A Tragedy and a Miracle

photo from Tesha's blog

Over five years ago I penned a story about God's faithfulness, even in tragedy. It's about pregnancy loss and pregnancy miracles. I wish I had time to take out the passive verbs--turns out I've learned something about writing in the last five years--but company's coming and this version has to suffice. 


Despite the rougher writing, I hope it blesses you, dear reader. 


I'm linking it to Tesha's blog, in honor of her angel baby, Jonathan. Please pray for Tesha and her family? She suffered a similar loss last January. Her grief is deep, fresh. 


December, 2007


A miracle occurred in our little world last Christmas season. As this Christmas season draws to a close, I can't help but retell the story. God weaves tales into our lives for a reason. Stories are meant to be shared. God, no longer here in the flesh, uses us to reach others. We are his hands, feet, and hopefully, his heart. May you experience Him through this story, dear reader. 

Tick, Tick, Tick
To celebrate our first anniversary, July 3rd, 2000, we drove from our home in southern California to a beautiful northern-California volcano mountain, called Mt. Lassen, located near Redding, Ca.  We tent camped, hiked, and had an amazing anniversary week enjoying the beauty of God's splendor. 


Oh, yeah. And in that tent--which we should have kept for posterity sake--we also conceived a child. Conceiving as newlyweds wasn't our first choice. We knew more time alone as a couple was probably best, but I was 34 and my husband 41. 


While we spent the first year of our marriage enjoying long hikes, leisurely dinners, and lazy Saturday mornings, our biological clocks were doing a steady tick, tick, tick.

Our baby was eagerly anticipated. We spent hours talking about names, looking at baby furniture, and counting ourselves blessed that we were able to conceive. I knew that at our ages, fertility was supposed to diminish; I was pleasantly surprised to fall pregnant at all, given the bleak picture often painted for "older" women.

There was no morning sickness or spotting. It was an uneventful pregnancy, with an ultrasound at seventeen weeks showing a happy-go-lucky baby boy, doing flips and sucking his thumb. I was already in love with the little guy, but actually seeing him flip around threw my heart into flips of its own.

A routine blood test was offered to screen for abnormalities. We agreed to the test; it wasn't invasive or risky. Results showed a 1-in-87 chance of Down Syndrome, which was upsetting and scary, but we declined the amnio, which would have confirmed or ruled out the disorder.

Meanwhile, I had not begun to show, and at 20 weeks, hadn't felt any movement. We were mildly alarmed at this, but it isn't that unusual in first pregnancies, so we didn't suspect anything was amiss.



Devastation

A level-two ultrasound was offered, in lieu of the amnio, to check for signs of Down Syndrome. We agreed to this and went to the appointment just shy of my twenty-first week, more to have another glimpse at our bundle of joy, than anything else. The test began as usual, with the doctor commencing his fetal measuring.

I didn't see the heart beating, as I had in the seventeen-week ultrasound. I asked about this, and the doctor said he would check conditions after he finished his measurements. 

Finished with his measurements, he proceeded to check the baby's condition. After a minute or so, he pushed hard on my stomach, and then said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news. The baby's heart is not beating and he's not responsive."

Stunned. Devastated. Horrified. These words can't begin to describe our demeanor or our hearts. 


We broke down. I asked why I hadn't had a miscarriage or any bleeding, and why I still had signs of pregnancy. I had never heard of a baby dying in the womb without miscarriage. Turns out this is not uncommon. The placenta keeps producing hormone, so the mother continues to experience signs of pregnancy.

The baby only measured sixteen weeks and, judging from the last known heartbeat, died sometime between the nineteenth and twenty-first weeks.

Next, I wanted to know if I had worked too hard or done something to cause this. He apparently hears that a lot; he immediately ruled it out and indicated I should stop that line of thinking entirely. He said it just wasn't a healthy pregnancy, and there was nothing I did or didn't do to cause this tragedy.

We were comforted by the doctor and nurse, then sent to another room to have more questions answered by a genetics counselor. She indicated that perhaps the baby was Down Syndrome; many Down Syndrome babies don't make it to their birthday. That was all she could offer, except that our next pregnancy was likely to be normal.

There is only a 4% chance of losing a baby after twenty weeks. Why, I asked myself, am I always caught in these tiny percentage categories? Only a small percentage of women get married after thirty, only a small percentage of people are saved after age 18, only a small percentage conceive this late in life (though that is changing), and only a small percentage lose babies in the twentieth week. 


At the rate I was going, I would never have a child. 


Or so I thought.

It was evening, five days before Thanksgiving. There wasn't anything else I had the strength to ask, so the doctor, a neonatal specialist, escorted us out the back door, presumably so that our tears didn't upset those still in the waiting room.

We drove home in silence.

Advised to see our regular OB doctor the next morning, we had to somehow get through the night, knowing I carried a dead baby. 


Sleep never came. Darkness enveloped me. I'd lived long enough to know that life ebbs and flows. There is joy. Then sadness. 


I shudder to think this, but I know I may have a darker night in the years ahead. We have to count our blessings and keep our grip light on the things of this world...for we are not in control. The Lord's vision and purpose? It's perfect. That's all we need to know. 


When my husband was sixteen, he lost his in mother in an auto accident, also in the evening. This was his second darkest night.

Labor was induced the next morning, at 11 am, and our baby boy was born at 5:30 AM the following day. The epidural, given too late, didn't take. It was painful, but shorter than a regular full-term first labor. I only had to dilate seven inches, rather than ten, and there was no pushing.

The nurse, who had been through this many times before, knew to wrap up our baby and have each of us hold him. I would find out later that doing this was an important part of the grieving process. I never looked at the baby, but my husband did. He is still haunted by the image, and to this day, I wish the nurse had not suggested it.


Addition:  This story was penned five years ago, and since then I've read accounts of similar experiences. In each case, couples looked at and took pictures of the baby. Death changes the baby in sorrowful ways; looking is a risk my heart couldn't take all those years ago. My faith wasn't strong enough. I didn't want a vision of death to carry with me for decades. I wanted to remember him as I saw him on ultrasound at seventeen weeks. Full of life and joy.

They discharged me, after I spent the equivalent of a day listening to loud, healthy fetal heartbeats and heard two babies make their first cries. They told me to avoid letting warm shower water run on my breasts, so as not to stimulate milk production.

As always in the aftermath of a death, we were in shock as we went about the business of going to a funeral parlor, considering our burial options. The owner of the funeral parlor waited on us. Thirty years previously, this same tragedy had occurred in his wife's youth. This funeral owner? He was a gift from God. It was a difficult thing to attend to, and he was wonderfully understanding and supportive.

We had the baby cremated and went up to a very high California mountain, not far from where we lived, to release his ashes into the wind. I had painstakingly prepared a funeral handout, complete with verses and an order of service. Just my husband and myself were present. 

Our little boy's name, Isaac Abraham, is from the Old Testament story about Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the altar. In my mind, that was what God was asking me to do. He wanted this baby, for whatever reason, and my job was to let my baby go, while still being able to say each day, "I love you, Lord" and mean it.

The Beginnings of a Miracle

A few weeks following the funeral, a work acquaintance of my husband's, after offering his condolences, added that he dreamt we would eventually have a baby on Christmas. I barely looked up when my husband repeated this that night, but I filed it away somewhere in my head, nevertheless. I was busy teaching first grade and trying to be a professional in the midst of my grief, which got much deeper after the funeral. Horror replaced the initial shock.

The doctor said to wait two complete cycles before trying to conceive again. I wanted so badly to be pregnant again, that I didn't wait the two cycles. We waited one. Still, it took five long and painful months to conceive. I'm aware that five months isn't terribly long, but my heart needed to feel hope again.

Many women go through childbearing heartbreak, some much worse than mine. I found out shortly after our tragedy that a woman from our church lost two full-term babies, back to back, for unknown reasons, and still didn't have a baby to cuddle.

You hear stories like this, and know to count yourself blessed, but when you're going through your own pain, you just feel so alone and like such a failure. I still wonder if there is any longing stronger than a woman's yearn for a child?

My first son died in November, 2000, and my second son, Peter, was born on January 11, 2002, healthy and strong. I didn't relax through the pregnancy until I felt Peter kick, at seventeen weeks. What an awesome feeling! And what a relief!

My third son, Paul, was born twenty-one months later, healthy and strong. I was blessed and busy. As each of their birthdays came and went, I still wondered about the December 25 dream, but there wasn't time to dwell on it very often. I was a happy mom.

I miscarried another baby in 2005, at ten weeks gestation. While much less horrid an affair in comparison, it hurt just the same. I was thirty-nine; it seemed my last chance to have another child.

Meanwhile, we moved to Ohio and busied ourselves getting established in a new community and in a new home. A stay-at-home-mom, I was very busy every day, and had to put my childbearing grief behind me.

Try as I might, I found it hard to say goodbye to pregnancy and childbirth. I loved nursing and all the quiet, peaceful, sleepless nights spent looking down at a beautiful newborn. I nursed my second son a long time, two-and-a-half years, partly because he loved it, and partly to hang on to the childbearing chapter of my life.

The Miracle

In late February 2006, I went shopping for a daycare crib and highchair. We needed extra income, and I was taking in a 13-month-old baby in a week's time. As I shopped, I couldn't help but notice all the beautiful furniture and other baby items. I floated along down the aisles, not ready for the tears that welled up.

The painful realization that I would never have a daughter suddenly overwhelmed me. Retreating to a corner of the store, I regained composure, then quickly went about my purchases. Back in the car, I cried all the way home. 

Pulling into the driveway, I dried my tears. As I opened our front door to greet my family, I told myself that the childbearing chapter of my life? Closed.

God wanted it this way. I was forty, my husband forty-eight. We were old. I knew it was best to count myself blessed and move on. My boys? They were such a blessing!

I made a mental note to see a doctor about birth control soon.

I unexpectedly conceived a month later. It was both pleasant news and a worrisome shock. You see, it's one thing to desire a child, and quite another to be told you're having one, at the age of 40!

Delight and amazement consumed us at the 21-week ultrasound. We would have a daughter! 

And her due date? December 25th!

Mary wasn't actually born on Christmas Day. We had an early induced labor, due to blood pressure complications. I suffered post-partum preeclampsia with my first child, pregnancy induced-hypertension with my second, and was in the third week of hypertension with Mary's pregnancy. 

I wish now we'd stayed the course and let God work his complete miracle. Mary might have been born on Christmas, making this an even bigger miracle. 

Regardless, her due date and her presence with us are miracles enough. Having a daughter is every bit as wonderful as I imagined! Every time she smiles up at me, I'm amazed anew.

Friend, he is faithful. As your own stories unfold, cling to his perfection, his love, his faithfulness.

Addition:  Friend, I went on to have another beautiful baby girl, Beth, in December, 2008. Our cups overflow!


I wish the noise in this house were magnified...by two more joyous voices. I will always wonder about my baby's personalities. About their gifts. My life is not better off without them. 


But my heart? It might be. In place of more noise in this house, I have more compassion. We are a broken people; descendants of Adam and Eve. I cannot will myself to be compassionate. My flawed heart just can't do it. Left to its own devices, my heart judges, rather than spills compassion. 


I believe God bestows compassion; it's a gift of grace. He puts it in our hearts. 


And his method? Our brokenness. Don't be afraid, dear reader, of a broken heart. For our Heavenly Father? He's a Redeemer!

Sharing Burdens With Church Family, and Other Stuff

What's the longest you've ever prayed for someone's salvation?

My highest number? Fifteen years. Not just for one person, but for an entire clan.

One of the fifteen-year people will be visiting soon, for two weeks. She isn't staying with us, but with her sister, who resides in a neighboring township twenty minutes away.

These visits emotionally tax me. On the one hand, it is good to be around family.  But on the other hand, lots of preparation needs to be done, including changing the prayers in our prayer jars to reflect not salvation prayers, but prayers that everyone we know will experience God's peace. Mealtime is shared with visitors whenever possible, and mealtime is prayer-jar time. The clan of people I pray for? They range in their hostility to the gospel, and our visitor ranks pretty high on the hostility chart. Hearing a five-year-old pray for our visitor's salvation, in the visitor's presence? That wouldn't go over well at all.

With Christian family, you can share your burdens easily. But with non-Christian family, you have to be more careful of what you say. The amount of stress we've endured the last three years has been unusually high. Mostly I take it in stride, but sometimes it feels like a dam of tears could explode any minute--and that shouldn't happen in front of someone who believes that God either never existed, or, that he created the world and promptly stepped away, never to return.

If I let my burdens lose during one of these visits, would it look like I'm experiencing God's peace? Not to someone with an observation window of two weeks, every two years. She could never gather an accurate picture of our lives in these short Ohio visits, which don't even include daily visiting time. There are complicated reasons she stays with her sister instead of with us--reasons that have little to do with us, for the most part. I can't go into the reasons here.

Peter is a small part of it. I can say that much. He's a charmer one-on-one, but when people visit us the irritation he inflicts becomes evident after an hour or so. It pains me to see, though as his mother I know how difficult ADHD frenzy is to endure. He talks incessantly, he monopolizes attention, he fixates on one subject (usually nature). When people are here more than two hours, they find him exhausting. Unfortunately, he's missing the impulse control to stop his social onslaught. His medicine only subdues some of the hyperactivity; it does little for the impulse control. Church staff love him at the AWANA church, and at our church. They see him as highly engaging and smart. He is both those things, when you encounter him in short doses.

I'm used to loving difficult people, and even for me, it never gets easier. So I do understand.

But does that keep the heartache away? Surely not. It hurts to know people need to get away from my son. And there's nothing I can do about it. He's developed the social sense to know when people feel overwhelmed, but the control isn't there to back away.

I heard my dad remark once, about his nephew: "That boy is one of the most irritating people I know. I can't stand to be around him."  I asked him if he'd heard that Charlie--age 19 at the time--had ADHD. No, he'd never heard, and the revelation didn't fill him with grace either. He still felt nothing but disdain.

I'm all about people being held accountable for their actions, no matter what caused them. But a frenzied personality is not misbehavior. Whatever happened to, "There, but for the grace of God, go I?" 

I wish extended-family grace for my son, who didn't choose to live a hellish existence. The impulse control everyone else finds effortless, constantly eludes him.

Changing gears a little...

...Our church body broke up into small groups for prayer yesterday, instead of having a regular service. A church member lost her mother from a tragic motorcycle accident two days before, and her father was not expected to make it through the day. Other heavy things had happened to the body that week as well, so the pastor brought us together to share our burdens. Church is family, he told us. Yes, it's hard to share. But we cannot continue to enter church every week, pretending that everything is okay. No more phony.

He wants us to share the heavy of this life and be real.

The miracle is that my husband and I? Just the week before we remarked that not a soul knows our burdens in that church, and neither do we know much about our church body. Everyone smiles and shakes hands, but nothing real ever happens. It's not a potluck church in which everyone visits often, knows who needs prayer, and who bakes the best pies. The church does, however, do a wonderful job of reaching the community for Christ. But reaching each other? That needs work.

So, the congregation dutifully, but nervously, broke into small circles with the school cafeteria chairs. We are a 2.5-year-old, 170-member church plant that meets in the local elementary school.

When it was my turn to share a burden for prayer, I asked that a single-mother acquaintance of mine, who just earned a high-school teaching credential and amassed $72,000 in student loans, could find a job, even though there were no prospects and no sub jobs happening.

When it was my husband's turn, his voice wavered and though I couldn't see his face, I knew he was softly crying. You see, our Beth is in the worst arthritis flare we've seen. He's gone in the mornings by 7 AM, so he doesn't see how Beth struggles to walk, or how she starts the day crawling. It's not an easy sight.

By the time he walks through the door at 7 PM, she's feeling pretty lose most days. Thus, his tears on Sunday morning, when she walked like a stiff robot down the school hallway, oh so slowly.


His reaction broke me, and reminded me of how hard it will be for my relative during her visit, if Beth's flare doesn't subside. It's one thing to hear that a three-year-old you're related to has arthritis, but quite another to watch the reality.

How will she feel about God as she watches Beth in pain? Will the reality embitter her even more toward the Almighty?

Will Beth break out in her current favorite song, sung in her sweet, articulation-challenged voice, with her body-swaying, big-smiling enthusiasm lighting up hearts?

Stop and Let Me Tell You


Stop, and let me tell you
What the Lord has done for me.


Stop, and let me tell you
What the Lord has done for me.


He forgave my sins and he saved my soul.
He cleansed my heart and he made me whole.


Stop, and let me tell you
What the Lord has done for me.



Yes, Lord. May it be so. May she sing it out for your glory, and may it transform our visitor's heart. May the singing and the singer, reveal the truth of the gospel life:

That things aren't necessarily sweet when you're a Christian.
They're just grace-filled and achingly beautiful. 


Please pray? And friend, how can I pray for you? You can be real with me in this space. Comments are on delay.
 
photo credit

When Learning Is Hard For Your Child

 

As Peter encountered various stumbling blocks in his learning, it became clearer to me how the difficulties were related. His problematic areas over the years--recognizing numbers, reading sight words, cursive, spelling patterns, math facts, telling time--have all been tied to visual processing.

With passing time, and/or with the right materials, he's experienced success. One of the remaining stumbling blocks--spelling patterns--he's now progressing nicely in, thanks to Avko Sequential Spelling.

If he truly has visual problems, he may benefit from vision therapy, which is something I intend to look into in terms of insurance coverage.

I need to be prepared for possible further difficulties as he encounters new visual information, such as chemistry symbols, higher-math symbols, and the like.

You may not have a learning-disabled student, but knowing something about learning disabilities helps you pinpoint weaknesses, and then motivates you to find materials that work for your child. School teachers often teach a curriculum, instead of a child. That is to say, they try to fit the child to the learning material, rather than the learning material to the child. 


No one has more motivation than you do to help your child succeed. Your child's teacher may certainly care, but he or she doesn't possess the same time or sacrificial love that you do. Classroom teachers have many students and they can't go the extra mile for all of them.

A teacher may be using a learning style or technique, or curriculum, that is all wrong for your child. And for this reason, I invite you to read an article on learning difficulties. Many articles on this topic aren't easy to comprehend, but I found a jewel of an article that is parent friendly.

Very comprehensive, it details all types of learning disabilities. The truth is, we all have learning strengths and weaknesses. Learning something about how our brains acquire and process information can help your child even if no disability is present. If a weakness isn't addressed or identified, it can lead to problems later, when school work becomes more difficult and the pace more rapid.

It's important to note that children with learning disabilities do not have low IQ's. Their IQ's can be average or even high. Unlike "shady eighty" children, who possess lower-than-average IQ's, a child with a learning disability has the same potential as a person without a learning disability. Learning disabilities don't affect potential...but they can affect performance, if not addressed.

Once the disability is compensated for, either through interventions at home, at school, or in the workplace, learning and performance rates jump. These children can make it to college and excel in the workplace! Once they understand how they are different, they learn to make adjustments, such as sitting at the front, bringing a tape recorder, framing text to block out distracting images, etc.

The article in it's entirely isn't very long and I found it amazingly helpful.
You'll find it here:  http://www.helpguide.org/mental/learning_disabilities.htm

For in-depth information on auditory and visual processing disorders--the most common difficulties--this article is the best I've found:
http://www.ldonline.org/article/6390/



photo source

Saturday Devotions 4/14

Sunday in the Backwoods
Thomas Faed

My Saturday Devotions:  James 1:1-12

Scripture in black, my words in blue and red

 ¹ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

   To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

   Greetings.

Trials and Temptations

 ² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

We know we will face trials. The question is not if, but when. Suffering can come in the form of a difficult-to-control child, a handicapped child, a job loss, the loss of a loved one, persecution, chronic pain, infertility, a broken relationship, a difficult husband or a difficult extended family, or loneliness and isolation. Suffering takes on so many different forms, I couldn't possibly name them all. Some people experience many at once.

The most difficult lesson suffering brings is this:  "Yes, this terrible thing is happening to me or around me, but God is still good. He is always good."  And just as important, he is always present.

God doesn't promise health, wealth, or happiness. He promises his presence. 

Every person you know can have better physical and mental health, more wealth, a nicer family, a more mature and devoted husband, blessed kids, and a greater support system, and it doesn't mean God loves you less. This is a huge concept to understand and internalize. 

I know this truth because the Bible tells me so:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:3

Poverty of spirit refers to a deeply known and felt need for God. A person with poverty of spirit understands that they are nothing without God. They can't live in and get lost so easily in this world, because so many of the perks of this world aren't available to them...either they were never available, or they were rejected when they were found worthless compared to the richness of communion with God. Usually, those with poverty of spirit must live a heavenly existence, a kingdom existence, to survive. They focus on the eternal over the temporal.

We are told in this passage to ask for wisdom. This is also a huge concept, because we tend to believe we can get it figured out ourselves, if we just try hard enough. When we humble ourselves and ask for this wisdom, it will be given to us. And then, we must not doubt it. We mustn't go back to our own intellect or heart to find answers. Our task is to give up worrying and obsessing. We must cling to the wisdom given us by the Holy Spirit. Cling and trust.

 ⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

Never should we look at what others have materially, and wonder why we aren't similarly blessed. Wealth is not a blessing unless the one possessing it is willing to give it away. Let that concept sink in. Wealth is a blessing when used to bless others...bless others spiritually...such as relieving the suffering of the poor in Jesus' name. 

Giving our families the best of everything, or giving them abundance, does not bless them spiritually; it distracts them from their need for God. We have to resist the temptation to keep our abundance in our own family. We weren't saved to revel in wealth on earth. We were saved to bring glory to God, and our wealth must be part of that. What we receive vertically (from God), we distribute horizontally (loving others as ourselves).

 ¹² Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Persevering under trial requires God working through us. It requires dying to ourselves. No one perseveres because of a strong will (how many times have I convinced myself otherwise?). We persevere when we humble ourselves, when we ask for the wisdom promised us, and when we cling to it.

Scripture source

A word of wisdom? How have your devotions been this week, friend? You won't go to church tomorrow and open your Bible for the first time since last Sunday, will you? 

As mothers we are so busy; we give so much. But regardless of our work load, we cannot forsake devotions. We can't stay on a right path outside of fellowship with God. Bible reading and prayer are central parts of fellowship with Him. 

~ We can't experience God without them.

~ We can't please God without them. 

~ We can't bless our families without them. 

~ We can't bless the Church without them.

In Which I Owe the AWANA Teacher Some Chocolate

Interior at 'The Chestnuts' Wimbledon, Grandmother's birthday
J.L Dyckmans

The kids missed AWANA last week because Mommy was too nauseous to drive them. Mary had cried because she really wanted to see her teachers.


Tucking Mary in after AWANA night this week, I asked: "Was it so good to see Miss Helen and Miss Erica again?"


Mary:  "Yes, but something happened to Miss Helen's hair. It's dried out. Why is Miss Erica's hair still black, but Miss Helen's is gray?"


My husband picks up the kids so I didn't see Miss Helen's hair, but based on Mary's description, I figured she must have frosted it. Both the teachers are pushing forty and maybe some gray was bothering Miss Helen?


Mommy:  "It sounds like Miss Helen may have dyed her hair, Mary. You didn't say anything about it, did you?"


Mary:  "Yes, I went up to Miss Helen and told her that her hair was dried out."


Mommy:  "Oh, boy. (Insert maternal shame and sorrow here.) That may have hurt her feelings, Mary. What did she say?"


Mary:  "Well, I didn't really understand this, but she just smiled and said thank you."


Yes, indeedy. I think I owe Miss Helen a sorry card and some chocolate. I'm sure they got a giggle out of Mary's comment....but still.


If I ever dye my hair, it will be a shade of brown as close to my natural shade as possible, until I'm over 65. 


photo source