Yet I Will Praise You

Today, our little baby, whom I carried but never held, would have been five. We knew about him for such a short time before we lost him, that his past birthdays have come and gone with some sadness but much joy at the knowledge that when we see Jesus face to face, we will also see our first child for the first time.

But today seems like such a significant day: a day when you look into the face of your child and see the resemblance of who they once were but recognize them as someone new – someone changed and grown. Our lives are made up of many of these moments of seeing and recognizing but knowing we aren't now who we were then.

So, today I wish that I could hold our little Asher Matthias. That I could see him blow out his birthday candles just once. That I could tell him now that I am so happy that he is a part of our family and that he is indeed a gift to us, just as his names mean. His little life was and is so much bigger to me than a span of weeks. It is a memorial stone in my walk with God. Whenever I feel weary or full of doubt, I can look back at that time and at God's care for me and I know with full certainty that He is for me and is always shepherding me.

So many I know have and are currently going through intense periods of hurt and suffering in ways that I cannot imagine. But God always demonstrates His great love for us by reconciling us to Himself and guiding us toward a greater intimacy with Him, if we let Him use our suffering to shape us and grow us. If we recognize that sorrow may last for the night, but joy will come with the morning. If we choose to let the ones we have lost have a legacy of bringing glory to God through their impact in us and through us. 

I was and am surprised to feel this strongly today. But I welcome God's reminder of His unending faithfulness to us. He is always, always enough.

Source

Know Your Anger

"Injustice, brokenness, and cruelty abound in our fractured world – to the point where it is easy to see how anger can become a lifestyle, outrage a default reaction. But this is where our anger putrefies and begins to poison us. When anger is tightly grasped and infected with a sense of righteousness, it turns into a monster. Once we feel justified in our anger and vengefulness, we coddle it and lovingly nurture it to maturity and beyond, at which point it's grown into the kind of monstrosity capable of unthinkable things. 

… Anger can be holy and anger is human. It's a facet of our experience, our emotional make-up, that can't be denied or domesticated to make it more palatable. When we grasp it, feed it, exalt it and praise its excessive demonstration in our leaders, we disfigure ourselves and pave the way to atrocity. But if we can know our anger and honestly express it, we can be supernaturally infused with hope that reconciliation is possible and things will, in time, be right" (Making Peace With Anger, Ashley Lande).

Things will never "be right" in this life, and I know so little of the true suffering of many. But rather than simply adding to the discord of voices, today I am praying that we can begin to break the vicious cycle of anger, distrust, violence, and outright murder. That we can acknowledge the hurt, the anger, the "injustice, brokenness, and cruelty", and pave the way to honest dialogue and reconciliation, deciding not to join in the tide of so many who choose to ride the newest wave of racism and fearful blame-shifting. There is no "cure" for hatred and fearmongering; however, there is always hope.

Hope in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that He will, one day, make all things new. 

Hope that forgiveness is possible even in the most devastatingly cruel situations.

Hope that we don't have to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us.

Hope that God is indeed greater than the deep depravity of our hearts.

Hope that love wins and will surely cover a multitude of sins.

I am nowhere close to having all of the answers. Sometimes, I read the news articles, and I just weep over all of the senseless pain and heartache. But I have a mighty God who is the Light in the darkness and who daily commends me to not grow weary of doing good. So, even in these times, I choose joy and hope. Because it's easy to hope when life runs smoothly. It's easy to hope when we have those we love around us, rather than buried in a grave. It's easy to hope when we can quickly find an answer. But when life is hard and pain runs deep – when we cannot even find words to express our sorrow and outrage over the treatment of precious souls – we realize that true hope cannot be manufactured inside our broken selves.

"I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13, NLT).

Source

Beauty in the Ordinary

About this time last Sunday my brother and I were driving into Chicago for a very impromptu trip. Our loving grandma (my stepfather's mother) and the matriarch of the family for almost 40 years had passed away after a five-month battle with declining health. This woman survived the death of her husband when she was in her early fifties, breast cancer on more than one occasion, and was the last of her siblings left. She always took care of everyone and worked hard without complaint.

I was surprised, honored, and a little terrified when I was asked to give the eulogy at her funeral on Monday. We remembered her family, her work, and her friends; however, what has stuck with me the most and I have been thinking on all week is the fact that Grandma was born, raised, and lived in the same neighborhood in Chicago for all of her 90 years. Most of the things that she accomplished and the people that she loved were in that neighborhood, too, at one time in her life. She didn't have to travel around the world to see and be thankful for all that she had around her. I am left with the overwhelming reminder that the life we live is made up of moments of faithfulness and sheer ordinariness.

And the sum of those moments is something truly beautiful.

I Know Who You Are

Sometimes life just doesn't make any sense.

We struggle to wrap our minds around pain and loss and suffering that seems too intense to bear. And while there are a myriad of ways we wade through sorrow and tragedy, today is the day we set aside to specifically remember the smallest members of our families who hold such an expansive place in our hearts.

We can list all of the statistics, but the truth is that statistics cannot take us to that moment when tears spill over as that sweet mama or dear papa realizes that their child–a unique and beautiful blend of two people–will never say his first words or take her first step. As parents, they will never see them walk into their first day of kindergarten, hear about their first crush, watch them walk across the stage at graduation, or see them give their heart to another.

But it's not just a dream that dies. It's not like losing a job or house. It's more like losing a finger or a thumb … or an arm or a leg. A part of you has ceased to exist. You heal. You learn to cope. And, over time, there are moments and perhaps even a whole day or days where you don't really take the time to reflect on the kind of life you have adapted to. But no matter what you do or others do for you, what was lost cannot be returned to us.

When I got to see our sweet baby, Asher, he was only seven weeks and three days old. One week later, my body no longer carried our first child. But I oh-so distinctly remember the awe and wonder of hearing his heart beating from inside of me. My first glimpse of Kieran was at nine weeks; at 12 weeks and three days, my eyes soaked in this sight of Elias.

This photo absolutely amazes me.

I had no idea that I would be able to see that much detail when I wasn't even visibly pregnant yet. At a time when so many dismiss this fragile, yet intricate body as a vague, formless group of cells, my Elias--who has brought so much joy to our lives--had his tiny thumb to his lips. My mama's heart cannot look at this picture of him without feeling the strongest urge to protect him. To whisper to him even then that he is loved and wanted and cherished and known. That there has never been nor will there ever be anyone like him. That no matter what we decide in or out of courtrooms, had this been the only time I had ever seen him, he would still be my child. That love isn't defined by days or weeks or months but by the simple truth that I am and forever will be his mother.

Another blogger puts it this way:

It was six months after my son was born that the reality of abortion became more than a vague concept in a world that didn’t directly affect me. It became an undeniable and unavoidable truth that invaded my heart. I was driving down our simple suburban street, and I looked up in the rearview mirror at the reflection of my infant in his car seat. He was sucking on his pacifier and watching brightly colored animals dance from the bar above him.

Overwhelming grief came over me. The thought of precious babies just like my own who laugh with tiny tummy songs and smile with toothless grins not tucked safely in car seats, but in trash cans and zip lock bags and coolers at the hands of their own mothers was more than I could bear. Abortion is real, and while I drove the speed limit with my baby buckled carefully into his car seat, children like mine were dying.

As we recognize all of those struggling with infant and pregnancy loss and infertility, there is a raging inferno of emotions on either side of an issue that has produced so much hate and violence that it seems we who claim to be on the side of precious life have chosen to not only decry the act but the women who enact it.

Abortion is murder, and the women who choose it shed innocent blood. Surely there is no greater sin.

How could we not–especially we who have so deeply grieved our own losses or the losses of those dear to us? And, yet, a loss is a loss. I cannot speak for the women out there who have chosen to, been pressured to, or coerced into ending the lives of their babies. But when something that was once full is emptied and something–someone–that was once whole is broken, how can that not leave a void? And how many women who have chosen abortion grieve in secret on a day like today?

… I am sorry. I am so sorry for shame that you have had to carry alone. I am sorry that I… that the Church… has not done a better job of pursuing you in your pain. That we have shunned and rejected and thought of the babies and not the women – you. Because the truth is… 

God loves you. He isn’t mad at you. There isn’t anything you could ever do that would cause Him to stop loving you, because there wasn’t anything that you could do to earn His love. It is free. It is the scandal of a God full of grace that pursues a sinner with nothing to gain for Himself but a relationship with them – you – me. He wants to heal the places of shame that creep up in your heart. He wants you to come to Him and find peace and restoration and forgiveness. 

He wants to set you free from years of secrets, from hidden burdens, and from crippling shame that says you will never be able to walk in the forgiveness that is available to you. The greatest lie of the enemy of our souls is that God doesn’t love us. It is a lie as old as time itself, and it is nothing more than that – a lie.

If you ask me, I will say that I choose life. I choose the life of my children, always. And I would choose the life of every other child, too, if I could. But I also will say that I choose to love the lives of those who did not make the choice I would have made.

I hope that one day most people can look at that 12-week photo of my now almost one-year-old baby and see his value. One day, I will show my boys these pictures and teach them about just how precious life is. And I hope I can truly show them the value of life by loving the brokenhearted–just like God does.

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands …  (Isaiah 49:15-16).

Life, Death, and the Source of Joy

I didn't realize it until recently, but I have been struggling this pregnancy. I will be 15 weeks on Friday, but I still have felt somewhat subdued about this baby. I am not saying that I haven't been excited or anything, but things are just different this time around. Besides having the distractions of thoughts like, "How am I going to give this baby the care it needs with a 19-month-old running around?" and, "Can I have a normal delivery after having a c-section?", I have had friends, acquaintances, and even friends of friends who have had recent miscarriages.

While I carried Kieran, I vacillated between hope and despair. I knew it was God's plan for me to become pregnant again two weeks after miscarrying Asher, but it was difficult for me to focus on the truth when I didn't know what that plan entailed. Was God giving me the child I never got to hold? Or would I forever have empty arms? Now there is joy sleeping peacefully in a crib a few hundred feet away from me, and I still cannot believe it at times. My pregnancy with Kieran was one of grace. Grace upon grace. I never was one to yearn for children that I did not have, content in what Jordan and I had for the time at hand. But once I became a mother, even though the time was short, my heart longed for the fulfillment of that hope. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12).

With this little miracle, I realize that I have not felt the pure joy and awe that I felt with my first two pregnancies. When I saw my babies on that screen and heard their heartbeats, I felt overwhelmed by what was being created within me. With number three here, I was so relieved just to know that s/he is doing well so far. So happy to hear a good heartbeat. Grinning ear to ear as s/he bounced around on the ultrasound. But it is like I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not consciously, but somewhere, in the back of my mind, I suppose I feel as though I am not "in the clear" yet and I just have not been able to completely relax and let myself really dream of this little one to come.

So, at 5:00 a.m. this morning, I cried out to God in the sanctuary of my shower. I think it went something like this:

God, my child deserves more than this. S/he deserves a mama who is over the moon about his or her arrival. God, You deserve more than this. You deserve a child who believes what You say and trusts completely. Thank You for this life that You have given me. Thank You for these lives that you have trusted me with. I need Your help to let go of what isn't true and hold onto what I know.

Today I looked back through my book a friend made for me after we lost Asher. It has some verses and a poem in it, as well as my blog posts from the time and his ultrasound. Reading through my blog posts, I relived some of that time and realized anew that I would not trade that time for anything.

Whoa. Did she just say that?

I wish I could convey just how amazing it is that I have this time in my life that I can point to for years to come and say, "When I needed God, He was there." I learned so much about God, marriage, myself, and life in general. By having my heart utterly broken, I am convinced that I was able to love Kieran and will be able to love my children to come so much more because when it healed, it healed bigger than before. Yes, I want this baby to live. And, more than likely, everything will be just fine. But I'm not trusting in "just fine". I am trusting in this:

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love."

Romans 8:38

I used to think of "neither death nor life" in terms of facing the fears of death or being physically separated from Jesus while living on this earth. But now I also think of it in relation to those we lose and those who are given to us. Because this is so important:

Whether my baby lives or my baby dies, God still loves me.

I am surrounded by an abundant, everlasting, never-failing, all-consuming and pursing love. And, while that doesn't make the outcome of this pregnancy unimportant, it does mean at least one thing.

I can say, "Yes," to God. "Yes, God, whatever You bring is good." Not just good, but right and exactly perfect for my life and my family. And I can let go of my fears for today and my worries about tomorrow and bask in the love of my Father and my love of this child.

Once again, God has given me the joy and the hope that I needed. And I am indeed blessed and overjoyed.

This is Baby #3 measuring at 12 weeks, 3 days.

Look Up, The Clouds Are Breaking

When I log onto Facebook, I see all sorts of updates: how many cups of coffee one friend had, whose children did what silly antics, and dozens of fun pictures telling the stories of the lives of friends and family. But I also see that one toddler is facing cancer. That one baby is fighting infection. And most recently, that a daughter, sister, wife, and mother of young ones has passed. 

It could be depressing. I could start logging on less and less so I don't have to see the sad, sad news that permeates the lives of so many. Yet I have such an opportunity to pray. You see, I have never met any of those three examples I gave. I know their families or friends. I can't be there to give out hugs or personal words of encouragement. But I can run to Jesus and help them carry their burdens there. 

Oh, how precious is the family of God.

O heart bereaved and lonely, 

Whose brightest dreams have fled

Whose hopes like summer roses,

Are withered crushed and dead

Though link by link be broken,

And tears unseen may fall

Look up amid thy sorrow, 

To Him who knows it all

O cling to thy Redeemer,

Thy Savior, Brother, Friend

Believe and trust His promise, 

To keep you till the end

O watch and wait with patience, 

And question all you will

His arms of love and mercy, 

Are round about thee still

Look up, the clouds are breaking, 

The storm will soon be o’er

And thou shall reach the haven, 

Where sorrows are no more

Look up, be not discouraged; 

Trust on, whate’er befall

Remember, O remember, 

Thy Savior knows it all