Processing

I cannot thank you all enough for the overwhelming support you have brought to our family with your comments, emails, phone calls, and visits. I have been so uplifted by your prayers and have truly felt many arms around me, comforting me, even from miles away. I would be lying if I said I was doing "great." I'm still in the middle of it all, still reeling from the crazy emotions of the past few weeks, still crying at the drop of a hat. But I have felt great peace, and great love from an incredible community of people. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is what the body of Christ is all about.

All my adult life, I have felt like there are all sorts of "clubs." You usually notice them most when you're at one place in life and you wish you were in another, and everywhere you look there are people who are where you want to be and it's like they're all in this exclusive group of people you just can't belong to. There's the engaged crowd when you're still waiting for a "sparkly," the married crowd when you're still "waiting," the pregnant crowd when you're "trying," and a million little mommies when you're waiting for a baby- and I've even found that when you wish you had more than one child, everywhere you look there are mommies with whole broods of kids making you feel somehow not enough even with the one you've got. And then there are other "clubs" you don't even know are there until one day you find yourself part of a group of people you would never have wanted to join. I would never have asked for admission into the "club" I joined last week, but I have found that this group of mamas who know what it is to grieve the loss of a tiny life with all the hopes and dreams you have for its future before it ever starts, is (unfortunately) much larger than I might have imagined- and full of hearts who understand because they have broken in this way, and loving arms to reach out, knowing just where that hurting place is- and who know also what it is like to come out on the other side, forever marked by the experience, but able to return to life again. I would never have wanted to join this group- but I am so thankful that it is there. And someday when someone else I know has a sorrow to bear like this, I will be able to be there for her, as they have been there for me.

I said before that writing is part of healing for me. I wanted to write something about what I am learning from this experience to honor this baby... and I want to share it with you if you want to read it. In a way, I feel that putting this "out there" gives this baby a place in history and commemorates its place in our family. So read this if you'd like, this letter I wrote to the child I will never know on this earth, but love no less than the one who fills my days with life and giggles and yogurt stains and temper tantrums and hugs.

Dear Baby,

I’ll never forget the day I found out you were there. It was April 23, a Wednesday morning, exactly two years and six months from the date I learned I was expecting Carolyn, your big sister. Oh how I wanted to meet you, to watch you grow on the crackly ultrasound screen, to hear the sweet quickstep of a baby heartbeat, to feel you thumping and kicking me from inside, to bring you screaming into the world right around the New Year. I prayed for you, every day, every minute sometimes, that God would make you grow strong and bless our family greatly through you. He didn’t answer that prayer in the way I expected Him to. Just a week after I learned you were there, I found out that you were gone. Such a short life- not at all what I asked for! But I believe in my heart of hearts that no life is a mistake. You are a unique person, possessed of an eternal soul from the moment of conception. So even though your life on earth was just a blink- I only got to love you inside my body for seven sweet days- you were here for a purpose.

I don’t understand why God chose to take you, to snatch you from my womb and leave me with a yawning gap inside where once your life stirred and began. No doubt, you understand all this better than I do. Mommies live to answer their children’s questions, to teach them about life. But maybe you lived to teach me. I can just picture you up there, sitting in heaven, wishing you could comfort me, give me the answers I wish I could have, help me understand why God thought you were so special that He had a unique plan for your life here, as short as it was- why even the pain that comes with losing you, the gaping emptiness of a womb no longer stirring with life, is a blessing because although if I’d never known you were there I wouldn’t feel the loss, I would also have missed the blessing of knowing that God gave our family another member. I picture Him in heaven, choosing you specially to be here for this moment in history- brief in span of days, but a pivotal moment in our family’s story. Nothing will ever be the same after this- it just can’t be. Our family will always be one short- and a part of my heart now lives in heaven with you, my sweet child. I never got to give you a name, but I know that God already has, and one day I will know it.

I want to honor your life, sweet baby. No life is a waste- no life is without purpose. And I believe that God gave you to me to teach me some lessons that I could not have learned any other way. As backward as it sounds, I think He brought you into the world and took you away again to teach me to trust Him, even when bad things happen. I was forced to confront one of my very deepest fears this week- the fear of losing someone I love. I prayed that it wouldn’t happen, believed that God could have kept it from happening, and it happened anyway. And when it came down to it, I found that I did not have to walk the road alone. God Himself, the great Shepherd is leading me gently through this valley. I’m still in the middle of it now, in the darkness with walls on either side of me, unable to see the steps in front of me, yet I can sense His guiding hand on my back, proving to me that I do not walk alone. And one day, when I come out of this valley and back into the sunlight again, I will know in a way I have never known before that His grace is indeed sufficient.

I remember reading something in a book a few days after I found out I was pregnant and I was worrying that God would take you away when I already loved you so much. In the book someone told the story about how God gives us the grace we need at exactly the moment we need it- and not a minute sooner. As a child, she went on train trips with her father, and her father never gave her the ticket for the train until the moment she needed it. And God is like that, too. I prayed when I felt fearful that I’d lose you that God would give me the ticket I needed if that train ever pulled into the station. And indeed, He did. I won’t say the pain hasn’t been great, or that I haven’t cried buckets of tears in the last week. But even in that stomach sinking moment when I found out that you had gone- my heart was flooded with a peace I cannot explain- and I know that that was my ticket, not a moment sooner than I needed it, but faithfully there to see me through one of the hardest moments of my life.

Perhaps there is no other way I could have learned these lessons. Before you came, I just wanted to be pregnant, to have a baby, to expand our family… I sought after that goal with all my heart. And now He is bringing me to a new point, where I will seek after HIM, and not only after His earthly blessings. He brought me you so that you could lead me back to Him. And I am all the more determined to learn what He wants me to learn because the cost has been so great. I will love you always, remember you forever, live with a hole in my heart that will never completely heal. I will always wish you were here, but one day I know I will see you in heaven, where He himself will wipe away my tears, and crying and pain will be gone forever. Until then, sweet baby, know that you will have a place forever in your mama’s heart.