Friday
May 16, 2009
If only I could go back and tell this girl how much life is going to change in a few days. And it will get worse over the next few months. Life will suck. Suck a lot.
The couple in this picture has a secret. They’re having a baby! Yep, another one! Yep, about a year after the last one. Yep, they’re surprised, too.
A mere 24 hours later she will start bleeding. She won’t tell her husband right away because it might be nothing.
But it’s something.
She tells him before they go to bed.
The bleeding doesn’t stop and she cries during the entire church service on Sunday.
When a select people find out what’s going on, they say well meaning things she doesn’t want to hear. “Whatever you have Lord. Your will be done.”
She knows this is true.
But it doesn’t encourage her in the moment.
She calls the on call doctor.
The on call doctor tells her “if it’s a miscarriage, it’s a miscarriage. We can’t do a thing about it.”
She knows that’s true. But she didn’t need to hear that in the moment.
Her and her husband go to the small town ER. The doctor calls her baby a BABY. The doctor is sorry they don’t have better ultrasound equipment to check on the baby.
She tells the doctor how she saw a heart beat 3 days earlier.
Another well meaning person tells the couple “at least you have other kids.”
She bleeds and cries.
She wakes up Monday to call the doctor.
They schedule an ultrasound for that afternoon.
They tell her what to look for in case she passes something.
She bleeds.
She cries.
She bleeds.
She cries.
She begs God to allow her to hold this baby. Because if she prays this way it means she will stay pregnant.
The moment. She knows. The moment it’s happening. She’s delivering her baby. Her heart knows.
She looks and sees what they told her to look for. They had told her to bring it in.
She grabs a plastic sandwich bag from the kitchen.
She has no memory of the next moment.
But she knows she took her baby from the toilet and placed it into the sandwich bag.
She carried her baby with her to the doctor in her pocket. She handed her baby in a sandwich bag over to someone to make sure it was what she already knew it was.
She sat in the ultrasound room to be told “If you hadn’t known you were pregnant, I would have never guessed you were.”
Her womb was empty and there was not even evidence of pregnancy.
Because she had handed over that evidence in a plastic bag. 14 years later, she wishes she would have thought to ask for her baby back.
She would realize much later how God answered her prayer. The prayer she tried to manipulate into giving her a healthy baby after 9 months. The prayer that she begged God to hold her baby. He answered her. Not in the way she wanted. But in the way that He willed. She got to hold her baby. This would remind her of God’s true faithfulness. He listens. He doesn’t always answer how WE want, but He listens and answers.
14 years later, she remembers finding out about this baby in Walmart in Darboy. She cried. She didn’t know how they were going to have 5 kids under 5 years old.
She got to the van where her sweet husband was waiting with the 4 kids under 4.
He looked at her and said “it’s going to be fine. We’ve already done it! We got this.”
She believed him. He was right. It would be fine.
14 years later her heart still struggles that she cried over being pregnant. She KNOWS that it’s not the reason she miscarried. But the enemy likes to mess with her heart and tell her how she cried.
This couple needs to know that they will get pregnant right away after this loss! They’ll be excited.
They’ll be devastated again.
They’ll find out the baby isn’t growing.
She will have to do a D&C because her body doesn’t know it.
She will find out 2 months later that the baby had quite a few chromosomonal things wrong.
When the doctor asks her if she wants to know the gender, she will say YES.
She will find out that it was a boy.
She will wonder for the rest of her life here on earth what he would look like. She anticipates the day she is reunited with him (and the two others) in heaven.
May of 2009 started a dark stretch of life for this girl.
God’s faithfulness to her would result in the middle name of her baby born in July of 2010. Faith.
She knows she would have loved the babies of 2009 to be part of their earthside family. But knows the baby of 2010 is the double rainbow she needed to be part of it.
If I could go back to this girl, I would just hug her.
I would tell her to hold on tight, life is going to be pretty hard for a bit.
I would tell her that it will all be okay, it’s just going to take a (long) while to feel okay.
I would hold her as she sits confused with my words, but takes them in and buckles up for the ride.
Because, I am this girl.
And I am okay.
The ride was necessary to get to where I am now.
The ride wasn’t easy.
I’d like to say it was worth it, and I suppose it was, but it wasn’t a bit fun.
The ride was a (very long) chapter of my story.
A chapter that I wanted to rip out of my story every day I was living it.
A chapter, now, that has shown me a lot.
A chapter that was just that.
A chapter.
Not the end.
Yours is, too.
It’s a chapter.
Not the end of your story.
The author isn’t finished with you.
Keep walking through the pages.
You’re going to be okay.
I promise.
Because He promises.
❤️ap
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