I have never been a fan of wearing this type of thing, it just never seemed to fit. Now I knew things had changed. I looked at different items on Etsy and narrowed it down to two. So I got them both, that is how I roll. I didn't want to leave the house until they came....it was a good thing they shipped really fast and now I can breathe more comfortably.

This one arrived first,a necklace I ended up getting it from SilverLime, I love it. This is just for Shiloh, just because. The number 12.1.12 is the 12th of January 2012-- it is the European order for the date, smallest to biggest, it makes more sense to me.

I had to wait a little longer to get what I was most excited about, a set of  three rings from tinahdee an Etsy seller. She did not disappoint, these rings are even more beautiful and perfect than I had expected. I was a little worried about the fit, as I have a super small size and ring people always look at me like I am nuts when I tell them I wear a 4.5 but she didn't and when they arrived I slipped the rings right on and haven't taken them off since (well, maybe except for taking these pictures).

I wanted something that reminded me of Shiloh, as well as reminding me that I still have two little boys to love on. The boys thought that was a good idea too.

Honestly at this point I wouldn't want to leave the house without either. I am feeling much better than in the first days, still that aching is there- and these remind me that it isn't because I am just odd, but that someone is really missing from me here on earth. This mommy jewellery is my security blanket, and I am okay with that.

If you haven't read the story our our little Shiloh, read here.

I have been playing this one over and over....so I will leave you to it.

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Today I looked at pictures that were left on my camera from right before we found out about Shiloh's death, my swollen baby filled belly, when I when I was clueless of  the future--it makes me feel as if I do not recognise that girl. It is me, and I seem the same to most people, maybe a little sadder- but I feel so different that I don't even look like the same person to myself. It is weird. I know that most of it is that I know how full of hope I was, and now. I can see the image of this scenario painted as a picture in my head, a huge fist barreling into me,from the front and along with the air from my lungs when the contact is made, from inside me are evaporating these painted words:a dream,a hope,a future.  When they are released from my body they meet the air and mist to nothing. In myself, in my flesh that is how I feel. Empty. As if I have a loss nothing can fill.  I know it is a lie, one that I see now how easy it would be to believe.

I see how easy it would be to be angry at God, but if all is His already than the blessings I have, that He has allowed me to keep are just as much of a lesson as those He has not allowed me to hold close. Some were a glimpse of what is to come, of a world of promise beyond this world.  It also makes me think that we have coined the word blessings as something that feels good- and that it isn't the case at all. Blessings sometimes hurt, they are painful, they can be happy or pleasant as well- but hey are always for our good. Always. So if everything is God's I should be thankful for what He lets me keep, and not bitter, but thankful for  what He asks of me. I know that in my head, I am still working on my heart. My heart is truly a fickle creature.

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.”
― C.S. Lewis

I don't want to hear that, that there is a substitute for loss, or a blessing that will come in place of Shiloh. I don't want to come to the realisation that growth in character, feeling for others, and understanding could be the blessing that I will keep from this. In the first days it felt like nothing would be worth the loss, yet I have realised that because of this pain I now know what real pain feels like, it was like part of me was missing, the part that had blessings stored in heaven, the part that would sit with a friend knowing that I did not understand but I knew what loss felt like. It is a horrid feeling, misery, a dead end, hopeless, devastation, it actually literally hurts in your chest, like a pressure or that you can't get enough air- it feels like you have more of a gravitational pull (therefore a heavier weight on your whole body) than you should.  I am now scared or marked.

With that scar I can lift my head high, I can use it- or I can live under it, a life that is marked by what has been done to me and be a victim of circumstance. Jesus was marked too, but His marks made Him no victim, they made Him rise to victory. I am not Jesus, but the more I get to know Him, the more I want to be like Him.

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

In the last couple weeks after our loss I immediately jumped to, "lets get another dog", "maybe a canary that sings would make me happy", " honey bees-now!", "what new hobby can I find?"--I would like to say that I am kidding, but it is true. I am trying to find hope in my future again, which is completely okay, but yesterday I realised that was not all I was doing. I was filling my wound with temporary happiness or distraction. A hole was certainly left from all that Shiloh was to me, and I  immediately tried to fill it with something other than God. It is true I prefer almost filler to filling my emptiness with Him, but it is also true that it is only He who will meet me right here and right now- and give me something that is not a filling, but what was meant for me.

“Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.

If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

A friend just shared this with me, I had never heard it before, and it is very perfect for me right now:

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I have felt up and down and all around over the last days. The swell of God's peace from the first days that covered me when I needed it the most is still there, but it is just true that it is not required as it was in the first days and therefore it is not as thick. I decided to go to church on Sunday, it was a bad call- as I wasn't ready to get the love that was waiting to come my way to the extent to which it was given. I was overwhelmed and we left early,  in tears and filled with an intense feeling of flight. Guilt then overwhelmed me for being upset with people,they were just trying to love me, it was too much too soon and I overreacted.

Slowly, the words of the Father settle over me, they form me. Abba takes my clay pot, adds in tears and I am being made new. This time is one of great uncertainty and it is one I am not navigating through on my own. With each step The Husband has been holding me up to our Abba father, helping me, holding me, loving me, and putting up with me. I could not ask for a better man, this pain has brought us together in a way which is impossible to put into words unless you have bonded over pain with someone, and then you will just know what I mean. It blows everything else, all the romancy-red laced valentine love to tattered shreds, it is the real, the raw, that which stands- this is love.

Sometimes I know how I should feel about something, or how I have always been able to feel about it before and yet I cannot. I am completely caught off guard by  the most common circumstance, if I didn't see it coming. I feel like a time bomb, ready to go off, afraid to be chaos at any moment, making me feel sad and guilty all over again.

However now more of the day is hopeful than sad, there is more light, more future, more something deeper. I have been hollowed out by this pain, and I am being filled in with something that does not come from me- it is a growth I didn't know. Despair is loosing its grip, peace, a lasting peace filling its fingerprints. Still we are sad,Shiloh's spot will never be filled, will will never be the same again, and yet there is joy in our house once more. Not because of anything except that we are now more able to choose it, for those still here, for the two sons God has given us to watch on this earth- our grief holds, joy is not always complete- but it is there, like a bud in the spring. Worship is forming in my heart, and this song below has been the one I have listened to over and over and then played even more, knowing it is God's heart for His children. The rawness of my voice to him, the tears that flow still, I offer it all in worship to Him.

Listen to this song, the words are below.

Come to Me by Jenn Johnson from the album 'The Loft Sessions'

I am the Lord your God, I go before you now
I stand beside you, I'm all around you
Though you feel I'm far away, I'm closer than your breath
I am with you, more than you know

I am the Lord your peace, no evil will conquer you
Steady now your heart and mind, come into My rest
Oh, let your faith arise, lift up your weary head
I am with you wherever you go

Come to Me, I'm all you need. Come to Me, I'm everything
Come to Me, I'm all you need. Come to Me, I'm your everything

I am your anchor, in the wind and the waves
I am your steadfast, so don't be afraid
Though your heart and flesh may fail you, I'm your faithful strength
I am with you wherever you go

I have been so loved on in this season, people I know, people who I only know a little and then some that I don't know at all are reaching out to me. We have had meals every night brought to us from friends- I am so shocked by every single response I am getting. I am left speechless at how loved God has shown me that I am, you, each of you are His hands, His tangible love to us right now. I have loved your emails, your comments, your poems you have sent me, books you've dropped off, cards in the mail, flowers, songs, and even a tree seedling to plant outside when the time comes. Thank you, you have no idea how much you mean to me.

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The deep raw emotion comes and goes, the hole lingers, an emptiness that I have never owned before now belongs to me. This journey's trail rounds new corners, and then loops around to where I thought I already had crossed. There is confusion, and a re-learning of who I am, and who I am now that I have this seal of pain on my heart. I feel the rawness fade and the feelings of intensity become more like a scab than an open wound- but this is just as disconcerting as the previous stage of this pain. It allows me to think I can function in the world, and then am caught off guard by what will pull open this wound again letting it bleed bright red.

Once it is burst open I feel the need of flight, immediately. Where usually my instinct  prior to this grief was to fight, right now I can only think of how fast I could just get out of the situation where I can breathe again, where I can rest, where tears can fall without me having to explain, or having to justify what needs no justification.

Pain is remembered in infant carriers with small, downy  baby heads peaking out just below the warm blankets. It comes in waves of swollen pregnant bellies and families of 3 boys, waves of sadness lap over me. I try to be strong, thinking if God is walking through this with me why is it not easier than this?  God never promised easy though, it was my own assumption. I have learned I am not strong, I am weak, and that is hard for me to admit. He isn't taking my pain away, he is walking through it with me.

Trusting in God through this does not mean that I will just get over the pain, or just move on thrilled that I could experience this as a growing experience. Trusting God through grief is a daily choice I get to make, trusting his purposes is another daily choice- it isn't even one that I would prefer to make at times, but it is what he is asking of me. I haven't felt permission to walk outside of God's grace, of course that means I could choose to do that- but it is not the sweet spot where I feel the most loved, and embraced. Still for seconds anger creeps in, moments of despair surface, but those moments are not the ones that make me feel any better. Those are the worst of times, the ones that I can spend the rest of the day getting passed, allowing full feeling of bitterness, anger, or self sufficiency to consume me does not enable anything to grow from within me that I want to nourish. I do not feel better during or after, that is what makes me know that walking day in and day out embracing that would make me weaker, trusting in God's purpose and rejecting the temptation is that sweet spot where although I feel weaker now for not powering though on my own, I am the strongest I have ever been.

These quotes have blessed me over the last days:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for  and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

Praise isn't denying the pain but pronouncing who God is in the midst of your pain. - Kathe Wunnenberg

Grief can cause us to relate differently to God, ourselves, and others. We may look the same, but we are forever changed and must learn to communicate and connect in new ways. We speak a new tongue: the language of loss. -Kathe Wunnenberg

The seeds of new beginnings and new possibilities begin to take root and emerge from our soul's soil. Tears can nourish us and help us grow through our grief. Over time, we may see a lush, green garden of hope, and our soul might bloom with the strength to press on, a result of God's life-giving power through our tears. -Kathe Wunnenberg

Today I came upon this one, each time I think of Shiloh, I am thankful God gave me a third boy- even if I am getting through the pain of Him not being with me. Right now, someday I will get to see him grow, see his smile, and he will know me as his mama.

I thank my God every time I remember you. Philipians 1:3

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18/Jan/2012

Last night I cried out, in my pain I cried to the Lord. I told Him I missed my boy, that I trusted Him to take care of Shiloh and I just wondered with God about what my boy would have been like. Would he be more like The Husband or more like me? Would he look like either of us? What would he enjoy doing? Would his favourite food be mac and cheese like his brother Oliver?

Test results came in yesterday. We received the news yesterday afternoon that the physical death of Shiloh was due to infection. None of the listed or known ones, not listeria, or toxoplasmosos, or staph infection or strep b, none of those that are known currently to the medical field. It is not an infection that I currently carry in my blood, or that I could have known about. It has no barring on the outcome of future pregnancies- if we choose that. It does not increase our chances of this happening ever again. I asked the doctor if she would give me examples as to what it could have been, just for my mind to wrap around it. She said infection that can kill a baby is everywhere and yet the chances of infection at this stage are completely almost non-existent. She was almost sure the tests were going to come back as no infection, and that Shiloh had a chromosomal issue. She told me that under the right conditions that I could have even just breathed in an infection, that had caused me nothing and yet been the death of my baby. She listed off where the infection could have come from and I was shocked- it could have come from anywhere. It was a fluke, but I know that it wasn't I know that God called my little Shiloh before he could take his first earthly breath, that he called him to not suffer life on this earth, to not endure pain or sadness, to live his days from the start in Heaven.

I find it interesting that all that Shiloh will not have to endure is exactly what my heart aches from right now, sorrow, grief, loss, pain, sadness, Shiloh was spared, I was not.

The news that brought instant hope to me, that I could have not known to do something different, that my body was still strong and that I had not caused any harm to my baby at first filled me with hope for the future, and it still does. But what I was not expecting is that later that night I would cry bitter tears because my baby was perfect, he was beautiful just as my other boys. God took my perfect baby to be with Himself. I am in anguish. Shiloh would have been like my other boys, with some traits from me, some from The Husband- he had been made by God and would have been able to completely function in this world, had God not chosen to take him.

In my brokenheartedness God gave us this song though one of our loving friends, it really is my words exactly, and my heart's cry. It is the pain I have felt, it is the courage that I have embraced, it is the hope that I hold from afar. I like that through the pain there is strength and assurance.

This morning God gave me this word from Him, which Mercy Me made a song of below, very powerful to me right now.

Psalm 139

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
5 You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall[a] on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;[b]
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

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