This is the picture that breaks my heart.
It reminds me of a person I didn’t get to be and a person I didn’t get to know.
Tomorrow will be 4 years since Josh and I received the most heartbreaking news a parent can hear. “There is no heartbeat.” “Your baby has died.”
I remember the start of that day. It was a Wednesday. I had just finished my last project for Josiah’s nursery. His bassinette. I sewed a cover, canopy, and skirt to match the rest of his Very Hungry Caterpillar room. It was a beautiful August day in Iowa. Blue skies and a nice breeze, temperatures perfect enough to leave the windows opened. I remember I had spent the morning, and much of that summer, listening to the 70s Folk station on Pandora – those songs and the warm breeze of fresh summer air flowed through the house and it felt like a perfect summer day. And I felt ready. The last project was done. The house was clean. I knew we were in the “any day now” stage. I had been feeling what I thought was him moving but turned out to be Braxton hicks contractions. But I did not know that until minutes before finding out what the day actually held for us.
That morning, Josh was out with a friend from church at a shooting range. When he got home, we went to our 37-week check-up. I don’t remember walking in or what I was thinking about. I don’t remember what anything felt like at that place before our worlds came crashing down. But I will never forget the moments of the crash. Seeing his beatless heart on the ultrasound and knowing this was happening. Still in shock and having to be told again. And then realizing, I still had to deliver him. While I asked for a c-section to spare myself any further trauma, the midwife informed me that while it was an option it was not the best one for my own healing, recovery, or having future kids. While I began to grasp what was ahead of me, in a 15-minute span of having a normal check up to finding out our baby had died and I would still have to deliver him and then go home empty, I was doubly shocked that she would suggest that I would have more kids. Because while I don’t remember what I thought walking in, I clearly remember walking out and the only thing I was sure of is that I would never be here again. I would never put myself in a place to love someone and have so much anticipation and joy to meet them and love them for their whole life only to be told that it had ended before it could begin. I could not change what had happened, but I had to protect myself from allowing it to happen again.
And that lasted about 24 hours.
As the initial shock began to wear off, we weighed the few options we had. I could wait until I went into natural labor. But I didn’t think I would mentally, emotionally, and physically survive drawing this out until my body decided it was time. The c-section option was out because despite the immense pain I was in, I knew I had to love a baby again. My call to motherhood was not something I could protect myself from, even if it brought the caution and reality of loss. So after a day and a half of mourning and shock, we started labor the next morning. Active labor began the following day and he was born after a relatively short labor. (And drug free – I’m proud of that fact! And have since gone straight for the epidural. But yay for my one!) The evening of Saturday, August 25, 2012, Josh and I, and our parents got to hold the baby we had waited so long – in the months of gestation and the hours of death. It was a glimpse of new life. Even through death. The 24 hours we spent with Josiah were filled with joy, beauty, and love. We had a naming and blessing service for him, took pictures, and held his little body.
In the days ahead, we were surrounded by love and support (and food!) from family, friends, and the Wartburg community. We received cards of care, compassion, and shared heartbreak in the loss of Josiah’s life. We received notes even from people we knew, including the man Josh spent his morning with, and those we did not know who knew the pain of the death of a baby and we didn’t feel so alone as we joined the worst club ever. On August 31, we had a funeral for Josiah. I looked forward to this as a symbolized end of this stage of grief and at the same time deeply grieved the movement of time, putting more hours and days between the time that I had held Josiah. I could barely handle walking down the aisle and I remembered the pastor saying something to us about the times in the service where we say “stand as you are able” and that it is okay if we are not emotionally able to stand, and the rest of the people gathered will stand for us. And it came to the time when the Gospel was read before the sermon began. The story was from Mark 10, and the disciples tried to keep some children away from Jesus. Jesus is pissed (or indignant, as Mark more eloquently puts it) and tells the disciples and the crowd “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” As I heard these words, I felt an overwhelming presence of God. I cannot explain it other than knowing we would be okay and having a sense of peace like never before.
The days, weeks, months, and years that we have lived after Josiah have been hard. There is always a sense of someone missing and that our family is just not complete. I dread when people ask me how many children I have because I honestly want to answer 2 out of 3. I hate denying Josiah’s life and death.
As I look at the picture, I see a girl who had hope, excitement, and anticipation of the joy we were to meet.
I still am part of that person. But I know things that I didn’t then. I had experienced death, grief, and the pain of missed loved ones. But nothing like this. There was no way to make it feel better with the clichés I had used before. I don’t believe that Josiah’s death was God’s plan. God’s plan is that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). I don’t believe that God needed another angel because frankly that makes little sense to me and is not in the character of who I know God to be. I don’t believe ‘everything happens for a reason’ similarly to why I don’t believe this was God’s plan or that Josiah had to die for some unknown reason. The reason he died because something physically happened to cause him to stop living.
But somehow amongst all of the things I don’t know or don’t believe, I still know we are going to be okay.
This okay I’m talking about is different than I think most people tend to understand. Obviously, Josiah is still dead and that will never feel “okay.” And I know someday we will all die, I know I will have to grieve the deaths of many more loved ones. And I lay awake at night most nights worrying about the things that could happen to the 2 of my 3 that are here, anything from something life threatening to someone being unkind to them. None of that is “okay.” But yet we go on.
The okay I feel is eternal. The okay I feel is the comfort, peace, and hope that God is with us in our grief. The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept” and I think it says it all. I take comfort knowing that Jesus knows this pain and weeps with us. I also am reassured of God’s love as I dwell in the truth of the words from Josiah’s funeral “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” This kingdom of God holds God’s children, welcomes them, and loves them all.
And that is more than okay.
