Author: laurenblauw

Lauren Blauw is a Jesus follower and joke teller. She writes and speaks about the movements of Jesus Christ in her life. Lauren lives in Munster, Indiana with her husband, 3 kids, and 2 dogs. When she is not writing, you can find her scrubbing a toilet, giving a time out or complaining endlessly about the lack of cookies in her house. Blogger, vlogger and attention hogger.
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I Wish I Knew I Could Love You

When you were born there were easily 12 nurses and Doctors in the room. Your birth was pretty easy, 1 push. Hilarious because I pushed for about 67 days with your brother. I remember You being born and the OB team quickly plopping you on my chest for a quick few seconds to let me say hello before the neonatologists would assess you at the bedside.

And I’m sorry to say that the very first thing I did was to look eagerly at your face to see if you “looked” like you had Down Syndrome. First because there was still a chance that all of the diagnostics were wrong …… right? For sure in some Facebook group somewhere there was someone whose baby was born completely healthy despite the diagnostics. It could happen to me too, right? Second, because if the inevitable was in fact evitable I just wanted to see how Down Syndrome you looked. Maybe you wouldn’t even look that Down syndrome, you know? Because I was worried that if you looked too Down Syndrome I wouldn’t be able to love you.

You were pretty blue and still pretty goopy in those first few seconds but after the Drs and nurses cleaned you up and gave you some respiratory support I was able to hold you again for about 10 minutes. And guess what? I looked again and turns out you definitely looked like you had Down Syndrome. They whisked you away to the NICU and I wondered what it felt like to have a healthy, non-Down Syndrome baby girl.

A few hours later my nurses took me by wheelchair to see you in the NICU. You had a few tubes and IVs and of course they asked, “Do you want to hold her?”. And I said yes, because that’s what you do, and I held you. And again I scanned your face. And I cried. I was too embarrassed to cry openly because I didn’t want the nurses to know I was sad that you had Down Syndrome. What kind of ugly, cold-hearted, discriminating parent was I? What kind of person would be sad that they didn’t get the child they wanted?

So I fought tears but differently than how I am fighting tears while I write this. The tears I’m fighting now are not because I didn’t get what I wanted but because I didn’t know what I had. What I had was the sweetest, smiliest, love-of-my-life little girl I could have ever dreamt up. What I had was perfection but my eyes were too broken to see.

I wasted those first few weeks and I’m so sad and ashamed because of it. I wish I knew then that I could love you.

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You Will Always Get My Christmas Card

Excerpt from Southern Living, “The Etiquette of Taking Someone Off Your Christmas Card List”, October 31, 2023

{“Most people, out of habit, stick to the same ‘holiday card list’ they have used for years and sometimes decades, which is often outdated for one reason or another,” said Diane Gottsman, international etiquette expert, author, and founder of the Protocol School of Texas. “Relationships change, friendships wane, and people (physically and literally) move on.”

If your list hasn’t been updated in several years, it may be time to reexamine it—and perhaps make a few cuts. Read on for the etiquette on how to remove someone from your Christmas card list.}

I’m not here to judge. The cost of Christmas cards can really add up. Price per card, paper quality, foil lined envelopes, postage; I understand.

Some of you don’t do Christmas cards and I understand that too. It’s not your thing and I totally get it.

But it’s my thing. I love to send Christmas cards for many reasons. One being that I’m proud of my family. Not proud in a “keeping up with the joneses” type of way but proud in a “damn, we made it” type of way.

Another reason I love to send Christmas cards is because for many on my list it will be the only point of contact I’ll have with you this year. And if you are on my list then you are someone from my past who impacted me in such a way as to carve yourself onto my heart. Old co-workers who felt like family, friends I laughed with in church 15 years ago, people I hardly know who sent meals and gift cards when my baby was in the hospital, teachers who have selflessly embraced my most difficult child …… just to name a few.

I’ve thought only a few times about reducing my Christmas card list; usually when money has felt especially tight. But I just can’t seem to hit delete without feeling as though I’m in turn deleting the memories. Every name on my list is a person who has provided counsel, friendship, care, love, service, laughter, a place to lean or some combination of those things and I want you to know that …… I can’t delete you.

My Christmas card list is the unexpected reminder each year of how beautiful this world is. How filled with goodness this world is. How good the people of this world are. Even on the darkest of holiday seasons when I don’t even want to try and see the good things, I look at my list and am reminded of how many people have decided to show up for me over the years. And quite frankly, I don’t want to ‘move on’ from you.

If you receive a card from me and feel as though you need to send one back, you don’t. Please don’t trouble yourself. If you don’t send cards and feel guilty when you receive one from me; please don’t. If you are someone who does in fact weed out people from their card list and think I’m shaming you; I’m not.

I send Christmas cards because I want you to know that I still like thinking about you. That I still cherish our quiet, distant and otherwise obsolete friendship.

You will always get my Christmas card.

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The Whole Big Thing

Do the next thing. Take the next step. Everything is manageable in small doses. Get the diagnosis. Learn. Make the appointment. See the doctor. Plan. Another procedure. Talk to the children. Pack your bag. Be polite. Another IV. Don’t cry. Fill out the form. Talk to the teachers. Love. Comfort. Google.

It’s just the next thing. It’s all just the next thing.

I’m so good at doing the next thing. I can do the next thing all day long and not bat an eye. I am so good at the next thing that I forget to think about the whole thing; the whole BIG thing.

The stress. The worry. Lost time with my other kids. Lost memories. Missed events. Skipped traditions. The money that is no longer tucked tightly in our savings. The loneliness. The sadness. The grief. The anger. The challenged faith. The doubts. The new identity. New priorities.

It turns out that sure-footedly taking every next step does not get you closer to reconciling with the ‘whole big thing’.

Sometimes you have no choice to take the steps. In fact, your children are depending on you to take those steps. Keep going, keep moving forward and stay strong. Stay vigilant for their sake.

But when you can, and when it is appropriate you need to sit with the bigness of what you are going through. The reality is that every necessary step has been to simply keep your child alive.

What has it been like to live with the ever constant fear that your child might die? Tell me about the whole big thing.

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Uneducated and Unwell

I became a Christian when I was around 21 years old. I started attending church when I was 19. I had just come home from living in Scottsdale, AZ for nearly a year while I attended culinary school. During that time in Arizona, my social anxiety kept me from making friends and going out, which led to self-isolation and loneliness, in turn fueling my always lurking depression.

I can look back and give these things names but at the time I had did not have words or awareness let alone diagnoses or treatment plans. I just knew I was sad and lonely.

And fat. Always fat.

I moved home after my Grandma died. She was 92 and the first person I ever really knew to pass away. This gave me a sense of mortality for the first time in my life and I decided it made no sense to live so far from my family. Also, I missed my dog. Completely true. If I were to give percentages to reason for me to quit culinary school and move home, it would be as follows:

20% my grandma dying
20% finding value in family
20% I was running out of money
3,000% I missed my dog

I remember sleeping a lot when I returned home. Like, A LOT alot. I had no job and no college classes. So I slept until noon most days. When I awoke I watched TV. I knew what was on every channel from noon to midnight. That was my schedule.

12pm – 12am: Watch TV
12am – 12pm: Sleep

There were bathroom breaks, an occasional shower and meals but I don’t remember leaving the house. I don’t remember seeing friends. I didn’t go for walks. I stopped responding to the calls and texts from the few friends I had made while out in Arizona.

To this day I can’t remember what got me off the couch other than an intrinsic understanding that how I was living was not ‘normal’ and kind of embarrassing. I had to breakup with the couch. Was it comfortable? Yes. Did it support me through a dark time? Absolutely. But it wasn’t a healthy relationship. We were seeing too much of each other and frankly, I had become way too co-dependent on it.

I enrolled in courses at the community college which would start after the New Year. It was the same New Year that I started my New Year’s Resolution diet.

I was uneducated and unwell.

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I Catfished My Husband – Sort Of

When I met my husband I was real skinny. What he and the rest of the world didn’t know was that I was also real hungry.

Jason and I met when I was 21 or 22, I can’t remember and don’t care enough to figure it out. Maybe I should have just stated early 20’s but it’s too late, the thought process has been typed out. A few bits before we met I started my 10th-ish diet at the age of 19 on New Year’s Day. Yep. A weight loss resolution. I started counting calories, focused on eating fruits and veggies, doing some walking etc etc. I was 191 Lbs.

Always a planner, I tracked out how thin I would be and when if I lost 1 Lb a week. By physician standards, a healthy goal. And it was good. I steadily lost weight and as I did, I increased my exercise and found new interest in nutrition. When I got to 150 Lbs the weight loss started to slow. So I pushed harder. More time on the treadmill, fewer calories. Still I was struggling to lose more weight.

I’m 5’4″ and according to the BMI chart, I was still overweight. So I went harder still and with an unwavering devotion to get my time on the treadmill in, which kept me from engaging in social activities. If you want to achieve, you have to put the time in, right? I found ways to fill my tummy with as few calories as possible. I managed to get down to 145 Lbs but that was barely even a healthy weight. I wanted to get in a ‘safe’ zone since weight can fluctuate, I wanted a cushion of error that was safely within my healthy weight range.

So I started making sure that everyday I was burning as many calories as I was consuming. If I ate 1,200 calories, I had to burn 1,200 calories. I’m a treadmill warrior so that meant 2 hours on the treadmill everyday. And I did that. Everyday.

I got down to 131 Lbs. Which is still only a ‘healthy’ weight for my height, according to the BMI chart. I was never able to get under 131 Lbs. And I would know because I weighed myself around 10 times a day. First thing in the morning, after I went to the bathroom, Before I exercised, after I exercised, after I ate, before bed, if I looked at a brownie, etc etc.

I felt great. I was starving but it felt so good. There was a wonderful high that the hunger would bring. How baggy my clothes felt. How boney my hip bones were. How loud my stomach would gurgle, begging for food.

Since I am old and when Jason and I met, Facebook was just becoming a thing, I didn’t have the luxury of lying about my looks online. I did it in real life.

Catfishing is a term used to describe a situation when someone falsely attracts another person online by creating a fake persona. An example would be if I posted a picture of myself from my early 20’s leading people to believe that is how I currently look (I do not). So I like to joke that I catfished him (I looked like a thin person when I am actually a fat person). However, the hard truth is that it’s not actually funny. It’s called an eating disorder and when Jason and I met I was deep in the throws of my first experience with an extended/long-term episode of binge eating.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject but for today I just wanted to make it official and say that I am a fat person. I am not someone who has let herself go or someone who is lazy or someone who can’t get rid of the the baby weight. No. I am a fat person. I have a fat body. And I am sorry to my fat-self for spending so much of my brainspace and precious time trying to hide it.

Life is here to live now and I deserve to live it now. So do you. Come as you are.