Day 34

08/10/2015

I feel like I am failing at everything. 
I am failing at being a wife. 
I am failing at being a mother.
I am failing God with my lack of faith. 
I am failing at being a good friend. 
I can’t put aside my selfishness to go to our small group bible study; to invest in other’s lives. 
I can’t find a way to surrender. 
I feel guilty for these failures and it is heavy and I don’t like being me. 

Then I come home to this package covered in scripture and each breaks me down. 
There is this book in the package, the first page says “Mommy, please don’t cry…There are no tears in heaven.”
I have thought about baby being in heaven. I’m not sure it seems real. I'm not sure I have considered the implications of the reality of eternity. Michael and I have talked about what form baby would be. Baby was the tiniest little life when baby left me, the size of a blueberry. 
For a moment, I can see the truth. Not just something I say to myself to make me feel better and not just something I believe. In this moment I realize it is real. 

Baby was a life. God finds all life precious. He perfects it. My baby is perfect. 
Baby is now a perfect, healthy baby who has been held only by Jesus and I. 
Baby was not born into a cruel, evil world; baby was born into the arms of Jesus. 
Baby will never know hurt or pain. Baby is truly alive in Christ and will live forever. 
But the absolute best part, that in this moment is not just a cliché, is that because of the redeeming and refining blood of Christ, I will live an eternity worshiping God with our whole family. 

Right now, I can see that the absence of baby is not what makes our family incomplete. It is this world. It is the absence of God.

I shared with Michael that I feel like I am not handling this well, that my faith should be bigger; he said that it is not my faith that matters but the object of my faith. 

Losing baby was not an accident, a “miscarriage”. It is not that baby “wasn’t meant to be”, it is that losing baby was. 

I have been living as if this world is all there is. 

God doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t just take baby away. He conquered death! He lives! He has already righted this wrong. 

For the first time, I truly see this as a light and momentary affliction. For the first time, I can see that he is preparing an eternal glory beyond all comparison.

…And because He lives, I can face tomorrow. 

Photos by Anna Merrell Photography and Design

Day 33

08/09/2015

Marriage advice: camping is a dumb idea for your anniversary and/or when going through the hardest month of your life.

It started on our 5th anniversary two days ago with me locking both sets of keys, our 2 dogs, Michael’s wallet, my purse, and our 3 phones in our running Jeep. To say that he was angry with me is an understatement.

As soon as I pulled the door handle and nothing happened, it all came together in my mind. Both keys are in my purse, my purse is in the car, there is nothing I can do.

Failure.

As soon as I saw that screen with no accompanying rhythmic thump, it all came together in my mind. Baby is too small, baby has no heartbeat, there is nothing I can do.

Failure.

I couldn’t even carry my baby.

That is a terribly hard thing to say, to think. It is a terribly hard thing to experience and feel. It is just as hard to communicate that feeling to others.

So… let’s go for an adventure where everything requires teamwork, ya know, for you to carry your own weight…and just for fun let’s stay outside in Missouri in August with tons of bugs and humidity. Then I can fail at more things… like marriage.

Everything felt like an attack because I was already attacking myself and if I can see the huge failure that I am, everyone else must see too.

Maybe that is why people don’t talk about it. If I see myself as a failure, others must to. Maybe others are rooting for me to fail.

I just know that when I least expected it, the weight of this failure hit me like a ton of bricks and I have been carrying them around all weekend. Telling me not to carry them around doesn’t help. Telling me this feeling is wrong doesn’t help. I don’t even know what would.

What I do know is that the girl I see in the mirror, she lost her baby, and I don’t like her. I don’t want to be her anymore.

  Photos by Anna Merrell Photography and Design

Day 30

08/06/2015

I don’t know how to surrender.

I don’t want to worry and feel anxious about the future. I don’t know how not to.

I pray that I would surrender, that He would take these burdens from me, but I never give them to Him. I don’t even know what that looks like. Or how I would actually do that. Isn’t that just something people say? What does it mean to truly surrender?

I have been struggling with this. How do I get to a place where I am not worried about when that time of the month comes and it absolutely crushes me? How do I not wonder constantly? I want to say that I don’t want to be pregnant, because then maybe I won’t be so disappointed.

Yesterday I was able to ask my closest friends to pray for me about this. Today, I just get up in a bad mood because I can’t not think about these things.

4 weeks ago today.

My first patient didn’t show so I read my devotional. Today it is about the bleeding woman. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all recount her story. She bled for 12 years. No physician could heal her, and yet, she believed that if she could only touch Jesus’ cloak she would be healed. When she touched His cloak, she was, because of her faith.

And, I’m screwed…cause my faith looks nothing like that.

My heart issue:

I want to say that I don’t want to be pregnant because then when I am not, maybe I won’t be so disappointed. Because I realize I have no control. And I do not trust the God that took my baby to give me another one so easily. I do not think that being pregnant will heal my heart, but I feel like a mother and yet I have no children with me. I am broken-hearted that my baby is gone; that the dreams and prayers I prayed for that child will never be in this world. It makes me feel guilty to want so badly to be pregnant so quickly. But I do, because it feels so wrong to not be. It is so hard to admit it because maybe that isn’t God’s plan for me. And if it isn’t, that isn’t okay with me; I don’t know how to get to a place where it is.

The devotional ends with this:

In the midst of our hardship, our brokenness, and our deepest pain, it can be easy to throw up walls around our heart and hide our brokenness from the world. It can be safer to withdraw, to try to fight our battle on our terms and in our own strength. But when we choose to put our feet under our faith and reach our hand out to grab His cloak? We learn to trust Him.

Because He is good. Faith is worth the risk. He will make us whole.

Michael said, “I feel like God wants you to know that He sees you.”

God was not rewarding the woman because she had faith. He was demonstrating His faithfulness, His goodness. I forget His character; that He is trustworthy.

I cannot surrender if I do not first trust Him.

I trust that He sees me and He is with me. Now, I need my heart to trust His plan more than my own.

Day 26

08/02/2015

This morning I prayed that God would give me a heart of surrender.

We took anniversary pictures today. So bittersweet. Sweet because I have never been more grateful for my husband and our years together. Bitter because I should be showing. Baby should be in our pictures. But Baby is not.

I have never felt more out of control; so absolutely at a loss. I can’t say I was blind-sided, because I feared that day in the ultrasound room since I first saw those two lines. I was cautious with my hopes and expectations. I knew what I had was fragile… and completely out of my control.

I recognized that with Baby. Each time I would get anxious at the thought of losing Baby I would come to the same conclusion: God’s plan for Baby’s life has been determined. There is nothing I can do to change it. I can only trust Him and surrender Baby to Him.

When we decided to start growing our family this past January, we wanted to be completely open to however God wanted to grow our family. We have always wanted to adopt through foster care. However, it was hard for me to let go of the picture I had formed of motherhood in my head. The one that is attached to my own expectations for what our family would look like. God opened my heart to see that becoming a mother was not about fulfilling my wants and worldly expectations. Motherhood is about glorifying God by demonstrating His love to a child that He has given me. Regardless of whether the child is biological or not, the child is not truly mine. He or she truly belongs to the Lord. 

I come back to that now. Baby was not mine. Baby belongs to God and His kingdom. God worked through baby and completed that work and called Baby home.

This is not about me. It is not about what God has done to me by taking my baby; it is about what God did through Baby and is now doing through me.  

Wave of Light

There is a quote said by one of our pastors, Dave Cover, at The Crossing in regards to Christmas lights. Tonight, as we join many across the nation in lighting a candle for our little ones in heaven, I want to share some parts of that quote with you.

"let those lights shining in the darkness be a sign. Not a sign of tradition. Not a sign of better years gone by. Not a sign of family. Not a sign of memories. the more we think Christmas this life is about family in that way or nostalgia or tradition, the more it will eventually bring us grief and sadness as loss of family is unavoidable in this dark world. Pretty soon all our realities will be replaced by memories and nostalgia

let it be a sign to you that no matter how great your darkness is, God has not abandoned you to the darkness"

Our grief may seem unchanging. Our darkness unyielding, but this life is not about family. It is not about me. It is about a savior who conquered death. All death. 

Today we would have been 24 weeks. Instead, tonight we lit a candle in memory of our precious unborn baby and more importantly in recognition of a God who does not abandon us to the darkness; of a God who came into the darkness that we may spend eternity in the light with Him. 

Day 24

07/31/2015

Here’s the thing about the thought of “trying” again.

I hate it. I hate that I am not 13 weeks pregnant today. I hate that my baby is gone. I hate that I will never hold my sweet baby in this life.

It is all wrong, I shouldn’t have to be thinking about getting pregnant right now.

And the real truth, which I hate, is that I desperately want to be.

Because otherwise I am just a momma without a baby.

08/01/2015

The last few days have been rough. I have been emotionally overwhelmed. My heart goes to dark places and they fill my whole body. It feels like I am screaming from the inside out and I can’t calm down. My hands form fists and they squeeze as tight as they can. That same damn roller coaster just keeps going.

I woke up this morning and prayed. I prayed that I would seek His face in those moments today.

I finished the prayer and read my devotional for the day, which was this verse:

“Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her” Luke 1:48

Mid morning is the worst, I should call it mid morning madness… cause I get crazy.

I don’t even know how to describe it. My feelings consume me. Today was no different. I kept thinking back to that prayer; waiting for Him to pull me out.

I tried to explain this pit of emotional overload I was feeling to my husband; the anger that shackled me.

He grabbed me. He made me look him in the eye. He told me that he heard everything I was saying, that I have every right to feel that way, and that even with all those terrible feelings… he thinks I am perfect.

And I saw His face. I knew immediately that is how God feels about me. He broke the chains.

I was in, no doubt, an ugly condition consumed by things that look nothing like holiness and He saw me as perfect; as righteous. And He showed me His face. It’s funny, sometimes my husband looks a lot like Jesus telling me I am redeemed.

We took my nephew and mom to see a movie. Little Keith and I “surprised” Michael with a water balloon fight in the back yard. We chased each other and we all ended up soaked from head to toe. We sat in the sun in the back yard. I shielded my eyes from the sun, and I looked at my mom and Keith and Michael all sitting around me, and I thought, God is still good.

God is so very good.

Day 22

It has been a hard week, fighting with God about sharing this entry. 
Why do I have to share my darkest moment? 
Let others see the worst parts... 
Maybe, I can skip this part... Not all of it needs to be shared. 
But that is not the conviction God pressed upon me. He doesn't just save parts of me, He saves the ugliest parts of me. 
And so He gently pushes me;
To let others see the far reaches of His redemption, the brightness of His light. 
It is with a reluctant, yet obedient heart that I share this with you. 
So that others who I have experienced this, would know they are not alone; 
that people considering this would know the lasting devastation;
that you might be able to demonstrate compassion to someone you love, or even someone you don't;
and to demonstrate that the depth of God's mercies never fall short, even in the most desolate of places. 

07/29/2015

We got my bill today. They called it an abortion.

I don’t even have the words.

I am not condemning people. I am not passing judgement. I just can’t help but think that they must not know how terrible it is…

They must not see my baby as a life. Their baby’s heart BEATS.

…to choose this.

There are no words.

07/30/2015

Three weeks ago this morning I had my “procedure”.

We chose to have a D&C in the doctor’s office.

The doctor had told me it would take 5 minutes. Five minutes.

She said that it would feel like I was dying for 90 seconds.

I was terrified.

I woke up with part of this line from a song stuck in my head, “even if the healing doesn’t come”.

And I knew it wasn’t coming. I knew He wasn’t going to take this away.

We sat outside the doctor’s office, knowing that when we would come out our baby would be gone.

I used to think that it would creep me out, for something not alive to be inside me. But it was just the opposite. I knew baby didn’t have a heart beat. I knew baby was already with Jesus, and yet I did not want to let go. I wanted to carry baby.

It was physically painful leading up to the procedure; they gave me medicine to dilate me the night before. I could feel the clots as they passed. There was so much blood. Each was heartbreaking.

She gave me valium. I almost only took one, because I didn’t feel anxious anymore. I already felt like I was dying.  I took two.

Michael read 2 Cor. 4 to me. It was excruciating to hear His promises and to know they were true, but that meant going through this.

Michael couldn’t go back with me.

The room was covered in absorbent pads. Every surface, protected from me. I laid on the table and looked up at the light. As she began giving me the local anesthesia shots, I asked if the nurse could hold my hand. Kelly. She held my hand. I stared up at the light and said 2 Cor. 4 out loud at first and then words stuck in my throat. The 90 seconds started, and the physical pain was immense but it was no match for the pain in my heart. I sobbed as my baby left me. Kelly brushed my hair back from my forehead. I sobbed harder as the 90 seconds passed.

She asked if I was in pain, but it wasn’t any pain she could help.

When I tried to scoot up on the table, I couldn’t lift my body. I’m glad I took two.

I returned to the room, Michael helped me to the table. We wept for our child, for a life God created, for our baby’s heart that stopped beating. I wept uncontrollably. For days, I wept.

And, I’ll never be the same.

Day 20

07/27/2015

There is a constant battle between my faith and my flesh.

Initially, I feel grateful for others' happy news. Then it sits there and my flesh takes over, my human nature consumes me.

I lay in bed, and in anger cry out,

Why my baby, God?

If God is all powerful, which You are…

If He intended for us to live in perfection and relationship with Him, which You did…

If He loves us, which You do…

Why did You plan for us to eat the apple?

Why did You plan for us to need saving?

Why did You plan for us to be separated from You?

Why pour out Your wrath?

Why set all these things in motion in order to bring Yourself glory?

To be your own heroine? Are You that narcissistic?

You obviously love yourself, more than you love me. You love your glory above all.

But, Your glory leads to the world You intended.

You loved us so much that you gave us free will.

You gave us a choice, knowing that we wouldn’t choose you.

You watch us struggle and you must think, 

“Why my child?”

You allowed us to separate from You, You planned to lose your own children. 

You knew that it would bring us suffering, which would bring you pain.

But You let us choose.  

You brought us out, so that you could bring us in.

That we might know the pain of Your sacrifice, the depth of Your love, and the fullness of grace more completely.

You let me yell at you in anger. You let me question Your character. In the same angry thoughts, my heart cries out the answers. You have put them inside me. You don’t leave me. You have not forsaken me. You will not leave your child in the desert. You will bring me home.

Day 19

07/26/2015

This morning we went to church. In between two of my closest friends, tears silently streamed down my face. 

I came with such a grateful heart, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to worship God. I hear His promises in the words of the songs. I hear of the depth of His love. I hear of His power, and His mercy, and His grace. I hear what I know to be the truth. But even with my grateful heart, the words barely escape me.

Even with seeing His provision, even with feeling His comfort, my heart struggles.

It aches to praise His power, the power that took our baby, but enabled me this weekend. It hurts to sing of His love, the love that gave me baby, the same love that holds me now. It stings to sing of His grace, the grace that didn’t deliver me, but sustains me. Maybe one day those things will coexist as well, now they fight within me.

Sometimes I lose myself in His sovereignty. I forget the role my flesh and free will played in the way of the world. I forget I have a choice. I would have eaten the apple. I chose the apple over Him every day.

I know this world is not what God intended. All that He does, good and bad, is to restore this broken world to the glory He created it in.

Right now, I hate that.

At the end of the day, in the quiet of our home, Michael holds me and the sadness rushes back. I miss the joy that came with knowing our baby was inside of me.

I still do not like His plan, but I can recognize that it is much bigger than myself. And part of me can praise Him for that. 

Day 18

07/25/2015

Today was a great day.

I almost don’t know how to describe it. The feelings I felt were not any of the ones I expected. Everything came together so well.

I loved spoiling her baby with headband crafts and funny diapers for her parents. I loved watching Dana open her gifts and oohhhing and ahhhing, and meaning it. I loved seeing all these people pour out love on Dana and baby girl. I loved that I loved being there.

I loved feeling her baby move and getting to spend time with my best friend and talk with her in person for the first time about Baby.

Today was not about me. I didn’t think I could put my hurt aside. God did something better, He made it okay for my hurt and my happiness to coexist. He made me care less about myself and more about someone else.

There is no part of my wildest imagination that thinks I would be capable of this on my own. I did not dig down deep and find the strength. My evil nature would have said screw you and wallowed in self-pity.  Which is exactly what I was afraid would happen at the shower. However, God heard me. He heard my friends praying for me.

When I was in the dark place, the thought that kept me from giving up on the shower completely was the idea that I couldn’t not go. I refused to miss out on this time of her life.

I am so thankful for the way God worked in my heart. To change me and make me less like me.

God may have thrown me in this pit, but He is here with me. He is working on getting me out.

Day 17

07/24/2015

I rush around filling the car, checking off my list. It’s in my head, but nonetheless. As check marks fill up, the butterflies in my stomach become restless. The ride to Columbia is long and quick at the same time. I am scared to see her. I pray that I will not ache. I pray that my heart will not drop when I see baby things. I pray that God will change my heart to look more like His; that my eyes will not see my loss but the beauty of life and my best friend becoming a mother. I pray that God will give me a peace only He can. I pray that God will give me comfort only He can. I pray that I can put others before me.

I am cautious at first. I am guarded. I struggle to meet her eyes. And then when I hug her, I feel her belly, I feel the love and her hurt for me emanating from the strong hold of her arms, and God fills me. He fills me with gratitude and love and reassurance. He takes away the butterflies.

My God is so big. He lives inside me and He held the sadness and loss of my baby in one hand and my love and gratitude for my best friend and her baby in another. They no longer overlap. The stroller doesn’t make me look the other way, as I feared. The nursery doesn’t send me running as I feared.  I felt joy to see her and be with her without feeling my own sadness. My comfort is no longer the most important thing. I cannot wait to see the joy on her face in the morning.