Secret Garden Meeting - October

The Secret Garden is a place that is only open for bereaved parents. It is our garden, our secret place to come to. A place to remember our children with those who understand us. It is a place to just be, without worry or fear of not being accepted. May you feel safe to share your hearts here in the garden.

So this meeting we would like to talk about where you are. Where are you at in your grief. Has it been years or just weeks since you lost your baby. How are you feeling. How do you hope you will feel in the future. Have you found any peace at all?

This grief no doubt has many unexpected turns and twists. The longer I'm on this journey to hopefully healing, the more I realize the permanence of this loss. More than anger and frustration, I am being swallowed up in sadness. The guilt has been left behind for the most part, along with being angry at God or anybody else. It's just sadness right now. But I'm not even a crying mess, like I was a few weeks ago. The sadness creeps in while I'm teaching, driving, working, in conversation with someone, cleaning, sleeping, dreaming, anything really. It's always there in the back of my head, and it is the burden that weighs me down. I get to wondering if it will always be this way? 

I am in some twisted way learning to accept this fate. She's in Heaven, me still here, but even in acceptance the loss is wearisome. The sadness is derived mostly from how far time has taken me away from her life, and those moments I got to know her. Lately, it's not so much over the things I missed out on with her. Don't get me wrong, those things make me sad when I get reminded, but that's a bottomless pit of disaster every time I go there. Because there is no end to what I missed out on had I had the chance to raise her.



So this is me. Sad. Sad. Sad. Along with this sadness, there is a burning desire to cherish those moments I had with her. Even in the pregnancy, after hearing all the bad news, I still enjoyed her so much. I never let myself stay sad when I was carrying her, or watching her in the NICU. Maybe I am making up for it now? Who knows... I feel that there are never enough ways to honor her life. I strive to honor her life through mine, living in the moment, and loving life. 


I'm crazy excited about getting to start her memory garden in a few weeks. And by next summer I will be able to crack open my paints again! I want to be free again to remember my daughter and not be constrained by sadness. My loss was her gain, and I want to live like it.

So, have I found peace? Yes. I really have. The peace is ever present as I keep my eyes fixed on the One who can heal me completely one day.

Where Were You?

I woke up this morning with this weight on my brain, on my heart, on my soul.

Where were You, God? When we found out she hadn't been growing like the other babies?

Where were You? Were You helping someone else?

Crying with me?

Gone?

Where were You God? When each visit after five months offered no consolation? No hope?

Where were You? Holding my hand?

Knowing there'd be a brighter day?

Letting my world decay right before my eyes?

Where were You, God? When April came and they put me in the hospital? Bedrest, thinking at least we still have hope?

Where were You? Giving up on us?

Teaching us a lesson?

Crying too, because You knew my heart was about to be shattered?

Where were You, God? When two weeks in bedrest failed our attempt to help her grow?

Where were You? Singing sweet songs to my Jenna?

Sending angels to be by our side?

Holding the shaky ground we were on together?

Where were You, God? When the doctor told me that Jenna might die during delivery?

Where were You? That room was cold and lifeless...

Were you waiting for the inevitable?

I want to know You.

Where were You, God? When the doctors kept throwing hopelessness into our ears?

Where were You? I longed for the miracle that never came.

Were You looking at the big picture?

Whispering sweet comfort to my Jenna in her isolette?

Where were You, God? When they told us there was no more that could be done?

Where were You? The medications were maxed out and still life was escaping her body.

Were You telling her it wouldn't be long before she'd be whole?

Were Your angels singing to her as she entered Heaven?

Where were You, God? I had to hold my daughter's lifeless body.

Where were You? The reality of Heaven was suddenly so bleak.

Were You there and I just couldn't feel it?

Carrying my crushed spirit and holding my empty hands?

Where were You, God? When I left the place she was born?

Where were You? I had nothing to show for, all those months I'd worked so hard for her life.

Crying for the fallen world that we live in?

Were you broken-hearted, too?

Where were You, God? It's been a long road.

Have You kept Your promises and not left my side?

Have You cried with me each time that I do?

Have You seen all my tears?

Tomorrow she would have been six months, but I am filled with these rhetorical questions. Six months seems like a lifetime ago. Six months has never gone by faster in my life. Six months...

Unmasked

Before I write this post that weighs so heavily on my heart, I feel like a disclaimer or some type of warning is necessary. First and foremost, if you find yourself offended at its contents, you must know I started this blog for only a couple of reasons...

1. To be honest with myself and God about this grief as a means to find some kind of healing

2. To let other babylost mamas know they are not alone in this grief of losing a child by sharing my Jenna Belle

So now for my heart.

There were seven to eight of us expecting babies back-to-back in my world IRL. And God looked down as we were all planning or not planning these families and knew one would be required in Heaven far sooner than his/her time. That's how I look at it anyway.

He picked Jenna. My Jenna. I can't even imagine wishing this pain on anyone else. That's not what this is about. But I have asked God probably a thousand times, why me? That question is so childish and its significance is fleeting but the reality is that I feel like I have been picked on. Like I have been reprimanded for wanting a family which I thought would come so easily.

Out of the seven or eight of us, a couple of women were expecting rainbow babies. That was especially sweet. A few gracefully accepted the awkwardness after Jenna died and let me know that they still cared within weeks. A few others which had never buried a baby, kept their distance for safety I am sure, and meant no harm. But it complicated my world. Their sudden distance made me feel like I was a plague and I wanted to scream IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE...

But I didn't. So I scream it here. IT CAN.

This grief is exhausting to say the least and it hardly suits a Christian I think at most times. Of course, my idea of the ideal Christian hardly battles anger, frustration, envy and strife, right? Well right or wrong that is what I am feeling. I have battled feelings that I wish I never knew. As a result, I have minimized my concerns to my heart with God, my husband and close family and a handful of true friends. I don't want to destroy any of these relationships because of my grief.

A lot of times I feel like anger toward God is sinful and tell myself to stop being angry. That hardly works. So I just started telling Him how angry I was. How much I hate that He took my Jenna and how it has complicated my world. I feel like when I started to do this, it was as if He was really listening. I can't even describe it. I really believe He heard that prayer. He wanted honesty, not a facade of "okayness". I have had a lot more peace accompany my sorrow since I told God how honestly angry I have become. I know He is working on me and helping me sort through these feelings of anger and the root of bitterness.

I am to the point where I need help so bad, I could care less what the world concludes about me. I am desperate. I need God's help and am very aware that I have been closer to Him than I am right now. I am very aware that I have probably contributed to the complicated relationships with other expectant mothers in my world. I am very aware that this grief has probably taken me to the lowest place yet - hell on earth. I am very aware that I am not the same person I was a year ago. Or even a few months ago. That girl had hope and a God that could only perform miracles. I am no longer than person. My God can heal but He doesn't always heal. This is my reality.

I cannot keep this bottled up for long and I can never predict where this grief will take me next. It is a roller coaster that fares into the darkest pit of human grief and sorrow.

"Thou, which hast shown me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth." 

-Psalms 71:20

Those Pictures

I wasn't ready again. Daddy needed the SD card so I copied and pasted those pictures on it in a safe place. But it was hard. I hadn't seen those pictures since you died. Actually I hadn't seen you like that since you died. I had never seen those pictures. I knew they existed, but I have not been able to bring myself to look at them. To remember you like that. It is so hard.

Five months today.

There is not a lot to say, except that my heart hurts so bad. I never imagined this would ever happen to me. Growing up I did not know babies could die - that's how ridiculously naive I was. Ridiculously carefree...

I want to be that little girl again that loves children, longs for babies, and envisions raising them; not wondering if I will ever get to bring a baby home from the hospital.

I have a hard time convincing myself that I am not angry. Secret's out, I still am. I just miss you... Those pictures, they brought it all back. I wasn't ready. But once I got a glance I couldn't not look. You are beautiful, Jenna. Even in death.

I asked Daddy if it was wrong that I couldn't look at them. He said no. He understands. He really couldn't look for long either.

I remember getting to hold you for the first time, only for it to be the last time too. I felt like time was swallowing me up as the hour was approaching to switch you to that other breathing machine so I could hold you. I wanted to hold you, but I didn't want to let you go.

How does one prepare to say goodbye when you know its too soon? How did I not die of a broken heart that day or these past five months?? FIVE MONTHS! It hardly seems like that long ago.

I know that the God that gave you to me has also been faithful to not let my broken heart kill me. It broke a little extra today.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when I can look at these pictures and not cry because the missing hurts too much? Does that day really exist? I hear it does. I hear that one day I will be in a "healthier" place to confront those hard memories. That's what I hear. That is what I look forward to. I look forward to a place where your memory doesn't break me.

A Secret

I don't know about you...

but I struggle with the thought that God has a plan. I struggle with telling myself that God knows best. I struggle with the fact that God could have saved Jenna and He didn't. My faith has been dismantled, torn apart, scrupulously analyzed, turned upside down, chiseled, wounded, interrogated, and left desolate to tell whether or not it would survive the past five months.

My faith has changed. 

My faith in the God who could have saved her has come to find out something about Him I never knew. It's one of those secrets of God that can only be manifested in the deepest, darkest pits of absolute pain. To be honest, it's one of those secrets I wish I knew nothing about. But since grief has redefined my life, it is a secret I have come to cherish.

I have heard all my life that Jesus Christ died for my sins and how He bore my sins on the cross so that I could have a way to go to Heaven when I died. One day, I accepted Him as my Savior, believing that He did indeed die and carried my sins to that cross and paid the debt I could never pay.

What I didn't know was that on that cross, he also bore my griefs. The Bible says He is "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". Acquainted with grief? I have read those words before, but this time those words just flew off the page because that's me! I know grief more than I ever wanted to know it or be acquainted with it. It is deeper and far more hopeless than I ever could have imagined. Grieving a child is what we often say to be the harshest form of grief. I would have to agree. I didn't just bury my baby; I buried a toddler who would never take her first bite, lose a tooth, need a Barbie band-aid or take her first steps. I buried a girl who would never paint her fingernails or wear her Sunday best on Easter to church, I buried a young lady who would never go off to college or fall in love and get married. I buried a woman who would never have children or grandchildren. I buried everything she could have been. I buried my heart and love in the purest form. 

But Christ... He bore my griefs. It comforts me to read that He didn't just heal the sick and raise the dead. He knows my griefs. He knows. He is not just about the happy endings, He is familiar with the sad ones too. He acquainted Himself with this grief so that He could comfort my broken heart one day.

In that same verse, the Bible says that He also "carried our sorrows". The sorrow of those last moments of her life flashing through my head. The sorrow of knowing I will never get to use her beautiful name. The sorrow of knowing that life itself fled my baby girl's body. The sorrow of knowing the doctors did all they could to save her life. The sorrow of knowing that she is gone. The sorrow of the loss that empty arms can never satisfy. The sorrow of the memory of the pain her tiny body went through. The sorrow of the reality of her death at the grave. He carried all these sorrows with Him. 

A lot of people IRL will tell me they are sorry for what happened, and that is really all they can say. Let me just say that I am grateful for their sincere sympathy and understand their loss of words. But Christ actually carried my sorrow. He didn't just tell me He was sorry it happened, He carried this pain and sorrow because He knew one day I would need someone who feels the exact pain that I feel. So when I take my broken heart to Him, He knows all about it. 

And what's even more baffling to me is that He bore all my griefs and carried my sorrows way before they even happened. To think that He carried mine plus the entire world's grief and sorrow just helps me.

When someone shared these verses with me, it was like a light bulb turned on. These are familiar verses but they bring new light in this dark place of grief. 

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

Isaiah 53:3, 4

You Kept All My Tears

The day Jenna died and I walked away from the hospital with empty arms

I cried so many tears my face hurt and my soul felt dead

Life was changed

Death was real

And I wondered if

anybody knew about my tears.

The day of the funeral came

And I wondered why I had to go through all this,

I cried on the way there and all through the service

I cried and we couldn't even drive ourselves to the gravesite

I began convincing myself

that nobody knew about my tears.

Slowly the world began to shift and my ground became unstable

Unable to keep pace with the rest of the world

I fell behind

And I was convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

I hide behind closed doors and rush out of crowds

Tears build up

Behind sore eyes and a shattered spirit

Forced into this secret society of broken hearts

And I am convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

I grieve my loss of motherhood

The need to hold her makes me sore

The feeling that I have been robbed

Every time a mother holds her living baby closely

I am convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

Driving home my mind starts to wander

What she would have been like?

How she should be in the backseat

Snuggled safely in that 4-door sedan I picked over a year ago because we wanted her...

I am convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

The scar that my body wears replays that night she was born

How it happened, and why

The scar that means she happened

Too quickly...

I am convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

I sit alone most days

Avoiding the inevitable and meaningless conversations

That I just cannot care about

I feel I am losing myself in this grief

I am convinced

that nobody knows about my tears.

But someday when I die, Lord,

You tell me that you knew

You didn't let my tears dry up on the ground,

You kept them close to you.

In that bottle where our tears our stored

To show us just how much you cared

You saw me cry every time I convinced myself

that nobody knew...

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?  

Psalms 56:8

Name in the Ground

I never thought it would be this way
To see her name in the ground
To visit my firstborn in the heat of the day
and see her name like this
Beautiful
Morbid
Feelings of utter disgust


Something inside just can't see past
That part of me that let her down
Put she's ok today
I know she is
My heart weeps daily for the one that I love
She brought sunshine and love
Smiles and a whole bunch of hurt
When she left this earth.


It wasn't supposed to be like this
She should have buried me
Someday faraway
She should have picked my headstone
And the flowers and funeral arrange
But God had a bigger plan
Still not able to see it clearly


Maybe someday is not that far away
To see my precious one again
Each day feels like an eternity
Stretching my patience and sympathy
Trying my faith and peace of mind
Daily
Constant
Here I find His hand sufficient


When all inside me has failed
Failed myself
My firstborn
My dreams
My life


Here I find His grace
and love
The sweet comfort down inside
But there are days when I feel alone
Today I saw her name in the ground
Alone and beautiful all the same
It wasn't supposed to be like this


I should have been monogramming her name on pillows or sheets
Blankets or bags
Not on a headstone.
Not like this
Today the emptiness is drowning
This tide of sorrow blinds my sight
And I wait for tomorrow's hope.