Day Dreaming

February 16th, 2012

I’m sort of a crazy dream addict. I love coming up with these crazy big ideas and day dreaming about them actually happening. Sometimes I’ve even gone so far as to write up investment proposals for my crazy ideas, other times I’ve just secretly held on to them in my heart. Many of them have come and gone faster than I can fully form them into words. Others have lingered, grown, and morphed.

There were the  unfleshed out dreams like the dream to “build something”, or “be part of something bigger than myself”, or the dream to “change the education system”, or to “change the church”. And then there are other ideas that are more thought through.

I recently found a whole document I’d written just after graduating college that talked about the dream to start a high school for future entrepreneurs. Then there was the dream to have my own theatre company. And the dreams to start our own companies of various sorts, and the dreams to design and build our own house. There were the dreams to have land and animals, and the dreams to live in community and close proximity with others. There was the dream to travel around the world every year with our kids spending a few months on each of the major continents. There was the Life Studio dream. There was the dream to teach yoga and have my own yoga studio. And, of course, there have been more dreams and ideas that I can’t even remember.

Then there have also been the dreams of others that have captured my imagination and become my own. Dreams like starting a church in Prague, starting a community of artists, starting a retreat center community, and so many others.

Lately, as I’ve been thinking back on some some of these  daydreams and ideas, I’ve recognized some consistencies and common threads between them. Ive begun to recognize some touch points for what draws me and what capitivates my imagination. Almost all of my dreams seem to have thesecommon threads:

  • Starting something. I want to start something, create something. I don’t really want to come into an existing structure and work within it. I want to be a part of shaping and building something. I want to have a voice in what something looks like, and what it becomes.
  • Community. There is almost always a communal aspect to my daydreams. What I want to start and build is community. At various seasons the type of community has been different – an  entrepreneurial community, an art community, a church community, a yoga community, an intentional living/commune community, etc. But, always my dreams take on a communial aspect.
  • Physical Space. This is something that I’m only just recognizing, but physical space effects me and I ofte daydream in pictures of layouts and physical space.Even people whoknow me well, would probably never guess this about me, because it’s not really apparent in my life. I have friends who are spacial beauticians, and that is NOT me. But, I do think in terms of space p, but it’s the flow and form of space that interests me and when I day dream my ideas almost always take on an aspect of creating a physicalspace in my head that promotes the type of community I desire to create (sometimes I wish I had followed my childhood dream to become an architect!).
  • Creativity and Health. These are the topics of interest. These at the frame works that my ideas almost always fall into. The specifics of these look different at different times, but the ideas that captivately all have some aspect of promoting some form of creativity and/or some form of health.

Honestly though this part of me that loves to dream and come up with ideas has sort of laid dormant over the past few years since becoming a mom. I haven’t written about it much but I did suffer from some postpartum depression after having Thad and one thing that I really noticed was it became really difficult for me to dream, or at least to get really excited about dreams. I no longer would think of some crazy thing I wanted to do and then get so excited about it that I would lay awake making the dream bigger and bigger and fleshing it out until I could fully visualize it.

It wasn’t until Thad turned one that I started to feel like I could dream again and I had one dream in particular that I played with. But it wasn’t really my own dream, it was more like I was testing the waters of desire again. I dabbled, I dipped my feet in, sometimes I even got excited translating their dream to fit with old dreams of my own, but I still kept some distance. Somehow I knew it wasn’t really my dream to dream.

But, all that’s starting to change. I feel it deep in my heart. I want things again. And isn’t that the start of dreams? Desire. Ive realized something lately… In order to really dream, really desire and let your desires come to live in dreams there needs to exist a certain level of stability. It’s hard to dream big dreams when all of your desires are for very basic needs – like sleep. That’s how the beginning years of motherhood were for me – I was always tired, I was always hungry, I lived with a deep uncertainty about our future. I wasn’t taking care of my most basic needs and I loved surrounded by instability and uncertainty. It was hard to look past those basic desires to the kinds of desires that breed dreams. But, that’s all changing.

As I’ve written before we are stabilizing settling, finding our feet again. We’ve had a new start and we feel like we are coming into our own in this new place and stage of life. And I’ve started to dream again. Started to tap into my desires again. And it’s fun. I’ve missed this side of me. So in the next post I’ll tell you about my most recent crazy dream. It’s a good one!

Rejoicing in the journey,

Bethany Stedman

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Settling into Who We Are

February 11th, 2012

Just before the new year I wrote about how 2011 was a year of instability, a year of shifting sand, but now we finally feel like we are standing on solid ground. We are finally living in our own space. Bryan’s work has really stabilized and expanded. And for the first time I finally feel like a mom. That may sound silly since I became a mom more than two years ago, but it’s only been recently that I’ve really settled into being a mom. I think it’s only been since the birth of my second child that I’ve fully made peace with being a mom and allowed motherhood to become one of my primary identities.

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I told Bryan recently that I feel like we are finally starting to come into our own. I feel like we are settling into who we are at this moment in our lives. I keep thinking of this quote from Carl Rogers,

“Becoming a Person means that the individual moves toward being, knowingly and acceptingly, the process which he inwardly and actually is… He is not trying to be more than he is, with the attendant feelings of insecurity or bombastic defensiveness. He is not trying to be less than he is, with the attendant feelings of guilt or self-depreciation. He is increasingly listening to the deepest recesses of his psychological and emotional being, and finds himself increasingly willing to be, with greater accuracy and depth, that self which he most truly is.”

I feel like we have sort of been experiencing that a little bit. I feel like we have been settling into the selves that we most truly are.

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This feeling of settling into ourselves has, for me, also extended to my appearance. A settling into my own skin, you could say. Recently when I look in the mirror I have had the shocking and refreshing experience of thinking, “I look like who I am.” I don’t think I look like my ideal self, or the cultural ideal that I carry around. But, I do feel like what I see in the mirror fits well with the rolls and personas I actually am at this moment in time. I look in the mirror and I see an almost thirty year old mom of two. I see a wife who’s been happily married long enough to know that no marriage is completely happy or secure and long enough to be more secure than ever in her relationship with her husband. I see stretch marks and an untoned belly and instead if thinking “ugh, I hate myself”, I think, “yeah, I am a mom and that fits.”

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I say that this has been a shocking and refreshing experience because it’s an experience I’ve never had before. Ive never liked what I saw in the mirror, but more than that I didn’t feel like it fit. You see I’ve often felt like I didn’t look like myself when I looked in the mirror, didn’t look like I imagined myself looking, didn’t look like my age (once when I was 23 years old a flight attendant thought I was under 16 and told me I couldn’t sit in the emergency row – true story), didn’t look like the person I wanted to be or felt liked I was deep down.

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I think some of this was due to a lack of deep acceptance for the person I am, as well as holding onto identities that were not really me, or at least not yet me, or not fully me. My whole life, when I’ve looked in the mirror I’ve always been a little disappointed in what I saw. This was, of course, partly because I faced the same media messages about beauty and femininity that all women face. But, I think it was also partly because my image of myself, or, at least, the self I desired to be, didn’t match up with the self that I actually was in that particular moment. I always felt older or younger than I looked. I always felt that the image in the mirror didn’t fit the roles and personas I held for myself in my head. Until recently.

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For the first time in my life I feel like I’m settling into my own skin. I feel like I know who I am right now and, for the most part, I have a deep peace about the roles I am playing, the place I am at in life, and the direction I am heading. For the first time in my life questions like “who am I?” “what’s my purpose or role in life?” “what am I suppose to be doing with my life?” aren’t in the forefront of my mind and aren’t shaping my identity. Phew! What a relief!

It feels good to be in this place. It feels open and spacious and exciting. We are settling down, but we are not settling into mediocrity, we are settling into ourselves.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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New Blog Design

February 5th, 2012

Welcome to the newly redesigned bethstedman.com.

So, what do you think?

I had fun with this redesign. It seemed fitting that a new season of our lives, a new locale, and a new year would bring forth a new blog design. It feels so good to have it done and be able to share it with you all.

Whenever I redesign the look of this space it always gets me thinking about why I blog and what I want this space to be. It’s always been hard for me to answer those questions. There are so many reasons why I blog and at different times in life there have been different reasons. And there are so many different things that this space has been for me and that I want it to be in the future. I find it hard to describe those reasons, hard to put into words what bethstedman.com has been, is, and will be for me.

Sometimes when someone asks, I feel a little bit like I’m trying to explain the rules of grammar to a non-native English speaker – “I don’t really know why, but it just sounds right this way”. That’s a bit how I feel about blogging right now. I can’t really explain why, but it is just right. It fits. It’s part of me.

At various times I’ve tried to make this space something that didn’t fit. For example, I would feel guilty about the time I spent blogging and so I would try to make money from the blog, but it didn’t fit (and as you can see the ads are gone). I’m sloooooowly starting to realize something – you shouldn’t feel guilty for what you are. You shouldn’t feel bad for doing something that you have to do, something engrained into the fabric of who you are, something that brings you joy, something that you almost can’t help but do. Dancers don’t feel bad for dancing. Cooks don’t feel bad for cooking. Runners don’t feel bad for running. Mommy’s don’t feel bad for cuddling with their baby.

Me? Well, I write. I have to write. I always have in one form or another. I started my first journal at seven. In junior high i started writing poetry. In high school I would write sermons for fun. I enjoyed writing papers for school and must admit I even wrote one or two of my husbands school papers for him because it was fun and easy for me and tedious for him. But, I don’t just write, I blog. I had always written, but it wasn’t until I started blogging that something really clicked. It stirred something in me. It fit. Suddenly I could do more than just write, I could put something out into the world that others could read, and connect with, and respond to. I was a writer always, but I didn’t really have a voice until I found a platform.

Those of you who have only just stumbled upon this blog, those of you who have been reading my meanderings for years, those of you who have silently stalked, and those of you who have become friends, you have given me my voice. Thank you!

Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman

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Update on Baby Sage’s MRI

February 4th, 2012

Yesterday we made our way to Seattle Children’s Hospital in the dark.

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I hadn’t realized how nervous I was feeling about Sage’s MRI until I woke up in the night to nurse her and couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards. I just stared at her as she slept beside me. I knew an MRI was the next step we needed to take, but the thought of my baby under general anesthesia of course made me nervous.

In the morning before we left I was a flurry of nervous mommy energy, darting this way and that as I tried to get us out the door. I felt so grateful that my in-laws had taken Thad the night before (his first ever sleep over) and I didn’t have to deal with a two year old along with everything else. There have been so many moments lately when I send up silent thoughts of gratitude that we now live close to family for this season of our lives.

And then we arrived at Seattle Children’s.

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And again I said a quick prayer of gratitude that we live where we do. We always had pretty positive experiences with medical things in Prague, and felt well taken care of the few times we went to Prague hospitals for various reasons. But, there is something unimaginably calming when you walk nervously into a hospital building and are quickly greeted by people and signs that speak your language. There was no guess work, there was no translating. Sigh of relief.
But, Seattle children’s wasn’t just a good hospital experience because it was in English. I felt like it was a good hospital experience compared with others in the states as well. Everything was very well organized and structured, the building was clean and even beautiful in places. You could tell things had been well thought through. And well thought though with kids in mind. For example, this was the fun, inviting playground outside our window.

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Most of all though, everyone was just so friendly. People smiled and greeted us in the halls and asked if we needed help finding anything (that never happened in Prague hospitals). The doctors working with us really wanted to put us at ease. The anesthesiologist talked with us for quite a while, answering our questions, explaining what they would do, and even sharing stories about his own kids to help put us at ease. They were all very understanding and helpful.

When it came time they brought us and Sage to a prep area. We were able to hold her hand and be with her as they put her under. It was amazing to me how quickly she fell asleep. She looked so peaceful and still. We both gave her a kiss and then went up to Starbucks to wait.

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We got back to our room about forty minutes after we left her and waited for them to bring her back in, which wasn’t very long. When she got back she had a breathing tube in her nose. They had her hooked up to a machine to monitor her heart rate and all that. They took her temperature and did a heel prick to check her blood sugar. Everything looked good. She looked so small alone in the little bed. She shivered, we tucked the blanket closer around her. She looked beautiful.

They told us that as soon as she woke up we could hold her and I could nurse her. We waited. They said she should wake up soon. We waited. An hour went by. We waited. That period of waiting for her to wake up was probably the hardest for me. I was glad for the equipment monitoring her and that the doctors regularly checked on her. Eventually she woke up and was starving. We cuddled and nursed.

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They wanted to monitor her till 1pm. So we sat and read and cuddled and nursed. Apart from not being completely comfortable those few hours felt a little like a vacation to me. I didn’t have to do dishes, or laundry, or entertain a toddler, or listen to “mommy!mommy!” being screamed at me. Instead I got to just cuddle with my baby and talk and read with my husband for two hours. That part of the day was really nice.

Really the whole experience went as well as it possibly could have. The only negative was that we weren’t able to get an appointment with the neurologist until April. So, as of right now, we won’t know the results of the MRI until then. It’s a little frustrating to have gone through the stress of the MRI and know that there is information available about my daughters condition, but to still not know what that on formation is until April.

We were at least able to get a print out of the report and a cd of the MRI. We are thinking since we have the results we will try and see if we can get into a different neurologist to have someone interpret the results for us sooner. Or…anyone reading this know how to understand brain MRIs??

Whatever happens I find myself being continually reminded to take life one day at a time and to take this change in perceptions and expectations about my daughter one little piece of information at a time.

Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman

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Special Needs

January 25th, 2012

It’s funny how sometimes even when you sort of expect something it can still shock you when it happens.

On Friday we braved the snow and slush and went to Seattle Children’s Hospital for another neurologist appointment for Sage. It was the first appointment we had about her microcephaly where the doctor didn’t say, “well, it could be nothing…” the neurologist we saw was thorough, asking a lot of questions and spending a lot of time looking at Sage, checking her reflexes and movements. He was straight forward and clear, telling us that he definitely saw enough to concern him. He told us that her head is now 2.8 deviations and that since her weight and height are on the growth chart it’s called disproportionate microcephaly. He recommended an MRI, saying that it was the best place to start figuring out what is going on and would give us some direction.

And then it happened… He told us he thought we should start having someone work with her and getting her some early therapy. Then he gave us a packet for “children with special needs” It made my head spin…”special needs” I knew Sage had microcephaly. I knew there was a chance that she would have some delays, and although I knew that label was a possibility I hadn’t really imagined it or truly thought of my child as having special needs until that moment.

It was like a reality check for me.

Suddenly I was reminded of when I took a class in college on Teaching Children with Special Needs. I remember feeling convinced during that class, with an irrational intuition, that I was going to have a child with special needs. And I remember begging God to not let that happen. Now I look at Sage and I can’t imagine asking God that I wouldn’t have her and can’t imagine having any other child. But, I still wish I knew for certain that she would be able to live a completely full functioning, “normal” life. But, I knew in that moment that wasn’t a certainty I could have. It may yet turn out that way, but there’s enough concerns that I have to come to terms with the fact that it might not.

I sat there a minute a little stunned still by the term “special needs”.

I couldn’t deny it anymore. I couldn’t justify the fact that she hasn’t met her milestones. I couldn’t keep holding on to the “well, it could be nothing” statements.

All along I have sort of known this was coming. I knew something wasn’t normal. Not in the way you know that two plus two equals four but with an intuitive sort of knowing.

When she was six weeks old I had a vivid dream within a dream where things kept threatening Sage and I had to fight for her and protect her. At the most vivid part I saw a number of wasps and hornets stinging Sage. I woke up still in the dream and preceded to dream that everything that had happened in the dream within a dream was happening in real life. It was after having this dream that I knew we had to schedule Sage’s first well visit with the pediatrician.

Maybe it’s bad for me to say it but I’m glad that we didn’t go in earlier, glad that we had those two months of ignorance, to just be with Sage, bond with her and get to know her. Being able to bond with her without the uncertainties of microcephaly hanging over our head was precious and I’m grateful for it.

But, as we sat with the neurologist I knew that the time of denial was over. It was time for a new season. Time to grow up and face my new reality. Time to do the research. Time to make the phone calls. Time to get the help. Time to do whatever we can to make sure that my special little girl can have the best life possible.

On February 2nd Sage will have an MRI of her head and spine. It will be under general anesthesia. If you pray, pray for her safety, pray that we get the best possible answers, pray that we are able to get the results back quickly (as it is right now our follow up with neurology isn’t able to be scheduled until April – we don’t want to wait that long) and pray that we have no problem getting the MRI pre-approved with our insurance.

Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman

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