Granite and Graduation

~~~Flashback Post~~~
Granite and Graduation (May 20, 2015)

Somehow I managed to continue to live over the following weeks.  I had cake orders I had to fill. I had a graduation I needed to plan and prep for.  After two short weeks off, I was back at my desk at work.  I was answering the phones and greeting the public, still trying to figure out how to live in the aftermath of our nightmare.  I didn't want to be there, the general public didn't know what to say to me.  Some said things wonderful things, some said completely inappropriate things, most said nothing at all.

Physically speaking, two weeks was not enough time.  Mentally speaking, two weeks was not enough time.  Spiritually speaking, two weeks was not enough time.  But I was given two weeks of "maternity leave" and after two weeks, I returned to work... at a church... and I sat in that sacred and holy place harboring a great and growing bitterness, anger, and guilt-filled resentment towards God.

The day of our oldest sons long awaited Baccalaureate Graduation Ceremony was a sunny and warm day.  Truth-be-told, it was not a day filled with many smiles, it was not an overly great day.  The graduate was not wanting to even attend his Baccalaureate ceremony, and we as parents were completely caught between an angry, fist shaking urge to demand with a "you have no choice" approach, mixed with an empathetic, heartbroken - "I totally get it" understanding.  But for the most part, I didn't get it.... I didn't get it at all.  This was a big thing, a big deal - at least for me, and I couldn't understand why it suddenly wasn't for him.  Suddenly we were at the end of his High School career, the moment of finale, and there we were ~ more in a civil war than a grand celebration.

After an emotional roller coaster day of texts, calls, ignored calls, and attempted irrational reasoning, our Senior did finally enter the doors of the facility and join his class up front.  He however did not join us at his celebration supper afterwards.  We were left hosting close family in his absence, and my heart ached in both absolute pride of his accomplishment and utter disappointment in the emotions and actions of the day.  And my heart ached for whatever demons were internally attacking him.

As we walked out of the restaurant that night, the sun was setting, the wind was just a whisper, and I knew in my heart, it was time to drive by the cemetery.  We had not been given an exact date when they would be setting Faith's headstone, and part of me prayed it hadn't been delivered that day and it would still be that small little silver marker in the ground when we drove by, like it had been the day before, and the day before that... But as we slowly approached that evening, we saw several new large stones now on display, and then in her perfect sized smallness, there it was.

There it was, a beautiful delicate piece of perfect, polished, black granite, freshly etched with her name... our names... her birth date. The roses, the cross, the perfect angel wings on back.  Smooth and reflective on the face and back, rough around the edges, black, strong, a glorious mix of marbling... exactly like us, a perfect visual representation of our family.  We stood there holding hands as the sun set that night, heaving teardrops falling into the freshly packed dirt.

My heart was so hurt and so raw by the events and emotions of the day, the utter fatigue of the season at hand.  The arrival of her headstone really was the last thing that was left, the final chapter, of her life.  It was the permanent marker and symbol of her short life.  I looked and looked at that date.  March 27, 2015, and I was reminded of one of my favorite sayings...

"Your life is made up of two dates and a dash.  Make the most of your dash."

Her birth date had no dash following it.  Our Faith MaryJo did not get the joy of getting to live wild and free within the dash that we all get to enjoy between the dates of our birth and the dates of our death.

She would never cry, never laugh, never love, never grow, never graduate...  and that was such a bittersweet reality on that day for me as a mom.  Of all the days ~ the day of our oldest's final chapter of Grade School, Middle School, High School... would also be the same day as our youngest's, his baby sister's, final chapter through the setting of her memorial stone at the cemetery.  Two milestones completed, two chapters closed, both in the same day.

I stood there knowing both my youngest and my oldest had now flown from our nest.  One was still alive and soon to be embarking on life's new adventures of adulthood, hopefully to continue to make the most of his dash... and one was already embarking on Heaven's eternal and great adventure, never even granted the earthly privilege and dreams of her dash.

{"Bitter vs Better" blog post HERE }
{ previous journal entry, "The Days That Followed" HERE }
{ missed the previous posts of our Journey to Faith? click HERE to start }
{ next blog post, "Season of Blessed" HERE }

The Days That Followed

{Missed the previous posts of our Journey to Faith story?  start HERE }

~~~Flashback Post~~~
April 10, 2016 (The Days That Followed)

The days that followed the funeral were a blur.

I was dealing with the normal physical aftermath of a natural and vaginal child birth ~ the heavy bleeding, the uterine contracting, shrinking, and healing, the standard hormone imbalance and fluctuation with all its postpartum depression issues.  I had dealt with postpartum depression with my firstborn eighteen years earlier.  I had dealt with post adoption depression for over a year with my second child six years earlier. My milk had come in, as my body was responding how every other mother's does.  It was creating nutrients to provide for a baby's essential bonding, growth, and most basic of needs after it was done incubating that little life within me. My chest hurt so bad.  They were swollen, full, hard, tingling, letting down, and constantly leaking all over.  There was nothing inside to stop natures natural course of reproduction.  The reality and next step from within was no longer needed from the outside, and there was nothing properly coordinating with those natural responses. There was no baby, I had nothing to comfort or feed except my own sorrow, self pity, depression, and near desperation.

I was dealing with the incredible emotional aspects and coping mechanisms of a mother in the first steps of grieving the loss of a child, a long prayed for child after seventeen years of infertility at that...   I was home on an awkward and far too short two week "maternity leave." My body, soul, and mind an absolute mess, with no baby to love and care for. The only middle of the night crying was my own. 

And I was dealing with an enormous spiritual war in my anger towards God for causing all this, my guilt and shame over that anger towards God, and my battle to simply continue to find the will to go on living.  And yet, God kept continuing to wake me up every morning.  I knew He apparently wasn't done with me yet, but I sure was ready to be done with Him.

Cards continued to come in the mail.  My husband would bring in the mail and we would quietly sit side-by-side on the couch with a box of tissues. We would spend the next hour opening, reading, commenting, passing them back and forth, and crying our already swollen eyes out.   That first week the story was continuing to get out and several people were reaching out with love and support, praying over us, and trying to walk well beside us.  There were a few meals and not many phone calls.  After that we continued to get an occasional card or two, but very quickly the immediate outpouring of support trickled to an end.

People had no idea what to say to us, so most said nothing at all.

We were all cycling through the overtaking moments of utter grief and loss.  Rarely were we all a mess at the same time.  As it had been during the delivery, funeral planning and funeral itself, we all continued to just ebb and flow, taking turns through the downs and absolute rock bottoms (there were NO ups in any of that period of our lives...) of our pain and sorrow. We were trying to blindly navigate how to grapple with all our own inner demons, we were trying to help pick up the pieces of the others when they fell apart, we were trying to figure out how to be parents that now had children on earth and a child in Heaven.

My husband went on a spending spree as he tried to spread salve on his wounds.  Our teenager got even more quiet, secluded, and withdrawn than he had been before.  Our unpredictable, moody, adopted six year old, who knew he had not come from within the same womb that his big brother had, the same place his sister had just passed away in, rebelled and fought us tooth and nail through meltdowns and anger as his little confused mind attempted, but absolutely could not comprehend or process all of the intricacies of biological / adoption / grief / loss / life / death...

We all desperately needed to give each other grace, love, and support... But when you yourself are in the midst of their same darkest of dark places, giving grace, love, and support is amazingly hard, if not impossible.

I remember the sun shining and the promise of spring during the rare moments when I left the house.  I mostly remember the dark, curtain drawn shadows of our bedroom and those four bleak walls continuing to surrounding me as I lay in bed for hours and hours, day after day.

All of me - mind, body, and soul was an utter train wreck in dire need of healing, strength, and hope.  Never in all my life had I hurt so badly.  Every cell of my body ached in the pain of our loss and sorrow.

{ click HERE to our next journal entry, "Granite and Graduation" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry, "The Funeral" }

The Funeral

{ Missed the previous posts to our Journey to Faith story? start HERE }

~~~Flashback Post~~~

The Funeral (March 31, 2015)

The morning of the funeral was sunny, calm, and an unseasonably warm 77º. An absolute rarity for a spring day in Iowa. An unbelievable gift from God ~ the most beautiful day of the year thus far, on the what was by far the hardest day of our lives thus far.

I had stood at the door of my closet that morning, staring blankly at the sea of colors and clothes in front of me. I had no idea what to wear. I had no idea what would even fit. I had been hiding behind bulky hoodies and sparkly scarves desperately trying to hide my growing waistline, while battling an inner sickness and mania, for five months. I was only days out (double digit hours really) after sending my body into the shock and recovery of childbirth and delivery. I knew my body was quickly shedding pounds, but I had no idea how much I had actually lost.

I kept thinking over and over, what in the world does a mother wear to bury her child?

I finally went with an old black short sleeve shirt, covered with a dark grey, open knit, short sleeve sweater wrap, and my favorite black dress slacks. Slacks that had hung unworn in my closet for the last several years, because they were too small. These were thee slacks that had always been my "skinny pants" goal. Well, I could get them on that morning, so I wore them. It was a small consolation prize.

We drove in silence to the cemetery, where we joined the small group of friends and family we had personally invited to join us. Family, close friends, and our co-workers. A few steps out of the van, my mom came over and hugged me. Holding me long and hard and crying huge hiccuping tears into my ears. I clung to her with all the strength that was in me. My sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and father joined the circle around me and the rest of my family. Hugs, support, tears and so much pain. 

I knew others were hurting, but part of me struggled to realize the depth of everyone else's pain and loss beyond the walls of our home and within my own mind.  I was aware, but did not fully comprehend that we were not the only ones solely hurting from this loss, and that was often hard for me to fully acknowledge.  I was so self absorbed in my pain and focused on myself, my husband and my sons that I was blinded from clearly seeing beyond that.  She wasn't just our daughter and sister. She was a granddaughter, she was a niece, she was a cousin, she was their friends and co-workers child, the thing that God has caused the people they loved to have to hurt and endure and suffer through and from... Everyone there loved us, everyone there hurt for us, everyone there was also hurting and grieving her heavenly departure from earth..

We slowly crossed the grass that was slowly greening, yet still matted and dirty from the winter blanket of snow that had recently melted. The sky was a vivid blue, and we made our way to the small crowd of people watching us and standing behind the four chairs waiting in the front row. The chairs were draped with the old, royal blue, funeral home chair slips. There was a matching blue cloth over a small table, with the tiny white, fabric covered, casket resting on top. A tiny rectangular hole was carefully dug into the freshly thawed earth next to the table.

A single light pink rose with babies breath sat on the top of the closed white lid. It’s color, fragrance, and texture emitting life and hope, while at the same time ultimately representing death and sorrow.

Inside, a tiny, diseased filled, earthly body was resting in one of the two pink and white scalloped blankets my husband and I had picked out together a few weeks earlier, in preparation for this very moment. The second matching blanket was waiting and carefully folded on a table next to the pink photo frame displaying her little ultrasound picture back at the church.

That moment in time will forever be etched into my mind. The sun, the spring warmth, the gentle, gentle breeze through my hair and open stitching of my sweater, the hard metal chair beneath me, the strong arm and support of my husband directly to my left. The sniffs and tears of those standing behind us. Our teenager held hands and cried with his girlfriend, who had also buried an infant brother several years earlier, and to whom I was so incredibly grateful for, as she was able to provide the support and comfort that I emotionally was just not capable of. Our youngest sat on my husbands lap. He did not cry once. He looked back and forth with wide eyes, looking deep into our wet eyes and emotionally spent souls. While he knew some of what was going on, I know he really did not grasp the absolute magnitude of it at all. There was no way he could fully comprehend the details and reality of that life and death moment. It left me feeling an incredible amount of guilt and regret for not telling him sooner and attempting to help him understand, grasp, and process the enormity of it all.

The text was on Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the confidence in what we hope for, and the assurance in what we do not see.” The exact verse and meaning she was named after. And then Pastor Jon went on to talk about her middle name. MaryJo. A combination of her grandmother’s names… and then I heard him talk about Jesus’s parent, Mary and Joseph ~ which also could be blended into the full meaning of MaryJo as well. I remember how profoundly that statement struck me in that moment.

And then suddenly, we were praying, and the small service was over. Another long moment that slipped by and had ended entirely too fast ~ another perfect and exact representation of her life. We were standing again, we were hugging, we were crying with those behind us. Soon everyone was walking to their vehicles, heading off to church for the small lunch and receiving line. My husband and I were the last two to leave, minus the funeral directors. I remember how hard it was to pick up that tiny pink rose and will myself to just walk away from her tiny casket, knowing it was soon going to be lowered into the dark and damp earth. Soon to be surrounded, hidden, stained, and fully covered by the black earth.

{ click HERE for our next journal entry, "The Days That Followed" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry, "Going Public" }

Going Public

{ Missed the previous posts to our Journey To Faith story?  Start HERE. }

~~~Flashback Post~~~
Going Public (March 28, 2015)

We left the funeral home absolutely exhausted, completely emotionally spent, but we had one more ginormous task to still hurdle.  We had to tell our six year old son.

We drove out to my parents house to pick up him up.  He thought we were still off on an anniversary vacation, although I'm sure he knew something was going on because my parents had to have been distraught and understandably upset as they grieved for both our pain and the loss of their only granddaughter as the details and information came in from us from the hospital.

The details of having to try explain a hidden pregnancy (a biological pregnancy at that), a life, and a loss of a sister to a six year old little boy, who had been adopted, and whose little life had started and grown in the womb of another woman, is beyond imagination.  There are no words to have to describe that reality.  I'm sure we said and did all the wrong things, I'm sure he will end up in therapy for years to come, but at the time, we did what we felt was right.  We said what we felt was appropriate for the delicate and intense state of his little life and inner-workings.

We later arrived home, and received word from the funeral home that the obituary was going to be published on their website shortly.

It was time.  It was time to finally open our hearts, and our pain, and publically share the present reality of our story. We knew there are people that visit the funeral home website daily, just to be nosey and see who has recently died, and we knew we wanted to be the first one to share about her.  We didn't want some random funeral home website stalker to be the first to see, to ask us, to comment, to share...

But... the internet was down!  We had been having all sorts of issues with the local internet provider the last several months, and of all the days, and all the times, there we were ~ unable to connect, unable to email the necessary details to our friends and family, unable to log on to social media and publicly share.  I was already dangerously teetering on the edge, and that just about sent me over the edge of all rational sanity.   In time, we would finally get on, and posted the following on social media:

       ~~~~~~~~

"On Friday, March 27, our precious little daughter, Faith MaryJo, was born. She was 18 weeks and had been diagnosed earlier in the pregnancy with Trisomy 18, a rare chromosomal condition. Our little miracle was born sleeping and already safe and healed in the arms of Jesus. It has been an incredibly long journey that has been entirely far too short at the same time. We grieve this loss with an intensity I've not felt before, and take great comfort in the promise of eternity in Heaven. Our families thank you for your prayers and understanding as we mourn and heal.  Brian and Sara Crane"

And then we linked her obituary.

Obituary for Faith Crane

Faith MaryJo Crane, daughter of Brian Russell and Sara Lee (Oldenkamp) Crane, of Orange City, was stillborn on Friday, March 27, 2015, at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

There will be a family graveside service on Tuesday, March 31, at the West Lawn Cemetery in Orange City. The Rev. Jonathan Opgenorth will officiate. Arrangements are with the Oolman Funeral Home in Orange City.

In addition to her parents, she is survived by two brothers, Bailey Goebel and Isaiah Crane, both at home; grandparents, Kenneth and Mary Oldenkamp, of Alton; Jolene Crane, of Rock Rapids; and Steve and Debbie Crane, of Rock Rapids; uncles, aunts, and cousins, Derek and Karalee Oldenkamp, with son Kennick, of Glasgow, Kentucky; and Rachel Crane, with daughter Jordyn, of Sioux Falls.

       ~~~~~~~~

The next morning in church, it would be announced from the pulpit.  We watched and cried along with them via the livestream of it from our home.  The thought of venturing into public still unbearable and unthinkable.  There was so much to share, so much to say, and yet all we wanted to do was be alone, to sleep, to hide, to hurt privately...  But that's what we had already been doing the entire time... Now it was time to figure out what to say, and what to do, and bravely figure out how to look the public in the eye and grieve and mourn openly.

{ click HERE for our next journal entry"The Funeral" } 
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry "Funeral Details" }

Funeral Details

Missed the previous posts to our Journey To Faith Story?
Start HERE.

~~~Flashback post~~~
Funeral Details (March 28, 2015)

I think one of the hardest things in this whole journey and loss, was trying to figure out and justify the "appropriateness" of what is both "socially acceptable" and what we felt deep within us was the right thing, and the right way, to give us the closer we needed and celebrate this little life that never even got the chance to really even live.

We were also now faced with the reality of how would we publicly share about something so hard, so sad, and ultimately ~ so secret.  At that exact moment the majority of the world still had no idea what our little family had just gone through.

We had had the option to leave her at the hospital, where we were told she would be appropriately laid next to other lost babies from the hospital, which of course was not an option for us.  So the funeral home was notified, and a few hours after we were released from the hospital, after we had walked down that horribly hard and incredibly sad never-ending maternity floor hallway, we parked our vehicle in front of the funeral home, on the busiest and main road running through our little town, my name and business logo completely visible on the side windows.

We slowly walked in that late Saturday afternoon, hand in hand.  This time we were not there to meet any other family or friends and give them our sympathies.  This time we were "the family" that was there to do "the planning".  And I personally was greatly wrestling with what to do.  Should we do any kind of public visitation?  Should we do any kind of public funeral?  Should we do any kind of reception and lunch following?

I did not want to not celebrate her, I didn't want to overlook and under appreciate the reality of her life and the magnitude and enormity of this loss, but I had no idea what was the appropriate manner in which to accomplish this.

All along, we had known that this moment could not be fully pre-planned, because it really would look different depending on the date and way in which we would finally lose her.  The details of this funeral planning would be different than the funeral plans we would have made had she been born full term, after a full and publicly visible second-half of the pregnancy.

Seriously, I cannot begin to describe the amount of emotions all this brought me, on top of everything else we had just gone through.  We had known all along this was going to happen, we had talked and shared our thoughts for our hopes for this moment, and Lord knows I had mulled the millions of options over and over and over in my head over the weeks prior.  And yet, honestly, nothing can possibly prepare any parent to be able to fully comprehend what it will feel like knowing you have an appointment at the funeral home, to make final arrangements for your child.

But... it was the next step, the next thing we knew we needed to do.  The next part of the journey we had to bravely just get through.

The funeral director met us inside the door and we all sat down at a table in a small area around the corner.  He had our folder started, there was paperwork to begin.  And I will never forget the sorrow and emotions that overtook my husband at that moment.

It was one of those similar moments like so many had been with the two of us throughout this journey.  Thankfully, God rarely seemed to allow both of us to completely fall apart at the same time.  He would give one of us just a little more strength during those moments when the other was crashing to rock bottom.  And suddenly, mid-sentence, my husband put his head down and just sobbed.  Huge emotional sobs coming from the depths of his broken heart and shattered dreams.  I sat quietly next to him, rubbing his back, holding tightly to his strong arm, just letting him cry.  I may have had a few tears pool into his, but I distinctly remember not being overcome and having the odd strength to just somehow hold myself together in that moment.

We chose a tiny white casket, covered in white embroidered fabric, and we handed over the soft pink and white scalloped blanket we had so emotionally chosen earlier.  We chose a single light pink rose for the flower on top.  We decided to not have any kind of visitation.  We went ahead with our initial plan of having a small grave-side service, that we would personally invite about fifty close family and friends to attend with us.  We would have a receiving line after the service at our church, followed by a small lunch.  We would serve heavily buttered funeral ham buns, potato salad, chips, fruit, and volunteer donated variety of cakes.  We chose a list of songs we would have quietly playing during the lunch.

It was intimate, small, and yet just large enough to still hopefully be the perfect farewell and special closure all of us needed.

The reality never left my mind that nearly a year earlier I had taken over the job responsibilities to be the "Funeral Coordinator" at our church.  No one would have ever guessed that the very next funeral in our church would be for my very own family, my very own child.  It broke my heart knowing my church family and my fellow co-workers were going to be the next ones getting the call to organize and plan for all this from the church's end.

And then we worked on the obituary.  The beautiful words we would finally publicly share about the life and loss of our precious little girl...

{ click HERE for our next journal entry, "Going Public" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry, "Labor and Delivery" }

Labor and Delivery

{ Missed the previous posts to our Journey to Faith Story? click HERE }

~~~Flackback Post~~~

Labor and Delivery (March 27, 2015)

After the initial news and ingestion of what was about to have to happen, the rest of the day is both a bit of a blur, and an absolutely vivid, slow moving movie of crisp details, smells, feelings, sights, sounds, and emotions that I will never ever forget.  I had lived with an absolute manic fear of this exact moment that was now upon us, that long lived fear of dying myself in the midst of it all.

I could spend hours sharing these details, but I'm quite certain there is no one out there remotely interested in what it's really like in the inner room, in the birthing wing, on the maternity floor of a specialty hospital, when the only reason you are there is to induce labor to ultimately deliver a baby that is no longer alive.  I also believe in protecting the sacredness of that moment between my husband and I.  I realize "sacred" is perhaps and odd word to use to describe the worst day of our lives, and yet - it is in the monumental moments like these in our lives, and in our marriages, that fuse the bond and strength of ones relationship.  

We traveled hand in hand, heart to heart, dragging each other through the worst nightmare of our life thus far.  We stood by each other during our ugliest, our hardest, our darkest moments.

We were embraced by the most amazing nurses who lovingly sat us down and walked us through what was about to happen, the why, the when, the reason for what was all going to be happening.  We had been scheduled to find all of this out in just a few days, but we had not made it that far.  We had not mentally been able to start processing this leg of the journey, and it was the one that we knew was going to be the hardest. And yet there we were, plowing forward full speed, ready or not.

Within a matter of hours of hearing those fateful words, "there's no heartbeat..." I was checked in at a hospital in another state, gowned, iv'd, and had been given the medicines to start contractions.  A doctor whom I had never met before came in around 5:00 p.m. and stood at the end of my bed and quietly told us that this typically was something that did not go quickly.  We would not delver that night, more than likely we would not deliver the following day either, his assumption was we would deliver early Sunday morning. Wow, that was a sobering blow to us... We were in for a long haul.  I had unsuccessfully labored and delivered for two and a half days with my oldest, I'm not sure why I had hoped this time it would be different.

In the hours that followed we would laugh, we would cry and we would cry some more.  We attempted to remain as real and upbeat as we could.  I found out labor and delivery for a stillborn premie at the age of 40, was just as intense and hard as the labor and delivery of full term at the age of 22.  For some reason I had let my mind convince me with an odd logic that since the baby would be small and not full term, that the labor and contractions would also be small and not as bad.  This was absolutely not the case.  But I had no option to change, stop, or back out.

Labor was heavy, my water broke minutes after my husband had left to get something to eat, and everything quickly started falling apart.  She was breach and she was coming much sooner than anyone had imagined.  My husband finally rushed back in, the new doctor who was now on call arrived, and only a few short hours after our arrival, at 7:37 p.m. on Friday, March 27th, Faith MaryJo was born. She did not get to greet the world with a cry, but I did.

Details with the delivery had not gone as they had hoped, and quickly we realized there was going to be further complications with the remainder of the delivery and the next several hours were crazy, intense, stressful, and long.  Since everything had gone so quickly I did not receive any pain medicine until the very end, it was short lived relief, and we were down to the wire for time.  They brought in the surgery paperwork and I had everything signed and ready.  And this made me so angry.

I did NOT want a spinal.  I had lived through two of them; the emergency c-section after two days failed labor and delivery with my oldest, and hemorrhaging after my miscarriage a year later.  In my opinion, the six to twelve hours of my body coming out of a spinal was one of the top worst things I've gone through... and to suddenly go from stillbirth labor and delivery to signing paperwork for another spinal and surgery left me emotionally livid at God. If I was going to have to end up still having surgery, why in the world did God make me go through labor and delivery as well?!?  I hadn't basically eaten or been able to drink anything (even water) all day, which was not helping the matter.  Finally there was one last "natural" procedure to try before I would be whisked off to surgery.  There were nurses and the doctor and my husband beside me... and my body finally gave up its fight, and all things once in, were now all things finally out.

I vividly remember there was an immediate bright light coming down on me, on my left side, filling the area of my hospital bed from above.  Maybe it was the lights in the room, but I believe it was God choosing to spare my life.

Done.  Delivered.  Alive.  I was still alive.  There was a momentary initial ten ton weight lifted from me.  It was late.  It was dark.  It was done.

They closely monitored me for the next several hours, knowing my history.  After midnight I was finally given the ok to order something to eat and drink.  We ordered off a menu and it was delivered to the room.  We sat silent and numb, in utter exhaustion as we attempted to eat the food in front of us.

It was over - all of it was finally over, and all of it actually was just a different kind of beginning. 

I cried the entire night while my husband snored loudly on the couch next to my bed.  I had always been the one on the couch, the supportive healthy one.  It had been 16 years since I had been a patient in the hospital.  I had had a miscarriage, followed by unexpected hemorrhaging.  And I had gone home without a baby that time as well.

The next morning the funeral home quietly slipped in and out, and later we would pack our bags and were slowly escorted down the long maternity floor hallway.  The walls were lined with enlargements of babies and smiling families.  The doors to the rooms were open and filled with tiny little newborns wrapped up tight, surrounded by the buzz of visiting family.  Balloons, flowers, excitement.  So many babies.

It was the hardest, longest walk of my life.  No carseat, no balloons, no flowers, no gifts.  No baby.  Just tears, so very, very many tears.  My heart broke into a million pieces over and over with every step we took.

{ click HERE for our next journal entry, "Funeral Details" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry, "Already In The Arms of Jesus" }

Already In The Arms of Jesus

~~~Flashback Post~~~
Already In The Arms of Jesus (March 27, 2015)

"The following morning I called the local clinic and was able to secure a 10:30a.m. appointment.  We were scheduled to still leave at noon for Illinois, and I had somehow managed to get myself, our six-year-old, and our dog all packed and ready for various locations while we were gone.

I went to work that morning, still feeling off and almost irritably nervous.  I had originally planned to leave work around 11:30am, but explained I felt a little off and that I was going to go in to the doctor before we left town.  I finished up all my work, double checked everything was taken care of and covered since I was going to be out for several days, and headed to the clinic.

When I arrived, I simply stated that we were leaving town and I just really wanted the assurance of hearing her heartbeat before we left.  My local doctor assured me this was just fine and he was able to do that for me.  I was soon lying down on the exam table, shirt lifted up, listening to a machine project all the inner sounds from within.  He moved the instrument around and around.  Soon I did hear a heartbeat, but it was much slower than the heartbeat we had heard on the earlier ultrasounds.

And then he had his fingers on my wrist, checking my pulse.  My pulse was the same speed as the pulse being projected, and I slowly willed myself to continue to just lie there and breathe.  In... Out... In... Out...  My eyes were closed and I felt him let go of my wrist and heard him say that he was going to bring in the portable ultrasound machine.

I lay there for a few minutes alone.  Alone, afraid, and pretty sure I knew what was about to happen.

And yet nothing really could prepare me for the moments that followed.  The door was opened and a lady wheeled in a large machine.  She turned down the lights and immediately went to work.  She apologized because the jelly wasn't warmed and was going to be cold.  I'm quite certain I wouldn't have noticed had it been either as cold as ice or as hot as fire.

And then she quietly said the words "Oh honey, I am so sorry... but there is no heartbeat..."  She went on to say that her entire body was quite full of fluid.  More than just the large pocket that had been on the back of her head earlier.

I laid there looking at her, a mix of really slow moving emotions.
"It's ok, it's ok...  She is sick, and we knew this was going to happen... It's ok..."

It was like a really huge weight was lifted, while at the same time a ten-ton train was slamming into me head-on.  Relief and the very first prick of extreme sorrow all at the same time.

She helped me sit up, and she quietly slipped back out of the room, and I sat there in the silence, completely alone.

Done.  All the waiting and wondering was over.
Gone.  She was already gone.

She was already gone, but she was also already healed, whole, and in the arms of Jesus.  I could picture her in His arms.  He was already holding her - cradling her, loving her, looking deep into her eyes.  Her disease and all her earthly imperfections were no more.  The tears and sorrow and full reality overtook me at that exact moment and I put my head in my hands and just sobbed.

Suddenly, it became a blur of calls and conversations and plans, and change in plans. We were packed, but we would not be heading east to Chicago.  We would head west to Sioux Falls, where they would be waiting for our arrival at the hospital.  We were told we needed to get packed and be on our way within the hour, or they would send me there in an ambulance.

And even though I had thought about it daily, obsessed over it hourly... we were completely and totally unprepared for the labor and delivery that still had to happen..."

{ click HERE for our next journal entry "Delivery" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry "The Start of Our Goodbyes" }

{ Missed the previous posts to our Journey to Faith story?  start HERE }