Remembering

On Tuesday, September 22nd, it will be one year since I had my first ultrasound and we saw our baby. It wasn't good news though. The baby was only measuring at 6 weeks gestation when it should have been measuring at 8 weeks. It was too small to pick up a heartbeat. I tried to have hopeful thoughts. Maybe I got pregnant later than they thought. After all, the time period they estimated the conception was during a time my husband was out of town! The very next night I began miscarrying.

This morning I was reading Psalm 42 and realized that this is exactly how I felt for several months after the miscarriage. I was downcast and angry with God, yet I thirsted for Him at the same time. I feel compelled to write out this psalm here. For those of you who are not believers in God and maybe don't own a Bible, perhaps this will speak to you.

Psalm 42

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night,

while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul:

how I used to go with the multitude,

leading the procession to the house of God,

with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and

6 my God.

My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

8 By day the LORD directs his love,

at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"

10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.

Amen.

Keeping Up

I haven't kept up with this blog like I thought I would. Trying to write 2 blogs isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Now that school has started and I'm back to work, it will be even more difficult.

I do want to share a few things tonight though. I'm still in the process of going through a pregnancy loss Bible study with my friend, Kristie. It has been a slow go just because I've been busy and Kristie just gave birth to a baby girl! Congratulations Kristie and family!

I was doing Lesson 8 tonight. One of the things it asked me to do was to name my baby if I hadn't already. Since I was only 8 weeks into the pregnancy when I miscarried, I have no idea whether our baby was a girl or a boy. This is how I answered that question:

If our baby was a girl, her name would have been Claren Jacalyn Johnson. My husband’s favorite grandfather was named Clarence, so that’s where Claren comes from. My middle name was Jacalyn before I took my maiden name as my middle name.

The week before the miscarriage we told our sons that I was pregnant. We told them to come up with a boy’s name because we didn’t have one. In less than an hour, they came up with Nolan. I’m not sure what his middle name would have been.

In my gut, I feel it is Claren who is in Heaven. I haven’t asked Eric if he has a feeling either way as to whether our baby was a boy or a girl. I just always pictured us having 2 boys first and then a little girl further down the road.

I was also asked to write a letter to God about our baby. Here is what I wrote:

Dear God,

I know you are taking care of our child and I thank you for that. Please hold her and rock her and let her know how much we love her and miss her. Tell her that we’ll never forget her and that we can’t wait to meet her someday in Heaven.

I wish she was here for us to cuddle with. I would have loved to have seen her with her big brothers! She would have been spoiled by them! I wish we could see her smile and hear her giggle. I bet she is blue eyed and blond like her brothers.

I would finally have had someone to share my favorite childhood books with…Little Women and the Little House series! And all the pink in the house would have driven her brothers crazy! She would have kept her dad and me young seeing that we would have been 62 by the time she graduated from high school!

Please make sure that she knows my brother and her two little boy cousins. I pray that they are playing together and keeping each other company until the rest of their families are with them.

And please God, keep your hands of hope and grace resting upon the shoulders of Eric and I, especially when our grief washes over us as we go about our days. Someday we will understand Your ways and know the good that has come from our loss. Please give me the words and ways to comfort and minister to other grieving mothers.

Lord, we have given our child over to you. We trust that Your ways are best and that You will be a far better parent to our little one than we ever could have been. Please make her feel safe and secure and most of all, loved.

Thank you God for this third child that I always knew was meant to be, even though she wasn’t meant to be here with us physically. She will always be in our hearts and our spirits.

Amen.

I also want to take this opportunity to plug Kristie's book here. Her newborn baby is actually her fourth daughter, however, the middle two were born straight into Heaven. Kristie has written a book about her experience of suffering through two miscarriages. It is her hope that sharing their testimony of healing will help others going through the same thing. The book is entitled "Unforgotten Children". You can go here to order it through Tate Publishing. It will actually be released in book stores on December 1. Kristie is much younger than I am but has a lot of wisdom! Also, please visit her blog!

I pray that my words here and Kristie's words will help those of you struggling with the loss of a baby. Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments. I really want to minister to families who have faced this kind of loss.

Blessings and love to you all!