I remember the nurse coming in through the door of our dimly-lit hospital room, and in a hushed, apologetic tone asking if we were ready. With our first baby in his arms, my husband asked if he could be the one to do it.
“Of course, of course—whenever you’re ready” said the nurse as she retreated back out past the purple butterfly wings affixed on the frame of our door. He brought the tiny bundle over to me and I kissed the little cheek, then he did before laying the gently in the clear bassinet on wheels and slowly rolled it out of the room. I cried. When he came back through the door he softly closed it, and then man who was my rock, broke down and wept.
Four weeks before, we had eagerly walked into our first ultrasound appointment, the one that could have told us the gender of our baby. We had decided if it were a boy, he would be “Benjamin” and a girl we would name “Hope”. I had suffered an ectopic pregnancy at five weeks several months before, found myself pregnant shortly thereafter and was happily fielding comments on my rapidly expanding waistline. It never occurred to me to worry about my unusually-large-for-the-first-full-pregnancy-girth. I was rather proud of it. So when the chatty ultra-sound technician grew increasingly silent as she moved the ball of the ultra-sound camera around the surface of my belly, I instinctively guessed it wasn’t just because she was concentrating and when she suddenly stopped and said she will need to go for the doctor as her eyes got watery, I knew this was not “as per usual”.
In the following hours we discovered that no, there was nothing “usual” about our baby. After meeting with the Internal Fetal Medicine Specialist, it was determined that our child had Turners syndrome with cystic hygroma and fetal hydrops, a lethal combination that, in essence, was a chromosomal abnormality paired with a condition that would cause the baby to drown in their fluid. It sounds horrible, mainly because it is. There are many horrible things of varying degree in this world. We know this, and occasionally, we are brought nose-to-nose with the fact in a very personal way.
On February 14th, my husband took me out for Valentines Day dinner at the local diner where we had our first date. Up until then, the little life within had been moving about, kicking my belly and causing me to hope for a miracle that would upend the doctor’s “0% chance survival” and we would shout God’s kindness from the rooftops in great jubilation. But that evening, when I kept kneading my belly with no responsive kicks, I was certain she had been gently taken back to where she was from. Two days later, on February 16th, I was administered an epidural and all sorts of pain medication to get me through birthing the body of our baby, all behind the door labeled with a butterfly sticker to note our difficult situation to the revolving staff. Because the body was so swollen, it was impossible to see the gender on the ultra-sound screen, but after the birth we were told we had a girl.
Hope had arrived, even as she had already left.
She had left, but she was not lost. No. I would never, ever refer to having “lost” a baby. Babies are never lost, because their Creator always and forever has His eye on them and scoops them up the very second the heartless imperfection of this world forces them out (maybe even a little before). It’s the parent of the child who is the one who is left feeling “lost” in such a shattering ordeal.
We each carry our own pain. You may be reading this and thinking "She doesn't even know the half", and you very well could be quite right. There are those who may be here and in the middle of dark valley and unbeknownst to them, a miracle is just around the bend. I pray this is true. For all of us, there are hurts that sink our hearts. I only know what I have experienced, and today I humbly share the hope that brought my heart back up to the surface. This is what my experience with my firstborn daughter has left with me, even eight years later, to hang onto as she enjoys a painless, tear-free, safe and fulfilling childhood in Heaven:
“Of course, of course—whenever you’re ready” said the nurse as she retreated back out past the purple butterfly wings affixed on the frame of our door. He brought the tiny bundle over to me and I kissed the little cheek, then he did before laying the gently in the clear bassinet on wheels and slowly rolled it out of the room. I cried. When he came back through the door he softly closed it, and then man who was my rock, broke down and wept.
Four weeks before, we had eagerly walked into our first ultrasound appointment, the one that could have told us the gender of our baby. We had decided if it were a boy, he would be “Benjamin” and a girl we would name “Hope”. I had suffered an ectopic pregnancy at five weeks several months before, found myself pregnant shortly thereafter and was happily fielding comments on my rapidly expanding waistline. It never occurred to me to worry about my unusually-large-for-the-first-full-pregnancy-girth. I was rather proud of it. So when the chatty ultra-sound technician grew increasingly silent as she moved the ball of the ultra-sound camera around the surface of my belly, I instinctively guessed it wasn’t just because she was concentrating and when she suddenly stopped and said she will need to go for the doctor as her eyes got watery, I knew this was not “as per usual”.
In the following hours we discovered that no, there was nothing “usual” about our baby. After meeting with the Internal Fetal Medicine Specialist, it was determined that our child had Turners syndrome with cystic hygroma and fetal hydrops, a lethal combination that, in essence, was a chromosomal abnormality paired with a condition that would cause the baby to drown in their fluid. It sounds horrible, mainly because it is. There are many horrible things of varying degree in this world. We know this, and occasionally, we are brought nose-to-nose with the fact in a very personal way.
On February 14th, my husband took me out for Valentines Day dinner at the local diner where we had our first date. Up until then, the little life within had been moving about, kicking my belly and causing me to hope for a miracle that would upend the doctor’s “0% chance survival” and we would shout God’s kindness from the rooftops in great jubilation. But that evening, when I kept kneading my belly with no responsive kicks, I was certain she had been gently taken back to where she was from. Two days later, on February 16th, I was administered an epidural and all sorts of pain medication to get me through birthing the body of our baby, all behind the door labeled with a butterfly sticker to note our difficult situation to the revolving staff. Because the body was so swollen, it was impossible to see the gender on the ultra-sound screen, but after the birth we were told we had a girl.
Hope had arrived, even as she had already left.
She had left, but she was not lost. No. I would never, ever refer to having “lost” a baby. Babies are never lost, because their Creator always and forever has His eye on them and scoops them up the very second the heartless imperfection of this world forces them out (maybe even a little before). It’s the parent of the child who is the one who is left feeling “lost” in such a shattering ordeal.
We each carry our own pain. You may be reading this and thinking "She doesn't even know the half", and you very well could be quite right. There are those who may be here and in the middle of dark valley and unbeknownst to them, a miracle is just around the bend. I pray this is true. For all of us, there are hurts that sink our hearts. I only know what I have experienced, and today I humbly share the hope that brought my heart back up to the surface. This is what my experience with my firstborn daughter has left with me, even eight years later, to hang onto as she enjoys a painless, tear-free, safe and fulfilling childhood in Heaven:
God Leans In Close.
There was the time I was sitting on that yellow bench in a noisy arcade and wordlessly wished for a tangible sign that Hope was enjoying her childhood in a reality I couldn’t see. Within seconds, a little girl with long brown in hair in pigtails who had just walked past holding her daddy’s hand turned around, looked me straight in the eyes and with a smile, nodded ever so slightly. She, probably unknowingly, had listened to a nudge from God to express a tangible sign of his attentiveness. I had not even formed a prayer, but it was the beginning of a series of small signposts that lead me to realize God was leaning in close, closer than a thought that hadn’t yet become a prayer. In fragile moments that alert all of our sensitivities and simultaneously usurp much of our energy, God in His all-knowing Love, doesn’t put the burden on us to articulate our needs to Him. He lovingly translates our heavy sighs and sinking hearts. He’s already there, at the cusp of our smallest thought. It’s up to us to choose to lean in towards Him and receive it.
Heaven is Near(er) than You Think.
“In the world of Faith the heavens above the city are friendly and near: they are the upper chamber of every house” –Max Picard, The Flight from God
In another instance, I found myself sitting behind a new family within our church community one Sunday, and found myself completely enraptured with the little baby girl that was staring at me wide-eyed two rows ahead. This was just weeks after burying Hope and I had been actively avoiding any contact with babies, or anything to do with them (baby showers, baby aisle at CVS, etc.). Thus, when I felt myself drawn to this little one who I supposed would have been around Hope’s age, I decided to investigate a little further. I approached the woman (who had just moved her large family here from Oregon) and asked if she could come to our little brick duplex for coffee some morning, and would she please bring that adorable baby with. She kindly agreed to, and as she came up to my front porch I reached for her baby and asked her name.
“Grace”, she replied.
I exclaimed how sweet she was and the little girl snuggled up to me. Taking the plunge, I asked when she was born.
“Oh, she’s a Valentines Day baby!”
My heart exploded as I connected the divine dots. The woman probably thought I was a nutcase and fought to reach for her child as I asked a third, and bit unusual question: “What time of day was she born?”
“Well, I had her in Oregon, and just before lunch, Pacific Time of course….”
In the moment it was confirmed that Grace was likely born to Earth as Hope was carried to Heaven, the truth that there is a Kingdom—a real, live, thriving, active and ongoing reality which is intertwined in and around and through all that we can feel, touch, see and hear was made perfectly clear-the crystal kind.
In his deep and profoundly impacting book (to me) "The Divine Conspiracy", Dallas Willard writes:
"Nothing--no human being or institution, no time, no space, no spiritual being, no event--stands between God and those who trust Him. The "heavens" are always there with you no matter what, and the "first heaven" in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body...it is precisely from the space immediately around us that God watches and God acts"
When we find ourselves shivering after being stripped of the illusion that we have any control over life, we either grow bitterly cold towards God or we wait in the cold desperately scanning the skies for any little sign that He is attuned to our plight to warm us up. When you seek, you will find. When you ask, He will answer. It is a promise proven through ages of pain.
One day in April, when I quietly wished for assurance that He was still on my case (as many who rush to the scene, naturally tend to move on with life after the drama recedes), at the very moment of my request, a bright red cardinal swooped out of the blue sky and sat perched on my porch railing, not moving until he had more than delivered a convincing message sent straight from his Maker.
Heaven was then--and is always--near. Naturally, our perception of that reality is significantly dimmed most of the time. I remember as a child looking straight into the sun (the moment after my mother advised me not to) and I would stare until my pupils burned. When my eyes would shift back to Earth, my view was almost dark and it would take several long seconds for my vision to re-acclimate to the surroundings. Perhaps that is what will happen someday, when Heaven is realized. All the simple and complex God-inspired connections that were made over the course of history to bring comfort, restore and heal those who He loves and longs to care for will come into clear focus and instead of regretting all the times of doubt while in the dark, we will revel in the light of the fact that we were loved so deeply all this time.
Induction into the First Responders Club
My beautifully brave cousin and her husband have had the flip switched from coasting to crisis in a 24 hour period two weeks ago when they were suddenly made aware that their youngest child has kidney cancer. In a recent text she wrote:
"All of life is painted in a different color now and I can't help but think what a gift it is".
We see things very plainly in pain. When I stopped into visit with her yesterday, she mentioned having recently walked through two different families who suddenly had cancer diagnoses shatter their lives as they knew it. She said "They told me all these things, and I thought I understood. But I didn't. Now I know".
Once you possess a knowing of a particular pain that comes with a particular case--be it cancer, stillborn babies, bankruptcy, divorce, infertility, depression, prodigals sons and daughters, ailing parents, straying spouses, strong-willed children or being run over by a runaway gossip train--it does not matter the depth or the outcome compared to you're own...you unwittingly become a member of The First Responders Club.
Perhaps the pain is too fresh to use at first, or ever, and we resent the thought of being pushed into a club we never asked to be enrolled in. But I have seen, in those who came to my side during our ordeal, for myself years later and in countless others whose pain has changed them for the better, there comes a time when we are made aware of another sister or brother standing out in the shocking cold of circumstances familiar to our own, and we are moved to lean in close, offering the warmth that comes from a knowing empathy. In doing so we become an agent of Heaven's nearness.
The truth is, now eight years out, and in a pocket of life where we are luxuriating in a seemingly predictable pattern of living at a distance from "crisis mode", my vision has grown increasingly foggy. Once in a while life will smear a streak through the fog and I'll again be reminded that there is far more going on that meets the eye. There will also be the times I hear of someone whose baby was taken before they could meet them and I instinctively want to be there. In being a partner with God as First Responder, it mysteriously adds purpose to Hope's life...it extends her presence here to life on Earth (even as it does not change the fact I wish she were here).
There is that wonderful movie, Hope Floats and in it is a quote that has stuck since watching for the first time years before I knew anything (truly) about hope:
Beginnings are usually scary, endings are usually sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.” ― Steven Rogers, Hope Floats: The Screenplay
If I were given the chance to improve this message, based on experience and the view my faith holds onto, I would change it to this:
"Beginnings (of the unknown) are usually scary, endings are never really the end (life on Earth is just a teeny sliver of our entire story), but it's what 's in the middle (what we do with this life) that counts. So when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will".
Although not seen with my eyes or held with my arms, my daughter is alive and very well. What Hope taught me then is yet floating along in and through my present world....and will continue to do so until my eyes rest on her face that will instantly be familiar and until I realize that everything I believed about her--and her Creator--is real, but far better than even my best understanding.
There was the time I was sitting on that yellow bench in a noisy arcade and wordlessly wished for a tangible sign that Hope was enjoying her childhood in a reality I couldn’t see. Within seconds, a little girl with long brown in hair in pigtails who had just walked past holding her daddy’s hand turned around, looked me straight in the eyes and with a smile, nodded ever so slightly. She, probably unknowingly, had listened to a nudge from God to express a tangible sign of his attentiveness. I had not even formed a prayer, but it was the beginning of a series of small signposts that lead me to realize God was leaning in close, closer than a thought that hadn’t yet become a prayer. In fragile moments that alert all of our sensitivities and simultaneously usurp much of our energy, God in His all-knowing Love, doesn’t put the burden on us to articulate our needs to Him. He lovingly translates our heavy sighs and sinking hearts. He’s already there, at the cusp of our smallest thought. It’s up to us to choose to lean in towards Him and receive it.
Heaven is Near(er) than You Think.
“In the world of Faith the heavens above the city are friendly and near: they are the upper chamber of every house” –Max Picard, The Flight from God
In another instance, I found myself sitting behind a new family within our church community one Sunday, and found myself completely enraptured with the little baby girl that was staring at me wide-eyed two rows ahead. This was just weeks after burying Hope and I had been actively avoiding any contact with babies, or anything to do with them (baby showers, baby aisle at CVS, etc.). Thus, when I felt myself drawn to this little one who I supposed would have been around Hope’s age, I decided to investigate a little further. I approached the woman (who had just moved her large family here from Oregon) and asked if she could come to our little brick duplex for coffee some morning, and would she please bring that adorable baby with. She kindly agreed to, and as she came up to my front porch I reached for her baby and asked her name.
“Grace”, she replied.
I exclaimed how sweet she was and the little girl snuggled up to me. Taking the plunge, I asked when she was born.
“Oh, she’s a Valentines Day baby!”
My heart exploded as I connected the divine dots. The woman probably thought I was a nutcase and fought to reach for her child as I asked a third, and bit unusual question: “What time of day was she born?”
“Well, I had her in Oregon, and just before lunch, Pacific Time of course….”
In the moment it was confirmed that Grace was likely born to Earth as Hope was carried to Heaven, the truth that there is a Kingdom—a real, live, thriving, active and ongoing reality which is intertwined in and around and through all that we can feel, touch, see and hear was made perfectly clear-the crystal kind.
In his deep and profoundly impacting book (to me) "The Divine Conspiracy", Dallas Willard writes:
"Nothing--no human being or institution, no time, no space, no spiritual being, no event--stands between God and those who trust Him. The "heavens" are always there with you no matter what, and the "first heaven" in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body...it is precisely from the space immediately around us that God watches and God acts"
When we find ourselves shivering after being stripped of the illusion that we have any control over life, we either grow bitterly cold towards God or we wait in the cold desperately scanning the skies for any little sign that He is attuned to our plight to warm us up. When you seek, you will find. When you ask, He will answer. It is a promise proven through ages of pain.
One day in April, when I quietly wished for assurance that He was still on my case (as many who rush to the scene, naturally tend to move on with life after the drama recedes), at the very moment of my request, a bright red cardinal swooped out of the blue sky and sat perched on my porch railing, not moving until he had more than delivered a convincing message sent straight from his Maker.
Heaven was then--and is always--near. Naturally, our perception of that reality is significantly dimmed most of the time. I remember as a child looking straight into the sun (the moment after my mother advised me not to) and I would stare until my pupils burned. When my eyes would shift back to Earth, my view was almost dark and it would take several long seconds for my vision to re-acclimate to the surroundings. Perhaps that is what will happen someday, when Heaven is realized. All the simple and complex God-inspired connections that were made over the course of history to bring comfort, restore and heal those who He loves and longs to care for will come into clear focus and instead of regretting all the times of doubt while in the dark, we will revel in the light of the fact that we were loved so deeply all this time.
Induction into the First Responders Club
My beautifully brave cousin and her husband have had the flip switched from coasting to crisis in a 24 hour period two weeks ago when they were suddenly made aware that their youngest child has kidney cancer. In a recent text she wrote:
"All of life is painted in a different color now and I can't help but think what a gift it is".
We see things very plainly in pain. When I stopped into visit with her yesterday, she mentioned having recently walked through two different families who suddenly had cancer diagnoses shatter their lives as they knew it. She said "They told me all these things, and I thought I understood. But I didn't. Now I know".
Once you possess a knowing of a particular pain that comes with a particular case--be it cancer, stillborn babies, bankruptcy, divorce, infertility, depression, prodigals sons and daughters, ailing parents, straying spouses, strong-willed children or being run over by a runaway gossip train--it does not matter the depth or the outcome compared to you're own...you unwittingly become a member of The First Responders Club.
Perhaps the pain is too fresh to use at first, or ever, and we resent the thought of being pushed into a club we never asked to be enrolled in. But I have seen, in those who came to my side during our ordeal, for myself years later and in countless others whose pain has changed them for the better, there comes a time when we are made aware of another sister or brother standing out in the shocking cold of circumstances familiar to our own, and we are moved to lean in close, offering the warmth that comes from a knowing empathy. In doing so we become an agent of Heaven's nearness.
The truth is, now eight years out, and in a pocket of life where we are luxuriating in a seemingly predictable pattern of living at a distance from "crisis mode", my vision has grown increasingly foggy. Once in a while life will smear a streak through the fog and I'll again be reminded that there is far more going on that meets the eye. There will also be the times I hear of someone whose baby was taken before they could meet them and I instinctively want to be there. In being a partner with God as First Responder, it mysteriously adds purpose to Hope's life...it extends her presence here to life on Earth (even as it does not change the fact I wish she were here).
There is that wonderful movie, Hope Floats and in it is a quote that has stuck since watching for the first time years before I knew anything (truly) about hope:
Beginnings are usually scary, endings are usually sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.” ― Steven Rogers, Hope Floats: The Screenplay
If I were given the chance to improve this message, based on experience and the view my faith holds onto, I would change it to this:
"Beginnings (of the unknown) are usually scary, endings are never really the end (life on Earth is just a teeny sliver of our entire story), but it's what 's in the middle (what we do with this life) that counts. So when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will".
Although not seen with my eyes or held with my arms, my daughter is alive and very well. What Hope taught me then is yet floating along in and through my present world....and will continue to do so until my eyes rest on her face that will instantly be familiar and until I realize that everything I believed about her--and her Creator--is real, but far better than even my best understanding.
