June 21st matters. For ten years I either dread it, or I forget until a day or two before and feel caught off guard. This year was the latter.
I've been fairly forthcoming about our story of infertility and multiple miscarriages. Most days of the year I'm thankful for the story God has written and the way he's woven our lives for his glory, and how he's pursued me with unending and unfathomable love. But 3 days a year, I don't care very much. All the growth, pain, heartbreak and heart-mending, the person I am today because of it all, I would willingly trade it all on these 3 days, just to hold my babies. June 21st is one of these days.
Today, I would trade all that God has done just to know who my babies could have been. To memorize their faces I've never seen, the curve of their jaw, the texture of their hair, the color and depth of their eyes, the long lashes they're sure to have, the button nose they've all inherited from me. To hold them and know their smell and the feel of their weight in my arms.
It's been 10 years since we learned we were expecting again, after infertility, one miracle premature son, and a miscarriage that almost destroyed my heart and body. I begged my Dr. for weekly visits, just until we passed "that point". She was willing. I saw and heard a heartbeat on the screen, I started to hope and to breath. Then another visit, thank God Andrew was with me. The Dr. struggled to find the heartbeat we'd seen a week before. "Let's try an internal ultrasound". She left the room so I could change and I just looked at Andrew. "I can't do this again" I whispered, so scared. But we would. Because not only could she not find the heartbeat that should have been there, but she found two tiny bumps of our babies, both heartbeats gone, but there had been two. We talked about options and how long and painful my previous miscarriage had been. Both she and Andrew wanted to spare me that pain and since my body wasn't showing signs yet, surgery was scheduled.
I spent the night before barely sleeping, fitful and awake so often. I was waffling between feeling like God doubly answered my prayer to get pregnant with these twins, with severe disbelief he'd let us experience this again. I wanted to express all my doubts and anger and hurt, but I clung to faith. If I had enough faith I'd make it, I was sure. The song "Blessings" by Laura Story was newly popular right then, and all night when I'd wake, the lyrics would run through my mind. "What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you're near?...What if you're blessings come through raindrops, what if you're healing comes through tears?" I clung to the hope these words were true, but my body and soul knew I hadn't experienced all the breaking yet, so how could I even begin to heal?
June 21, 2011 was stormy and rainy. When I awoke after surgery, I was already sobbing. My body was grieving before my mind was even present. There are so many private and personal details to this story that I could share, but they're mine. And that's how I've felt about these babies for so long. When someone would bring them up without asking, would express their grief, I feel as though I'm being robbed of the respect or chance to express my grief. For too many years, I thought to be truthful to God about my anger, hurt, and loss, would betray any faith I had. Through more living children, another miscarriage, more trauma, and a lot of counseling, I've learned that's not true.
I can believe God is faithful, trustworthy, good even, and still not understand and have hurt and anger. They are not exclusive. I can express my humanity, how broken and grieving I am, while expressing his deity, how good and faithful and worthy of praise he is.
But 3 days a year, I just grieve. I tend to feel crabby and angry. I still don't always know why. I know I'm grieving more than my babies. I'm grieving the aloneness I felt at that time in our lives. The situations I was in that made me feel as though I had to heal, trust God, be okay, be a testimony, and move on, before I'd ever actually felt the weight of my loss. I grieve how people who should have asked how I was doing and acknowledged our loss, just ignored it. I grieve how friends who'd experienced what I had tried to help, but I was determined to express faith, believing faith and pain (which must be distrust) couldn't co-exist. I grieve that I know without losing these babies, I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't know the love of God in such an intimate way if I had not walked through the valley of the shadow of death. That depression, anxiety, anger, trauma, repressed trauma, and all the pain I kept stuffed inside, would one day almost kill me, and then it would save me by God's rescue.
Every Mom and Dad who have lost a child is different. We all grieve differently. I would never claim my story is someone else's. But today, 10 years after the day our twins were gone, I don't know if I'll ever be "okay". I don't think I'll never not answer the question "how many kids do you have?" without hesitating. I don't want to burden others, but I'll never forget the real answer is 8, not 4. I don't know if one of these anniversaries will ever not affect me. And I'm learning to be okay with that. I'm okay not being okay.
I like things wrapped up in a tidy bow, but this story isn't. Oh, there are amazing and beautiful answers and changes and healing. God as I know him today is so much bigger and more loving than the God I was clinging to 10 years ago. I know now he can handle my grief, my unbelief that he'd allow this yet again, my feelings of unfairness and jealousy to those who've lost children they've met and go to see their faces. Pain isn't and shouldn't be comparable, but we like to do it anyway. I know I can believe the sign that hangs on my wall "And if not, HE IS still GOOD" and also cry over all I have lost. I know I can be sad today, can speak their names to my other children, and still be thankful for what I have and who I am.
It took years, but we named our twins. You can argue theology all you want, but I firmly believe our children are in heaven with God. I don't think it matters the genders we assign them here and whether they're babies, their "earth years" old, or adults automatically in heaven. What I do believe, is the Holy Spirit knows our pain. He bears witness with our spirits and prays for us when we can only groan in agony. I also believe he gives good gifts, and he's still active and moving in powerful ways in God's children. I believe he's given me thoughts, visions, pictures, whatever you want to call them, as a comfort for what my human mind can understand. So, we named our twins as boys last year. Samuel and Josiah. Samuel can be translated to mean "God has heard", and Josiah means "God has healed (or saved)".
These two boys' lives and deaths broke me in ways I'll never be able to articulate or fully grasp. Their names give evidence to God's answered prayer, hope that in begging for a baby, God heard and gave us two. And their names give evidence that God healed them in their deaths. They will never experience pain or tears again. And God saves. He saved them, but also me. God used their lives and death to allow me to break in ways that wouldn't be let out for years to come. But even today, their stories save me. Save me from being comfortable here on earth. Their lives and their sisters' lives leave me longing for heaven. Not just to meet them, but to know God in the way they have always. To be so enraptured with the God who loves me and wiped away my sin, that the hurt of my children will no longer matter.
Today I tell you all this, and then I weep. Weep for the boys faces I will never memorize, personalities I can only imagine when I look at their brothers, and bodies I will never hold on this earth. I grieve and miss them. I can rage at God for taking them. And then I rest, in God who loves me as much as he loves them, who can let them see their family remembers, has never ever forgotten, and can hold me and fill me with his love and peace. It all doesn't make sense humanely, and today the pain brings the tears. But instead of doubting secretly the God I want to cling to because what else is there, I say "I don't get it, but I know you. Papa, you are good and your love for me is bigger. So, I trust you and I cry." It's a tension I think I'll walk and live in until I die. The tension of trust and pain, hurt and not understanding, of my heart being here in the 4 children who I hold in my arms and my heart longing for heaven and the God who holds my 4 children there.
This song has always had meaning for me, but today this line is my anthem:
"Such a short time, such a long road, all the madness,
but I know, the silence has brought me to HIS voice"
It was such a short time I carried our boys, and this road has been longer than I ever dreamed. So I choose, to let it keep bringing me to God's voice, to his heart, love and comfort.
