Category: Grief

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Easter Outfits

As I was just getting Easter outfits set out and prepared for this upcoming weekend, I was remembering back to just a handful of years ago when I was anticipating Easter. I remember how painful it was to pick out clothes for Gabriel ~ and nobody else. How he was my only one to dress up. He wasn’t a stairstep kid. He didn’t have siblings on earth. I couldn’t put bows on his sisters’ hair, because I can’t reach all the way up to heaven. I didn’t get to pick out matchy-matchy stuff for brothers, or even think about finding coordinating things. Sometimes he got to coordinate with his cousins (thanks to Grandmama’s excessively good taste and love of filling out the grandkids’ wardrobes), but sometimes that was more painful than fun for me.

Easter of 2011, I was raging with pregnancy hormones and new drugs, painfully aware that the baby in my womb may not survive to the next Easter. Going to church on Easter to celebrate resurrection almost made me feel like a fraud. I was stuck in death and waiting… it didn’t feel real to celebrate new life and resurrection. I went through the motions, but it felt fake. Forced. Habitual. I saw families at church with coordinated outfits. I saw little girls everywhere with bows and hats and patent shoes and purses and flowers and plastic bead necklaces.

I remember feeling like I was surrounded only by shattered dreams. And I remember that depth of anguish.
I simply can’t forget.

But here I am, just a few years later. And oh God, how merciful You are to me, a sinner… You saw fit to come down and lift my downtrodden state… You gave me stairsteps, and You even gave me a daughter. Oh God! I cry at the thought! Why would You do such merciful things for me?!

So today I cried as I laid out two little plaid shirts, grey pants, white bow ties and suspenders… and a poofy flowery dress, patent shoes, tiny tights, a big white bow… and my own THREE miracles, my little darlings I dreamed of but nearly despaired of ever holding in my arms… they will sit in the Easter service singing and praying and eating candy and shouting “He is risen, indeed!” in their matchy-matchy outfits, nearly stairstepped in size (Gabriel is like the landing on a set of stairs, haha).

And this mercy is not lost on me.

Nor is the pain that my joy could be causing someone else.

So I will pray for infertile women, suffering mothers, bereaved mamas, single women. I will pray for hurting hearts that will throb and bleed when they see my own little brood of Resurrection-Life children. They may not know what a miracle it is that I have been given this gift… but I know.
I simply can’t forget.

And so on Easter morning, I will look again at these miraculous children… these gifts of life that followed so much death and so much waiting… so much sitting-at-Christ’s-feet… so much crying to God why-have-You-forsaken-me… and I will feel mercifully, undeservedly, bountifully blessed. And I will shout with tears in my eyes as I think of all eleven of my beautiful children, “CHRIST IS RISEN!!! ALLELUIA!!!”

Christ came. He conquered. He lived. He died. He rose again. He gives us hope.
Hope even for a woman who is raging with hormones, dealing with awful drug side effects, grieving for a daughter I don’t get to hold again… hope that resurrection has happened, and it will happen again.

That’s what packing Easter outfits did to me today. It reminds me of broken dreams, and of dreams come true.
Death inevitably follows life, but for those of us in Christ, life follows death. Hosanna! Alleluia!

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Frozen

I think it has been a month now since I have really cooked a truly proper dinner from scratch. I’ve done cop-out type simple dinners like eggs and toast, but mostly I have been using my reserve of freezer meals. And it makes me so sad to use them up. I filled up the freezer last summer & fall during the months that we spent trying to conceive ~ I knew that I would need them either when dealing with morning sickness or in the case of a miscarriage. I knew that, one way or the other, I would not be up for cooking real meals for a while. So I’m using them according to the purpose for which they were made ~ according to one of the two possible purposes anyway.

And it just makes me sad that I’m using them for this reason. That I have to rely on freezer meals because my grief is so encompassing that I can’t cope with cooking, rather than because my body is so busy tending to my little daughter’s nurture and protection that I don’t have the energy to stand for that long.

 

I long for spring. The spring of life that follows winter’s death. I need resurrection.

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Four Weeks

I just looked at the clock: it is 12:42 on Friday afternoon. It was exactly four weeks ago that I held my daughter in my hands. What a beautiful moment, what a horrible moment. What a piece of history. What a painful wound.

Have you ever had those moments where you felt like something was etched into you? Like it’s written into, not only your story, but into your skin, your very being?

Heritage did that. She—her life as well as her death—left me wounded.

Just twenty-eight days ago, my wounds were gaping holes: the kind where ripped skin, torn muscle, gushing blood, and deafening screams of anguish set the stage. And I know that someday the wound will heal over to the point where it will be scarred: most people may not even really notice it, they will no longer ask about it or wonder “oy! How did THAT happen?!” But that time is not yet. Right now, my wounds are scabbing—they’re in that stage of going back and forth between bleeding and scabbing, bleeding and scabbing. The wound is not as fresh and gory as it was a month ago, but it is still a wound. It hurts, some days maybe just stinging but other days completely throbbing. As much as I wish I could rush the healing process, there is no way to make a wound heal prematurely—the scabbing, scarring, healing process takes time.

Four weeks sounds like a lot to some people, and in some perspectives and in some situations, it may be. Can you imagine being without food for four weeks? Can you imagine standing still for four weeks? Of course not, because four weeks is a long time. Then again, four weeks is also a short amount of time. Can you imagine marrying someone you just met four weeks ago? Can you imagine climbing Mt. Everest four weeks after you learned to walk? Of course not (or at least, it’s incredibly remarkable and rare if you can!), because four weeks is not much time at all.
People not only wound differently and react to their wounds differently, but they heal differently too.
There may be two people with identical wounds, yet they may heal differently. They may heal at different rates, their scars may look different, their pain levels or pain tolerances may be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Every time I see a baby or a pregnant belly… every time I even hear about one… every time I think about August… every time I look at my shelf piled high with injections and medications that are sitting untouched… when we hear news from my specialist that makes me think we might not be able to even try again, let alone have success again—these things pick at my scabs. I bleed. I hurt. I cry.

That’s where I am. That is my reality.

It isn’t where I will always be, it will not always be my reality. Because my scabs will harden, dry up, scar over. I won’t always bleed when poked (although I may if I’m sliced or sucker-punched).
The God I serve is the Great Physician, and He is in the business of healing, of redeeming, of making all things new.
Even this grief over the death of my baby girl will be nothing but a scar someday. I don’t know if it will be the kind of scar that you have to squint to see, or if it will be a bulgy purple thing that will burn if something so much as brushes by it. But I know it will scar. That is one of the ways God works: He doesn’t take us on a journey, and then bring us back where He got us at the first place. He takes us on a journey, and then takes us on another one as a changed person. There are purposes for the scars He gives me. One journey leads to another, and the scars I received on previous journeys will be there for reminders—for myself, for others—on subsequent journeys. These scars show who I am, who He made me to be, and how He is remaking me.

So as odd as it sounds, I look forward to the day when I am scarred. When the scabs are gone, when the blood stops flowing, when things have reknit and been remade into something new. It is hard to predict what the purpose will be, but I look forward to finding out.

And in the meantime, I ask for grace to endure the bleeding, the scabbing, the picking.
It’s been four whole weeks already!
Wow.
It’s only been twenty-eight days since I held her…

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In the Valley… On the Move…

It is bitterly cold in the valley of the shadow of death. There it is always winter. It is, however, there always Christmas as well. Because Aslan is with us there. And the gifts He brings are not baubles to brighten our lives on earth, but tools to prepare us for the brightness of heaven. … Aslan is on the move.
~R.C. Sproul Jr, blog

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Remembering MomMom

My husband’s grandmother has joined the heavenly choir. While I did not know her long or know her well, I loved her for the things I heard about her, and for the fruitfulness I daily glean from the fruit which dropped from her faithful boughs.

We grieve the loss of this Christian woman who faithfully toiled, who victoriously labored, who successfully blessed ~ without her, my children would not be, my husband would not be, my mother-in-law would not be. I pray for her children who most keenly feel her absence, for her grandchildren who mourn the only grandmother they ever personally knew, for her great-grandchildren who will never get to sit on her lap and hear her stories.

We rejoice for her gain, for her rest, and praise God for the faithfulness He shows in bringing His children home to His bosom.
Rest in peace, MomMom; we will see you again in the Choir.

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Putting it into words

Do you ever feel like you have something to say, but you just don’t know how to put it into words?
Like you have this important concept in your head, but are unable to get that articulated in a way that makes sense?

I feel that way.
And usually it is because it’s about something so big, so huge, so central in my life that I feel like if I don’t get it right, if I don’t process it fully from my brain into a way that it gets properly into yours, then it isn’t worth blathering about in the first place…
And for me, that subject is (98% of the time anyway) my children. Specifically, the deaths of my children.

And while I sometimes use the word “miscarriage,” it is rather a misnomer ~ I’ve always said that it’s such a little word for such a monolithic devastation. It is not a medical condition: it is, rather, the death of my child.

So I tend to replace “miscarriage” with that phrase. Because it’s more precise. (You may even notice that I do not have a category or tag called “miscarriage”… which surprises some people!)

Thus, when I read this article this morning, and realized how well Rachel composed her thoughts, and how precisely she put into words the thoughts of my own heart… especially from past years when we would have services hosted by one of our pastors on the sidewalk outside of Planned Parenthood (two times while I was in the first half of my pregnancy with Asher, in fact)… I realized that I just need to ask you to read her words.

I can’t tell you how many times I have started writing on that very subject, and deleted the paragraphs because I just didn’t think I did it adequately. The words that I have wanted to coin for a while, but didn’t know how ~ she did it. May God be glorified, and may eyes be opened.

“that hole in her heart that will one day scab, one day scar, but will never fully heal…”
“What if you didn’t just affirm to the world that all babies are valuable — but you also affirmed to a bereaved mom that HER baby was irreplaceable, and would forever be missed?”

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Not Forgotten

It is easy to feel forgotten. Even Scripture has evidences of God’s people feeling forgotten by Him.
And to be honest, right now, I feel forgotten too.

Psalm 77:7-9
Will the Lord cast off forever?
And will He be favorable no more?
Has His mercy ceased forever?
Has His promise failed forevermore?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?

Psalm 42:9
I will say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

Isaiah 49:14
But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.”

And in these moments where I can so easily feel forsaken and feel forgotten, I have to rely not on feelings and not even on circumstances, but on what I know about God, His character, His faithfulness. And so I must talk to myself, rather than listen to myself. I must remind myself about truths of God, not give in to the feelings that I have about where God has me right now.

Isaiah 49:13, 15
…the Lord has comforted His people,
And will have mercy on His afflicted.
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.

Psalm 10:12
Arise, O Lord!
O God, lift up Your hand!
Do not forget the humble.

Luke 12:6-7
Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God.But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

May God remember me in His mercy ~ by being with me in this dark valley, and by graciously bringing me to the other side of it back onto the heights someday where the sun still shines.

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They’re too big to miss

As I miss my baby girl (yes, Heritage is a girl… and apparently her chromosomes look a lot like her mommy’s… which makes me dream about what having a second little clone of me would have been like, just 18 months younger than her precious big sister…), I am clinging to faith, and clinging to Christ and His promises BY faith. There are giants in the land. Some of them have to do with the death of my baby daughter, and some of them are giants of other nations that we are facing at the same time. And what we are seeking is to approach these giants by faith, and to rest in God who is the One we trust will not only guide our steps but also equip us for battle, as He triumphantly gives us victory… one giant at a time.

 

We have to recognize the importance of fighting giants.
It is truly odd that pictures of this (in Bible story books, and so on) do not record the fact that Joshua led Israel into the land of giants, in order to displace those giants. This is a motif throughout Scripture. …
[W]hat are the giants in your life? What are you called to do about it?
The Great Commission says what it says very plainly. The Christian faith is a religion of world conquest through evangelization.
Are the giants here big enough to qualify as giants?
There are two approaches to take with giants — the first is that of unbelief and the second is one of faith.
Unbelief says that the giants are too big to defeat.
Faith says that giants are too big to miss.
~Douglas Wilson, blog

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Grace given to us…

Most of the time, I can not stay curled up in a ball in my bed, alone with my tears… when I went through the majority of my miscarriages in the past, it really wasn’t so hard to spend hours of my day curled up with my tears, because Gabriel either wasn’t around yet, or was so little he was oblivious to Mommy’s pain. At this point, the miracles of life (times THREE, thanks be to God!) around me require my attention, and require me not to give in to a drowning of tears throughout the day. It almost feels like I have to schedule time alone in the bathroom (which comes at a premium anyway, of course) in order to let go of my guard and indulge in tears. I miss my darling baby. I hate that I am empty, when I should be round and full; just a few days ago, there was absolutely no buttoning of my jeans, but suddenly, I can almost button them again without a problem, and I hate that. There are so many dreams that lie shattered around me now, and I don’t have the strength to sweep them up and toss them away. I still want to grasp at those dreams… giving it all up just feels impossible. Last evening I was stopped in my tracks by some pains in my belly, and out of nowhere, I grabbed my belly and thought, “no! Oh God, please don’t let anything be wrong with my baby!” and in another split second, I remembered the awful truth: there ISN’T anything wrong with my baby, because my baby is truly alive in the glories of heaven where there are no more tears, no more sorrows, no more pain. But as for Mommy… I’m left here feeling empty, with nothing but blood and shattered dreams to show for it, with tears and sorrows and pain.

That’s one aspect of my reality.

Then 5pm rolled around…

A friend showed up on my doorstep with a box full of freshly homemade Mexican food ~ enough probably for three dinners for us! She apologized for not calling to tell me she was coming, and the thing is… having her show up like that just oozed Grace.
A few minutes later my darling husband got home from work, and brought in the mail. In that mail was a box containing a bouquet of beautiful lavender flowers from some of our dearest friends who recently moved eight hours away. In that mail were a couple of cards from people who wanted to share their prayers and love and sympathies with us. In that mail was a box packed full to the brim with tangible love: coffee beans, chocolates, notes of sincere Christian love, and gift cards for dinners & lattes ~ a box from people I hardly know, yet who love us with such Christlikeness and such Grace that it brought us to tears and absolutely blew me away.

When someone in the body of Christ is hurting, the rest of the body ought to feel it. And this evening, I was shown, through various gifts that God graced some of His people with, that parts of His body are throbbing with us and for us. Nobody had to tell these people to love on us ~ they just did it. There was no committee organizing these folks to surround us with gifts ~ God urged them to use what gifts they had, and they did it. These things today are added to a couple other cards and flowers we received a few days ago after we found out our baby had died. And once again, we are reminded that the Lord inspires His people to do His work, and that His faithful followers are called to share Grace together not because we have to, but because we love to and long to. Thanks be to God.

Romans 12:6
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them…

Oh, how thankful we are that the Lord our God takes care of His children, and that He uses others of His children in order to be His tangible arms!
Brethren, thank you for blessing us with your gifts that God has given you; the gifts of words of encouragement, the gift of being our prayer warriors, the gifts of hospitality and helping us feed the hungry bellies here in our home, the gifts of beauty as you put flowers on our tables. Thank you for listening to the urging of God to share the grace He has given to you. Thank you for bearing with us in our weakness. Thank you for weeping with those who weep. May the Lord truly bless you and reward you for these sacrifices of grace.

 

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First and Last

Yesterday was the first and last time I ever got to hold Heritage in my hands.
It was horribly painful yet terribly sweet at the same time.
I am thankful that God gave us the opportunity to hold our baby, to see those precious arms and legs in their miniscule forms, to see the bright blue eye pits where eyes were being formed ~ to see God’s image on such a small but perfectly formed little human.

Tomorrow we will begin celebrating Evangeline’s first birthday. I remember the first time I ever held her, too. I praise God that He continues to allow me so many sweet times of holding her in my arms. Having her with us does not negate the pain of losing her younger sibling to heaven, but it reminds us that God is faithful ~ and that is the reminder we need right now.

Psalm 77:1-12

I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, and he will hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
When I remember God, I moan;
when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah

You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old,
the years long ago.
I said, “Let me remember my song in the night;
let me meditate in my heart.”
Then my spirit made a diligent search:
“Will the Lord spurn forever,
and never again be favorable?
Has his steadfast love forever ceased?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” Selah

Then I said, “I will appeal to this,
to the years of the right hand of the Most High.”

I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.