the kind of help God gives

At least, the kind of help He gave me.

One day (not last week, I don't think, but the week before - and yes, this is the first chance I've had to write about it) recently, I was sitting on the couch, feeding one baby with one arm and hand and holding the other in the other arm, which was hard enough by itself, when I heard my toddlers begin to go after each other in the other room. My hands were, literally, full. I was taking care of two of my children, barely, and was unable to go and take care of the other two.

So I prayed, un-eloquently, something along the lines of, "God, help!"

And somehow, I don't remember exactly how, within a minute, my two older children had come and joined me on the couch and were paging through a picture book for me so that I could read it to them.

I was still holding a baby in one arm, and holding and feeding the second baby in the other (which hurt) and I was using my eyes to read and my mouth to speak and it was very all-consuming, but I was taking care of the needs of all four of my children at the same time.

Which hadn't even seemed possible a minute before, when Bess and Gamgee were in theo ther room fighting.

So, I thought afterward, sometime when I had space to think again, that is the sort of help God is going to give me. I had been wanting to pray that he would make it less work, somehow. But that's not it, quite. Instead, he just stepped in and made it possible. I couldn't walk into the other room and get my toddlers while still attending to the needs of the babies, but God brought them over to me. He really did. I have no other explanation for them being in their room, fighting, and then in the next minute sitting next to me on the couch, helping me to read them a book. He heard my prayer and stepped in beside me when I was by myself and didn't have enough hands. He led my two oldest over to me, bringing them to where I could help them. He helped me.

So I feel like I know a bit better how to pray to him now. I need to pray not that he would take away the work (the hard work, the good work) that he's put in front of me, but just that he would help me to do it. To ask him to do it with me. Or maybe, rather, to let me do it with him. And he's shown me now that he will. "God, help!" is a prayer I now know that he answers. I just wanted to share the way that God has been kind to me, to praise him publicly for it. He indeed "gently leads those with young".

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

buy Touchstone

Commercial enough? I have had a link to this magazine on my sidebar for a long time, and have been a reader of it even longer, but I have a special reason for recommending it this month: I have the honor to have a short article in this month's edition. So even though our twins' arrival is keeping me from posting very often these days, you can still read a bit about homemaking through the church year. The article is actually the sum of what I've learned since I began trying to practice the church year as a wife and mother.

But buy the magazine for more than that; check it out because it is a consistantly excellent monthly collection of essays and more. And it has writers from all three of the great divisions of Christianity, and they never pretend that our differences don't exist but instead acknowledge them while at the same time working to think well about how what we all believe (summarized in the Nicene creed) influences - no, rather, dictates - how we ought to live.


Speaking of the church year, Easter is coming up, and our oldest daughter is scheduled to be baptized at the Easter vigil service. Does anyone have any tips on how to prepare a toddler for baptism? I mean prepare in a practical sense; obviously you want to have been teaching her to love the Lord and explaining to her what baptism means, etc. But did anyone practice the service with her child or do any of you have a "learned it the hard way" story about your young baptismal candidate getting stage fright (so to speak) during the service or freaking out about getting wet? Our girl is excited about getting baptised, and I think she understands it as well as a three year old can, but I'd like to do what I can to help it all to go well. I'd be grateful for any tips from moms who've done this before.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

babywearing two

I've discovered that it's true: you can babywear twins! In the above picture I have our two new babies snuggled together in a sling made for me by a lady at our church. Given that our twins aren't even supposed to be here yet, I think that having them snuggled together, womblike, in a sling is a good thing. I understand that later, when they can hold their heads up properly, I can double sling them, with one on each hip, or put one in a mei-tei on back and the other in a sling on the front.

Today I carried them through Sam's Club like this, and laughed almost the whole time at all the double-takes I got. "There's two in there!" "Mommy, there's TWO babies!" "Oh my goodness, you have two!" It was a bit of a problem because I couldn't get through the store very quickly, but I have to admit that it was kind of fun. By the end I just smiled and kept walking, but it was a hoot!

It's fun to have people exclaiming over my babies for pleasanter reasons than, "Oh, they're so tiny!" (Which, well, they are, so it's not like it's a silly comment at all, it's just nicer to hear "there are two!" or "they're so cute!")

Anyway, I think that these girls will live in the sling once my husband goes back to work. I've been worried about how I'll handle two toddlers and two newborns on my own, but the success of this babywearing experiment heartens me considerable. Now if only they'll twig onto breastfeeding exclusively! (Being premies, they're lazy eaters and still primarly bottlefed. But we're working on it!)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

prayer in less-than-ideal circumstances

My babies are home. Hence the lack of posts the last few days.

And my heart is full. There have been several times the last few days when I have glanced around the room, seen every single one of my family members, and closed my eyes in a moment of absolute pleasure, simply savoring the presence of all five of them: husband, son and three daughters, in the same place as me, for the first time in over two months. (Well, the first time with all of the daughters on the outside.)

And my hands are full. (By the way, am I the only woman who gets "boy, you have your hands full!" from every chance-met stranger in the store, on the street, at the library? Not the worse thing to hear, certainly, but awfully repetitive.) Our twins aren't yet nursing exclusively, and so in addition to taking one hour out of every three to feed them, my husband and I are spending lots of time washing bottle and breastpump parts, and I'm spending time pumping. And we're taking care of our two older children. And no, I don't know how I'm going to do it when my husband goes back to work, but I have the suspicion that God will provide grace to me when that happens, and not before.

Anyway, on a liturgical note, Jen's suggestion that one ought to pray more when one is busy and not less has been ringing in my mind. And I have to agree with her. Just about the best thing that came out of my month and a half long hospitalization was a deeper sense of God's presence. After all, it was mostly just me and Him every day, for all those days.

But my prayers the past couple of days have been scattered and worried, something long the lines of, "Please help them eat, Lord. Oh they did. Oh, thank you. Oh dear, what should I do next? Do you know? Of course you do. Hmm, wish I did." And so on.

The best remedy when your prayers sound like that is to 1) be okay with it. After all, we listen to OUR children babble, and why wouldn't our heavenly Father listen to us? and 2) Take the time to pray a few prayers that were a) written by people who were further along on the path of sainthood and b) not sleep-deprived.

There are, of course, lots of prayers like that in the Book of Common Prayer, and even more in the Psalms. But what's worked for me the past few days has been singing hymns. But not just singing them, but praying them as I sing them. I've found that after singing several hymns, with all their good theology and excellent music (yes, such hymns exist), my babbling prayers during the rest of the day are less worried and more just contentedly tired. More full of trust and less full of anxiety. Because the hymns have reminded me of the nature of our Lord, and how is He is both ever-ready to help those who turn to Him and ever-powerful to perform that help.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. I would, of course, appreciate your prayers, should you feel led. Especially that our little girls continue to eat and gain weight, and maybe even learn how to nurse. :) God bless you!

on twins

Ever since I found out (only, wow, four months ago) that I was having twins, I've been researching them. I've found out lots of fun facts. One of the most interesting to ME is that only about a third of twins are identical, and of those, only about 1% are monoamniotic like my girls. But I've also learned that all IVF doesn't cause identical twins (though someone on IVF can, by the luck of the draw, have them), that some people don't know at birth whether their twins are identical or fraternal because identical twins, if they split early enough, can each have their own placenta. And that, yes, if you tell someone you have identical twins, they just MIGHT ask, "a boy and a girl, then?" :)

But the really fun thing has been learning about my OWN twins, now that they're here and I can get to know them. I've found "tell" (other than the fact that Anna is currently about half a pound bigger than her sister); it's something that will disappear eventually, but it will do to help me figure out which is which while I'm getting to know them this first year.

And I've found that they have some slight mirroring: their cowlicks turn different directions, one clockwise and one counterclockwise.

And they are tiny and beautiful and mine. Anna loves cuddled and Lucy loves having her hand held. And they love being sung to. I've gone through lots of hymns, visiting them in the NICU.


And then I come home and miss them, but have many happy hours watching Bess and Gamgee gambol about the house, jumping off things, playing with blocks and shouting out the back door, "It's okay, Wise Men, it's just the Baby Jesus!" (Our Advent playacting has continued through Lent; in my toddlers' current world, the wise men are camped out in our backyard.) I've read that twin relationships are very similar to the relationship between any other two siblings very close in age. I hope so. Because if my older two are any good example, we're going to have a happy household packful of little ones.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

There are good days in the NICU

I hate to say it, because it feels like a jinx, but, as my priest might say, "being good Christians, we don't believe in that", so . . . I think my girls might have turned the corner. As of last night, they're getting one bottle-feed a shift, and FINISHING IT ALL. They're gaining weight. And yesterday, I got to try to nurse little Anna, and SHE NURSED. (This was not what the nurse who let me do it was expecting. She was expecting it to be "non-nutritive breastfeeding", i.e. "let's-just-let-her-get-acquainted-with-the-idea". But Anna latched, and sucked and ATE. It was so cool.)

Please keep praying for our baby girls, because they're so not there yet. But God is being very gracious, and they are getting there. I'm beginning to be more hopeful about them really coming home someday.

It's so funny to think that they'll be three weeks old tomorrow, but, really, they shouldn't even be on the outside of me yet. They shouldn't have even been born yet, but here they are, eating and breathing and pooping and being as cute as ever two little girls were. So weird.

Thank God for medical technology. I mean that with all of my heart. Isn't it cool that He lets us learn how to do things like keeping very little babies alive? And, if you come to think of it, correct poor vision with curved glass or cure diseases with what is basically orange mold? I really think that science, properly done, is so very Christian. It says that since the most excellent of designers made the universe, that universe will have an order that we can discover and study and understand. As it says in Proverbs, "It is the glory of God to hide a thing, and the glory of kings to seek it out." My mother calls that "the scientists' verse". :)

Well, medical technology is something I'm grateful for today. But I'm even more grateful to the God who is slowly teaching my daughters how to breathe and suck and swallow in a coordinated manner. Who is shielding them from harm. Who is being with them in the NICU when I can't. Praise Him!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

if you've ever kept a journal

I'm a journaler; I have been, regularly, since eighth grade. But there are always those times, every year or two, when for some reason or another I stop journaling for a month or so. When I come back, I feel a burden to spend pages catching the record up. Yet it's an impossible task, so instead of taking twenty pages to summarize what I missed recording, I just apologize (yes, I apologize to my journal; I know, I'm weird) and start up again by talking about that current day.

Here on this blog, at least, I can apologize to the people who read it: I'm sorry, I've been remiss. In my defense, pumping milk around the clock, taking care of two toddlers and visiting the NICU every day takes a lot more time that I would have guessed. We are all well here, and the twins are well at the hospital. At this point, they are very healthy (thanks be to God!), and once they learn to eat on their own (i.e., once they don't have to be tube-fed), and hopefully gain a bit more weight (they're still well under 5 lbs.) they will get to come home. (Please pray that they learn to eat!)

It feels appropriate, somehow, that it is Lent as I write this. I admit, I'm not officially fasting from anything, having decided that the postpartum experience of being without sex, sleep or a pain-free body was probably enough to be going on with this year. Add to that the overwhelming sadness of being without my daughters, and I think you have a Lent that's Lenten enough for anyone. Sometimes, I think, God chooses the fast He wants to you practice, and then it's best to just go with what He's set before you.

It helps, somehow, that it is Lent, because approaching the task set before me like it is a real fast; approaching it as something seasonal, appropriate and (above all), finite makes it easier to face. All experiences earthly come to an end, and Easter is always, always, always waiting at the end of Lent, as our Lord awaits at the end of every Christian life.


Also appropriately, my baby girls' original due date is almost exactly Easter day. Since preemies are usually home by their due date, I am looking forward to the Queen of Feasts with even more longing than usual. (Not that I have a guarentee, just a reasonable hope.) AND, my oldest daughter is scheduled to be baptized this Easter at the Easter vigil service (Saturday night). It doesn't feel like I'll ever get there, like I'll ever have the joy of all six of us together in a pew at church, but by God's grace, it will happen, we will get there, my baby girls will come home. It is Lent, but there is Easter at the end of Lent, and I will keep walking towards it, one day at a time, because there is no other way to get there. Lord have mercy.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell