A Baby is A Baby, No Matter How Small...

(https://www.facebook.com/IDSCforLIFE)

I was looking at photos today of some babies that were born premature at 7 months and 3lbs 5 oz. just like me.  My mission is to hunt down a photo of me when I was born, if it even exists anymore, because my parents had somehow lost it and I am just so curious. It really amazed me and made me pretty emotional at the same time because in Canada a baby can be aborted at exactly this stage in life and also for the fact that it is a girl. There are no laws and no accountability and this just makes me sick beyond belief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twtt-mCsXAM&feature=player_embedded

If you think about it, just one second before I was born, the same doctor that helped to bring me into the world could have killed me (yes I am using that word because if you look up what they do that is the only word you can find for it) and that is perfectly ok with the government.  One second.  If someone wants the precious little wonderful life that is growing inside of them, they call it a baby, but if they don't want it, it's just called a fetus or a blob of cells. This makes absolutely NO freakin sense to me whatsoever in any way, shape, or form.  I mean we all had to start from somewhere and it's just common sense.  To see a baby that is just born being held close against her mothers chest and new to the world with all the love that we give it. One second.  Just one second before and it would have never even have had a chance to live and breathe. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXCmt8PBZvk&feature=channel&list=UL

Things could have been much much worse for me health wise than just the issues that I have had to struggle with since I was born.  I know I stayed in the hospital a while and my mom could not even hold me during this time; I think she could only touch me through the little hole in the side of the incubator.  I know I had tons of tubes hooked up to me and equipment so I could breathe, but I was so fortunate that I did not have to undergo any surgeries.  I turned out pretty normal.  Well, sometimes I wonder.....(There is not too much more that I know as my mom can't remember much due to arthritis after I was born, which lead to medication that left her so drugged that she lost huge chunks of her memory, such as my details.) 

Sometimes I wonder why God kept me alive when there are many other babies that didn't make it.  I have no answer to that one, but I do know that I appreciate more and more the fact that I am around.  To think that I would not have been around if my mother listened to some doctor (who is not God by the way, but just some human like us) if he had told her to abort me.  There are so many stupid and ridiculous reasons that people give for allowing abortions versus so called really good or valid reasons. There are no good reasons. Am I God that I can take a life or give a life? If someone harmed a pregnant woman that was 9 months pregnant and about to give birth and the baby died, it would be murder? but the same thing happens 100,000 times around the world daily.  Just think if your son, daughter, friend, mother, father, husband, wife, niece, nephew or anyone you love was taken from you suddenly. 

I don't know why God blesses some women with babies and some not.  I am not God and I will never know why he allows certain things to happen in this imperfect world. I know that there are probably tons of parents out there that never wanted to have kids and complain about them all the time and wish that they were never born and will actually tell their kids that to their face.  But I do know that there are tons of wonderful loving couples that would give anything in the world to have a baby and even to save just one from an abortion; to give it love and raise it as their own and give it a chance.  A chance like I had just at living.  There are so many awesome organizations and practical help and love for couples that are going through an unwanted, unplanned, unhappy, or scary pregnancy.  There is hope and healing and love and life.

http://www.thesignalhill.com

http://weneedalaw.ca

http://www.clcbc.org

I worked with a lady some years ago whose daughter was pretty young, maybe 16? and her mom found out she was pregnant.  Well, the lady was so angry that the daughter got pregnant (not angry that she was sleeping around though).  Then I saw a bit of happiness as she talked about being a grandmother.  Then she talked about her daughter wanting to have an abortion.  It was really sad because I could tell the lady was in denial trying to convince herself  that it was up to her daughter and she herself was having too much fun at this point in her life to become a grandmother and look after a baby and her daughter was not responsible enough to raise a child.  I remember the heavy sad feeling in my heart. I don't know what happened to that family as I had left that job before I knew.  Even to this day about 5 years later, I still wish I had said or done something more.  

A precious baby growing inside the womb is just as much a living breathing baby outside the womb.  They both need our love and they both need our protection.

"Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings...?"

I can't believe sometimes how simple little things trigger memories and emotions that you think were long gone and forgotten.  I used to pride myself on the fact that for years nothing ever really made me cry, except the odd sappy movie.  Not sure why that was.  I think I was a pretty emotional kid and then I realized that it got me nowhere to put my heart on the line, feel, be vulnerable etc. because I learnt that you were just going to get badly hurt again and again and again.  It was far better to be strong and not let anything touch you.  But somewhere along the way, and in people that I loved that lived in denial, I saw that having concrete walls all around you is not all that it is cracked up to be.  It's very tough and painful to do sometimes, but it's far healthier to face your fears and take a chance with the possibility of being hurt, then to live in a supposed safe and closed off comfort zone, never knowing what could be.

Emotions.  I think with my heart. Sometimes I wish I was not an emotional person, but I have had to face the fact that it is part of who I am.  Yes, sappy movies make me cry.  Yes, I want the prince charming on the white horse to come and take me away to his castle.  Yes, I love happy endings, even if they are boring and predictable.  Yes, to cute puppies and babies and hearts and roses.  Sometimes I hate it because it takes a lot out of me. On the flip side, I also consider myself somewhat of a strong person that thinks alot (way too much) with their head.  I am always analyzing things and trying to figure out why things are the way they are and why people are they way they are a little too much I think?  Sometimes I just need to just DO more instead of second-guessing myself and not being confident of my actions.  I guess I do enjoy that I am both the feeling and the thinking mixed together.  Feelings enrich my world and grow my heart, but thinking helps me make good decisions and keep me anchored through it all and helps me realize how far I have come from my past.

Even something as simple as an email from someone that used to be a huge part of my life and seeing how they signed it with my nickname (which is used only by my family really) brought a whole flood of emotions to the surface.  Or seeing old photos or emails or letters from someone that was everything to me, but slowly fading away into the past that was the old me. Sometimes it is something you think is very small.  A visit from someone that you were so close to for so many years and then not can even make you realize how your past is a part of who you are and why you deal with things a certain way.  Broken relationships for any reason (be it death or breakups) have such a profound effect on how you see your own worth and that is hard.  Even hearing the family fighting across the alley tonight for some reason made me think of certain things from my childhood. You cannot run from your past anymore than you can run from the rain in Vancouver.  It is impossible.

So don't run.  Leave the past in the past where it belongs. Think and move ahead to hope and a future and make a step in the right direction; forwards. I think the best thing is to realize how far along you have come and how you have made progress when something triggers a memory or feeling from you and you realize it doesn't bother you like it used to. God is an expert at healing us like that.  He takes the broken pieces of our shattered hearts and he pieces them back together and then gives us a new heart back.  Eventually. When I think about the past 4 years in my own life, I have no idea why I am still sane and why I have adjusted as well as I have to things that have happened.  These things are a part of who you are, but they don't have to rule your entire life and cripple you from living the life you were meant to be blessed with here on earth. There is no possible reason or any explanation that I can come up with except God.  I didn't adopt any positive thinking and it was nothing that I did on my own whatsoever.  How can you fix yourself?

I am around very highly intelligent and educated people every day, which is part of my job.  There are times where I feel pretty inadequate and just downright dumb compared to them.  But, they are just flesh and blood regular people that were created out of nothing like I was and they had to start from somewhere.  They would be the first to admit that they are just regular people as well (although some may not want to admit it).  They have a soul and a spirit and a heart and a mind just as human as mine is. I have learnt so much from being around them and getting to know them as people, as well as seasoned professionals.  There is a lot of talk and writing and debates in general in the world about proving the existence of God through many different ways, such as science. But ultimately you have to have your own personal story or experience that makes its way into your heart from the beginning of the journey where it starts in your head.

The only thing I can say about that is some of the best proofs in my life came from real experiences and not anything tangible. God does work in a billion different ways to reveal himself to our world in the most amazing way through people, nature, science and discoveries, church, media, music, etc. The list goes on and on.  And all those things most definitely did help my faith, my hope, my insight, and my knowledge.  (And I believe in as much education as you can get, which I hope to do one day.) But the best way that God chooses to work in my own life is LIFE.  The school of life. You want proof that God exists?  I would love more than anything to tell the whole world that he does, just from things I have gone through, now sitting here in BC typing away and wondering how I even got this far. I still have no idea.  That's God to me. I never want to take for granted any blessings that God sees fit to bring my way, even though I am tempted to think about all the things I do not have.  I am only human after all.

Again, it was nothing special that I did or think or say to get through it all, except to go through my pain and face it head on in my own way, instead of living in the world of denial and concrete walls.  To be in the dark and hopeless valleys of rejection, fear, death, loss, sickness, hate, loneliness WITH God.  Knowing he was never going to leave me like so many people that I had loved.  Knowing that he was with me in my brokenness and with me in the times that my heart ached so much that I could not even cry. And the times when all I could do is cry and never want to stop.  The times when I wondered if I would ever see happiness again and what I had ever done to deserve the misery. The times when I hated myself and others and thought that I was not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or just enough for anyone.

God was there through it all, like the footprints poem.  He was carrying me all along to the other side of it all.  Hebrews 4:15-16:  "For we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tried as we are in all things except sin.  Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" and 11:1-3:  "Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen; for by it the men of old had testimony borne to them.  By faith we understand that the world was fashioned by the word of God; and thus things visible were made out of things visible."

They say that people write best about what they know about.  It does get better.  I can attest to that.  That's all the proof I need.

A Reflection on Life (In Memory of Chris Doty)

I had forgot I had even written this until today when I went through all my poetry from over the years.  It was written pretty close to the funeral of a friend of ours from our old St. Joe's youth group in 2001.  How little did I know that years later it would still be relevant to me in different ways.

Oh God, we seem to think we know how this complicated game of life works.  We seem to trust that our short earthly life will stretch on for miles and will never reach the end of the road.  We take it all for granted.  We are so dumbfounded and struck when we discover that a companion on this road was taken so suddenly from us.  It wounds us, scars us, and hurts our spirit in a real and tangible way.  And yet, it also alerts us to the fact that it is you who start and finish our journey, not us, and that we should love stronger, hope firmer, and become what you want us to be.  Ultimately, what we are doing now at this very moment determines our place in your everlasting kingdom.

Why then do we waste our lives here so much and throw it away on trivial little things that will never last and that makes us all the more empty?  I guess we are all searching and longing in our own ways to be desperately loved and needed.  We learn from those who've passed us already and are holding the prize in their hands.  We look at some lives and think that they were so successful in the world's eyes, but what and who are they to you, God?  Does all the fame and money in the world matter to God?  But others, dearest to our hearts, cause us to ponder our own lives and to wish that we are like them; loving, giving, unselfish, and compassionate.

Not that we hold them up as gods or idols, but rather we understand that for their right and simple lives, they are now walking with you.  They now, at long last, have what we all spend our entire lives searching for.  They didn't know it on earth, but they have found it now.  Maybe it is a call to action, a knowledge of how frail and little we really are.  Maybe it points us to always keep the end in sight; to always think of you and of each other and that it is the heart that counts.  And in the end, you will come to greet us with open arms and a smile and hold us close.  For all along, you knew that one day we would find out way back home to you.

I Want You To Love Me...

I honestly wrote this "just because" poem because it struck me how we all want relationships.  Relationships that last and relationships that don't come and go and have real quality to them.  It dawned on me that we should not have pre-conceived notions of a certain "type" of person that we want to be with, but that there are heart qualities that are much more important and that we long for.  Hope you like it.  (And I was not even in a sappy mood or anything.)

I want you to love me when we are old and grey, and the youth that we know is slipping away.
I want you to love me when I can't walk anymore, and you have to help me just to get to the door.
I want you to love me when I cannot remember, when I get discouraged and show my temper.
I want you to just be there no matter what, and love me in spite of all my crazy stuff.
I want you to love me when I can't offer the world, when there are no more diamonds and gold and pearls.
I want you to love me when I can't sing any more, when I worry and doubt about what is in store.
I want you to love me and never grow tired, I want us to always have that one fire.
I want you to love me for everything I am, for the life in my soul, for the things in God's plan.
I want you to love me when I just can't go on, and you're there by my side encouraging me on.
I want you to love me when there is nothing I can do, but give you my heart love you too.
I want you to love me in good times and bad, through everything happy and everything sad.
I want you to always be there for me, I want it to always be me that you need.
I want you to hold my hand and my heart, to be the missing piece and the light in my dark.
I want you to love me for my faith and my self, for that is the greatest of all treasure and wealth.

Maria Santarossa 2012