The Last Mother’s Day

This weekend we announced that we are pregnant again. Again? Most of you probably know, but some of you may not. Last September Brittany and I found out she was pregnant a few days before I was supposed to leave for my new job in Denver.

Long story short, we suffered a miscarriage. It was some seriously dark days. Have you ever felt like everything happening around you wasn’t real? I felt like I was moving and speaking and working, but that it was someone else’s life. It sounds so cliché, but I literally found myself on my knees crying in a hotel room. It was rough. I don’t cry very often.

I don’t pretend to understand why it happened. I doubt either of us will ever understand the why. I wish I could tell you what I’ve learned from the loss, but that’s what’s so difficult about the miscarriage – we’ll never know exactly what we lost. You’re just left with questions that don’t have an answer. It’s unsettling. Unnerving. It shakes you to the core. It hangs over you like this heavy darkness. Every day has been different. I think I’ve moved on, and then something else knocks me back to my knees.

But back to finding out we are pregnant again. About a month ago, Brittany had some unexpected bleeding. The doctor wanted her to take a pregnancy test just to rule it out. Well. It was positive.

Here we go again. I know that’s what both of us were thinking. I mean, really, how could this happen again? I feel like both of us had grown in so many ways since September, but it felt like in that moment, we were both back to square one. That was kind of depressing. In an instant, I felt like I was just as weak as I had been before September. I felt like we were knocked back to our knees again.

Then, so many people came to us and got down on their knees with us. I can’t begin to explain the amount of love we have experienced these last few weeks. One night we had our small living room packed full of friends from church who came to pray for us. That kind of supernatural experience is foreign to me. To be honest, I struggle with that kind of stuff. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes, but I was to a point where I was comfortable with the uncomfortable. I wasn’t going to let myself get in the way of what God was trying to do in our life. I can’t thank our friends and family enough. They didn’t just try to pick us up – instead they got down with us in our pain.

Fast forward a few weeks, we received great news at our last doctor’s visit. We have a blob and a heartbeat. Pretty cool stuff. We were to the point where we felt comfortable announcing the good news.

So this is our last Mother’s Day without a baby.

This morning Brittany and I took my parents and nephew to our church for Mother’s Day. I got hit pretty hard with some emotions just thinking about our baby, Mother’s Day and how God is our Healer. I’ve never believed that before. But how can I deny that now? How can I look at the last few weeks, the prayers on our behalf for a healthy pregnancy and the good report and not see God at work in our struggles.

I go back to trying to pinpoint what I’ve learned from all of this, or how I’ve grown, and the only thing I can come up with is that I’ve learned to stop limiting God in my life. In our desperation, I opened up to God like I never have before. My hope and goal is to start opening up to Him in the calmer times of my life and not just turning to him in the hard times. I think that’s a goal all of us can relate to.

I’m going to be a dad. Brittany’s going to be a mom. Wow. 

Goodbye, Michael

So, it’s been five days since I bid farewell to the great Michael Scott from The Office.

I’ve had plenty of time to process the episode, and overall, I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t a perfect episode, but I did feel like it was a perfect goodbye to an unforgettable character in Michael Scott and amazing actor in Steve Carell.

The episode was perfect because is stayed simple. It was about Michael and his relationships with everyone in the office – not about some crazy concocted story. There was no big reveal that Michael was the Scranton Strangler, which many people have been speculating about all season (my pick is Gabe – dude is straight up strange, especially in this episode). Instead, the episode revolved around Michael saying his goodbyes to every single person in the office.

But it wasn’t in typical Michael fashion. There was no big spectacle attached to his departure. In fact, he had misled everyone in the office to believe he was leaving the next day. The truth was that he was leaving that afternoon.

It really shows how Michael has grown and developed as a character this season. I mean, he even kept things cordial in his goodbye to Toby. That’s proof enough! By the way, that was one of the funniest scenes in the episode. You could see the torture he was enduring by not giving in to his desire to be awful to Toby. We’ve seen him try to do this before, and it’s never worked. But the new Michael could resist. He’s grown up. It only took him 40-something years…

I loved all the throwbacks to past episodes. It was very rewarding for an Office super fan like me. It was all right there from the beginning with Michael baiting Dwight with his misinformation about bears.

Speaking of Dwight, I remember telling Brittany before the episode that I really hated the way things had gone between Dwight and Michael because Michael hadn’t recommended Dwight for his job. I didn’t want Michael to leave with bad blood between them. Michael tried to deflect the issue at the beginning of the episode, which I thought was weak. But he did redeem himself later in the episode when he gave Dwight a letter of recommendation. Watching Dwight read the letter and slowly crumble was awesome. It was a touching scene. You easily forget how good of an actor Rainn Wilson can be because of how ridiculous Dwight normally is.

Back to the throwbacks. I loved that Michael finally took Dwight up on some paintball lessons. I loved that Michael went to the warehouse to attempt to use the bailer. (Bail her? I hardly know her!) I loved the shot of Michael adjusting his Dundie on his desk. I didn’t really enjoy the throwback to the basketball episode. Him repeatedly missing just wasn’t that funny to me, but I kind of appreciate the history of it. And who could forget Ping?

My favorite goodbye was with Jim. I know that’s probably a bit too obvious, but I just loved how it worked out. Michael had purposefully misled everyone so that he could avoid real goodbyes. Jim busted him on it, but he was gracious enough to give Michael his last wishes. I liked that moment.

Is it weird that I actually believed Michael and Pam wouldn’t get a final moment together? The episode played with that notion the entire time, and I actually kind of believed it might happen. Of course, that wasn’t true. They got their goodbye, but we didn’t get to experience it thanks to a great play on the whole “the show is a documentary thing” (by the way, taking the mic off helped them slip in probably the dirtiest “that’s what she said” ever, which was another fitting way to send Michael out).

Pam told us what he said. But I don’t really know if I believe that’s exactly what went down. I think Michael had greater things to say to her than just, “I miss Holly.” But I don’t think Pam could bring herself to reveal the special moment they had. And I’m OK with that.

I enjoyed the B-story with Andy and DeAngelo. It was pretty comical – probably the funniest Will Ferrell has been on the show in his three episodes. But what I really loved about the B-story was that it kept Ferrell away from Carell, allowing the focus to really be on Michael.

I love Michael Scott. He’s easily one of my top 5 favorite fictional characters. A lot of that has to do with Steve Carell. I really enjoy his work. Will The Office be the same without him? No. Does that mean that it will be a terrible show from now on? I don’t think so. It’s going to be different, of course, but at least we have three episodes left this season to experience and decide from there whether or not the show is worth watching next year.

I say give it a shot. You may be surprised. At the very least, we’ll find out Thursday night.

Side notes:

• The Gabe-Erin-Andy story line is getting strange.
• Seriously, I think Gabe is the Scranton Strangler.
• Looks like an interesting storyline is developing between Phyllis and Erin. They might just be mother and daughter. Don’t believe me? Check this out.