Another Birthday

I can't help but wonder when I will know what to expect. Last year was sad but still a celebration of the sweet girl who changed our world...today was nothing but raw and painful. I spent the better part of today lost and terrified of the heaviness that washed over me. I felt little comfort from my loving God who opened up the sky to weep with me.

My older children shook with sobs that came from so deep they gladly went to bed an hour early.

It was just heavy and hard.

She never stops being gone. She's never coming back.

While I take great comfort in knowing each year brings us closer to reunion, it also takes us further from hello.

I miss my little girl so much.

Love Letter

It starts so simply...and then God in his abundance, finishes it so amazingly!

About two months after Eden's initial diagnosis, well into my journey, I was introduced to another mother destined to have to make the same types of decisions for her ill, not yet born, son.

There is something special about sharing with another member of our exclusive club. We share the lows, the highs, the good and the very honest and ugly parts. We understand what it is to rail at and into the arms of God. We hold each other together while still a mess ourselves. It is a beautiful thing really. Beautiful in it's raw emotion.

We cemented a bond that is beyond this life, which is wonderful considering we are separated by an entire country and had only met online, introduced by one of our dear friends that I, again, had only met online.

For months and months we have shared each step of our shared path, stopping along the way to get down in the dirt with the other...or to hold out a hand to help the other up. Sharing tea, and tears, and laughter...all through a little box on the desk.

In my dreams I wondered if we would ever meet this side of heaven. I doubted we would, but I hoped.

And then all of a sudden it was happening! A gift from God, given through a wonderful friend and I was on a plane to surprise this dear woman with whom I had shared so much. And for 4 days I sat in kitchens and living rooms on the other side of the continent and learned what it meant to love Canada with my whole heart.

I laughed in grocery stores and cried for the joy of new-but-not-really friends.

So, once again, God gives me a beautiful gift out of one of my darkest hours. It is so amazing to be loved so fully by the creator of the heavens and the earth.

Two Months

It's not that I have anything particularly profound or exciting to say, just the idea that it's been two months since I last updated this blog makes my heart break a little.

Here I am, Eden's mother, and all I can really do to tend to her, or care for her, is keep this blog...and for two whole months there has been silence.

Eden died 17 months and two days ago. An amazing little girl who profoundly changed me, and who's influence in this world is immeasurable, has been away from it for nearly a year an a half. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago I held her in my arms and kissed her sweet bowed lips. Sometimes it's as if I just said good bye.

There are days when the ache in my heart is enough to make me wish this whole world would just stop so I could be reunited with her again, when living one more day without my baby girl seems like a burden to heavy to bear.

And yet there are others, where the joy and honor over having been trusted with the responsibility of being Eden's mother is overwhelming in it's own right.

The truth is there is great blessing in the midst of this journey that I still walk everyday, and that much of that blessing comes from up out of the ashes of hope.

So today I am taking a moment to nurture this mother's heart, the heart that longs for first steps and first words... not memories of final breaths and last goodbyes. I am taking a moment to parent Eden in the only way I can, in my heart and mind, and dreams.

A Repost

From my other blog:

Sanctity of Human Life Week is coming. A time to stand up and be heard about the inherent value in all human beings. A brief moment set aside to, not just decry abortion, but to speak to the value of the life contained in the womb.

I remember the first time I heard about abortion and being horrified at the mere idea of it. I remember joining a protest on the whim. Just a child, not much older than my oldest son. I also remember that it sent a lighting bolt in my home. My mother not at all pleased that I would take a stand on an issue I couldn't fully understand.

She was right, I didn't understand it all. I didn't understand what would drive a woman to make such a choice, I saw a selfish desire to just "do away" with a mistake.

As I grew into adulthood and saw a more human face on abortion, my view didn't change much. The slogan "Abortion stops a beating heart" always rang in my ears. My heart broke for the desperation some women, some girls, felt when choosing to end the life of their unborn.

I listened as semantics were juggled and words like tissue, fetus, potential for life were used. I tried to understand the idea of a starting point for humanness... but still I saw the pictures I had seen as a young girl of discarded babies and brain couldn't understand how this choice would be good for anyone.

Then on May 17 2007 I was told that the baby I was carrying would die. I was encouraged to abort and everything I knew and believed and felt changed. I struggled through the idea that I may end a pregnancy of a baby not destined to live.

Once again though, I saw the pictures of those discarded babies and couldn't bring myself to make that choice.

In making that choice I discovered that my mother had been right all those years ago. That there was much to this debate I couldn't fully understand.

I also realized how sacred life really was. Eden, my baby girl, did die just 36 hours after her birth, but in those 36 hours I saw her fully realized humanness. That even as one profoundly damaged, her worth was immeasurable. Being her mother changed me in so many ways, changes I welcome and embrace. Eden's life changed many people and pointed to a God beyond description. Eden's short life, lived outside of my womb for such a brief instant, was a life filled with purpose and rejoicing. And I life that still effects people today.

All I Want For Christmas

Yesterday morning, when I started this post, my kids were watching I Love Lucy. It's one of their favorite shows and I am fairly certain I have now seen every episode a dozen times.

Thursdays are always pretty slow since we are out late the night before.

Back to the Ricardo's...

So this is the episode where Lucy discovers she is pregnant and is trying to tell Ricky in some sweet and amazing way.

I never got to do that. I was always just way too excited to stage a big reveal.
This episode wasn't sweet or funny yesterday. This episode tore at my heart and soul. My arms aching for Eden and my womb aching for the baby it should be carrying.

I have had people suggest to me that this was all "for the best" and maybe God just "wants me to be done."

Was that what God wanted for Elisabeth as her soul ached for a child?

How can someone put reasoning into the desire for a child. No, maybe it's not logical but my very being crys out for a baby to hold in my arms. To nurse . To love. To adore.

When you have been a parent, and watched them grow and shared every parenting joy and frustration, and you think that you are stepping onto that roller coaster again...and suddenly the ride stop...you know what you have lost. You know what you are not going to experience.

Tonight my family walked over to see Santa, and as we stood in line, Jack yelling from twenty feet away "Hi Santa! Lego Star Wars!", I struck up a conversation with the family behind me and played with their beautiful little girl. All cozy in her pink footie pajamas, I watcher her smile at Noah and play with my camera and suddenly my heart broke all over again.

Unexpectedly, it all came rushing to the surface. My heartbreak, my loss, my desperation.

I miss my baby girl.

Thankful

When I wrote this line in my other blog I knew I needed to grab a cup of coffee and come sit in this special place and think some more... write some more... about who God is showing Himself to be to me.

I wrote :

I make a choice everyday to serve and love God when my circumstances seem bleak, because I want God to be made strong in my weaknesses... I think weaknesses make God excited to really show off His strength and glory.

I know I have written before about my choice to serve, love, and worship God when in the midst of a struggle. In the midst of pain. Yet, each day i learn there is so much more to this choice and that it transforms, not just me, but my whole world. This choice has ripples that I may never see, but I know they exist.

Recently, just after the loss of our last pregnancy, one of my husband's students wrote to him that she was angry with God. that this seemed cruel to her and how could He... all things I felt in the midst of our loss. Things my husband felt.

It broke my heart for her because I don't think she knows Him. That she can turn to Him with these questions. I did. I wept bitter tears and threw out a lament to rival King David. I felt forsaken, betrayed.

Yet, in my utter brokenness and heartbreak, God revealed His great strength because my weakness was great. He stepped down from a place of glory and got in the dirt with me to lift me up.

I have no "why" that I can find. They have been offered by some, but I believe there is really no "why" there is an "is" that God wants to use as refinement and glory and to show something to the world beyond myself and my family.

God is showing that He can still be glorified when there is no "why'. He is showing that the miracles are still there and the biggest ones happen on the inside. He could have healed Eden. he could have stepped in to protect and restore my pregnancy. He didn't. But He DID step in to restore my soul. My heart. My faith. Physical healing is amazing and has it's place and is NOT something He withholds, it is available everyday... the healing of a spirit is beyond what eyes can see and so rarely labeled as a miracle...but I can tell you as one who is walking it, it is so much so. In my life and soul, almost more so.

At Peace

The thoughts in my head are all jumbled and not linear or particularly intelligible but it is clear that one thing has happened to me tonight... God, the creator of all the universe, has met me in my dark and desperate place of need. He has come to sit and share a cup of tea and offer me understanding.

He has shown himself to a desperate and broken child and revealed His great love for me. Not His plan, but His love.

I don't need to know the whys as long as I can trust the love, and that trust faltered this week. Faltered and nearly shattered, but has once again been restored, refreshed , and renewed.

God, in His great love and compassion gave me the time to mourn and the time to be angry and let me pour it all out at His feet...and then he scooped me into His immense Fatherly lap and, rather than cuddle me in my brokenness, spoke to me like a woman and child of His and reassured me of His immensity and His sovereignty.

He did not let me slip into a pit of resentment, no matter how tempting, He just revealed Himself once again to me.

Poured out another portion of joy and intimacy and loved me.

I am once again, gleefully under the shadow of His wing and nestled up to Him for my comfort.

Thank you God for loving me through my weakness and showing your strength overwhelmingly.