After all

written on 01/04/2015

Our baby was due a month from today. 

It makes my heart ache thinking about what this month should have, could have looked like. It makes me miss my baby. How can you miss someone you haven’t met?

I should be putting the finishing touches on the nursery. I should be washing clothes and putting them away. I should be checking our packed bags. This month should be filled with joy and anticipation of meeting our first child. 

I received an email this morning notifying us that we are now licensed foster parents. 

I was initially so excited. Then fear crept in.
Are we ready to be parents? The room isn’t ready. We don’t have clothes or a car seat or toys or a bag. We don’t have daycare prepared. It has been just the 2 of us for 5 years, can we do this? What if I love them and lose them? Everything is going to change. We are suppose to have 9 months to get ready for this sort of thing…

Haven’t we though? 

Haven’t we had 9 months? Nine months filled with trials and teaching. Haven’t we had 9 months thinking about and praying for our future children?  Haven’t we had 9 months of loving them and losing them? 

Hasn’t He prepared us for this first child? 

And if He has been preparing us, who has been waiting for us? What has the past 9 months been like for our child that God would prepare us in this way?

It isn’t what we thought this month would look like. It is messy. It is unfamiliar and unknown. 
It is terrifying. But, my goodness is it poetic. 

It doesn't make it okay. It doesn't lessen the hurt we feel when we think about the past 6 months. It still doesn't make sense. This world is still the terrible awful place where my babies had to die for us to be able to love and provide for someone else's child this February. But He shows me a glimpse of His plan through the poetic timing and reaffirms to me that He is doing something. That we lost our babies in this world to care for another family, to show them God's love in this world... Because He knows we will have our babies in another. 

After all, I will spend this month preparing a room and putting away clothes and waiting in eager anticipation to meet our first child in this world. 

A New Year, Thank God

written 01/01/2016

The holidays have been a tug of war between rejoicing for the future that the birth of Christ promises and being saddened by the absence of our babies. 

The new year was a struggle between being grateful as hell that that terrible year is over and not really looking forward to another year.

That sounds bad, but I’m not sure that is completely a bad thing. It isn’t that I have no hope, I think I may just be learning that nothing in this world can satisfy me. That this world is not my home. This world will have always have trouble. I am not made for it. And for the first time, I don’t belong. And I don’t want to.

As much as I would like to trade this past year in, I wouldn’t dare. The God I knew last January was not as mighty, as sovereign, as powerful, as loving, or merciful as the God I know now. He hasn't changed, but oh how I have.

As much as I wish I could, I wouldn't trade it. 

Christ's promises are way better than the promises of a New Year.

Joy in every circumstance

written 12/06/2015

I have always been a social person, an extrovert. I love to be around people.

So, it is very different for me to be so anxious and uncomfortable in social situations. But alas, I am.

I get nervous thinking about them. I have many anxious moments in the days leading up to social gatherings. It doesn’t matter who it is with, even my closest friends. Family in a big group. It doesn’t matter, I get anxious.

I think of the pity glances. The things people will say that will unknowingly make me uncomfortable. The questions and small talk that will make my skin crawl. The eye contact I will now try to avoid. The “encouragement” I will try to talk over to shield my ears. The drained feeling I will have when I leave from acting like I am someone I am not anymore.

A majority of the time these thoughts and feelings are unfounded and I leave feeling more full. And, sometimes not. When strangers ask if you have kids and it isn’t your party so you have to say no to keep the attention away from you and then you feel as though you are going to throw up because you surely do have children... the fact that everything is so hard is evidence.

We had Friendsgiving in Columbia this weekend. I was anxious.  It is really hard for me to communicate that. To say that I am scared to see my friends because I feel different and I haven’t seen them. So, instead I sit in the passenger seat and think about it for 3 hours and convince myself that I am alone in the world and then blow up as we pull in the drive…

cause that’s helpful.

Sometimes I forget that others love me. Maybe because some days it is hard to love myself.  I was nervous for this weekend, but it was a great reminder that while losing my babies is a part of me, it is not who I am. Sometimes when I think of social situations I see myself wearing a name tag that says “Hi, I have failed to carry my two babies.” A weekend surrounded by and simply being loved by my best friends reminded me that I am not broken. My name tag says, “Hi, I am a child of God...” and He has taken care of the rest.

There is such joy in that, in every circumstance.

Truly His

11/19/2015

We always knew we wanted children. I have always known Michael would be the most incredible, attentive father. Until last January it has been a “whenever the Lord wills it” or a “some day” kind of want. Then it changed. All of a sudden we were ready for kids and we wanted them right away. At the same time we wanted to be surrendered to however God chose to grow our family. We wanted to demonstrate God’s love and answer His call to love and provide for those in need. We pursued foster care as we began trying to conceive.

My heart wasn’t there. There was no excitement. In my mind, I just kept thinking “some day” we will do this. And then we got pregnant. We decided we would do respite care and then go on hold when Baby #1 came. When we lost baby, I could not imagine opening myself up to such pain at a time when I was so emotionally distraught. We finished our home study with the intent of going on hold when we received our license. As we healed and God revealed truth after truth to us, our hearts began to change towards fostering. We no longer saw it as a means to grow our family, but truly about providing for children in need, demonstrating God’s love, and opening up our home and arms as a ministry.

We decided we would pick a month and open up for placement regardless of what happened. He said December, I said January. (For absolutely no particular reason.)

A week later we were pregnant. Two weeks later we weren’t.

For the first time and for today, I am actually surrendered, peaceful in the knowledge that my God and His promises are constant. This life is full of death and darkness. We have sat in it, we have lived in it, but He has overcome it.

For the first time, I am excited at the thought of ministering to a child in our care and loving on their family.

After losing baby #1, I was so scared of God’s plan for our lives. Scared that more babies in heaven were in store for us. I wanted to trust Him so badly, to rest in His sovereignty, but it only scared the hell out of me. What if God’s glory meant 50 babies in heaven? I won’t survive it again.

But I have.

For the first time, I am not scared of His plan. While His plans may hurt, they will never harm me. I am saved.

I have never been more aware of the character of my God.

I know whatever tragedy may befall us, whatever hurt we will encounter as foster parents, whether we have 10 babies in heaven and none on earth, come sickness or poverty, loss and betrayal - God is on the throne.

He meant me for more than being paralyzed by fear, for more than my disillusioned, selfish version of the “American dream”. He meant our babies for more.

I will answer His call...come hell and likely, high waters.

For the first time, I feel like I am truly His.

God with us

11/18/2015

I haven’t written much. More than anything, in most moments I feel there are no words.

For the first time in months I don’t feel worried or anxious about the future. I am not living for a positive test tomorrow or what day of the month it is. While I don’t ever want to go through this again, I know that if we did… we will be okay.

I look at our circumstance and it seems tempting to deem it “unfair”. Yet, my heart KNOWS and is clinging to the truth that GOD IS JUST. He has not wronged me. I am not pitiful. I will spend eternity with my children. How GREAT is my God?

When we began training to foster in April 2015 thoughts of what I wanted our family to look like plagued my mind. Could I prepare a nursery to bring home someone else’s baby? We have always wanted to foster and maybe one day adopt, but I had a picture in my head of how I wanted that to go, too. I had expectations for my journey through motherhood. As much as I prayed to surrender those expectations, I didn’t.

My mind was also plagued with fears about foster care. My second-worst fear was that I would not love the children brought into my home as my own. That I would feel like I am babysitting and fail them. My worst fear was that we would welcome a child into our home and love it as our own and then lose it.

I sit here now, my expectations for our family utterly shattered. My fears faced, having fallen in love with my unborn children so quickly, so fully, and losing them. I sit here now, hands and heart open to whatever God has in store.

I know whatever it may be... He has gone before us and He will go with us. And one day we will join Him.

Sustaining Grace

11/8/2015 3 days after we lost our second

Yesterday I cleaned and organized everything I could in an attempt to control something and look at things that are in no way a reflection of the way I feel.

I woke up this morning in my clean sheets, my body sore, blisters tender from my rampage to make things pretty and I found that my heart is literally hurting. There are no chores to do today, aside from some laundry, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I ache.

We went to church. We made it through a song and a half before tears were streaming down my face and I felt like my walls were going to collapse in on me. Singing of God’s healing powers and deliverance, while ever true, I just could not do today. I walked quickly out of the service, out of the building before my sobs became audible and my husband took me home.

I feel heavy today, burdened by our hopes for this child that have been dashed; burdened by dread of outside world. I thought I was doing better this time. Today lacks that peace; today lacks promise.

I asked God to take away the overwhelming desire to be pregnant. I can assure you that He has. When we lost our first baby, at first I said I didn’t want to get pregnant right away... I lied, and demonstrated sheepish, hesitancy towards becoming pregnant again… All the while desperately wanting to. It is much different now. I absolutely dread the thought of seeing two lines again. Especially before doing more to see what could be wrong with me. There is an odd relief in not constantly fighting off fear, maybe that is part of the difference this time.

We have lost greatly, but for the moment, no more babies are threatened inside my body. I am not paralyzed by fear that I am losing one. I pray that during this interim, God would deal with my fears and show me more of His promises and character so that one day, I will fear not.

After losing our first baby, my best friend wrote this to me in a letter,

“I wish so desperately things were different...I long that God would have extended a delivering grace during this season of your life. A “yes” to your prayers. Rather than a sustaining grace. The kind that holds you during the storm but doesn’t calm it. The kind that seems useless and callous and insufficient. The no to your prayers.”   

I had never pondered the difference. I keep asking for deliverance and feeling forsaken. However, I must not mistake His sovereignty for absence. (Wasn’t I just praising his sovereignty a few days ago?) As I have learned, it is my feelings that change, my circumstances that change… but my God, He does not.

Then she shared this scripture, Psalm 22:1-3
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet, you are enthroned as the Holy One.”

Today his grace feels useless and callous and insufficient. I do not see His healing in sight.

Yet.

Facing my fears

11/05/2015

Those moments that nothing is like it was just one second ago…

Wednesday. I was happily getting my flu shot and marking the pregnant box one moment. Then I went to the  bathroom. I have seen that pink before on a previous Wednesday. Then the floor dropped out from beneath me.

I was resigned to what was to come. I didn’t try to make myself feel better by hoping. My body knew it. I knew it. The nurse whispered hope, it didn’t convince me. 

I may not know what second trimester is like, but I know what it feels like to lose your baby.

I knew I was losing baby #2.

I have feared this day so much. Telling myself I would not survive if this happened again, the pain would crush me. The shame would swallow me.

I had started a study on fear. I came home and did the next chapter, appropriately named “Facing Your Fears.”

Overall, I felt numb. A little mad, a little sad. Scared to feel anything too much in the event it would overtake me. As much as I was resigned to what was happening, a part of me couldn’t believe it was real and I still do not want to.

How could God do this? Give us such hope; hope to rock our baby, to redeem the month of July and then to instead ensure it will be the absolute hardest time as we grieve two babies.

The study asked what my greatest fears are. 

1. Losing this baby. 

2 Not trusting God.

It then asked that I go deeper, to write honestly what exactly I am afraid of.

I fear this baby dying and not being able to hold this baby. 

I fear being childless. 

I fear never getting to be a mom. 

I fear being what is wrong; that my body is killing my babies. 

I fear the absolute devastation that I know too well that comes with this loss.

I fear being angry and hating God. 

I fear His plan.

The study points out how often the bible commands us to fear the Lord. That kind of fear is described as awe, respect, wonder, reverence, and worship. And it is this only kind of fear he wants us to have.

“When we choose to fear God...we choose to live in His will and under His protection. We don’t need to fear anything or anyone else.”

I woke up this morning, for a moment I hoped. I hoped that we would look back on this scare and think about how God delivered us. As pink turned to red, I understood again that deliverance isn’t coming.

Today, to live in His will in my life means to lose our second baby.

I don’t understand it. Again, I mourn it.

The God that numbered the hairs on my head and the stars in the sky, the God that suffered a death on the cross to give me eternity, the God whose plan spans far beyond the vapor that is my life, the same God that holds my babies… He is doing something. Something I can’t bring myself to question this time, I rest in it.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelations 21: 3-4

This stirs such longing within me, and every part of me is grasping to these promises now as all the pieces of me threaten to fall apart.

I will wait on the Lord and in His word, I will hope.

Fear and pregnancy after miscarriage

Please note: this was written in November while I was pregnant with our second baby. We lost our second baby.

11/1//2015

My hands were shaking, my heart beating out of my chest as I waited the three minutes. As soon as I read the word “Pregnant” I took a deep breath, my heart calmed, tears flowed and I told God that our baby is His, that I surrender this life to His plan. I prayed for the ability to love and care for this life as long as He would have me to. I prayed for the ability to want His glory more than I want this child.

Sometimes, I feel like I have to do that every second of every day. 

I can feel the fear creeping up like a thick fog, clouding my rational thoughts and awareness of the truth. Every new and different feeling inside me, every pregnancy symptom, or lack thereof, brings a wave of fear.

In a moment of honesty the other night, I told Michael that I feel like I am waiting for the foot to drop. I don’t know what pregnancy looks like past week 10, and I honestly don’t expect to. I don’t expect for this baby to live.

I do not want to carry this baby in constant fear; to be 9 months pregnant and look back and think, “Man, I sure wish I would have enjoyed that.” or to lose this baby and look back and think, “Man, I sure wish I would have enjoyed that.”

I can’t help but come back to my due date, a beautiful picture of God’s redemption. He didn’t have to do that. To make such a dark time on this earth a little brighter. He already died for me, He already righted this wrong. And yet, He entrusts us with a new life to take care of and sets this baby’s arrival among the darkest week of our lives.

How absolutely unnecessary, yet breathtakingly beautiful.

Whether or not this baby lives or dies does not change what I know to be true about my savior.

God is good. Period.

God is love. Period.

God is just. Period.

God. Is. Sovereign.

He leaves none of those things open for interpretation.

Because of those truths, I have nothing to fear in this world. Only if I am living for this world, and not for eternity, does the fear threaten to overtake me.  

As the fear starts to rise I ask myself, a million times a day I ask myself, what am I living for?

But…

my baby…

it would kill me…

i wouldn’t make it…

What am I living for?

When the answer is eternity, there are no objections that justify the fear.

When I am living for eternity, I am not a slave to fear.

I am His child.

Our Second

PLEASE NOTE: This was written in October the day I found out I was pregnant with our second baby and the day I told Michael. We lost this baby a week and a half later. We are not expecting. Yikes.

10/27/2015

When we were pregnant with baby we sat at church, my hand resting where my tiny baby was growing, and we listened to a sermon called “It Is Well with My Soul.” The sermon recounted the story of the hymns' author, Horatio Spafford. Spafford’s business had been ruined by the Great Chicago Fire. He had planned to take his family to Europe, however, he was held back and sent his wife and four daughters ahead via ship. The ship sank and his four daughters died. On his way to meet his grieving wife, he wrote the hymn which reads, "Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,It is well, it is well with my soul."

The sermon talked about how suffering is necessary. How God prepares us to deal with our suffering. How it grows our faith. A man that has cancer and his wife came to the stage to talk about their faith during this trying time.

I sat there holding the tiniest life and the best secret I have ever had, overjoyed.

God couldn’t be talking to me. 

Please, don’t be talking to me.

I went for a run the next morning. I listened to a sermon from The Crossing entitled “Living for the Resurrection”. Dave Cover bluntly says, “This life will always bring suffering. Maybe you are on a good stretch... I promise you this, everybody’s life ends sad. This life will always bring suffering. So if you are trying to hold onto this world...you will end up seeing suffering and death as the greatest threat to your happiness and as the greatest terror in your life. Which means you are going to lose your happiness and you are going to live in terror if you try to  hold onto this world.” He went on to tell the story of a woman with cancer and her faithfulness midst trials.

My mind raced. 

No, no, no.

I jokingly told Michael when I got home that I must have cancer. As I was trying to tell him about the sermon I became frustrated, unable to communicate the truth of my fears and what I knew would absolutely devastate me; what I knew I was holding on to tighter than God. I was terrified that He was preparing me.

After losing baby, I remembered those sermons. I looked back at the weekend we heard them, 3 weeks before we lost baby.

I was 7 weeks pregnant.

The week baby stopped growing.

His sovereignty takes my breath away.

When I first listened to that sermon from The Crossing I couldn’t get past the warning that suffering was coming. Terror stopped me in my tracks. This week I listened to that sermon again, Dave Cover goes on,

“But Paul says because Jesus rose from the dead you can stand firm. Because Jesus rose from the dead you can let nothing move you because you know nothing in your story is in vain. Nothing done in service to Christ, nothing done in faithfulness to Christ is in vain because there is a resurrection coming.”

Michael came home tonight to a box sitting in the rocking chair we got this weekend with a note inside that said,

I can’t wait to rock our baby

July 2016

God’s sovereignty takes my breath away.

July.

A Faint Line

10/23/2015

You know those moments in your life that change everything? Where nothing is as it was just one second ago...

For instance, when I said I do.

When I saw those two lines.

When I didn’t hear a heartbeat.

And today, when I saw a second line.

Or wait... did I?

Just barely.

Does that count?

Three more tests.
Three more faint lines.

Hope.

I took the test expecting NOTHING... feeling surrendered for quite possibly the first time in my life. It took just one second and then I was dreaming and planning how I was going to tell Michael, our families, all the while standing in complete awe of God’s redemption and plan.

Then I grabbed the reins and pulled hard…

Maybe I shouldn’t tell Michael if it isn’t for real. I went and bought a 3rd package of tests, digital this time, so no faint line would trick me. I waited until this morning. I couldn’t sleep any longer than 5:50 am. I turned away from the test as I waited. I prayed for surrender. I prayed not to be crushed. I turned around.

Not pregnant.

My heart sank. I put the tests away, crawled back into bed, and laid my head on Michael’s shoulder, defeated. I told him. He held me. Didn't I just surrender the desire?

We went shopping for an accent chair later. Michael was careful with my raw emotions all day. I spotted this chair from across the store and walked directly to it, I became excited.

I sat down in it... and it rocked. My heart sank again. I looked up at Michael and he knew how much we both wanted to be able to rock our baby. He said this is the one and we took it home.