My Decision is......

I told you all to expect my decision by Tuesday this week, and I am happy to announce that I have come to a decision!!!

And my decision is........................






That............................





We will be...................................





Moving back to Florida!! Yes you read that right, Misty is leaving the land where she's always wanted to be to come back to the land she never wanted to be in again so that she can go to one of the best midwifery schools in the nation. Worth it? I think so!

Look for more posts soon!!!

I'm in!! I'm in!!

Last week a received my acceptance to Florida School of Traditional Midwifery by email! I was so excited that I jumped up and down for joy and giggled like a schoolgirl. It only took a few seconds for me to stop, and think to myself, now what the hell do I do?!?!?!

Moving back to Florida is such a huge decision. Even though I know that it is the right decision for my midwifery career, it is hard for me to figure out what is the right decision for my chldren. Well, within the next week or so you will know what my decision is, I am planning to decide and announce it by this time next week!

The Massacre of the Worms

Have you ever wondered what possesses the worms to all wiggle out onto the sidewalk in the mornings before the sun is hot?

As a child I always had a possibly unhealthy fascination with the wet and wiggly things we call worms. I used to dig up handfuls of hard clay dirt in my grandparent's yard in hopes of catching at least one or two of the cool wiggly creatures. I'd look the earth worms over letting them slink around from one of my hands to the other. I would bemuse about how they eat dirt and poop dirt. I'd gross out other girls with them. I squealed with excitement if my grandfather mentioned going outside in the cool dark night armed with flash lights and emptied and washed mason jars in hopes of catching some nice and fat night crawlers for fishing with at shadow lake.

Walking around the block pushing an adorable 16 month old in a stroller and looking at all the dried and shriveled up earth worms on the side walk makes my heart weep a little. I weep for all the plants who could have benefited from the worms. I weep for the children who will never get to play with those already dead earth worms. It seems silly I know, but when watching news of the Gulf oil spill disaster on TV, or reading about it on the 'net or in newspapers, I am becoming more keenly aware of emotions I used to have as a child. The wonder of the amazing ecosystem. The importance that each thing plays in it, from the simplest amoeba to the most complex of animals. The way that the human race is single-handedly destroying this amazing system. The complete lack of respect many people have for the other living things on this planet. The total disconnectedness of humans as a whole.

It should not be all that surprising to many of you that I was quite a little environmentalist when I was a child. I collected styrofoam egg cartons in my closet as a way to protest their complete lack of biodegradableness in hopes that one day someone would start recycling them. Much to my parents happiness many years later they DID start offering a recycling service that took the evil styrofoam and I happily carted my 100+ egg cartons to the plant for recycling then. I did not eat meat for the sheer disgust at the way the animals were slaughtered. I did not believe in pulling "weeds" and would protest their killing until I turned blue in the face. I did not agree with using pesticides to get rid of unwanted things in our yard.

I spent *many* summers playing in the woods, squatting over moss covered ground, pretending I was in some prehistoric land, coming in only when the mosquitoes chased us in or our parents called us in. I spent more time in dirt covered jeans with holes in the knees than not. I loved the smell of the earth. The faint metallic smell, mixed with the smell of vegetation, mixed with the smell of sweaty little kids and the occasional smell of scat or animal urine. It's a primal smell. Even to this day if I work in the yard or something I am transported back to my childhood from the smells of the earth.

That smell, that primal smell of earth, is present at a birth too. Somehow the smell of blood and amniotic fluid and sweat and sometimes feces mix together and bring back those memories. And the strong desire overcomes me to be a midwife delivering babies in a red tent where we can give back our blood, and amniotic fluid, to the earth. Where our bare feet are still on dirt and ground; the dirt and ground that God made; instead of the wood or carpet floors that man made, another layer, another disconnect away from the earth. Away from where we're meant to be.

And all of these memories and thoughts occurred to me because of the Massacre of the Worms. The sidewalk is such a cruel place for a worm. It comes out when the sun isn't quite up and the ground is still damp with dew. It somehow wiggles itself onto the sidewalk and becomes lost. This does not feel like any dirt it's ever been in! It can't burrow into it, it can't find grass or plants on it, whatever does it do? It struggles to find a place to burrow and in the mean time the sun creeps higher and higher and the sidewalk gets hotter and hotter. I image the worm thinking, probably very quickly, man I am thirsty!! I need some nice wet dirt!! but all it finds is cruel, rough, hot, hard, sidewalk. And then it gives up it's struggle, and it dies. Right there. Right on the sidewalk.

So as I walk, pushing the adorable 16 month old in a stroller, I stop whenever I see a worm still inching it's way across the sidewalk. I pick it up with hints of the childhood fascination within me once again, and gently set it back in the grass. In this one small gesture I have managed to save one worm. That is one less worm to fall victim to the sidewalk. One less that dies because of human invention.

I pass many other worms who were not so fortunate. And I secretly weep for them, For they had a life full of purpose. They are tasked with the important job of helping to fertilize and aerate the soil. To help the plants grow. To be the food for birds and other small animals. But instead, all of these victims of the Massacre of the Worms end up having no more purpose to their life, nor to their death. They will not be eaten by small animals, for dried up worms are not appetizing at all! They will no longer be able to aerate soil or help fertilize the earth. Now they are just toast. And it's all because of human invention.

Eighteen More Days

In only eighteen more days I will have my children back from their summer with their father. I think we will spend the weekend at the beach and kelly park before leaving for Ohio. I am kinda excited to get out of Florida again for a while....I have been here too long and am antsy to leave. I don't know how it is that I will stand living here again to go to FSTM.......I guess we shall see.

In the mean time I am still looking for what is the right thing for me to do in the fall...I wish the answers were more clear to me.
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Sweet Summer Songs and Whispers in the Wind

I told a friend and midwife mentor that I was going to use this time over the summer to pray, and focus, and decide where it is my future is taking me. I have been doing a lot of praying, and a lot of contemplating, and still have yet to come up with an answer to my questions. A once good friend told me that when making difficult decisions sometimes it is best to just throw all logic out the window and have faith in God's bigger plan for us. I used to have no problems following this advice - when it was just me. Now my decisions, however, are bigger than just me. The happiness and futures of three other amazing people have been trusted to me to help grow, and develop, and turn into amazing adults from the amazing children that they already are. When other people's fates are also in your hands, especially people whom you love with a primal, unexplainable completeness, decisions become harder to make. And, it seems, I find it harder to only trust in Faith alone.

The single hardest thing I have ever had to do since entering into this amazing role of "mother" is to make dcisions for my children. Even the most mundane seeming decision can turn into a stressful situation. I toil over what pediatrician/dentist/etc to use. I toil over how to raise them religiously. I toil over what school to put them in. I toil over whether to homeschool or not. I toil over how staying with their father would affect them. I toiled over how leaving their father would affect them. Vaccinations. Circumcision (or the lack of). Parenting styles. Cribs or no cribs. Disposable diapers or cloth? Wool or PUL? Work or Stay home? Finish a college degree or wait until they are grown? Follow my dreams? This becomes ever more trying as a single mother because now there is no more joint decision making. Now I am solely responsible. I am solely accountable for the raising of these little beings I call my children.

I realized while doing all of this praying and meditating this summer, that it is all like one sweet summer song. The life that I draw, that I create, that I write about. The life that I choose to make for my children. This is not the ideal life that I pictured myself and my children in 9 years ago when first starting my family. I believe that children need *two* parents. God chose to make it so that we cannot procreate without both sexes and both people are valuable in the upbringing. However, not everyone takes their commitment seriously, and I could no longer keep my marriage than a womb can keep a child past its time. After my marriage was over I was hurt and depressed and longing for something that once was. I denied to everyone, even to my self, that I ever loved my ex husband. I was so full of disgust for him at that point. But it isn't true. I did love him, very much. And he took advantage of me. And he lied to me. And now I am dealing with the consequences of his actions and inactions by raising three amazing children without him.

But I will not let it discourage me. And I will not get stuck in old patterns once again. I am a strong woman, with a strong desire to do what is right by my children, and so I believe that I will be given enough wisdom to know what is right and what is wrong for them. After all, they are my children, who were knit together in my womb. Whom I loved before they were even there. Whom I loved since my very beginnings. I no longer remember a time when I did not have love for them, when they were not a part of my life.

The wind whispered to me one day, and showed me a glimpse of my daughter years from now. Having married a man just like her father, and sitting alone one night, her own children in bed, crying silently by a fire. The vision weighed on my heart so heavily that I knew at that very moment I had to change things. For her. And for my boys, so they would not grow up to be men just like their father. And so we left.

Now I am left with another major decision. I have to decide how much I am willing to take away from my children, in order to give them a better life in the future. Am I willing to take away the beautiful house, the 1 acre of land, the horses next door, the peace of mind that allows me to have the children play in the neighborhood until the street light (there is only one!) comes on without worrying about strangers lifting them and taking them away? Am I willing to take away the small town, the life I've been working on building for them the last year, the friends they've made, the moderate climate, the occasional snow? Am I willing to move away from the one place I've longed to live for so long (a selfish question, I know)? Am I willing to bring them closer to their father, closer to the very influence I wanted to get them away from?

What are the good things we get in exchange you might ask? Three years from now (about) I would earn a license to practice midwifery in Florida. A climate for midwifery that will hopefully still be more positive than it is in Alabama. I would be able to earn more of a living in Florida than I ever could operating in Tennessee or Alabama (where it is still a class 3 misdemeanor). I could, perhaps, get the children and I out on our own. No longer have to rely on family for a roof over our head or water for our baths. That, ultimately, is my goal. Can I reach that goal successfully in Tennessee? Probably. If I gave up midwifery. Can I give up midwifery? No.

So, this is the decision that I must toil over this summer. And really, a decision can't be made at all until I hear back from FSTM one way or the other, which I have not yet. In the mean time, I will continue to listen to the whispers in the wind.