I'm Going to Run with it

So I had an idea. I hope its a good one. I want it to be a way for us to remember our babies but also find a drink in this dry land of grief. Losing a baby has got to be one of the hardest things a person could ever be asked of God to do. While I read new stories every week of someone else who has endured this lonesome path, I get to wondering if there is any hope. The answer is YES. 

I am very touched how many people have supported my thinking "outloud" on this online journal at Handprints from Heaven. I have met so many of you through the most unfortunate circumstances. But I challenge each of us to look for hope. This new blog is dedicated to the mothers who have had their dreams dashed into a million pieces, and often times more than once. I pray that you find the hope that only Jesus Christ can give. I ask you to visit my new blog called Abiding Hope.

http://www.ourabidinghope.blogspot.com/

There, I can make a hope collage with your baby's name or just a phrase that you'd like done. It makes a lot more sense when you actually see what I am rambling on about. May the peace of God follow in the days ahead.

But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.

-Psalms 71:14

Pierced & Comforted

Well, at church Sunday night, I was caught off guard. Completely.

Right before our pastor dismissed the service, he announced that there would be a couple dedicating their newborn to the Lord. He reminded us that this would not save the baby's soul but was a demonstration rather of the parents' willingness to give this baby to the Lord. The pastor went on to say, as he usually does, that we appreciate a healthy baby. Healthy baby. He said we don't take that for granted around here.

Boy, was he right.

Healthy baby. Just the idea seemed like an impossibility since our first and only baby wasn't. Then I remembered Jenna. Well actually from the moment he mentioned the dedication I was thinking about her. But when he said healthy baby for some reason I just could not take it.

I really thought I had reached the farthest level of pain, but I hadn't.

There are days that I feel numb, and that bothers me. But then I realize this is a randomized pattern of emotions I just go through. Normal? Not sure yet.

But that is just the way it is. Something like this beautiful dedication was in the past just another routine ceremony I got to witness once in a while. It was especially precious when it was my niece and nephew. But Sunday it hit real close to my heart. I think it actually pierced me that night. I wanted to dedicate my baby in front of the whole church. I wanted God and the whole world to know that we would raise her right. In the Word of God. In a good home. In the house of God. Guilt and a bit of confusion lingered over my mind for a few days that the dedication made me cry in a hurtful way. I woke up three days later breaking through all the emptiness that usually reminds me of my loss each morning. I laid in bed for a while and I was thinking about the dedication. Out of nowhere, I vividly remember something coming to my mind that must have been heavensent. I realized I don't have to dedicate her to the Lord, she is already with Him! Boy that did it for me. It hardly mattered that we did not get to dedicate her anymore.

Surely that was the goodness of God.