12/29/17

What I Didn’t Expect the Day My Rainbow Baby Was Born

My little rainbow baby is four months old now, and I still can’t believe that God gave us this sweet, little blessing - Joyelle Moriah.

Joy – for finding happiness in the midst of a storm

Moriah – for the mountain on which Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac - because that is how I felt when we lost our third baby.

Since finding out we were expecting in January 2017, I couldn’t help but wonder when this pregnancy would end too.  It was hard to enjoy any aspect of the experience as I felt like this child would inevitably be taken away as our last baby had.  People would congratulate me on the pregnancy, but I felt as if the words passed right through me.  I would smile and thank them, but I could never feel the assurance in my heart that I would be able to hold this child on earth.  I consistently would white-knuckle the ultrasound table, and I had to remind myself to keep breathing each time the doctor used the doppler to check for the heartbeat.   I couldn’t look at the ultrasound until I saw the reaction on the technician’s face – waiting to see whether it was good or bad.  I was happy to make it to each subsequent week but constantly wondered how long until my life would be shattered again.  And then, at 34 weeks, my water broke. 

A Bible verse popped up on my phone that morning, as one does every morning.  As I was lying in the hospital terrified of what the future held, I saw that the daily verse was THE verse, the one that used to be so dear to me but instead for the past year and a half had caused me grief.  Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  Ugh.  The weight of that verse felt heavier that day.  I quickly closed the app and put my phone away.  I did not want to think about how this situation was going to be good for me, how it would mature me, shape my faith and spiritual walk.  I felt the truth in the C.S. Lewis quote: “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” 

The next day, a new verse popped up.  It was Philippians 1:6: “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  I thought “Come on, God!”  This was also a heavy verse for me over the last year.  How could God start something and not finish it?  How could He make my child and then not let him or her be a part of my life?  And would He do it again?  Would I have to go through it all over again?  I knew that I will meet my children in Heaven and possibly this one too.  I knew in my mind that I had to look at my life through God’s perspective and not my shallow, blind, earthly view.  However, it still felt like salt in the wound to read this verse at such an uncertain time. 

My friend and I had just finished reading “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis.  In it, the most memorable passage for me spoke about how miracles in our earthly lives are rare.  We all expect it, but it does not happen often.  I could connect with this principle, not as a pessimist but rather as one who understood the reality of life.  I had taken off my rose-colored glasses. 

I certainly did not expect to have our daughter 5 weeks early.  After Joy was born, we found out that she almost didn’t survive.  Unbeknownst to us all, my placenta had ruptured, and the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.  My doctor said that if she had stayed in utero until she was full term she would not have made it.  At that moment, I knew…thank you, God, for breaking my water.  We didn’t know, but God knew.  If that doesn’t give perspective and hindsight right there, I don’t know what does.  When I heard that, I knew: God had moved a mountain.  I did not expect God to move a mountain.  He certainly did not HAVE to move it.  He is never required to move our earthly mountains…answer our prayers…but He had.  I did not expect God to work in such a big earthly way for this child. 

Then I wondered: How do I reconcile why God moved in such a big way for this child but not for the last child?  Why is the baby I expected to be here…not…and the one that I did not expect to be here…here?  I could feel the happiness of having this child coupled with the heartache of not having our third child.  It was bittersweet.  And I did not expect to cry, and I did…for my baby in Heaven…for this baby…for what our family could have been…for the future…for the unknown.  I just wanted to look ahead and know that it would all be okay.        

I did not expect to finally see the “good” in Romans 8:28.  Yes, God worked in a big way to bring Joy here to us.  And I don’t want to admit it, but yes, God DID move in a big way for the baby we lost last year – although it was not how I had expected.  He moved in my spiritual life and by bringing love from family and friends – new and old.  He changed my attitude and made me realize what is truly important in life.  What I once described as “infinite sadness” God changed that day to “infinite gratefulness.”  And of course, He was there with me through every step of the journey.  I thank God for Joy.  I thank God for all of my children – on Earth and in Heaven.  I thank God for the good that came out of the bad, even when I do not want to admit it.  God didn’t have to move this mountain, but He did.  Don’t get me wrong; there is still sadness in my heart, but there is something more – there is joy.     

06/20/17

Beautiful sight this evening.  I hope you saw it if you live near me.  A full rainbow and the beginning of a double rainbow.  God’s amazing handiwork.  We took the girls out on the porch to see it, even though it was raining…and they were supposed to be in bed.  We were all in awe.  (My three year old said that she wanted to slide down it!)  Pictures do not do it justice, and honestly, I could not get the entire rainbow to fit in the picture!  It is fitting that God sent this rainbow tonight of all nights. 

First of all, Biblically, the rainbow is a promise from God that He will never destroy the earth with a flood.  In Genesis 9:16, God said: “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”  A promise.  And God will remember it every time He sees a rainbow.  That resonated with me.  Just prior to seeing the rainbow, I was reading a Bible story to my daughters.  The story focused on Miriam and her concern for her baby brother’s welfare as he floated down the Nile River in a basket.  One specific part spoken by Jochebed, Moses and Miriam’s mother, left me in tears: “We have to let go of all the things we’re scared of.  We have to trust that God will take care of our baby” (Nellist, Glenys. Love Letters from God: Bible Stories. Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkidz, 2017. Print.).  Although this is a partly fictitious Biblical account for children, can’t you imagine her saying that?  I thought about the poignant and heart-breaking goodbye Jochebed would have given to baby Moses when she thought she would never see him again.  Any mom could imagine that, and many have had to do so in this life.  Gut-wrenching.  Cue the waterworks. 

Secondly, today I am 27 weeks pregnant with our rainbow baby, and we are trusting God that we will be able to hold this little girl in 13 more weeks.  To say this pregnancy has been emotionally difficult would be an understatement.  The baby we lost would have been 7 months old last week, and it seems everywhere I go lately, I see babies that age.  Memories and worries hit me often, and God knew that being a visual person, I needed this reminder of His promise and also a reminder to trust in Him.

TRUST.  Ugh…this is a hard one for me.  I like to be in control; I believe in the American dream, for goodness sakes!  However, I actually have very little control over my life in comparison to God’s control over my life.  The more I think about that statement, the more I realize it is a good thing!  But in the meantime, God keeps telling me to TRUST, even when it’s hard.  TRUST, even when it’s sad.  TRUST, even when it is difficult work.  TRUST, even when you think you cannot continue.  I can still see the rainbow as I look out my window, although it is changing into a lovely pink-purple combination within the medium blue clouds.  As it fades, I remember God’s promises.  The promise of reunion, the promise of life eternal, the promise that God will never leave us, all of the promises that have not been fulfilled yet.  On that day, we will get to stand in God’s presence and see all of the promises come into completion.  I look forward to this day, but until then, I am choosing to TRUST.

05/10/17

Exactly one year ago, I began my grief journey.

1 year – 12 months – 52 weeks – 364 days – 525,600 minutes.

And I have felt the weight of every single minute.  It is strange how something which happened so long ago can be so strongly engrained in a person’s memory.  It still hits me like a freight train sometimes, like getting the wind knocked out of me.  No one expects to walk in for their 14 week prenatal appointment and hear the words “no heartbeat.”  When you lose a child, you miss out on so much: the milestones, the “firsts,” the birthdays, the hugs and kisses.  My grief was wrapped up in not only the loss of a child but the loss of life experiences with that child.  It is not about forgetting but about remembering.  Yet my grief more often than not ended up in a mangled, twisted ball of confusion.  In fact, it felt like I had fallen down a rabbit hole.   

Since I was a little girl, I have always been captivated by the story of Alice In Wonderland.  Published in 1865 by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name of Lewis Carroll, it received great success and is known still today as a classic children’s book.  There are many movies, plays, musicals, etc. that depict varied off-shoots of the original, and trust me, I fell in love with them all.  But as I began my grief journey, I started to realize the unintentional connection I felt to Alice.  Like Alice, I had tumbled down a rabbit hole into a strange new and confusing world where everyone was “mad” or sometimes thought of me as the “mad” one.    

After entering this world, Alice experienced changing shape from normal size to small, then to large, and then back to small again.  I remember when I first heard the shocking news in the ultrasound room, the whole space expanded.  The walls got farther and farther away and the ceiling lifted higher and higher.  I felt as if the world around me was growing bigger and swallowing me up in it.  In Chapter Two, Alice swims in the pool of her own tears.  Need I say more on this subject!  Then there is the Mad Tea Party where the characters rotate seats and perform mundane tasks for no reason at all.  When grief is involved, the daily act of life is much more monotonous, and life keeps moving even when you don’t want to move. 

Not to mention the Cheshire Cat…who sometimes helps guide Alice and sometimes confuses her more.  At the beginning of my grief, I felt like that was God, dragging me around a chess board, deciding where I should go like a pawn about to be sacrificed in order to strategize for the team.  Disappearing and reappearing at random, smirking at me with his curled-up smile.  But now I realize that is absolutely false.  That is what I thought at the time, based on my feelings, and we were never meant to govern our life by our emotions.  Now that I look back, I realize how God was comforting me, encouraging me, making me part of His plan all along the way.  Joni Eareckson Tada, in her introduction for the book “Scars That Have Shaped Me” by Vaneetha Rendall Risner (which I highly recommend by the way), explains that we do not always see God’s hand in the midst of difficult times until we peer over our shoulder and look back at our life.  It is only then that we see how God carried us with His amazing grace.  He allowed me to hurt so deeply that only He could be the one to help.  It may have been confusing at the time, but God sees it all as crystal clear, unmuddied by the world’s demands and criticisms.  No, God is not the Cheshire Cat to me anymore; He has walked with me in the darkest valleys.  The Bible verse that has consistently come to my mind is Psalm 23:4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”    

When I was a child, the character I was most terrified of was the Jabberwock from Through the Looking Glass.  A make-believe creature which is dragon-like with “claws that catch” and “jaws that bite,” it originated from Lewis Carroll’s poem titled “The Jabberwocky.”  Honestly, I was pretty much terrified of mostly everything as a child, but that is an entirely different blog post.  In my grief, I felt like I was stuck on the side of the mirror with the Jabberwock tormenting me and keeping me fearful of the future, my children on earth, what would happen in my life.  I remember a desperate scene in a movie reconstruction of Through the Looking Glass in which Alice can see her mother and her real life on the other side of the mirror.  She hits and bangs on the mirror, all while shouting and crying for her mother to see her, but she is separated from her.  I felt that way with my grief…as if I could see my old life in my past, and all I wanted was to get back there, to walk through the mirror to the other side and be with my child.  Yet nothing in my power could achieve that. 

Much like Alice's world, the world in which we live is inverted.  God never planned it to be this way.  Things are very different now than on Day One of the world.  However, human beings chose to leave God behind and take their own path which lead to death and destruction.  The only way this inverted world will ever become right side up again is in Heaven through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  And so I wait (somedays more patiently than others) for that day, when I will see my baby again in Heaven.  Just a year ago, my baby was inside me, and now, he or she is waiting for me in Paradise. 

One year may feel like a long time...but not in comparison to eternity.

04/10/2017

This week I celebrate my birthday.  It always rains on my birthday.  I guess that is what happens when your birthday is in April.  I remember in first grade on my birthday the clouds were so dark it seemed like a navy blue curtain over the windows in the classroom.  My classmates and I were afraid of the crashes of thunder and bolts of lightning.  It was one of those storms that makes the walls shake.  Needless to say, as a young child, I was not appreciative of the weather that day.  Almost every year since I was born, it has rained on my birthday.  I have always thought of rainy days in a dreary and dismal fashion. 

Yet, in the Bible, rain is actually a sign of blessing as Franklin Graham recently pointed out.  1 Kings 8:36 states: “then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel. Teach them the right way to live, and send rain on the land you gave your people for an inheritance.”  After all, nothing would grow without rain.  The Promised Land would have been a dry wasteland.  In comparison, I do not want my life to be a wasteland.  Therefore, there must be some rain in my life.

This week, I should be celebrating my 30-something birthday, but instead, I keep thinking that this is my first birthday as the new person I am now. In the past year, my life has turned upside down.  My husband and I lost a baby, and then I almost died during surgery.  The chaos and confusion has transformed me. No, God has transformed me through the chaos and confusion into a new creation.  As in 2 Corinthians 5:17, I have been made new: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  I realize the person I was a year ago will never exist again.  I can never go back to who I was: the naivety, the innocence, the simplemindedness.  A part of me did die that day.  I suppose that is a good and bad realization at the same time…depending on the day, the holiday season, sometimes the hour.  God broke my heart so that He could change me as only He can.  I keep asking Him to put the broken pieces back together.  He has started, but my heart is still not whole again.  Someday it will be, even if I have to wait until I enter the gates of Heaven.  I know this truth because of Revelation 21:5: “He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'"  He is making me new everyday.

Almost dying changes you.  Losing a child changes you.  Grief changes you.  If it didn’t change who you are, then what was lost was not important.  But the baby we lost was important.

And now, I do not mind the rain as much...especially on my birthday (although the forecast actually looks like sun!).  I do not mind the cloudy days because as my friend tells me they are a more accurate reflection of life, and I get that now. 

So if you see me this week, wish me a happy first birthday because I almost did not live to see this birthday, and more than ever, I want to celebrate being God’s new creation.