Help Me Love You Again

April 8, 2014

Time to do a little talk on faith in a heartbreaking situation.  As a Christian all my life, I could never imagine being in the place I am with my view of God/prayer that losing the twins has brought me to. Shattered.  Don't get me wrong, I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I will NEVER walk away.  Although I have no idea why He allowed this, what He is doing, and to some degree Who He fully is, I will never ever say that He is not good.  With that said, that being my core belief, everything else is so broken. 

Up until going through the most cruel thing I've ever experienced that went down in the most horrific way my life was fairly smooth (minus the IVF sagas)-to refresh your memory, my water broke 1 day after my 30th birthday, a week later I visually saw her cord hanging from my body, I go to the ER and her foot is hanging out but I'm not in labor, I go into labor at night and she falls out in the bathroom the next morning-then miraculously my body stops labor and my cervix closes and there is SO much hope for Jude.  I get a cerclage (cervix sewn shut) and am bedridden in the hospital for 11 days taking IV antibiotics every 4 hours to try to prevent an infection.  While each second I live in the horror of what just happened, each second I fear that Jude will die, as I watch family and friends come and pray for miracles.  I watch my strong brave Dad cry out to God like a helpless child begging for a miracle.  I watch my strong brave husband laying his hand on my stomach begging for the life of Jude to be saved.  I myself cry out with all that I have left for God to have mercy on mye and to heal my body and to save my child.  Then when we finally think there is hope because it's been 3 weeks, an infection takes over, they break my water while I'm conscious (and feeling him move), and I deliver a 100% healthy normal baby that is 3 weeks to young to have a chance at surviving. As I quoted CS Lewis earlier in my blog it felt like we reached out for help to our Savior and we heard the door slam and then many bolts shutting and then silence. 

In my Christian walk this is the first time I've ever experienced something like this.  I have had hard seasons but have always trusted that He was working things out for the good.  I have had unanswered prayers before but never in such a silent, heartbreaking, desperate situation.  It shakes me to the core and although the Bible says "pray without ceasing" at this point I simply cannot.  I'm going through all the emotions that come with grief but I'm also a bit cynical.  I snicker at stupid things (ie someone praying that God will help them find their keys or take away their headache) Although people have every right to ask God for help in anything, these type of prayers make me roll my eyes.  He didn't save my child why would He help you find your keys??  I know better than that, I was raised that He is a personal God and cares about the smallest things in our lives-however at this point PLEASE don't pray to find your keys around me.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not "pouting" or trying to "show Him."  I am just numb/speechless/and quite frankly a little afraid of what can happen to anyone here on earth whether they are a Christian or not.  This whole experience shattered the fun/cute snow globe of happiness I tended to live in and has shown me the suffering and the pain that can happen to anyone.  If I do pray, they have massively changed.  I have also removed the word "Let."  "Let me get pregnant again."  "Let me know what you want me to do."  "Let me not be so afraid."  At this point sometimes the only prayer I can say is "Jesus."  Or "God help me."  Sometimes I can mutter "Let me see redemption win. Make it right." While other times I simply shrug my shoulders and say "Who are you?" or "I know you will do what you are going to do."  I guess this isn't exactly a pep-talk but I think it's important that Christians be real.  I just went through a very very sad/nasty situation where my ever-so-longed-for children literally were killed inside my body because of my body-I was a participate in their death.  We are humans and we to go through  waves of emotions in grief just like anyone-just because we have Christ as the center of lives does not mean we are always happy/protected-we just do our best to constantly remind ourselves that this is not the end, this is temporary and death can never have victory over us since we believe in eternal life.  If you are not a Christian I know I might sound a bit loca but if you are, this means everything. 

Anyway, there is this somewhat old-school 1990's worship song by Michael W. Smith (don't laugh) and for some reason it's been popping my head a lot lately.  The main chorus says "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy on us."  I decided to youtube it with lyrics and the phrase "Help me love you again" really struck me.  The singer is asking God to help him love God again!!  I could so relate with this.  What a strange prayer "Dear God, help me love you again." I think I'm going to add it to my small list of prayers.

I've posted this song before too, it's called Worn, but its one of the only Christian songs I can listen to. 

A Grief Observed

January 9, 2014

My sister in law gave me A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis.  In the past I've never connected much with is writing (he is too smart) but I read this entire book in one sitting.  He wrote it after losing his wife to cancer.  I could relate to so many things. 

1.  "No one ever told me grief is like fear; Perhaps more strictly, like suspense.  Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen."

I love this.  Grief, at this level, is very, very similar to fear.  I'm waiting for peace.  I'm waiting for healing.  I'm waiting for baby.

2.  "There is sort of an invisible blanket between the world and me."
When I'm out in public, I often feel this way.  The world sees me, but they have no clue that I kissed my dead son on the forehead 7 weeks ago.

3. "Meanwhile, where is God?  This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.  When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with graitutde and praise, you will be-or so it feels-welcomed with open arms.  But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find?  A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.  Then after that, silence."

I'm a Christian, I have been, and always will be.  But that doesn't mean that I can't question my faith.  The ugly parts that don't make sense here.  After our cries for help, our begging for a miracle, the thousands of friends, family, bloggers praying-when they broke Jude's water all I could hear was the nasty sound of  a door slamming and bolting and double bolting on the inside and then awful awful silence.

4.  "I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."
This is true too.  I realize, tomorrow and the next day and the next day, grief will be near.  Sadness.  His face. The kicks.  The loose skin on my stomach.  The look in my husband's eyes when I cry again about the same thing.

5.  "What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and  all the false hopes we had.  Not hopes merely raised merely by our own wishful thinking, hopes encouraged, even forced upon us, by false diagnoses, by Xray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that may have ranked as a miracle.  Step by step we were 'led up the garden path.' Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture."

Even CS Lewis admits later that this was a "yell" at God.  I really appreciate the honestly of his emotions because it means he is human.  I couldn't relate more with this statement and I am human too.  It is so hard for me to "pray"-it truly does get choked up.  From the initial early water breaking and me not going into labor till a week later (big false hope), to my body stopping in labor once I delivered Brinly, to the doctors saying things are looking good, to the cerclage, to when Dad cried out for a miracle and the Dr. came back in saying there was no infection in Jude's water, to hoping/praying the left over placenta was infected.  In all honestly, I truly thought Jude would make it-I thought God would be gracious-I believed it. While I don't truly believe "he was planning the next torture" it really really felt that way.  The truth that the false hopes were not hopes still feels like salt on a wound.

6.  "What grounds has it given me in doubting all that I believe?  I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account.  I had been warned--I had warned myself-not to reckon on worldly happiness.  We were even promised sufferings.  The were part of the programme.  We were told 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accepted it.  Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination."  "the faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.  The taking them into account was not real sympathy.  If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came."

Wow.  If I would have read this book (I would have been bored) when life was "good" I wouldn't have really gotten it either.  It's true.  We live in a world where we know of suffering and feel bad for it and have "sympathy" until it happens to YOU and like he says, its real and not imagined, it's surreal.  We hear horrible news all the time on tv, about people in other countries, war, famine, natural disaster, but then BAM, it's you?  You are the victim?  The sorrow floods in.

7.  "But suppose who you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good...The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting.  If he yield to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.  But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us?  Well, take your choice.  The tortures occur.  If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one.  If there is a good one, the these tortures are necessary." 

Although I have way more questions than answers, at this point much more sorrow than joy and deeper fear than hope, I chose the later option-there is a good one-a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.