It’s been a while since I’ve had the words to say but I thought there was no better time to start writing again than Holy Week. The week where it looked like death had won and hope seemed lost. I often think how they felt the Saturday before the Resurrection. I imagine the silence they experienced. Was it anything like birthing a lifeless baby? Where there was suppose to be life but all there was, was silence. The unanswered questions Jesus’ followers had I wonder if their questions ever sounded like mine. How can good come out of this? What now? The consuming hopelessness they must have felt after watching our Savior die on the cross. My mind can’t help but think of Mary who watched it all. How does any mother survive loosing her baby? It’s all too much to bear.

  No one thinks loss is going to be apart of their motherhood journey until it is. Days after Ruth’s due date we found out we were pregnant with baby #4. Prayed for, wanted, and loved beyond measure. My eyes longed to see those lines again. With daring to hope and to open my heart to love.. to carry life again. My rainbow baby was coming, the rainbow everyone talks about that you usually get after a storm(a loss). We spent Christmas celebrating what a miracle life was the birth of Christ and celebrating the new life growing in my womb. I felt hope for the first time since loosing Ruth each week was a millstone we held close. Trusting, praying, and hoping that we would get to bring this baby home. How can you prepare your heart for any other outcome when all you want is new life to be born? I believed that we were going to come out of those hospital doors with a living baby. 

 

After loosing Ruth I spent endless hours listening to graves into gardens by elevation worship. I would pray over my lifeless empty womb. I kept praying the lyrics towards the end of the song “you turn graves into gardens”. “Lord turn my grave into a garden, one full of life. Let me carry life again” a prayer I would cry out often. 

When we found out we were expecting i remember texting a sweet friend saying how I couldn’t believe that I was holding life again. After such loss I felt for the last 6 months prior, God turned my grave into a garden. We praised God for his mercy he had shown us. I remember playing that song in my reading chair with hot tears running down my cheek in disbelief of how gentle and kind our savior is. It was all by His grace that we made it there. That sweet December day where our life felt full. 

At around 10 weeks of pregnancy I opted to get some testing done so that we could find out the gender of our baby sooner. The test also shows a variety of different genetic and chromosome abnormalities. Never did we think it would be us, we were just excited to see who God placed in my womb. I had called my husband on his lunch break and minutes after hanging up with him I got a notification on my email saying the test results were in. I quickly opened it and read a result that said “abnormal”  surely this can’t be God, we just lost a baby “please Lord no no” I said in my head over and over. 

I immediately called my husband back and told him I opened the test results and they were not good and to come home as soon as he could. I remember wailing the words “the baby is a girl” to him over the phone. Our baby had tested very high for having an “incompatible with life condition” the gut wrenching pain I felt that day is embedded in me. It didn’t seem possible to go from hope to death in just seconds of time. 

The following week was spent at high risk doctor appointment and ultrasounds. We got the worst conformation of our lives our daughter’s life was likely to end in my womb sometime before birth and if she did make it to birth her life would end soon after. We spent our appointments talking with endless specialists who came in and out of the room explaining the possible outcomes for our girl. We left that office with more papers than we knew what to do with, more specialist phone numbers than I can recall and shattered hearts. The baby I was carrying couldn’t survive and there’s nothing I could do to help her. 

How do you process that the life you’re carrying won’t make it outside of the womb? How do we possibly tell our boys that this baby, too, is going to live with Jesus? 

  It was a miracle our daughter had even made it to the gestation we were at.  Our girl was a miracle, a living miracle. Everyday I was carrying her was a day she was beating odds. She was a fighter and I felt so honored that I was chosen to carry her. Out of all the people in the world God looked at my husband and I and saw us equipped to be her parents. I was witnessing a miracle inside of me and to me she was perfect. I spent many weeks researching how I could best support her and we had talked about flying out of state to get a second opinion from doctors who specialize in her condition. My doctor gave me a high chance of really scary outcomes. They also told me if she had made it to birth that they wouldn’t give her life saving measures because there’s nothing they could be done to save her long term. I don’t think I’ll ever have words to describe the pain I felt as I woke up each day knowing she was alive in me but it was all a matter of time before she was welcomed into our Saviors arms. I look back at those days and I have no idea how I made it through but Gods grace and peace flooded our home those weeks. I wanted her to know us and to know my voice, so I spent my nights singing worship songs praying that God would heal her. Alongside us, our church, family and friends were praying fervently for miraculous healing over our girl. We serve a God of miracles I believed it then, and I still do.