Silence

It has been about a week since I have last posted anything. It is because the dark has been too black and the hurt has been too acute. I don't know how to express my emotions when life becomes this way. I cry. I stay hidden under the covers. But mainly, I am silent. For those of you who know me, I am not a silent person. I am quite the Chatty Cathy. I have been given the gift of gab.

When I am silent, usually for a few days in a row, my husband isn't quite sure what to do, how to read me. It frustrates him.

I sense it but I don't know how to reassure him that I am fine or to let him know that in about an hour, I will be okay.


I don't know when I will be fine. I am not even sure that exists anymore for me.

So, on top of everything else I am feeling, I feel like I have failed as a wife and as a mother.

Simply put, I don't know how to be truly present anymore.

I have so many questions. So many questions that no one can give me the answers to. So, instead of asking them, I remain quiet. It will anger me if I ask the questions and no one can answer me. Silence is best. I don't want to deal with anger on top of the raw pain I am feeling.

I don't have desires any more and I lack energy. It is scary but I don't know how else to be.

I am lost.

I want to know why God allowed this to happen. I want to know if I will ever be the person I was before all of this. I want to know if the pain will always be intense. I want to know if my daughter will ever know the mother I was to her before I became who I am now.

What was the sense in two lives being lost before they ever got the chance to live? How do I make sense of this? What was all of this for?

For the rest of my life, I am left to wonder what their giggles would have sounded like, what foods they would have liked, how their smiles would have soothed my soul, when they would have gotten married and what their sweet babies would have looked like.

Instead of imagining all of this, I so desperately wish I would have been given the gift to experience it. Every single drop of it.

I am silent. I don't know how to express all of this. I don't know what to say when some one ask how I am doing.

I am silent because I hope the One who knows it all will answer me. I hope He fills in the gaps of the silences and He whispers the answers to all of my questions and wonderings.

Stephanie

Picture of Peace

In my grief, I have felt so alone.

In sharing my story, more and more people are coming out of the wood work, sharing their stories with me. I realize that I am not alone. I am among many (unfortunately) who have buried children.

I still feel all alone.

Grief is definitely a lonely road to navigate and travel. It is a crowded road yet a lonely one.

Grief is ugly. It is an awful, scary storm. I never know how hard the rain will fall, which direction the winds will blow, what darkness the clouds will bring. Some days I feel like there are rays of sun sneaking through the dark clouds and I am able to catch a glimpse of how life will go on.

 It will go on never the same, but it will go on.

Just as I am feeling some of the warmth that the sun brings, the dark clouds engulf me. My vision becomes blurred and then goes completely black.  I cannot see how I will go on. I have lost all desire to do so.

On paper, grief seems manageable and predictable.

There are five stages of grief. They are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

I feel like there should be an astrisks at the bottom of the manual of grief. No one can really tell you how it is going to look when it rudely taps you on the shoulder. There are stages you may never approach and there are stages you will revisit. You can experience some of the stages simultaneously. Some of them you may only live through for a day or two and others that may last weeks or months.

It looks different for everyone. It affects each person differently.

Just when I think I have caught my breath, something comes up and knocks the wind out of me.

The more I view the world, the more heartache I see surrounding me.

Someone has just lost a parent, sibling, spouse, child.

Someone has just been faced with their own mortality as they are told they have terminal cancer.

Someone is caring for a loved one who no longer recognizes them.

And yet, the world continues to spin. The sun continues to rise each morning and set each night.

Life goes on.

We all will be faced with troubles and heartache in our lives.

In John 16:33, we are told by Jesus that In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

There is no if that precedes the word trouble. There is no promise that if you take a certain job, marry a certain person, have a certain number of children, or even when you decide to follow Christ, that you will be exempt from it.

It is almost like a guarantee. You WILL have trouble.

You learn a lot about yourself when things do not go according to your plan. When your life turns upside down on you.

In the book, Stories for the Heart, there is a story written by Catherine Marshall. It is a story of a king who offered a prize to the one who painted the best picture of peace. Many people submitted their pictures of what they thought peace looked like. The king narrowed it down to two pictures.

One picture was of a calm lake that reflected the mountains and a blue sky in the still waters.

The other picture was one of a storm complete with lightening and rocky mountains. A waterfall fell with anger down the side of one of the mountains. Behind the waterfall, a bush grew out of a crack in the rock. In the rock, a mother bird had built a nest. That mother bird rested in her nest as the storm raged on.

The king chose the second picture because "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart."

Grief does not lend itself to "peaceful" times.

My desire is to still be at peace with the God who created me.

Joy is not the absence of pain but the presence of Christ.

from the book I Will Carry You by Angie Smith

 Lord, may I be at joy and peace in the midst of all this heartache.

Stephanie

Flowing of Questions

The flowing of questions are limitless.

Why? If I would have done this or that, would it have made any difference?

The silence that trails behind the whys is deafening.

The ifs just eat the soul alive.

Questions are natural.

They help gain understanding, knowledge, what is appropriate and what is not.

And sometimes, no one can really give an answer to the question.

Those questions are the ones that most desire an answer.

Why does cancer exist? Why do murders occur? Why is there chronic illness of the mind and body? Why do babies die?

I remember when I was a little girl, I asked a slew of questions. I wanted to know the whys and hows to everything! I'm sure my parents were driven crazy.

Why is the sky blue? The grass green? Why do cats meow and dogs bark? Why do most animals have four legs? Why is blood red and not neon pink?

Most of the time, their reply was, because it just is.


I'm sure there is a long, complicated, scientific answer to those questions. I was not given the answer because I would not have understood it.

Gods silence to my questions why, may just be because I will not understand His reply.

I have to stop with the ifs because they eat at me. It is hard for a control freak like myself to think there was nothing I could have done differently. The experts tell me so. My husband whispered it in my ear when I sobbed with each contraction and continues to whisper it in my ear when my body shakes with cries in the night.

My God whispers it to me as well.

It was not anything you did, my child. This has always been a part of My plan.

The other side to if is not for us to know.

If I would have gone to this school...

If I would have taken this job...

If I would have said yes... Said no...

If I would have arrived earlier... Arrived later...

To trust the road that was taken, that is what we need to know.

To trust that whatever path we chose or whatever has occurred in our lives, God is there. He will take care of it. Take care of us.

God is on the other side of the if. He is in the silence after the why.

That is what needs to be the focus. What needs to be trusted.

As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb,

so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

Ecclesiastes 11:5 

Stephanie

Bitterness

It is a dagger to the heart whenever I see a newborn baby or a woman who looks to be as far along as I would be right now.

It is so hard to explain to those who have never had to walk in my shoes.

A pregnant lady and a newborn baby is nothing but joy. Right?

Try explaining it to someone who has been told they will never be able to have a child or to someone who has just lost her identical twins.

It is so hard.

It sucks the breath right out of you.

It is so hard to explain because you simply cannot explain the ache. The hurt. The desperation.

When you see a baby or a pregnant lady, you see happiness, hope, a future.

When I see a pregnant lady or a baby, I feel an unexplainable ache. I feel a hurt I have never experienced before. I feel the void in my heart.

I feel lost and alone.

Bitterness and Resentment come up along side me. They try to take my hand in theirs. I resist them. Not because I don't feel welcomed by them but because I know the destruction they can bring.

They are like sugar. They are so sweet at first, but the more they linger, the more they rot. The more they poison.

I know because I have walked with them before.

Seven years ago, my husband and I were labeled as infertile.

I was the first one who was diagnosed as infertile. It frightened me and broke me.

I had always wanted to be a mother, now I was told that the most natural way to have a child was closed to me.

What frightened me was that my husband would eventually blame me. I feared he would leave me because, after all, he was not the problem. He could fulfill his dreams of being a father with someone else.

A few weeks later, my husband was also diagnosed as infertile. I sighed a selfish sigh of relief.

We both contributed to the problem. I thought it was a blessing we were both to blame. I know some marriages can't and don't make it through the battlefield of infertility.

Our marriage would stay intact, we were blessed, because we were both to blame.

Over the course of a few more years, through procedures and medications, our marriage frayed.

My husband clung to the hope of God.

I grabbed the hands of Bitterness and Resentment.

At first they were so beautiful and understanding. They seemed to hold so much promise. It was so natural to welcome them as friends.

When I walked with them, the questions came. Why? Why me? Why us? Why can't it be them? What did we do to deserve this?

Every joy I had in life started to darken. Bitterness and Resentment stepped out of the little place I allowed them, and started to infect every area of my life.

They are not good.

They do look welcoming and it seems so natural for me to want to join them now.

But I know the destruction they can create.

So I turn to them both, look them in the eye and say, "No, thanks. Not this time."

I need to feel my hurt.

I need to feel every aspect of it. Even the areas that others do not understand and frown upon.

I need to walk this road.

It is going to hurt me deeply to see a pregnant woman or a baby. They do hold so much joy and hope of a future.

It hurts because the hope I had envisioned for my babies had changed. It is not gone. It has not ended. It has just changed.

That change hurts.

Ignoring the hands of Bitterness and Resentment, I look to God, grab His caring hands and start to walk. I need to walk this road so I can accept that change.

Stephanie