Four

If I could post this picture a hundreds times without the rest of the word thinking I was crazy, I would. It is without a doubt my favorite picture and probably will be for a long time. Yes, I love it because we all match perfectly for the holiday of July 4th. Yes, I love that it was taken in front of my best friend’s house and if you look closely you can see her sweet boy riding his bike in the background. Yes, I love Jane Taylor’s outfit. I stalked the internet for months trying to find the perfect look for our new neighborhood’s biggest day of celebration. But what I love the most is that in this picture there were four of us.

Four. We weren’t planning on becoming a family of four at the beginning of July. We weren’t planning on having a new baby arriving in March. We weren’t expecting to have two kids under two. It wasn’t in our plans. But in early July we were reminded that God is in charge and this was the greatest unexpected plan we could ever receive.

A couple weeks later I miscarried. An unexpected pregnancy turned into an unexpected loss. And it rocked my world. Hard.

The question “why”. Ugh. I hate that question. Has been at the forefront of my brain ever since. Why did God give us this baby only to take it away? I was just beginning to process the idea of this baby being born. What the nursery might look like. How to convert the stroller into a ride for two babies. What would it look like taking two kids into the grocery store. And as all of those exciting, nervous thoughts were coming into play – our baby returned to Jesus.

It was amazing how I could go from receiving the greatest news to the hardest news all in the same month. How quickly my days went from dreaming to heartbreak. No one told me my body would go through all the motions again like it did after giving birth to Jane Taylor. No one told me that my postpartum anxiety would come back. And boy did it – worse than ever before.

I was great around people because they were a wonderful distraction. A moment in time where my head wasn’t having to fight off the darkness that seemed all consuming. Alone was scary. Night time was the worst. Becoming a one in a statistic hit me harder than I thought it would.

Summer was hard. I would lay on the floor in a ball of tears wondering why. Why us. Why me. Why am I going through this season of darkness. What Lord do you want me to learn from this. What was the point of gifting us new life only to take it away. It brings me to tears just to even type it out.

I am not on the other side yet. I am closer. But I am different now. Pregnancy is different now. I see mothers differently now.

I also see God differently – in a very good way. See through all of this I have had to lean on Him more than ever before. I see His work. I see His kindness. He works so hard to remind little fragile me that He has got the strongest grip on my heart. He is in charge. He is fighting for me. And it is a beautiful gift. I wish it was a gift that I didn’t have to receive through a heartbreaking loss. But I am so grateful for the way my eyes see Him now.

October 15th is now a day that will have a bigger impact on our hearts. So will July 1st – the day we found out we were pregnant. July 10th – the day we lost our child. And March 5th – the day our baby was supposed to breathe his first breath in this world.

Apart of me will always long for the child we lost. These dates will be filled with a mix of emtions. But I pray that when these dates come and go that I will use them to remind me of how great our God is. His plan might not make a lot of sense but it is set into motion for a reason only He knows. Putting my trust in that fact is the best thing I can do. It is not always easy. Some days it is the hardest thing I have to do. But it’s all I can. I pray for the mother’s who have lost today and I pray that through the hard moments they can see how tightly God is holding on to them too.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” -Psalm 147:3