Bigger Picture Moments: On Your Birthday, A Gift

Dear Selah,

This morning when the wise woman talked about finding each moment of grace, each moment of gift through the easy moments and even the hard, I thought of you.

I thought of how your short life here on Earth, buried in my ever-expanding womb, was marked with moments of grace and blessing.

And how even your soul passing from body to body anew into the glory of forever, still while inside my very own, was surrounded by very good gifts, from a very good God.

I think of you today because this day, last year, was the first and last time I ever held your small body, all 10 perfect fingers and toes, in my shaking hands.

And I wept over you, a miracle, and gave thanks, my hands cradling you with palms stretched up toward the giver of good gifts, giving you back to Him.

You helped me understand how it is possible to both hold and give, to both receive and let go. You were my pregnant pause, Selah, and your life continues to give me just that. Your life was a series of moments of grace and your death, even, was a gift of pause to understand what it really means to live.

God works all things together for the good of those who are called according to His purposes, and I have heard Him call my heart, inviting me out into deeper waters still.

After you went soul from body to body renewed, I prayed a desperate prayer for God to make clear what He wanted for our family, and I really just wanted you to come back. In the midst of being heartbroken at losing you soon fast and quickly, God answered my plea in a way I didn't understand when He began to break my heart for the children who don't have parents.

I thought of the heartache of losing you, entrenched in my mother's heart, and I fell face first into grieving the reverse loss, a baby losing her mother and father.

We prayed hard, and when your due date rolled around, we knew God was inviting us to host a girl who found herself in those shoes of loss reversed. And she came, and we learned, and we loved, and we cried together because when you know loss as deep as what she knows and what my mother's heart knows, you know what empty looks like.

But I'm not empty any more. I miss you, yes, and I long for you, yes, but another mercy moment, another gift of grace from your life and from your death was understanding that empty is a space that is yet to be filled only by Fullness Himself.

It's a gift you gave me to know that, and one that I'd like to whisper to other hearts that are empty and aching with voids they just can't seem to fill.

And the girl we hosted because our hearts were broken for the children without parents after we knew the broken of being parents without the child we loved, she'll come, God willing, into the fullness of a family that was born of empty and the fullness of a Family that was born of broken. And she'll have the parents, the brothers that were first yours, but that you all now share, and I pray that she'll have the Father we all share.

We know, because of your life, that one child never replaces another, and so we also know that one mother and father never replace another mother and father that were before. She'll know your name, and we'll know the names of the ones who came before us.

So this morning.

When the wise woman spoke about recognizing moments of grace and moments of gift through the good times and the hard times

and when she told us to make dots to mark those sightings and then string them together

and when she asked what I saw in the stringing together of those moments from this past year, I breathed in awe and exhaled reverence at what was before me.

I saw the Giver of Good giving me more gifts to unfold and savor, abundant gifts gleaned from your life.

A most perfect birthday present to celebrate your life, my beautiful baby girl, on the day you were born.

My love and my heart,
Mommy

Life After Miscarriage: Every Storm Runs Out of Rain

She gave me this painting back in April when I was drenched from standing in the middle of a torrential down pour that felt like it might never end.

My heart dripping and my flooded, she had prayed peace and healing over the colors and words she so lovingly spread out over the white of canvas and pages of His Word from James 1, a visual prayer layered with truth and hope.

And that painting stood as an encouragement that my suffering wouldn't be in vain

and

that every storm runs out of rain.

I kept it close day in and day out for months, reading the words from James so many times I could almost say them in my sleep. Sometime during the summer, though, I noticed that I didn't need that prayer quite like I needed it before, so I began paying more attention to some other passages of scripture that were meeting me where I'd been living -- abiding {John 15) and living a life of faith {Hebrews 11}.

A few weeks ago, one of my really good friends lost her baby, and as I sat on my bed crying for her, crying over the brokenness of our world, I looked long and hard at that painting that still sits on my nightstand.

That visual prayer  -- it was right.

Every storm does run out of rain.

It's something I can see seven months away from when we unexpectedly said goodbye to our baby and I said hello to a whole new level of anxiety for a period of time. It's something I can understand now. But when that storm was raging, it was hard to imagine any break in rain would ever occur.

And the first chapter of James was, of course, right, too; every ounce of suffering does produce perseverance and character.

Last week, as I standing in the park watching my boys laugh and play with warm October sunshine warming my face, I realized the storm storm clouds have been broken apart and cleared for awhile now.

I can feel the warmth of the sun again, my heart no longer a sopping wet mess of tears and anxiety,

and I can feel my lungs inhale the deepest of breaths without feeling like I'm exhaling the weight of the world through my mouth.

That very night, I shared while at a session with a beautiful soul whose been walking with me through the grief that has accompanied the loss of our babies that I don't feel like I'm the person I was even a year ago.

She nodded and smiled and agreed, saying that my spirit was calmer, my demeanor softer, my heart less guarded. And while I'd never choose to walk that path of hurt again, I could now appreciate what suffering has produced in my character, my spirit, my heart. All of that doesn't make the loss any less stinging, but it does grow hope in a weary heart that is so very tired of hurting.

I left that session feeling stronger, more of the woman I was created to be than I had in months, even years.

And I left that session realizing that what I thought couldn't be true is, indeed, true-- every storm runs out of rain, passes at some point. I think, perhaps that visual prayer that was an umbrella of hope over my head for so long needs to be passed along, too, a small but mighty shield from the storms of life, a traveling reminder that our hearts can hope for healing because He does heal and He is Healer.

And it will be accompanied by a journal with my story of the healing {and hopefully passed along again with another story of healing}, a traveling visual prayer of hope with stories of how the storms have passed and what He did in the midst.

For Michelle, the painter of my visual prayer, fellow hope seeker and heart-companion who keeps pointing me back to Jesus. 

Bigger Picture Moments: The Small Storms

It's not the biggest storm we've ever had, but he's completely overtaken by it.

We've been trying to go to sleep for about 20 minutes, snuggled together in his bed, but he can't relax enough to take his eyes off of the storm.  He's wholly intent on watching the lightening flashes jet across the sky just outside his window, and he nervously asks about each loud rumble of thunder that meanders in through the open window of his darkened room.

I open my arms for him, but he's too preoccupied with the storm ... until he grows tired and cannot keep his eyes open.

Finally, he tucks himself into the crook of my arm. The thunder roars a bit louder ... and he sandwiches me into a headlock between his 3-year-old arms, drapes his legs over my body as while the tree branches dance wildly in the wind just outside his window.

I try to slowly slide myself from his grip after I think he's drifted to sleep, but he whimpers about loud booms and holds on for dear life.

There's surrender tonight, heaping high in the midst of the storm.

Him, drifting to sleep.

Me, sinking into the bed until deep slumber takes over his body. And while I'm lying next to him, I know I've had trouble averting my eyes from the storm.

It's not the biggest storm I've ever known, but my eyes are glued to the window, worried about what's coming next ... when exhaustion sets in

and I, too, have to choose

to fight

or throw my weary arms around my Father's neck

and surrender to the Rest that only surrender brings

when there's storm thundering outside.

Bigger Picture Moments: Lightening Flashes

There's a storm brewing off in the distance and long before I can hear the thunder, lightening sets thick approaching clouds aglow.

The day has been warm and muggy; air hanging heavy in late spring is a sure-fire sign of approaching storms.

And how the day has unfolded, so goes my heart.

Today was deep joy and bright sun and spring warmth, air thick and heated, and I knew tonight would be one of those stormy nights in my heart and head.

We celebrated my niece's first birthday today with balloons and family and cupcakes with thick frosting, and it was good. My youngest played his heart out and snuggled me as he inhaled cupcakes and breaths of air. My oldest fawned over my niece. My niece smiled and snuggled against my chest, tired and deflated by the end of the party.

In those moments of holding her close and heaving to pick up my youngest and watching my oldest wear his heart of love on his sleeve, I remembered the first baby we lost ... one I'd hoped would share a birthday or birth week with my niece.

And in those memories, the second and third little lives we lost came to mind, too.

I silently shushed tears during the party and instead soaked in what was right there before us, celebrated  the lives of the children with which we've been blessed, gave thanks for the lives of the people we call family and friends.

But tonight as I watched the storm clouds thicken and build and blow in, I couldn't help but blow out the deep exhales of frustration and tears I'd held back earlier in the sunned part of the day.

On a whim, I captured the pink of the clouds lit aglow by the lightening.

Twice.

That never happens.

And I thought about the news we'd received a few weeks ago from the genetic testing; it showed a probable cause for the miscarriages, a genetic one from my own DNA.

An inversion on chromosome 13 likely explains why we lost those three precious babies; but we haven't pursued much more insight through the genetic counseling offered because honestly we're just not anywhere near the point of doing much more than healing.

But I've looked long at these two boys we have with wonder since we got the test results.

And I've wondered and awed at their lives, how they made it here into the land of the living when we'd barely uttered a prayer or laid a plan for growing our family,

how they might be these tiny miracles clothed in skin walking around my house day in and out and we just never really realized or understood the magnitude of such miracles.

I wonder if they are much like having captured lightening flashes twice in one storm

unlikely



perhaps impossible



but very much planned

to light up this space in time

and leave a long memory

just not exactly planned

by us.

Everyday Life: The Words

The words won't come.

Not in writing or in conversation.

And so I find myself quiet in this struggle.

The tears are free-flowing, though, in a way I've never known before now, like there's been years of them pent up.

The dam is apparently filled and any extra overflow has nowhere to go except for out. I feel like I should wear a sign that says "flood warning."

It's all so heavy.

The weight of the tears.

The weight of the losses.

The whole not knowing what's happening with my body and why when I stand up I still feel this spacey/off balance sort of feeling.

The feelings of depression and the accompanying anxiety that follows after sustaining so many losses in just three years time {we lost my dad three years ago this month on top of the three babies in the past 16  months and my grandfather this past December}.

They say it's normal for me to feel this way ... after what we've gone through.

But there's nothing normal about the way I feel right now.

The tears. The quiet. The racing of my thoughts and mind.

Not in writing or conversation.