My First Guest Post

A few months ago, my friend Alyssa, who also happens to be talented photographer behind most of my favorite shots of Ellie, asked me to consider writing a guest post on her blog.  She's doing a wonderful series this summer called Together Through Pain, which features a host of guest bloggers describing how to care for people walking through various trials including unexpected death, childhood trauma, and chronic illness.  I've so benefited from reading the series and am very honored to be included.  As you may have guessed, my post is about miscarriage and how to care for a friend who's lost a baby.  You can read it here.  And while you're there, check out the other posts in the series; they're worth your time.

One Year Ago

I remember what I was wearing a year ago today, not because the outfit itself was anything special, but because the doctor complimented me on it minutes before she told me you had died.  I remember a lot of things about that day:  splashing in the baby pool with your sister in the morning, when everything seemed bright and cheerful and pleasantly normal; the tissues somebody at the doctor's office handed me, crumpled into sodden balls in my hands; and the long drive home alone to find your Daddy and sister, knowing I'd have to tell them that you were gone.

It's been a long year, a year full of grieving and questioning, of medical tests and procedures, a year of watching your sister grow up, of thinking oh-so-often of what it would be like if you were here with her, with all of us.  It's been a hard year.  There were many months where I missed you so much that I wondered if I'd ever truly be able to feel joy again.  Today, I want you to know that I have, that with time, the grief has lessened a bit, created little spaces for joy to grow.

But I also want you to know that though grieving no longer defines each of my days, my love for you has not lessened.  I wish this post was about your six month birthday, about the delight (or perhaps horror) on your face when I stuck your tiny toes in the baby pool for the first time, about your first tastes of solid food.  I wish this post was about the knowing of you instead of the hole that not knowing you has left.

I miss you Avaleen.  I trust what I cannot understand, that somehow goodness triumphs even in your death, that someday we will see how even our pain is part of a beautiful story bigger than either of us.  I believe this, but I still miss the delight I know it would've been to watch you grow.  I'm so sorry I never got to hold you.  One day, I hope, one day.

My Book

So I told you almost a month ago that I'm writing a book.  Now that I've left you hanging for a few weeks, I'm ready to tell you a little bit more about it.

It's not a book I would have chosen to write, but it's a book I need to write, one I believe will be helpful to people like me.  It's a book about infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth and about where God can be found in these circumstances.  It's a book about my own story, but it's also a book about the stories of other families I'm interviewing who've walked through one or more of these trials.  It's a book of creative nonfiction that wrestles with some hard theological questions.

I am not writing this book because my story is particularly unusual or notable.  Most of the families featured in the book have endured loss more profound and extensive than my own.  I am not writing this book because I know how to walk through pain and loss or because I've figured out exactly how to discover God in the midst of it.  

I'm writing this book because I'm right in the middle of grief and hope and uncertainty and disappointments, trying to grow our family, not knowing if or when that will happen.  I'm writing this book because every day is a struggle for me to trust God, because I often fail to do so, because I desperately need the stories of others who've met God in their own pain related to having children. 

I'm writing this book because I believe God asked me to, and already, His fingertips are all over this project.  I'm only a few chapters in, have many words and challenges ahead of me, but I have a lot of faith that this book will one day be. 

This Gift

A few months ago, I sat in my friend's living room, feet tucked up underneath me on her couch.  We were catching up, talking about my miscarriage.  I don't remember the particulars of what she asked me or what I was saying in response, but I do remember this:  all of the sudden, mid-sentence, I caught myself with the phrase "this gift" on the tip of my tongue.  

I stopped, wondering where the words had come from, questioning whether or not I wanted to actually speak them out loud.  How could the loss of my baby girl be a gift?  How could there be blessing in something that had left me wondering if I'd ever experience another moment without at least a twinge of sadness?

I didn't know, couldn't find an answer.  But I turned to my friend and let the words roll off my tongue as tears brimmed...this gift.  It felt sweet to say.  It felt right.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace we have been saved through faith, and this not of ourselves, it is a gift from God, not by works so that no one can boast." I've been taught that this verse means saving faith is a gift God gives us, that even the one thing that saves us is not something we can muster up on our own.

But I'm starting to realize that all faith is like this, a gift.  The faith that saves, the faith that allows me to embrace God's plan for me, these are both gifts.  

The fact that words would bubble up within me, words recognizing God's goodness even in a death I cannot understand, this is not of myself.  I know this because there are many, many moments when I do not see or feel that my loss is a gift at all, when self-pity curls me inward, when despair simmers inside me all day long.  

I need help to get out of these places, help to see the gifts hidden in the pain, help to trust that they're there even when I cannot see at all.  I need the gift of faith.

I Do Not Understand

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, 

declares the Lord." - Isaiah 55:8

I was talking to someone recently about losing a baby, someone who knew because she'd walked through it herself many years ago, and she said, "We just can't understand what God's doing...We can try to, but we're not ever going to figure this out."

When she said it, I cringed inside.  Oh how desperately I want to know, to figure it out.  Somehow it seems to me that if I knew why we had to lose our baby, if God would just tell me, I would be able to trust Him better, more willing to submit to His plan.

I've spent more time than I care to admit speculating.  Maybe God allowed this to happen because He wanted me to be able to write about it, to minister to others in a way I wouldn't be able to otherwise.  Maybe I will know God in a way I couldn't have otherwise.

Maybe one or both of those statements are true.  Maybe.  But the truth is that, even if they are, it's not enough.  It's not enough to somehow make our loss okay, to justify the absence of our little baby girl.  It's not enough to make me stop hurting.

So I'm forced to agree.  I will never figure this out. I've tried.  I will probably keep trying.  The appeal of somehow rationalizing the pain away is so strong.  But in the end, I must simply say:  I cannot understand.  I will never understand, not this side of heaven.  But I trust. 

It's a humble place, a hard place for an educated, relatively affluent American like myself.  I don't like it one bit.  I want a God I can understand, control even.  

But even I, who wants so badly to know, can see that a God I can figure out, a God who has to explain Himself to me would not really be God.  I have no choice.  I must worship even when I don't understand, especially when I don't understand.  I must worship the God who's been faithful, the God who I believe is writing my story, the God who will one day wipe away every tear and make all things right.

A Moment Lost

The other week, Ellie and I were leaving our Gymboree class when she caught sight of a classmate's baby brother.  Her animated pointing and talking about the "tiny baby" caught her teacher's ear, and she turned to me.  "I think she's trying to give you a hint," she smiled.  My eyes welled with tears, and I had to leave quickly.  

You see, my little girl loves babies.  She has five baby dolls at last count:  Tiny Baby, Blue Baby, Yellow Baby, Green Baby, and one with a rattle inside that has yet to be named.   She totes them with her around the house, to the playground, and on errands, feeds them and wraps them up to make them "toasty," and sleeps with them at night.  She will spend at least half-an-hour looking at baby pictures of herself, proclaiming with pride on page after page, "Baby Eh-ee."  When we see a baby at church or while running errands, she smiles and points:  "Baby!" She is not happy until we get as close as is socially acceptable, closer still if she has anything to do with it.

One of the greatest griefs of this miscarriage is that Ellie is missing out on the chance to be a big sister.  I know that having two children 20 months apart would have been chaotic and taxing in many ways, but I also know that Ellie would have loved her baby sister with every part of her little self, that she would have smothered and loved on little Avaleen with pure delight.

I pray that one day Ellie will still get the chance to be a big sister, but I know that even if she does, it will be different.  She will be older.  The gap between her and her sibling will be larger.  She lost the chance to live life with the sister she wouldn't have remembered being without.

The other day I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed when a picture of a newborn baby appeared.  I didn't even know the baby's family; it was one of those photos of a friend's friend that sometimes show up on my screen.  But it didn't matter to Ellie.  She squealed with joy:  "Baby!" and leaned down to press her cheek against the screen, as if she were giving the baby a hug.

And all I could think about was what was lost - the real-life moment that might have been Ellie hugging her newborn sister in the hospital.  No matter how many more babies join our family, no matter how many siblings Ellie has, we will never get to experience that moment.  It, like so many other moments that might have been, part of the loss I feel, the grief I carry.

She Lived

I have two daughters.  One of them, Elliana Grace, is a busy, chatty toddler whose antics have made up more than half the contents of this blog since she was born some 19 months ago.  The other, Avaleen Hope, was supposed to be born this week, but we lost her in late May, at around 14.5 weeks gestation.

Though most of the writing I've been doing these past six months has been about the baby I will never hold, I haven't been ready to introduce you to her until now.  I've needed time to grieve alone, with my husband, and with family and close friends.  I've needed time to pray and cry and ask for God to heal me.  I'm still doing all of these things, still think about Avaleen multiple times every day, still miss her fiercely, but I think I'm ready to share the story of her life and death with a broader audience.

It feels a bit crazy even to me.  I've always thought that if I had a miscarriage, I'd want it to be a private thing.  That's part of why I didn't announce my first pregnancy on Facebook until almost 20 weeks, part of why I hadn't announced the second to the world even though I was in my second trimester, a few weeks past the point where the pregnancy was supposed to be safe.

But now that I have had a miscarriage, I see it differently.  To me, Avaleen is not just a setback in our pursuit of growing our family.  She is my daughter.  She lived.  She grew.  I heard her heart beat.  And she changed me, by living and by dying.  Even though I never got to hold her or kiss her forehead, I am different because of her.

So if I want to write honestly, to tell the story of my life and of the God who carries me through it, I feel I must tell Avaleen's story.  I cannot ignore it or pretend it didn't happen because, quite simply, it did.  And I believe with every fiber of my being that her life, short and quiet as it was, matters.

To be honest, I am a bit terrified.  I hesitate to write so publicly about pain that is still so very present in my heart.  I am not sure how readers will react, how their reactions will make me feel.  I know too that by introducing you to Avaleen, my public identity will shift.  I will no longer be simply a wife, mother, writer, teacher; I am also identifying myself as a grieving mother, a woman who's miscarried.  Unlike the previous titles, these aren't labels I ever would have chosen.  Part of me rebels against being associated with them or defined by them, would rather be linked to happier terms.

But the truth is, I have two daughters.  I hear one of them breathing softly over the baby monitor while I write.  I feel the absence of the other in my flat stomach, my empty arms, in the fact that I am able to travel for Thanksgiving this week.

I wish this post was Avaleen's birth announcement, that I was telling you how much she weighed, how her delivery went.  Instead, I simply want to tell you that she lived.