I thought to myself that after all we had been through we, or I, to be exact deserved this. I was due, as they say. It was time for God to deliver on my request since he had said no up until this point on some of the most important requests of my life. I was just sure that since I had prayed and begged once again that this time the answer would be yes and it would be awesome and feel great and wonderful and like redemption to my soul! I had sat many nights imagining the moment and how wonderful it would be. How happy the entire day would be. I thought about the words coming out of her mouth and the feeling I would get welling up inside and the look I would give to Amos and how I wouldn't be able to wipe the smile off of my face. How the entire day and the rest of the pregnancy really, would be this glorious happy celebration. I thought back to several moments in the past year watching others get their yes from God and just knowing we would get ours too. Standing in the card aisle of Target and literally picking up every "congrats your having a girl" card. Reading them all and remembering how it never felt right with Koralyn, we never got to just celebrate and be excited. There was always this dark shadow in the corner by the name of HLHS. Looming when we registered for all her tiny pink clothes, looming when we thought against moving our son to share a room so we could do a nursery for her. Looming as I swallowed my baby shower cake and smiled through my doubt, always looming at every sonogram and appointment. I remember when my dear friend called to tell me her happy news that she was having a girl. The utter joy and excitement in her voice, I could tell what she was having before she could even manage to tell me. After hanging up the phone with her I parked at the Home Depot under a tree and I cried for a good 30 minutes. I cried at the injustice of it all. How while I was so happy for her, at the same time it all seemed so unfair. We had a daughter and she was gone now, due to some cruel congenitial heart defect, really one of the worst you can be diagnosed with. Now to top it off not even a year into her death I was having to watch two close friends have babies, around the same time we would have celebrated Koralyn's much anticipated 1st birthday. It felt cruel and unfair and awful and all the negative you can think. I thought to myself in all those moments, wait for it, I am sure He is having you walk through this so he can give you the desire of your heart and it will feel all the more precious, wait for it Kenda, your reward is coming.
And then it didn't, at least not wrapped in the package I was hoping for and expecting. I had prayed for 17 weeks, or really since the day my daughter had died, that God would allow us to have another sweet girl. This time, whole and healthy and the answer was once again a no! I felt as though I had been hit by a truck, the weight of the sonographers words were so heavy and not what I was expecting to hear at all. The look I gave my sweet husband as he squeezed my hand and smiled down at me with a pained look of his own, was not the joyous one I had planned, but was more one of defeat and utter disappointment. I walked out into the hall and the nurse ushered me to take my blood pressure and weight and all around me were pictures of babies and each one of those babies with a bow or a dress seemed to stab at me, mock me really. I was shell shocked. I held it together until I was sitting on the paper of the exam table in the doctors room and then I just began to bawl. Some sobs shook me as I tried to quiet them and Amos stood rubbing my back and hugging me the best he could. The doctor walked in to my tears and asked if these were tears of joy and relief (which, I know at this point is really what I should have been crying as the sonogram hadn't shown anything abnormal and that sweet baby boy had 4 glorious chambers in his heart). I blurted out that no! These were tears of disappointment and release as this had been the longest week of my life waiting for my happy Friday that suddenly seemed rather blue... Pun intended. He reminded me that some families come in hoping for a boy they never get and I then reminded him that yes, but the difference is I had a girl and she was dead now. He sweetly conceded and said he wasn't going to pretend to know what I was going through and that I was doing very well for all we had been through.
Out in the truck we sat still reeling, I sobbed some more and asked my husband as I always do what he was feeling and thinking. He said he was indeed sad it wasn't a sweet baby girl but that he was mostly thankful and relieved that everything seemed to be healthy and strong so far. Usher in anger and massive amounts of guilt on my part. You see this is the ugly truth no one wants to tell you. I always think its so cute when a first time pregnant couple say "oh we don't care what it is as long as its healthy." I stand thinking bitterly, sure you do, because the world is your oyster and as far as you know if this ones not a boy or a girl the next one will be or you can just keep trying until you get both. I remember being that young girl, pregnant for the first time, not caring what it was just wanting my belly to pop so everyone would know my secret.
Both, how many people have both? Its ideal right? I remember thinking and saying as a small girl that I wanted a boy first and then a girl, that way the boy would be older and protect his little sister. 2 kids, one boy, one girl, the perfect American dream and then you are done and you can work on the rest of your perfect American life. But then you grow up and realize that lifes not that simple and pregnancy isn't easy for everyone and you can't choose your perfect American picture. Some get it, or we think they have it. But most end up with something very different then what they had imagined as little girls playing house, and teens writing the last name of the boy you liked all over your notebook to see how good his name looks with yours. Suddenly then you are that young woman with hopes of having a baby never thinking things could go wrong and that sometimes pregnancy ends in heartache and tragedy. No one tells you that, or if they do you are too caught up into thinking it can't happen to you to stop and listen.
The next few days were a blur or feeling devastated and let down. Crying and praying to God begging him that it could be different. Asking him why, going over in my mind all our friends who were fortunate to have both boys and girls and wondering and inquiring of God why it was that he thought we didn't deserve this privilege. Feeling so let down and heartbroken. The grief of everything seemed to come back in a Tsunami Wave and knock me back out into the middle of the ocean with all the debris floating beside me and no horizon in sight. It almost felt as if I was having to bury another daughter, the one I had imagined now since Koralyn died, the one who was going to come and right all this wrong that had been done to us. The one I would slip into all those precious pink outfits our Koralyn never got to wear. I was angry and so hurt feeling I had been robbed once again. I laid and cried for hours talking to this God who kept seeming to give me no at every turn. A few years ago I wouldn't have been able to really tell him how I was feeling and how dissapointed I was. I grew up thinking that you could never question God or have a negative feeling or emotion towards him or about him. Now I know how silly that is because he knows our hearts even if we choose not to speak them and he is big enough and gracious enough to handle our confusion and hurt. Wasn't it Jesus himself who asked "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?"
A few months have passed since that day of utter disappointment. I have been able to grieve and take the time I need to understand a little why my picture perfect baby girl is not a girl at all but another hairy little boy, as my mom would say. I realize now that in a big way I was counting on another baby girl coming and erasing a lot of my hurt and loss over my sweet Koralyn. I realize now that a baby girl was my solution to my problem, My band-aid that would cover my wound or the crack in the dam of sorrow I didn't want to face. My human, flawed way of fixing my problem. Instead of embracing what God has given me right now in my life I was fighting against it, but in a neat and tidy manner as to not alert those around me.
Isn't that what we have been taught? Everything can be replaced. Something breaks or gets old and ugly? Just replace it! Your wife not what she used to be? Just go out and find a new younger version, Your house no longer as big as you like? Just upgrade! Broken tv, we have several aisles and sizes to fit your television needs sir!! Not happy with your body just go in and have some of the parts tucked and nipped, good as new. It is all such a farce, yet most of us fall for this lie on a daily basis, sometimes on a small scale and sometimes so big it wrecks our lives and the lives of our loved ones. This is the reason so many lives and families are ruined by adultery, and addiction. Why so many of us are in debt with no way out. Because we keep trying to replace what can't be replaced here on this earth. We keep warring against a reality we don't want and digging our graves deeper and deeper in the wrong direction. When what we should be doing is looking up and clinging to the bottom of the cross, the cross that leads up and to the only way out of the hole.
What pressure I would have been placing on that sweet baby girl. To live up to my standards and thinking that she could solve most of my grief. Sometimes stopping to fully embrace our circumstances and grief is exactly what we need to move forward. Its such a bitter taste, to sit and confront your grief. To confront the reality that sometimes God says no and sometimes life really sucks and things aren't "fair" but it leads to freedom and wisdom. Coming to the complete end of yourself and realizing that your best human solution is actually no solution at all. My grief came back in a Tsunami wave because I had just been thinking, soon I will be able to solve this issue and move on once again.
If I have learned anything it is that we are all feeble in our attempts to solve and need something more and far greater then we could ever be to help us every single day. Everything is temporary here on this earth. Our pain, our suffering, our lives and moments with our loved ones. I choose to cling to the one thing that is not, my Jesus. It is hard, don't get me wrong, obviously based on the words above, it is a struggle to set my mind on things eternal. My broken humaness wants nothing more then to right all thats been wronged to me and solve it all here and NOW! As awful as it is to walk this hard dusty road I have been placed upon, I choose to continue down this path knowing that I am still so if not more, blessed now then I was before my perfect life fell apart with the birth of my special needs daughter and the death of my mother. This road is not the paved shiny one most people want for their lives but I believe it is leading me to something greater than anything I could ever imagine. All of my children have taught me so much and I am blessed to now be a mother of 4 precious lives. By God's Grace and goodness, not on my own.
I am very excited to meet the newest little man in my life, Abram Jace. I know he is who we are meant to have at this point.I know that he is a miracle and a blessing to our family. I am so excited when I walk into his sky blue nursery with all the little hot air balloons and think about the blessed days to come. Look at all his little outfits hanging in the closet and know soon a squirmy baby will fill them up!
Three little boys to love and watch grow. Three boys to, God willing, raise and be so proud of. Asa and Asher are so excited about thier little brother and I can't wait to see who he will look like and the little person he will grow into. I am so thankful that God saw fit to answer my prayer to be able to have another healthy and whole child. I pray each day for Abram to grow and be strong and whole when he comes out to greet the world. I thank God each day for what this precious boy has already taught me. I thank God for once again giving me what is best, not what I thought I needed or wanted. Does that mean my want for a precious girl is cured? Of course not! I am just comfortable and happy to say I know Abram is who I am supposed to have and he is wanted so very much. I love him and the One who has given him to me very much. If God one day sees fit to give us another daughter, whether through birth or adoption we will joyously take her. If not, we had and still have a beautiful daughter named Koralyn, who is forever changing our lives and who we will get to see again soon.
"Happiness is not getting something-but being given to someone." Ann Voscamp
Abram: Exalted Father
Jace: A Healing
