Random processing + labor metaphors
Caveat: Please, don't be afraid to acknowledge or ask us about Noelle, about how Peter and I are doing, about how our family is doing. It's more painful for us to not have her acknowledged. We need support but sometimes suck at asking for it.
I started this blog to process Noelle being...well, who God made her to be, a baby with an extra chromosome. I realize I haven't monopolized on the opportunity to write, but am finding it necessary to do so. So...here I go in the middle of it all! Processing.
I've mostly avoided writing and journaling all together during this time. How I am doing emotionally changes by the hour sometimes, and then not for days. Its hard to come to grips with everything. Sometimes I don't want to remember the emotions I'm pulled through, and have a written record of them (many of them too raw, many of them illogical, many of them fleeting). But God is showing me the healing that comes through acknowledgement of the deepest parts of the pain.
Life seemed to float on by semi-normally, and still does at times. But...as we are getting close to delivery (33 weeks today! Praise God she's made it this far), its just all becoming very palpable. Literally. Like Noelle is kicking like crazy in my belly. I can feel where her head is, she has hiccups occasionally, I can feel when a hand or foot smooths across my belly. Its all very real that she is a little person to me.
And the precious ultrasound pictures we have of her face - they are so beautiful. She is totally our child, she looks so much like Ellie. The reality of her life, and probably imminent passing, is being more real every day.
Birth alone is scary. Making medical decisions for your child are terribly scary. But to deal with this anticipatory grief is just...a lot. I know you know that. I just wanted to say it: it's a lot. More than even I can comprehend. More than I can face most days. My big-picture self just tends to shut down sometimes when I try to see it all.
I need reminders: Take one step, Laura. Just one step. Ok, now another.
Anyway...After what I thought was a lot of serious processing and coming to terms with God's plan in this, it feels have settled into a kind of denial of what is to come. I catch myself thinking, is she really even "sick"? Won't our lives just carry on like normal?
What brings a stinging slap back to reality is realizing things will never be normal after this.
Someone at church connected me with a friend of theirs that lost a Trisomy 18 baby, many years ago. There were so many things beautiful about our conversation, just the timing of it and the grace God brought when I was despairing in my heart. But I also began realizing this isn't just going to go away...this pain of loosing our baby, a part of me, will be there forever. Not to say there won't be joy or beauty or fun, but those scars will always be there.
But...even in the middle of this, my soul can sometimes cling on to this fact: Jesus has scars too. Where we killed him. Where he gave up everything he deserved as God and King. Where he let us torture him, so that we could actually have a chance at knowing and being totally restored by his Father. And he is alive, and he knows what it's like to walk the line between death and life, to have an imminent death.
I was reading in John 16 the other day and Jesus is talking with his disciples about a lot of awesome things, about how much he loves them, to cling to and abide in him, and how he will need to die. They of course didn't get it at all, but an analogy Jesus used really stuck out to me. Here's the passage:
19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
The title of the passage is "The Disciple's Grief Will Turn to Joy." I just think it's beautiful as a woman reflecting on the labor of my first child and pending on my second, how Jesus tells all these men, you are like laboring women. Pretty funny, I think. Yet, for sure some of them had wives and were acquainted with this pain themselves. It's funny to me, and honoring to what we do have to go through, and a beautiful metaphor God opened my eyes to see.
First, here is my experience of labor pain: There is pain, and it is terrible. It is excruciating, it is beyond what you think you can bear, and what you actually can bear alone. It comes in waves, and if you're lucky you'll be able to rest and catch your breath between the pain, but it will come again. When you are in the thick of it, you will ask for a way out. Any way out. You will focus all your being on the pain. Nothing else is even possible to focus on in the midst of this. And when you are far beyond what you thought you could bear, and there is chaos and pressure and lots of scurrying about, the pain suddenly stops. A new life has entered the world, the first sounds of a life. And that pain is GONE. Beyond gone, your whole body is ecstatic, shaking with JOY. Yes, ravaged, but like it was never there, but even better than if it had never been there. And there is someone new to meet, a fresh little face that no one has ever seen before, that you've been dying to meet. A soul in a tiny little fresh, crying, awkward body.
There are two metaphors this passage and these experiences bring to light: I think God chose to have us all come into the world like this, yes as a result of sin, but also to show us what life really is about. It can be painful!!! It is not a piece of cake sometimes!!! It can be beyond what you can bear!!! But oh man, the joy of rebirth in heaven! If our births on earth are so joyous, seriously, how crazy will it be to have things restored, fully, through Christ? And to be loved face to face by the One, the orchestrator, the soul of souls? I crave that day. Like I crave the joy of giving birth to a health baby, on days when I'm so overwhelmed with the labor that is this life.
Yes, Noelle's birth isn't going to be quite like this. There is more pain involved this time, on a deeper, soul crunching level. But man, I trust our God. That I may experience labor and remember that yes, this life sucks. But it will end. He will bring joy. Maybe not when Noelle is born totally, but when He restores all things, and saves those trusting in Him. And Noelle might get to experience that a lot sooner than any of us.
The other analogy, and the one more closely related to what Jesus is talking about I think, is that Christ and the disciples experienced this labor, this terrible pain. But Jesus said, Hang on! Just a little more! Joy is coming! And no one will take away your joy!
So I say to myself, and to you who might be experiencing pain, "Hang on! Just a little more! Joy is coming! And no one will take away your joy! Jesus has birthed your new, restored soul through his laboring! You will rejoice!"
Take another step, Laura, just another step.
I started this blog to process Noelle being...well, who God made her to be, a baby with an extra chromosome. I realize I haven't monopolized on the opportunity to write, but am finding it necessary to do so. So...here I go in the middle of it all! Processing.
I've mostly avoided writing and journaling all together during this time. How I am doing emotionally changes by the hour sometimes, and then not for days. Its hard to come to grips with everything. Sometimes I don't want to remember the emotions I'm pulled through, and have a written record of them (many of them too raw, many of them illogical, many of them fleeting). But God is showing me the healing that comes through acknowledgement of the deepest parts of the pain.
Life seemed to float on by semi-normally, and still does at times. But...as we are getting close to delivery (33 weeks today! Praise God she's made it this far), its just all becoming very palpable. Literally. Like Noelle is kicking like crazy in my belly. I can feel where her head is, she has hiccups occasionally, I can feel when a hand or foot smooths across my belly. Its all very real that she is a little person to me.
And the precious ultrasound pictures we have of her face - they are so beautiful. She is totally our child, she looks so much like Ellie. The reality of her life, and probably imminent passing, is being more real every day.
Birth alone is scary. Making medical decisions for your child are terribly scary. But to deal with this anticipatory grief is just...a lot. I know you know that. I just wanted to say it: it's a lot. More than even I can comprehend. More than I can face most days. My big-picture self just tends to shut down sometimes when I try to see it all.
I need reminders: Take one step, Laura. Just one step. Ok, now another.
Anyway...After what I thought was a lot of serious processing and coming to terms with God's plan in this, it feels have settled into a kind of denial of what is to come. I catch myself thinking, is she really even "sick"? Won't our lives just carry on like normal?
What brings a stinging slap back to reality is realizing things will never be normal after this.
Someone at church connected me with a friend of theirs that lost a Trisomy 18 baby, many years ago. There were so many things beautiful about our conversation, just the timing of it and the grace God brought when I was despairing in my heart. But I also began realizing this isn't just going to go away...this pain of loosing our baby, a part of me, will be there forever. Not to say there won't be joy or beauty or fun, but those scars will always be there.
But...even in the middle of this, my soul can sometimes cling on to this fact: Jesus has scars too. Where we killed him. Where he gave up everything he deserved as God and King. Where he let us torture him, so that we could actually have a chance at knowing and being totally restored by his Father. And he is alive, and he knows what it's like to walk the line between death and life, to have an imminent death.
I was reading in John 16 the other day and Jesus is talking with his disciples about a lot of awesome things, about how much he loves them, to cling to and abide in him, and how he will need to die. They of course didn't get it at all, but an analogy Jesus used really stuck out to me. Here's the passage:
19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
The title of the passage is "The Disciple's Grief Will Turn to Joy." I just think it's beautiful as a woman reflecting on the labor of my first child and pending on my second, how Jesus tells all these men, you are like laboring women. Pretty funny, I think. Yet, for sure some of them had wives and were acquainted with this pain themselves. It's funny to me, and honoring to what we do have to go through, and a beautiful metaphor God opened my eyes to see.
First, here is my experience of labor pain: There is pain, and it is terrible. It is excruciating, it is beyond what you think you can bear, and what you actually can bear alone. It comes in waves, and if you're lucky you'll be able to rest and catch your breath between the pain, but it will come again. When you are in the thick of it, you will ask for a way out. Any way out. You will focus all your being on the pain. Nothing else is even possible to focus on in the midst of this. And when you are far beyond what you thought you could bear, and there is chaos and pressure and lots of scurrying about, the pain suddenly stops. A new life has entered the world, the first sounds of a life. And that pain is GONE. Beyond gone, your whole body is ecstatic, shaking with JOY. Yes, ravaged, but like it was never there, but even better than if it had never been there. And there is someone new to meet, a fresh little face that no one has ever seen before, that you've been dying to meet. A soul in a tiny little fresh, crying, awkward body.
There are two metaphors this passage and these experiences bring to light: I think God chose to have us all come into the world like this, yes as a result of sin, but also to show us what life really is about. It can be painful!!! It is not a piece of cake sometimes!!! It can be beyond what you can bear!!! But oh man, the joy of rebirth in heaven! If our births on earth are so joyous, seriously, how crazy will it be to have things restored, fully, through Christ? And to be loved face to face by the One, the orchestrator, the soul of souls? I crave that day. Like I crave the joy of giving birth to a health baby, on days when I'm so overwhelmed with the labor that is this life.
Yes, Noelle's birth isn't going to be quite like this. There is more pain involved this time, on a deeper, soul crunching level. But man, I trust our God. That I may experience labor and remember that yes, this life sucks. But it will end. He will bring joy. Maybe not when Noelle is born totally, but when He restores all things, and saves those trusting in Him. And Noelle might get to experience that a lot sooner than any of us.
The other analogy, and the one more closely related to what Jesus is talking about I think, is that Christ and the disciples experienced this labor, this terrible pain. But Jesus said, Hang on! Just a little more! Joy is coming! And no one will take away your joy!
So I say to myself, and to you who might be experiencing pain, "Hang on! Just a little more! Joy is coming! And no one will take away your joy! Jesus has birthed your new, restored soul through his laboring! You will rejoice!"
Take another step, Laura, just another step.
I love your metaphor. One step at a time. Sometimes we are given a flashlight to see our way with only enough light to see where to put your next step, not enough light to see the whole path, nor what is to the right or left, just enough to see the next step. My prayer for you is that God give you enough light to see just that. Peace, breathe, and know Laura, that you are held up in great love, affection and respect for your grace as well.
ReplyDelete