He gives and takes away...

in the past several weeks, we have been excited about the addition of our 4th child to our family. we shared the news first with our family and then some of our closest friends. learning of a new baby is always an emotionally charged experience. the span of emotions is all over the place from excitement to fear to joy back to worry for a variety of reasons. but slowly the idea of having 4 kids began to sink in and become a permanent vision for our future. its amazing how fast you can plan out your future.

so...when you hear words like "i can't find the heartbeat" or "baby is measuring small"...suddenly nothing else matters and your future starts flashing before your eyes. the maternity clothes i had just bought the day before...i won't be needing those. the cozy baby blankets i had gotten a few weeks ago...wont be using those either. imagining the due date...but without the baby. imagining the future without that 4th person. imagining how i'm going to tell my other kids. all these things flashing before me...thoughts of what happens next physically and why this happened. i read a lot of things (too many things) as i googled my way through an overload of information pertaining to miscarriages. one of the things i read that has stuck with me is this idea...that just as much as seeing the positive pregnancy test changes your life in an instant, so does getting the news that there is no longer a heartbeat. 

this is my first experience with unnatural loss. unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow the life progression...parents shouldn't have to experience the loss of a child. ever. no matter what the age. i do not dare begin to compare the loss of pregnancy with the loss of an aged child. i can't imagine the grief. but i also would've never been able to imagine the grief of losing an unborn child. and after staring at my 3 blonde haired, blue eyed cookie cutter babes, i can't help but imagine if this baby would've been another perfect toe head. now that i know the joy of holding a precious newborn and raising a crazy toddler and laughing at a silly preschooler and growing up with an elementary aged kid...now i know what i'm missing out on. the sting of grief is even stronger because i know what could've been. 

 i know this happens to so many of us. that we lose heartbeats, lives. that it is common. i have known several people who have suffered this kind of loss. but that doesn't make it any easier when it happens. no, the pain is profound. and when we feel this pain, when it grips us, statistics mean nothing.

i also am reminded that we never know the whole story. so when you see me playing and laughing with my three kids...you may not see the pain in my heart and you may not know that i cried til my eyes were swollen and my head ached. but the hurt is there. i imagine time will make it better but it wont take it away. i'll hold special dates on the calendar close to my heart that no one else will think of as important...dates that would've represented life and celebration. we just never know what kind of hurts people are masking with smiles and small talk.  it reminds me of the quote that says be nice to everyone, they are fighting a battle you know nothing about.

He gives and takes away, yet my heart will CHOOSE to say, blessed be the name of the LORD. I may not fully emotionally support that statement yet...but i will make an everyday choice to continue to trust and praise God because He is God. regardless of my circumstances. I can't proclaim goodness and blessing only if it goes my way. whatever the path, whatever the road, whatever i am asked to endure...blessed be the name of the Lord.

not sure what my point is in all this writing...but if anything, it was therapeutic to verbalize it. its kind of a taboo subject...never really spoken much about...but there has to be more of us out there that have experienced this kind of loss. i suppose this is why so many people don't tell people they are pregnant until later in their pregnancy, to protect themselves for having to share this grief. but i felt i owed it to myself and to my unborn baby to acknowledge the magnitude of this loss. so,thanks for being my audience.  

suddenly these words have taken on a whole new meaning...

psalm 139

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.