Six Loves Lost

Life-size replica of his feet

October is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Month. In any typical year, I'd post those reminders/memes on my fb page without a thought. I'd do it because it would be my way of remembering the five babies I've lost in the past 15 years due to early pregnancy miscarriages. But all those babies, though their loss saddened me, were vague notions of a human being to me. I never saw their face, I never held them, I never even officially named them. I knew they existed in eternity as much as I did in this world. I knew one day I would know them and know their name. But to me, it was the loss of their future in my arms and in our family that saddened me, not so much the grief over their physical death. And then this year, everything changed.

 I found out I was pregnant again not long after the New Year. Just when I had signed up for a gym membership and even purchased extra personal training sessions (I would be getting back in shape this year, dangit!), I found out I was pregnant. Call it Murphy's Law, but every time I have committed to going on some diet or joining some gym or feeling like maybe there are new adventures or a new direction I can take, pregnancy hits me like a humorous, ironic and fateful force. A reminder that this life is not my own, and I am not in control. So a year and a half after my previous miscarriage, here I was again wondering what was in store for me and this little one.

 Week after week went by with no clue as to what was going on in there, what was going to happen. Finally, I had an ultrasound scheduled around 11 weeks. Pretty much right around the time I usually miscarried. I hadn't allowed myself to be emotional and even accept the pregnancy until I saw that little beating heart on the dark screen. Here was my child, still healthy, still moving around, still growing. I went out to my car holding the sonogram pictures in my hand and sat in my car and sobbed. I was going to have another baby! Finally acceptance. Finally hope. One month later, as I sat in bed early one morning unable to sleep, there was a pop and a gush. And just like that I lost him.

 Unlike every other miscarriage I'd had, this time I saw him. I saw his little face half covered by one perfect hand. I was struck by the details of him. His nose, his mouth, the little line across his chest that his diaphragm made. He was truly perfect in every way, and he was mine. But I would never hear his cry, never see his eyes open and never watch him grow. My heart shattered, and as I bled out the next few hours and days, it was if all my joy in life and hope in goodness flowed out as well. One week later when I could finally physically stand and walk again, we buried him in the pouring rain under our bleeding heart bush in the backyard. His coffin was a five inch box.

 My due date was in September two days after we closed on a new house. I was too busy to truly mourn, but I remembered. In the early days of October, probably about the time I would naturally have birthed him, my body remembered by dredging up nightmares of babies born and unborn. I awoke knowing deep down that this is when I would have had him. It was as if the very tissues and blood and genetic material in the depths of my body and mind remembered him and knew this would have been his time. I would have had another October baby.

 I will never be the same again. I will always carry around this sorrow that is a part of me now. And now that I've seen his face and held him, I know the love I have for him is the same love for all his brothers and sisters that have gone before him. When he entered eternity, they were there to welcome him. The first time he opened his eyes, he was able to view heaven. The arms that hold him now are Jesus' arms. And though my arms will always feel his void, he knows I know him and love him. And he knows his name.

Forever in my love, we miss you greatly, Matthias.

This is the one song that helped me get through this year. Most times, I sang it only able to mouth the words as tears streamed down, but my heart fully embraced, "Your Will be Done."  

Happy Humble, Serving, Joyful, Devoted, Contented Day! I mean, Happy Mother's Day!

Oh, boy, do I need this reminder! I would sum up my thoughts and feelings about this article here except that you just have to read it for yourself and see if you relate to any of it. I know I do! Oh, and before you start, Happy Mother's Day!

I heard it all over Facebook and Twitter and in phone calls last year. The disappointment.

The flowers that didn’t come, the cards that were forgotten, the breakfast that was a disaster and that you had to clean up while everyone else was watching football.

The house that wasn’t quiet or clean or tidied up. The getting to sleep in that didn’t happen, the nap that evaporated into a toddler’s meltdown, the meal that someone else didn’t prepare. The laundry that wasn’t folded for you.

The kids that didn’t call, the sermon that wasn’t about mothers, the grand kids who didn’t visit.

I heard it again and again in so many different, disappointed, let down ways – how this one day can’t possibly live up to what it means to mother.

How 24 hours can’t possibly hold the measure of a lifetime of laying oneself low for the loving and raising and wrangling of tiny humans.

Why do we think it will? I ask myself this every year after the inevitable disappointment.

But we do. We expect.

We expect so big and so hard and with so much pre-programming that we don’t know how to turn the expectations off. 

- See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2014/05/how-not-to-be-disappointed-this-mothers-day/#sthash.08Ex9eZv.dpuf

Motherhood is Not a Hobby

This one of the finest pieces I have ever read about Motherhood.  I just had to share it here:

Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.

Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.

Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.

Please continue on to the Desiring God website to read from the beginning...

How You Call It...

Married With(out) Children

Is marriage without children really the key to bliss?  This article states it as scientifically so.  And if you are childless by choice, there's a number of resources out there including websites, books and DVDs to support your decision.  However if you are already a parent, it's pretty safe to say that you couldn't and wouldn't want to imagine life without your children.  But we all now live in a time technologically-speaking where one could choose to marry and live their life without welcoming children into it.  This is a brave new world where we are given that choice - before now, forget about it:  if you had relations, you risked pregnancy.  Big time.  And the mere possibility of children always existed.  But the idea of not wanting children is not a new one and was even mentioned in the Old Testament (by the way, God killed him for that choice - ouch, Onan!).  So will God put you to death if you decide to have a childless marriage?  Of course not, however I think it's crucial to understand something. God, as the Creator of all things, also created the institution of marriage and family.  When God sets a design in motion, it's to our benefit to follow that design.

From the Making Home blog:
God's first command to the first man and woman was to "be fruitful and multiply". Children were an intrinsic part of the original *design* of marriage. Children are repeatedly called "blessings" and conversely, childlessness was always taken by biblical characters to be a curse, never a good thing. Jesus Himself modeled a receptive attitude towards ALL children when He chastised his disciples and said "let all the little children come to me." And these are just some examples off of the top of my head.

There is nothing in Scripture that remotely comes close to "well, it seems wrong to deny a person something GOOD just because she's not keen on following God's design". Rather, what we see over and over again in Scripture is the idea of taking up one's cross and submitting yourself to the will of the Father. A focus on personal "happiness" or "fulfillment" isn't ours to focus on... abundant life comes from following the will of God.

I have to admit (and I'm not proud of this) when I cross paths with a married couple who has no desire for a child, I become immediately suspicious.  In my heart, I am guilty of judging them as selfish, focused on their own goals in life, the careers they want to build, the fun things they want to do in life.  The casting off of the responsibility of children is one practice I just can't understand (and yes, I fully comprehend that when we do not understand something, it is hard for us to not judge or mock or any number of things that get us into hot water).  So God forgive me for being judgmental and I pray He gives me His heart instead.  However those few times when I glimpse His heart in that kind of situation, I feel sadness.  Sadness at the lost opportunities, the lost lessons and the lost legacies.  I mentally picture their genealogical tree abruptly ending - no more family name passing on to the next generation. No children to help care for them in their old age.  No Thanksgiving dinner table filled with joyful noise made by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren .

"Imagine a scenario where, on a Sunday afternoon, you sit idly for interminable hours slumped in your wheelchair in the tiny and stifling nursing home bedroom, which, due to overcrowding, you share with a cantankerous roommate. (Thank heaven she’s in the lounge for her weekly visit with her family!)

You think wistfully of your husband, now long departed. You begin to cry and your nose starts to run. You’d like a tissue, but you are tired and haven’t the strength to wheel yourself to the bedside table. Your diaper is wet, but you know the aide won’t be around for another 45 minutes. You know it is pointless to call for help; the home is chronically understaffed (you’re not sure why).

Enjoy the silence, the blissful quietude as you remember being part of a committed and adoring couple — without kids."1

Please understand this is not directed at those couples who can't have children, who have tried to have children, who have decided to wait just a bit before having children, etc*.  I'm talking about willful childlessness.  I am also definitely not saying for us all to be like the Duggar family and have as many children as your body will bear.  Or that a certain number is the right number for you to have.  Or that you can't use some form of birth control or family planning.  I can't even say that I fully agree everyone should have children.  What I am saying is for a Christian couple to deny the natural order of life ("first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage") is to deny the design God put in place for us.

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has this to say:

Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God's design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. The Psalmist declared: "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate." [Psalm 127: 3-5] 

Morally speaking, the epidemic in this regard has nothing to do with those married couples who desire children but are for any reason unable to have them, but in those who are fully capable of having children but reject this intrusion in their lifestyle.

He also states:

The Scripture does not even envision married couples who choose not to have children. The shocking reality is that some Christians have bought into this lifestyle and claim childlessness as a legitimate option. The rise of modern contraceptives has made this technologically possible. But the fact remains that though childlessness may be made possible by the contraceptive revolution, it remains a form of rebellion against God's design and order. 

Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God's gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are to find many of our deepest joys and satisfactions in the raising of children within the context of the family. Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come.


For Christians, having children opens our eyes in a way we cannot do otherwise to the role of God as our Father.  When I had my first child, I became aware of the love that our Abba has for us and some of the same emotions we must share as parents.  This is a priceless lesson to learn and can teach us so much about Him and who He is.  Just as marriage can yield so many lessons in how Christ loves His bride, the Church, parenthood teaches us who our Father in heaven is, why He disciplines us and how much He truly adores us.  Like marriage, parenthood can be an opportunity to learn holiness, more than happiness.  There is nothing in life to teach one sacrificial love like the love learned in a family - of a wife toward her husband, of a parent towards a child.

Mr. Mohler goes on to say:

This epidemic of chosen childlessness will not be corrected by secular rethinking. In an effort to separate the pleasure of sex from the power of procreation, modern Americans think that sex totally free from constraint or conception is their right. Children, of course, do represent a serious constraint on the life of parents. Parenthood is not a hobby, but represents one of the most crucial opportunities for the making of saints found in this life.

Two purposes among many as to God's design of the family are so we can understand and love Him better and so we can become more like Him.

One last word from Al:

The church should insist that the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God’s glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that.

*I know there are always unique circumstances when a couple may decide against having children due to illness/handicaps, genetic factors, history of abuse, etc.  Those are the exceptions, I believe, and that decision must be made between a husband and wife along with their God.

** Click on link to read Al Mohler's blog post titled Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion with a New Face in its entirety as well as his follow-up Yikes!  The Hot Debate Over Deliberate Childlessness

1. From the article: Childless by Choice: A Decision You May Live To Regret.  This is a *must* read!