random Easter thoughts...

Easter week, five years ago....

My parents were out of town so we drove down there, snuck into their house and placed baby items all around.  Baby bottles in the cupboard, baby socks in the sock drawer, baby spoons mixed in with the silverware, baby shampoo in the bathroom and finally a frame of our ultrasound picture mixed in with all the family pictures. For these babies we have prayed.....

Easter Sunday I remember being so sick that I picked at my dinner to make it appear that I was eating all the while wanting to run to the bathroom to throw up.  Morning sickness had hit me hard.  After we ate, we gave our nieces easter baskets with framed pictures of the ultrasound with the word cousin underneath them.  They were too young to read and my B&SIL ended up leaving town that weekend so that left grandma and grandpa to read the frame to the girls.  Tears of happiness flowed down all of our faces when it finally sunk in.  So many prayers were answered in that moment.

Later that day we announced it to the rest of J's family and then my family called when they got home and instantly saw the picture frame.  More tears.  More answered prayers.

Writing this, I can still feel the utter, deep down in your heart happiness of those moments. The tears still flow at the thought of how happy we all were. How we believed that God had finally given us the desires of our hearts.


Easter week 2013...

I am still coming to grips that all of that occurred five years ago.  Some days it seems like just yesterday and others, it seems like the memories are slipping through my fingers.

I ran into a fellow baby loss momma at church the other day.  We talked about how long it had been since we said goodbye to our angels and then she said something to me that shocked me.  She lost her son to stillbirth and she mentioned that if she had gone through what we did, she wasn't sure her faith would have survived.  I looked at her inquisitively.  She explained that when she found out something was wrong, her son had already passed away.  When we found out something was wrong, we went through days of waiting to see if my pregnancy would be strong enough to hold on a couple weeks and then we waited to see if Alexcyn would be strong enough to survive her premature birth.  Days that people covered us in more prayers than we will ever know.  So many prayers going out to God to protect the pregnancy and then to bring healing and strength to Alexcyn.  So many prayers that went unanswered.  She said knowing that God chose to let all those prayers go unanswered would have killed her faith.

Honestly, I had never looked at it that way before.  In the beginning I took life day by day and spent many hours conversing/yelling at God wondering how He could do this to people who wanted a baby so badly.  Many questions went unanswered but somehow, as time went on, I felt my conversations with God shift from anger to hope for a better future to acceptance of all that happened.  I will never, ever, ever say I understand but I accept what we went through and know that I am a stronger person mentally and spiritually than I was five years ago. 

I think about the girls every day but I don't get the overwhelming sad days/weeks that I used to.  Every once in a while though one of those days sneaks up and surprises me.  Unfortunately, this past week has brought me into another slump where I find myself in cahoots with God.  I am currently struggling with why He gives to some and takes away from others.  I just don't understand and although I know I never will, sometimes I just need to vent it out to Him so He knows how much it hurts.

I guess I am just ready for this Easter week to be over.  I mean, there really is nothing positive about sitting in church surrounded by adorable little girls in their dresses while looking at "your little girls"  aka the Easter Lily in front of church you bought in honor of them.   I know I will survive this bit of sadness. I know that times like these will happen to me for the rest of my life.  So,  I will take our Easter Lily home on Sunday and plant it in the garden, I will fight with God about what doesn't seem fair to me, I will shed some tears and then I will pick myself back up and go on with life like normal.   And at the end of all of it, my faith will remain because really, without the Hope that He gave me, my arms wouldn't be full of two squirmy little boys that I love more than words can say.