You can't grow without mistakes

I can't even tell you how much feedback there has been to the last post.  Well, not quantitatively anyway, but there was a lot.  I got quite a few texts and messages asking, "is Courtney really pregnant?"  A few more along the lines of, "How are you handling this, with the miscarriage?" And the most common, "you're such a good sister."

Let me get this out there, because it's been bothering me.

I am NOT as good of a sister as you may think.  I may be a better sister today than I was even a couple of years ago, but there has been a lot of "construction" in my heart regarding interactions with people I love.

Years ago, my best friend started to spiral.  He was young.  I can only speculate as to why he started to make the decisions that he did, but things went downhill, and fast.  Drinking and street drugs became a big priority, and a couple of weeks before his eighteenth birthday, he added jailtime to his record.  Here's the thing--he's a great guy.  His heart is really tender and he loves fiercely, but for some reason he buries those beautiful qualities beneath the drugs and alcohol.

I didn't know what to do.  Watching him drown himself was the hardest thing that I've ever had to do.  And I wanted to stop it.  Stop him from hurting himself.  Stop him from hurting me and the other people who care about him.  Have you ever done that?  It's so painful to watch that sometimes you want to scream at them and shake them.  So I did.  I yelled.  I screamed.  I cried.  I swore.  I hit.  I prayed.  I confronted.  I kept silent.  I begged and pleaded with him.  We fought.  Nothing worked.

Absolutely.  Nothing.

I tried everything that I could think of to get him to change, to go back to the goofy, carefree boy I knew before.  But lost innocence has a face now instead of just being a foreign, poetic idiom.  We can't rewind and re-live.  This happened at a time in my life when I was just starting to understand that you can't change someone.  I had already absorbed it application to myself, and I'd learned it in reference to boyfriends, but friends?  Aren't they supposed to be different?

But they're still just people.  They're their own selves.  They're someone else's boyfriend or girlfriend.

So I guess not.

Don't be fooled--it wasn't clear so quickly.  But I'm starting to understand and time allows for clearer vision.  Now I know that instead of fostering change, my reaction had spawned frustration, disgust, and irritation.  It's a source of contention.  We were talking recently about my sister's situation, and I realized how deep I'd hurt him.

"You're right.  I did come down on you harder... ...and I would guess that you feel like [my sister] is getting a pass because she's having a baby.  And partially, that's true.  For me, I don't want her baby to have to carry the consequence of HER decision.  That doesn't mean I'm not disappointed.  Her and I have had some blunt and unpleasant conversations about different outcomes for her situations...

...I hope you can keep in mind that I'm growing too.  When you started down the path that you're on, that was my first time seeing someone I loved fall apart.  I was scared.  I wanted to scream at you until you understood that it was going to make life more complicated.  Harder.  And it didn't need to be.  I even remember being so upset that you were headed that way that I wanted to beat you.  I was so angry.

I know for sure that handling it the way I did wasn't the best way.  At the time, though, that was all I knew to do."

So MAYBE I'm handling this situation better.  MAYBE it's closer to the way it should have been with my best friend.  But I can tell you for sure, he's a large part of the reason WHY my reaction to Courtney's situation is the way it is. So when I see comments saying I'm a good sister, I get uncomfortable.  I feel squeamish inside.  I'm ashamed because I don't feel like that's true.  Otherwise, how did I alienate him?

That's NOT a kitty-cat...

So I've been trying to figure out how to share this part of the story.  I haven't really come up with any solid ways of doing it, so I guess I'll just get it out there.

Let's hop back in time a few weeks...

A couple of weeks after we learned we were pregnant, my sister called me.  We were chatting more than usual, since she'd found out we were going to have a baby.  She LOVES LOVES LOVES little kids and was thrilled to hear our news.  I was cooking in the kitchen and I could tell something was different.  We were talking, but she wasn't really following the conversation.  Her questions, although normal questions, were coming out different than usual and I got the feeling that she had something she wanted to share with me, but for some reason, wasn't saying it.

I needed both of my hands in the kitchen, and since she was being a bit weird, I told her that she could feel free to call me back when she decided to say whatever it was that she wasn't saying.  The normal goodbyes were exchanged and before she hung up she said that she was going to send me a picture and she wanted to know what I thought.

Usually the pictures I get from her are of her cats, like this one:

The picture I got this time was different:

This isn't the exact picture, because my phone got replaced between now and then.  But you get the idea

So I called her right back.

Is that yours?
Yes.
You know you're going to have to tell mom, right?
Yeah.
Oh boy.

Needless to say, this was unexpected.  And did I mention that my little sister is 18 years old and that this was 3 weeks before she graduated high school?  And... And... And....???  All I could get out after that point was, "Well, you need to start taking pre-natals if you haven't already and you need to schedule an appointment with an OB-Gyn."

Woah baby.  Or, babies, I guess.  We would have been due at the same time.

So there will be a Brekke family baby--but not coming from the person people were expecting.

My feelings are conflicted.  I could list the reasons why I think this is not a great idea, but that won't benefit anything.  What will be, will be.  Apparently God thinks that this is a great way to connect with Courtney, otherwise it wouldn't have happened.  My job is to love unconditionally, and to be the best aunt I can be.

As her sister, I've done what I can to protect her from the realities that this world can offer.  We've talked, yelled, hugged, cried, etc... together over the years.  Like me, though, she is stubborn.  Learning the hard way is her way.  We all make choices, good and bad, and some of them have more obvious consequences--this would be one of them.  I want to put this out there now though.

For those of you who are friends with me, who know my sister, who know my family, and some of you who ARE my family... think before you react.  Courtney does not claim to be a Christian, so according to her beliefs (or non-beliefs, depending how you look at it) so you cannot hold her to that standard.  Obviously nobody who truly loves her would choose this for her, but a child is a blessing, and needs to be viewed as such.  This is just part of her journey.  Hopefully part that shatters her misconceptions of God's love and that brings her to a place where she can see it for herself, raw and real.  True.  Untainted.

Because in that form, and ONLY in that form, it is beautiful.