Fully Aware

I am fully aware that next Saturday will mark eight months since Felicity entered Heaven. I am also fully aware that we already have many activities happening that day and the week leading up to it. Please lift me up in prayer this coming week as I am already feeling myself slipping into a fog. I realized today that this week marks more time missing Felicity than time spent anticipating her arrival. We've known her longer as a memory than a reality. Oh, that hurts! Some moments it hurts so badly, I don't think I can stand it.

I thank God daily for my boys as their presence has truly sustained me physically these many months. While God has sustained me spiritually and emotionally and Paul has been my all-around supporter, without Ethan and Elijah to love and care for, I really think the past 8 months would've been quite different. I don't even like to think how different. But I ache to think of other grieving moms I've met who don't have any other children to help them through this deepest of valleys. So boys, someday when you look back on this time, please know that you helped me so much!

And thanks to you all, who have faithfully prayed for me and my family. I don't know what I would've done without you all. Thank you for sharing your own stories of loss and helping me see the path ahead of me.

A Letter From Heaven

If you're a mommy missing her precious baby in Heaven, please read this!

He Bore Our Sorrows

We went to church last night. It's been awhile since I've cried at church, though it used to be a place where the tears fell quickly and easily, whether I wanted them to or not.

We sit in various positions when at church. I like to sit next to Paul whenever possible. But with a squirmy toddler who needs to be barricaded in, Paul and I don't often get to sit side by side. Last night both boys were between us. The tears welled up in my eyes when I glanced to the right when Elijah said for the third time "Are we done?" and saw my two precious boys sitting there. It hit me that there should be a little girl there with them.

This time I didn't see Felicity as a little baby like usual, but as a little girl. She would've been dressed in a pretty dress with a bow or two in her curly brown hair. Her legs would've stuck straight out, not long enough to bend at the pew edge. She would've had white tights and shiny black shoes on. She would've been sitting between her brothers. But she wasn't there. So I cried, because I miss my daughter.

Today we went to the park after homeschool co-op and there were quite a few kids there. One was a little brown-haired cutie with a stocking cap on her head. She was about four years old. And her name was Faith. So I cried at the park too.

Isaiah 53:4-5 says, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

When our pastor read those verses last night, it struck me that not only did Christ bear all our sins upon the cross, but he also bore all of our sorrows, all of our pain, all of our hurts and discomforts, and all of our sadness. EVERYTHING! Christ bore on the cross everything that stems from SIN. Everything bad, sad, and hard in this world is the result of sin. He knows my griefs and sorrows and bore them on the cross for me.

The weight of my grief over missing my babies is unbearable at times. And Jesus bore mine and those of everyone else in the world! And someday "the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away." Isaiah 51:11

THERE IS WONDER-WORKING POWER IN THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF THE LAMB!

Barrier

Thanks for your prayers - I think I feel them working, but I need more. The last 19 hours (minus the 10 I spent sleeping) have been a roller coaster. I returned home yesterday from an appointment and errands and there was a message on our machine. It was a good friend calling to say she'd had her baby early that morning.

I hadseen her the night before and her baby girl was born just 5 hours after I saw her. It was a wonderful homebirth. My first reaction was extreme happiness - I KNEW she was going to have a girl. Then just minutes after that I crashed BIG TIME! I quickly became a sobbing, crying, emotional mess! All that was going through my mind was "why not me?" I spent all afternoon struggling with my emotional state, while still trying to do all my mom responsibilities.

I'm so happy for my friend! She is a beautiful person who has had much suffering in her own life. She lost triplet boys almost half way through a pregnancy, had another miscarriage, and lost her two and a half year old son about 11 years ago due to illness. (She also has five other living children - 6 now with this as of yet unnamed baby girl.) After Felicity died, this friend was someone who just knew how to talk to both Paul and I. She knew what questions to ask and understood our grief.

So, it's really hard for me to understand why I'm feeling this way. I literally feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin at any moment. My heart races at times and I feel like yelling at someone one moment and crying out the next. Is it because this is the first baby girl I know of to be born? Is it because she was born at home? I don't know. But I'm realizing that this was bound to happen sooner or later. Things had been calm for too long. There's a lot of busyness going on in my life right now, plus that broken relationship I mentioned in my last post. Paul and I aren't always on the same page lately either. Nothing major, but it makes everything feel more disjointed.

I'm still searching for peace. And to be truthful, I haven't spent enough time lately talking to God. There's a bit of a barrier there that I'm trying to break down. So, please continue to pray!

A Gift

I've received some really sweet gifts since Felicity died, many from friends in bloggyland that I have never even met. Today I received a wonderful little care package from Kara, an old elementary school friend. We recently reconnected through Facebook. Check out her blog for a cute and informative story, especially if you own a cell phone and have a child under the age of three.

Kara sent me the book, Rain On Me by Holley Girth and I'm really looking forward to reading it. It's a devotional book of "hope and encouragement for difficult times." Just what I need right now. I just finished reading the forward by the author and I'm already thinking I'll be reading more than one chapter a day. Unfortunately the chocolate bar that Kara also sent me won't last through the second chapter. But I'll enjoy it while it lasts and it's chocolately goodness will linger on my thighs for many months as well.

Kara wrote a sweet note and included a quote from Anne Lamott, which I have to share. ". . .what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it."

It's so true! Whenever I find myself stuffing my grief, I find it that much harder to keep going. When I acknowledge my stuffed up grief, I end up having to play catch-up and it's so much harder. Like one step forward, then two steps back. I'm really finding with all the busyness around me that I have to stay up late or be by myself in order to just sit and feel, to remember and cry. And then eventually I pick myself up and go on, until the next time the grief hits me.

Romans 8:38-39 is the verse at the top of chapter one in this new book and when I read it, it was like I was reading it for the first time:

I am convinced that neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Despite Felicity's death, whether I'm afraid of dealing with the present or I'm hoping for the future, the depth of my grief can never separate me from the love of God. What a wonderful promise!

Been Thinking

I've been doing a lot of thinking the past couple of days (in between all the laundry, cooking, cleaning, schooling, and 2 yr. old potty breaks). It's taken me a few days to put together all those thoughts with some coherency. Here's what I've come up with:

I've got a lot of idols in my life.

Kind of goes against that whole "thou shall not make for thyself any idol out of anything. . ." (My six year old has it memorized, but he's sleeping presently and I'm too lazy to set my laptop down and reach four feet away to grab my Bible and type it out verbatim.) Sorry.

Over the years I've had a lot of idols in my life. Things that seemingly are good, but take my focus off of Christ, when I focus on them too much. Those idols have included relationships, security, my home, and more often than not, behaviors that I don't want to give up.

Since Felicity died, my main idol has been having another baby. This idol was initially created because I thought having another baby would take away the pain of losing Felicity. While having another baby does help with healing, it can't take away the pain of missing my daughter. Since my miscarriage, I found myself struggling with this idol again. Chances are, I could get pregnant again very quickly if I wanted to (and boy do I want to), but I know my body needs some time to heal. Waiting is not my game! I'm finally recognizing this desire as an idol. In and of itself, having a baby is a wonderful God-given gift, but if that's my main focus, there is definitely something out of place. I think God is calling me to be patient. He's wanting me to find my contentment in Him first, not in another baby.

True peace and happiness can come only through Christ. We are to be "content with such things as we have." Hebrews 13:5 (Just remembered we have e-sword on our computer - woohoo!) Please pray for me to focus on Christ - to find contentment in Him.