Due date: 09/27/2011 is typed neatly in white block letters at the top of a grainy ultrasound picture of what looks to me like a lima bean with a heartbeat, now tucked away in a blue Rubbermaid container in the basement of our condo building. The baby box, we call it. It also holds the pregnancy test confirming our second pregnancy, which I added to the box on October 1, 2011 as I was miscarrying that second one. And the journal I started for the third baby in March, trying to be defiantly hopeful, that's in there, too. Should is a tricky word, but I can't help thinking that I "should" be counting baby kicks as I near the third baby's early December due date.
Of course I'm not and these days sneak up on me, dates that won't let me forget just yet, dates that always surprise me with how urgently they demand that I acknowledge them. That I observe and remember those tiny hearts that beat, even for a few days.
But how do you honor something that barely was?
As usual, I don't know, really, but it feels important to acknowledge what those little heartbeats gave me: a chance to be brave for someone else, to learn that I am seen, to feel loved in the deepest, darkest places I didn't even know I had.
I will honor these days and the hearts that beat, barely and remarkably, and my own heart by not swallowing any tears that need to be cried today.
By speaking kind, life-affirming words today - to other people and to myself. I may not have children to hold but I can bring life into the world, I can nurture the life around and within me. I have not birthed life, but I can breathe it, I can speak it. No one calls me mother, but I can mother today, I can protect, I can love without reservation or condition.
By breaking bread, by feasting, with friends who held our tears and our anger and our confusion. I can offer my thanks for them and I can celebrate that should our hearts break again, we will not be alone.
By taking a walk in the fresh air, rejoicing that I'm here, that I survived, that I got up off the floor, that it didn't kill me. I can inhale and exhale deeply and exult that it doesn't hurt to breathe anymore.
By kissing my man, full on the mouth, sloppy and loud and in wonder that we're making it, that I feel more and better loved, that I know him deeper, that I am more deeply known.
Each sad anniversary represents a no from God, a reminder that despite my pleading, I did not get what I asked for. But, and this is one big, glorious but, I can hear more clearly His resounding Yes over my life.
I can remember today how I am changed, how three times over a mother and then not has carved itself on my soul and I can marvel at what effective companions Sorrow and Suffering can be.
I think I'm a little bit harder and a lot quicker to cry. More cynical maybe, but more fiercely convinced of the necessity of hope. Marked by sadness but what I'm starting to think is also joy. Less patient with superficiality, but more patient with the excruciatingly slow work of God. More broken, for sure, but desperately hoping I am in greater communion with the One broken for me.
I can commit to this: I will walk this out. I will walk. this. out. I will go all the way through. I will learn everything I can learn. I will not choose avoidance or distraction or indifference. I will hope even when I'm scared. I will not be ashamed of the shattering of my heart any more than I would be of the shattering of a bone. I will believe that miscarriage is not the last word for my life. I will hope because I know that the end is good, and this is not the end.
I started writing this, choking back sobs that came from a heart
broken and now I'm crying because it's so good and maybe your heart has
to break open for the light to get in?
I never got to hold them, but, man, am I grateful that those hearts and tiny, unfinished bodies existed, even for the short time they did.
I am grateful and I can't even believe it. It's a gift. It's all a gift.
In remembrance of babies I barely knew, I can say thank you today.
This is what it means to be held, how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive.
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