Morning Will Come

This second time around
brings sleepless nights. I wake a dozen times a night to push and prod my belly, urging him to move.  I rise red eyed for good before the sun because it's easier than drifting off and forgetting, waking with panic.

When I dream, I lose him. Everytime. Sometimes I hold him for minutes and then he goes. In others he grows still  inside of me and I feel him leave. The depth of how damaged I have become unnerves me. It shows its face when I snap at his brothers; when the winter's sun dips below the horizon too early; when tears fall while peeling carrots at the sink.  Its resonates in the dullness of my voice when I comfort my son as he tells me his worries.

Eli says that his fears are too big for God to calm. I rationally explain that God is plenty big enough, that perfect Love casts out all fear, that when we seek Him we find peace, that when we hide His words in our hearts we know His peace. Yet I tremble throughout the night. I lie to myself and my son by telling him that God is bigger than his fears, but not believing that He is bigger than mine.

I know that He is. I've known Him since I was a little girl, spoken intimately with him since I was Eli's age. He was as tangible to me in my youth as a being with skin. So there is no unbelief. Just fear; so much fear. I hold so many things  more tightly than I hold Him.
Knowing His glory supercedes my wants, no matter how pure they may be, is crushing. It makes everything else futile.  I know in my bones that His Grace on the cross drawing us near is the story that matters. That Truth is the one my eyes need to seek when the sun dips low and I pine for things lost already, and fear the things that could be lost in times to come.

So today we will guard our hearts. Take every thought captive. Meditate on Truth.  Wait for the darkness to pass. "At dawn, look to the east." Morning will come. It has too.

36 weeks

36 weeks pregnant.

36 weeks of growing you. I admit, I didn't expect you to stay. I am in a panic to wash your things, buy diapers and bottles and nuks. Things I did for your brothers ages before their due dates. But I really had no confidence that you would live. Im 36 weeks and just beginning to think that you will bere. And soon. And I'm so happy that i hide my smiles. Just in case.

35 weeks

35 weeks pregnant.

35 weeks of fearing and loving and hoping.

Today I'll shop for tiny sleepers and socks. I think you may live and fill my arms soon. You already fill my heart and I'm desperate to see your face: your eyes and mouth, to sit and watch the rise and fall of your chest.

Close to seven months into this journey and I am only just beginning to think that you may live. You move so much now. I never mind. You rock back in forth while I sleep, waking me at dawn with kicks that come just in time to ease the panic that you are still. You're alive.

Close to seven months into this journey and I am only just beginning to think that you may live. I may actually walk out of a hospital with more than just a card with faint footprints. I may actually have a lifetime to spend with you. The idea pushes me under, like when I guide your brother's heads back in the tub to wash their hair and they panic at the water rising above their ears. Your sister left this hole, this emptiness so vast and cold that the thought of you warm against me makes the cold feel even colder.  It pushes me under and the water rushes to cover me.

Seven months in and I'm just beginning to think I may need to wipe down the crib and car seat, and pull out the sleepers your three brothers have already broken in. Seven months in and I'm growing so hopeful, so attached, so in love with this fourth son. Please live Ben. Please be perfect. Your brothers are the most delightful cacophony of noise and dirt and kisses. They smell like wind and they run and wrestle and scream like banshees and they need you to join their ranks. So don't leave littlest boy. Please stay with us. Please be my bookend and finish our family.

4-

I hate it when people ask if ill try for a girl. I have a girl. I had one. And i want to say your name, Grace Elizabeth, to put life into you, but they cant handle hearing about you. They dont want to listen to how I grew you for five short months and then you were gone. They cant understand how I never saw your face, but still I look for you in the eyes of every dark hair, brown eyed girl I see. How when I'm counting the boys, 1- Solo, 2- Eli, 3- Jonas, 4-             , I always balk at 4 and that split second of panic catches in my throat because I don't see you and just where did you get too? And then I remember- Don't count to four when counting heads on the shore. Don't count to four when calling the kids for dinner. Don't look for a fourth hand to hold when walking through a parking lot. Don't think about buying a fourth winter coat or budgeting for four kids at Christmas. Don't think about leggings and boots and cute shirts with glitter or anything pink because you aren't here, and I know you can't be here, but the spot you should be in is visibly vacant. I see your absence in their photographs where you should be nestled between three big brothers and where your seat should sit between them at table, between their spilled milk and boisterous banter. I can feel the warmth and weight of where your arms should cross behind my neck with every hug and it's warm like my face when I sit near the fire even though my back is always cold.

 That's what I want to say when people ask me if I'll try for a girl. I had a girl. I have a daughter. And like her Daddy says, we will have her for all of eternity. Just not today.

Women always say that after childbirth you forget the outragous horror of delivery. I haven't labored and delivered to know. After one labor over 19 hours long I ended up with my first c-section to retrieve my fat, wide shouldered first born who never fit in new born clothes and had feet so big that all footied jammies had to be cut to accommodate them.

However, I suppose it's similar to forgetting the nervous energy that walks me to the O.R. for the other deliveries; the fear of being cut open, seeing nothing, hearing only nurses and doctors chatting about their weekend plans.  Of course all that fear is totally worth it when they lift that sweet new face above the sheet.

Similarily forgotten, is the horror of morning sickness. It's always bad. Puking all day, all night, and growing worse each pregnancy. Although it may just be the three boys already here that make it seem so much worse.

This time though, I'm a tangled mess with headaches and nausea and for the first time, fear. So much terror. It's  like nothing else to stand in the shadow of the Strongtower and still be afraid.

I can't figure out how to grapple with losing Grace and doing this again. Morning sickness has always abated about the time we learn the gender. And there's this amazing shift physically and emotionally when you see him or her on a sonogram and can name them,and prepare for them, and all the energy that has been drained by morning sickness is replaced with a joyful drive.

But we didnt have that last time. Five months of puking and exhaustion and then her heart just stopped.  I never got to deliver her, or see her, or hold her. It just ended. It was 20 weeks of all the hard parts and it didn't end with a new face above the curtain. It ended with a burial in a field and a stone angel marker that I can't avoid finding when I look out the window. 

So weeks into this morning sickness I am terrified. I force myself to remember, I am not growing Gracie. But i wish that I was. And in the same breath I'm so thankful for a new son or daughter. And I am so hopeful, so desperately hopeful that this baby will not die. And one day this morning sickness will pass and we will know the gender, and the name and we will move forward in preparation, believing that I will have the privilege once more of feeling the nervous energy as I walk to the O.R.

Faith Proved

The test came back positive; two pink lines confirming that we are indeed running this course again. Im relieved. And terrified. I look out the window and follow the curved tree line hedging the field until I find the crepe, the bench and the stone angel. 

Chanting scripture like a mantra to still my racing heart; casting cares, running for a Strong Tower, and begging for this baby to live.

Even still, I have little expectation that in less than 8 months time I will have another son or daughter. 

We told them about you today. We debated on when to tell them, but you're here right now and growing, and if we have you for 20 weeks and then you're gone, then we will have one more chance to point our sons to Jesus, to Hope. My boys have hope. It resonated in their eyes in the seconds they first knew. They've prayed a million prayers for you to come and they have hope because He answered. They're dreaming a million dreams of you and praying for you to live.

Little one, I'm desperate for your heart to beat. I am desperate for you to hear your brother's rowdy yells and hear them singing and laughing and playing. I am desperate to carry you to term and fufill the vision of delivering you into the hearts of family and friends that have walked this road with us. I am desperate for your biggest brother to hold you in his arms and smile at me with that know-it-all look in his eye, because he was confident this momemt would come.

So tonight I'll choose hope, and faith, and peace. I'll choose to rest and trust that a year from now my fear will be faith proved.