

When someone grieves, they really do want the world to stop.
 Somehow, strangely, Covid stopped the world, and for us, it was ok. Sure, it made some things difficult, and I’m by no means downplaying the hurt and fear that came with it, but the unexpected gift was a slower pace, zero expectations. That is what grieving people need from you: zero expectations.

Laughter and silliness and hope don’t have to die too. Our kids make us laugh every day, and sometimes we do that for each other. We have hope for this place to get better and hope for heaven, the place where we’ll all be together again someday.

Hurting people are everywhere. I can never know what the person next to me has gone through and they don’t know what I’ve been through. Our everyday words matter. Our everyday actions matter. Kindness goes a long way.

Loss of a child is not something you get over. It stays with you because love for your children is both powerful and eternal. We’re not climbing some grief mountain to get to the other side. We’re carrying her life and death with us daily; some days the burden is light, some days heavy. Everyday we appreciate those who carry it with us.

Finally, to my sweet baby girl, Happy Birthday.
I wanted you. I prayed for you. I hoped against hope you’d stay with us.
We miss you always, but especially today.

Sending oceans of love to you from all of us.
We love you; we love you; we love you.

Save a spot next to Jesus for me.
xoxo, Mama

Besides the back of my dog’s head, you are looking at a shoveled driveway. But it wasn’t shoveled by me or my husband. And nope, not by our dog either.

The story behind it:

It’s about half past one and my dog starts barking at the front door. I’m shushing him, as usual, because I just got the babe down for nap, and I’m working on the toddler now. But then I hear voices. I look out the window and see a troupe of middle school to high school-age girls in my driveway. Actually they are shoveling my driveway!!

I watch for a second, dumbfounded. Is that really my driveway? Am I so sleep deprived that I’m seeing things? The girls are nearly done, so I open the door and call out to them. I recognize a few of them as direct neighbors and a few others from summer bonfires. I thank them profusely, offer snacks and ask if they’re a Girl Scout group or something of the sort. Nope. Just doing this for people who need it done. Just walking through our hood and spontaneously blessing the woolly socks off people.

I snap a picture, thank them again and text one of their moms. What a daughter. What a blessing.

This has officially made my day.

I hear “love your neighbor” a lot in the circles I run in. It’s a catch phrase and a catch all for people trying to convince you to be kind to that guy you don’t like. Or thoughtful of others’ struggles and perceptions half way around the globe.

But half the time we don’t take it literally. Half the time we don’t even know our actual neighbors by name.

I’m lucky enough to be part of an amazing neighborhood where I know most of the people I live by. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make it even better. I’ve been a little stuck in my own world of raising little humans and hanging with mommies that go with them.

But my hood is where I live, the people who quietly (or loudly) exist nearest to me. People with basic and complex needs. People with families and drama and struggles. People like me.

These girls reminded me that loving my neighbor starts with knowing my neighbors! With saying hello.

And it continues with simple things. Homemade cards and hand-me-downs. Shoveled driveways and mowed lawns.

And an extra large batch of blueberry muffins.

Comin at ya, neighbors!

The other morning as I walked around our cozy little house with my watering can, I saw the weed that I’d been avoiding for months. It had grown to an astonishing length. Nearly taller than the hosta plant it was leaching from, and here I was dumping water on it again.

It was one of those pokey weeds with jagged looking leaves and little stickers that lodge into your skin when you touch them. So, naturally, I avoided touching it, leaving it for weeks and weeks and promising myself that I’d get on my gloves one of these days and pull it out.

I’m not going to pretend I’m the first person to compare gardens, plants, and weeds to spiritual walks, but hey, I’m going to be one of them. Because this weed grew for no other reason than my own complacency. I let it grow right up alongside of my healthy hosta until finally it was too big to ignore. I think that’s what complacency is in our lives–seeing problems, but ignoring them until they nearly demand to be noticed.

Recently my husband and I went through some scary stuff with his health, some stuff that is still lingering. With all the hospital visits, sleepless nights, 9-11 calls, dr. visits, we began to do something we needed to do for a long time; we started to pray. Not just the prayers you mumble before falling asleep, but prayers that take time to mine from your soul because they are so deep and old within you. We started to play worship music in our home, to meditate, even sing the words together–something we’d only really done together in church so a slightly off-key melody is drowned out by those around you. We talked, cried, prayed and sang in a new way not because we became suddenly more spiritual, but because we needed to. Because we couldn’t be complacent anymore. And it was so, so good.

The funny thing is, when I put on my gardening gloves that morning (okay, I don’t even own gardening gloves… I put on my husband’s leather work gloves) and  pulled out that weed, I began to see more.  I pulled out another short stubby one, one sprawled across the earth, then another frail looking one with surprisingly grippy roots. Weeds I hadn’t really noticed before littered the ground, and I felt good. There was my complacency pulled out down to the roots,  and there was a clean little plot of hostas, their purple buds just beginning to flower.

I decided to write about my labor and delivery experience in a place where I can always find it with the hopes that it helps other women who want to try a natural birth.

Monday
At almost a week overdue, I’d been feeling tightness in my abdomen off and on for days, so the fact that I was feeling it again didn’t surprise me. I prepped a roast that day and snacked a lot, feeling even more hungry and thirsty than usual.  The day had been warm and bright, so that evening my friend and I drove to the tennis courts to watch my husband and brother play. Throughout the game, I was having sharper more focused pain, and even sitting down became uncomfortable. I turned to my friend and said, “this can’t be labor, can it?” Around dusk, I called out to my husband, E , and said it was time to go. On the drive home, I nonchalantly mentioned that I might be having contractions– and they seemed to be coming about 10 minutes apart. He was calm, knowing I’d had these pains before and they hadn’t lasted.

Back at the home front, my doubts about being in labor grew smaller as the pain grew sharper, wrapping me in a way I’d never felt before. I encouraged my husband to eat, get showered and get ready to go. I grabbed the birth ball and mat. E lit a candle, put on calming music, and we began to time the contractions.  As the contractions came closer together, I took out a encouraging notes from friends and began to read them. I found myself going back to the birth ball again and again, leaning over it to sway through the gripping pain and letting out low sounds as I visualized my body opening up. E was with me on the floor, rubbing my back and timing the length and space between the pains. Finally, around one a.m., with contractions only 3 minutes apart, we left for the hospital.

Prodromal labor
Immediately upon arriving, the nursing staff put us in a labor room, and the nurse and midwife began to assess how I was progressing. Soon enough, we discovered that though my contractions were only 3-4 minutes apart, and I seemed to be actively laboring, I was dilated only a very slight amount. My options were to take a strong drug for the pain and another drug to help me sleep (with the hopes my body would keep working while I slept) or to go home. Striving for a drug-free birth, but confused at what my body was doing, I didn’t know which path to take. E and I took a moment to chat alone, and he helped me remember our goals. We decided to go home. Walking back out those hospital doors, stopping in the hall as my body continued to contract was beyond physically painful. I felt both frustration and fear, the tears I’d saved for when the pain was worst starting to finally escape. But the beautiful thing about tears is that they are another kind of birth, a release of anger, frustration and fear. I let myself cry and then resolved to continue the journey.

Tuesday
That night was a restless one; sleep came only between contractions which kept coming at 5, 6, and 7 minutes apart for some time. A dose of antihistamine was a big help giving me those much-needed minutes of rest in between. However, as my body relaxed, contractions slowed down to around 10-15 minutes apart, leaving me confused at why labor would not progress.

The next morning, contractions were still pulsating through me, and as I labored, I clung to E and to the hope that my body was moving in the right direction. We made an appointment to get my cervix checked rather than going to the birth center right away. Though I’d hoped for better news, I again had to fight discouragement when I heard I was dilated only 3 cm. The midwife assured me that my body had done some major work over the past 12 hours and she was confident the baby would be born that night.

Going home again inspired another bout of tears, and the resolve to have this baby tonight. With each new contraction, I fought fear, battled the temptation to panic.  A quote that had been an encouragement to me throughout pregnancy now became an anchor:

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers–strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.

I felt anything but strong, yet something deep within me rose up, and in my weaknessGod gave me strength; I kept going and kept going–swaying out the pain with E right by my side. At around 7:30 that evening, we left for the hospital again, deciding that this time, we were coming back with our baby.

Delivery

We were both excited when we heard our favorite midwife was on the birthing floor that night, and then further blessed to have a nurse we’d gone to college with. But shortly after, we had to fight discouragement yet again. I was still only dilated around 3 cm. Again, the options for drugs were presented. Again, E and I consulted alone and I decided to try a more natural intervention. I was exhausted from laboring for the past 24 hours, but still did not have peace about disrupting my body’s natural process.  I requested to have my waters broke, and Sarah, our midwife, looked at me and said, “Okay, but then you’re having this baby tonight.”

“Bummer,” was my sarcastic response.

Feeling my waters break was the most euphoric part of labor–the wild rush of warmth against my skin, the knowledge that there was nothing but a few centimeter between me and my baby girl. Afterwards, I got in the tub and labored– feeling the loving hands of my husband and the nurse on my back each time a contraction came, hearing their prayers over me and our baby. Before long, I started to feel the urge to push and suddenly wanted to get out of the water.

When they checked me this time, I was dilated to 6cm! We were having this baby!

E was excited, and though my hopes had finally come to fruition, the next batch of contractions felt like my entire body was being wrung out of energy and stamina. I could feel myself involuntarily pushing, could hear myself asking for something for the pain. Then, only moments later, I was on the bed, and Sarah was telling me “Okay, Megan, it’s time. Grab your legs and get ready to push.”

Grabbing my legs I bore down, trying to place my energy where I felt unbelievable pressure. I reached down and felt the soft slope of my baby’s head. She was so close! Sarah coached me through each push, E at my right and constantly encouraging. I heard myself screaming, but not the high-pitched, I-just-saw-a-spider scream. It was a war-call, a cry of  aggressive determination that I’d never heard myself make before.  Around 40 minutes in, it became apparent that my perineum wasn’t going to budge enough for her head. Trusting Sarah and my husband’s opinion, I asked for an episiotomy. And into the pain and the stinging, I pushed, Sarah helping me use each contraction to the fullest. A few more pushes– all my physical and spiritual and mental self into those moments, all my resolve and hope. And suddenly release. Suddenly she was there, on my belly, all red and teary and whole.

“She’s here? She’s really here?” I just kept saying. Because through it all I could’ve never imagined the amazement I’d feel, how quickly everything–the pain, the fear, the struggle–felt like a dream when I ran my fingertips over her feather-soft skin.

Our baby girl.