Transformed Through Pain, Learning Who I Am Now.

What follows are the days in the life of a late-pregnancy miscarriage, or stillbirth. Not the story anyone wants to share or have, but our story it is none the less. Please pray, we are no where near healed- this is the hardest pain, the deepest sadness I have ever felt. At times I have wondered if maybe my heart would stop from the grief. There is hope in the future, but right now it is sometimes hard to feel hopeful. Minute by minute we get by.  To read from the beginning, go here.

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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May There Be Beauty from This Pain.

What follows are the days in the life of a late-pregnancy miscarriage, or stillbirth. Not the story anyone wants to share or have, but our story it is none the less. Please pray, we are no where near healed- this is the hardest pain, the deepest sadness I have ever felt. At times I have wondered if maybe my heart would stop from the grief. There is hope in the future, but right now it is sometimes hard to feel hopeful. Minute by minute we get by.  To read from the beginning, go here.

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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