Remembering

Losing Abigail has been such a hard pain to deal with. I go throughout my day unsure if the person I’m interacting with knows of our story, of our baby who is in the arms of Christ. Part of me wants to shout it out for everyone to hear just so they know and so there is no more wondering. Part of me wants to speak of it only with those who I know understand and realize the deep loss. I go through my day finding it hard to be around other women who have newborns or are pregnant. I hate feeling that way. I hate having to distance myself from close friends during such a joyous occasion in their lives, but it is just too hard. It is too hard to watch my friends beam with excitement as they tell me about their pregnancies or their babies. I want so badly to be join in their joy, and while I am happy for them and so thankful for the health of their babies, I just can't put myself through that pain.

We have prayed for wisdom on how to deal with the void that Abigail left and God has given us several answers. I have a great friend that has suffered the loss of two children much farther along in pregnancy. In fact, she delivered both babies who were born to Heaven. I admired her strength then but now it seems more like a miracle than any doing of her own. Through her immense pain she has chosen to bring hope to others who have experienced similar losses. As soon as she heard of our miscarriage she e-mailed and told me she was going to attend a special event in my life that was set to take place 3 days after we found out about our loss. I was to be ordained to the ministry of the Gospel at our home church the Sunday after the miscarriage. My dear friend made the trip to our town and was there to support me, us, on that momentous day. She also brought with her a bag full of helpful and comforting resources on dealing with miscarriage and infant loss.

In this bag was a snowflake ornament that we put on our Christmas tree right at the top. It didn’t match the burgundy and gold color scheme as it was glittery white but I didn’t mind. It stuck out but I loved it. Every time I looked at the tree I thought of Abigail. Some days that brought joy and other days it brought deep sorrow.

Also in this bag was a glittery white butterfly ornament. I had already thought that the butterfly would be a great symbol to commemorate her life. I love 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” I have always thought butterflies depicted this transformation well. So we have a flower arrangement that sits in our office that we change seasonally but the piece that never changes is Abigail’s butterfly.

We also bought a wind chime with a beautiful butterfly on it and we hung it outside our bedroom window on our balcony. Every time the music plays I think of her. I think of her in the arms of Christ resting, praising Him, and enjoying His presence as He rejoices over her. I also think of what it would have been like to have continued to carry her, to see her on the ultra sound machine, to prepare for her, to buy her things, to hold her, to see her face, to rock her, to sing to her, to teach her about Jesus, to watch her daddy get wrapped around her finger, to hear her voice, and so many other things. I wonder if I will ever stop wondering what it would have been like to keep her. The same dear friend who brought us all of those comforting once said in her own blog that some days she feels like she has one foot here on Earth and one foot in Heaven. I definitely identify with that. There is a feeling that no matter what we do or even what comes next our family won’t really be complete until we are in Heaven.

On days that I feel like my arms are physically aching to hold her and it’s hard to make it through the day I start to think, “maybe it’s silly that I am hurting this much. I only had her for a few short weeks. There are so many others who have lost children much later in pregnancies or through their lives. Maybe I should be able to trust God more. Maybe I didn’t pray specifically or earnestly enough as we were trying or as soon as we found out.” My mind can spiral from all of those doubts and wonderings to all of my fears of the future.

In those desperate moments I have to remember the truth. I am hurting deeply because I love deeply. God created a life inside of me. She may have been very small and very young but she was still alive and she was still my baby. I have to fight the lies of the enemy that tell me that I should just get over it or blame myself or God for that matter. I have to fight his lies with the truth of Christ and His word which tells me that God is in control that He is working all things together for my good that He has good plans for me, that the desire for children is a holy one, and that He has never and will never let go.

God has used the short life of our baby girl to teach us so many things. I am sure I will go into more details on particular lessons in the future but one thing I want to share are the lessons He has taught us about grief. I’ve grieved before. I have gone through the steps. I have been in shock, denied, bargained, been angry, sad, and eventually accepted the loss. In fact I have been through that grief over losing my father when I was 18. I’m no stranger to grief, but God showed me something beautiful this time that I didn’t see in the past several losses I’ve endured. He showed me that He makes beauty of out ashes and that He wants us to face our pain and create something beautiful out of it.

I learned that I had to face the pain long enough to let it hurt; to let it sting so that I could see what God intended to teach me. I had to let beauty come from those ashes. I had to create something out of the pain. For me that took the form of writing, a lot of which you are reading right now and a lot of which are so tear stained that I’m not even sure what they say anymore. It took the form of music, dance, and nature for me. I sang a lot. I danced a lot. I enjoyed God through His creation.

For Dave it took different forms. Dave is very artistic and very good in my opinion. He has painted some beautiful things over the past few months as a release of his pain. He also wrote an incredibly sweet story titled Abigail’s Stocking. It is a children’s book that follows a family as they explain to their two children about the loss of their oldest sister who went to be with Jesus. It’s absolutely precious. He wrote it and illustrated it. I hope he will publish it one day. I think it would be helpful for families who have experienced a similar loss especially if they intend to explain it to their other children.

Our hope and our prayer is that through this pain and heart ache that God will be glorified. We pray that we will face the pain long enough to learn, to grow closer to Him and to each other. We pray that others will be pointed to Christ through our pain. We pray that beauty will come from these ashes.