Watching Goodbye

There is nothing, nothing, that can prepare you to watch someone say goodbye to her child.

No amount of training or imaginings or books about loss or stories of fellow adoptive parents or birthparents can come close.

A year and a half ago, this all felt different. We knew about our son's birth mom, heard about her pain, her sadness, even in the midst of certainty of her decision. But we didn't actually know her. We hadn't hugged her or seen a picture of her. We didn't know what her voice sounded like or how wide her smile was. We didn't know why she made this choice.

Now we know.

And while I'm overwhelmingly glad to know these things, to have these mysteries solved, I also sometimes miss the ignorance.

Because in the ignorance, I could not feel her pain.

In the ignorance, she was just a member of the "adoption triad", someone we treasured in spirit, whose courage and bravery we honored. But she was not particularly real to me or to my son. Intangible, somehow.

And with the new tangibility comes new pain for all of us.

To sit across from a woman who looks you in the eye and thanks you for loving her sons. To watch her glance down at the baby in her arms and hold him tight, unsure if she will ever choose to see him again, if it would be too painful to answer his questions. To hear her whisper words of love and heartache and watch a tear fall, landing on his little hands before she hands him to you to take home.

This is to see pain at its deepest.

So maybe I've been a little quieter about this adoption. Maybe there has been a little more of the bitter than the sweet in these early weeks because I cannot remove that image of mother and son in the moment of goodbye. I don't think I ever will, nor should I. I pray that it will, in the hardest moments of parenting him, remind me of her deepest sacrifice, her hardest choices, her unfathomable pain- and my deep, humbling privilege in calling him "son" alongside her.

And sometimes I think "Is that what God's face looked like? When he said goodbye to Jesus? Was it that mixture of deep anguish and hope that I saw on her face? Is what she is feeling a small taste of God's own huge sacrifice?"

I can't ever know but it makes me pause this time around with the enormity of what adoption means.

And, in the pausing, thank God that, despite all the pain, he has brought us all together- the beautiful woman, her precious sons - our family, that looks more beautiful than we could ever imagine but that will also have deep scars underneath the beauty. Scars of goodbye and loss and grief.

Sometimes in the church we like to paint adoption with rainbows and unicorns, but this is hard stuff, friends. Deep, soul wrenching choices that last a lifetime.

So while I treasure the coos and the first smiles and the sweetness of his big brothers holding his hand or kissing him gently on the head, I treasure it with the knowledge that their first mother is missing it. And while we cuddle him and teach him to call us mom and dad, she waits for texts and pictures, living in the reality of life after loss, her arms empty of that little boy she cuddled not even two months ago.

I am grateful for God's comfort and hope on the days when her loss feels bigger than my joy.

The Silent Loss

They call it the Silent Loss. The Invisible Death. You can go through it without a single person besides yourself having any idea it's happening. And no one can possibly warn you about how hard it will be until you experience it. Possibly we think it will be an easier loss because we've bought into the lies of our culture that tell us it's "just a fetus." That dehumanize what from the instant of conception is unequivocally life, and beautiful life at that. For many people, the minute the little stick turns pink, that child is a baby, a little life on the way, with cribs to plan for and maternity clothes to buy.

Perhaps since I've been so honest on this blog about our own story of miscarriage and infertility, I find myself often aware of people who have gone or are currently going through the loss of miscarriage. Just in this last month, my heart has been broken three times alongside friends who have shared this news. And you know what people say? It happens all the time. It's common. Which unintentionally, or possibly intentionally, communicates that we should recover quickly from it. Get on with our lives. But you know what I say? There is nothing common about death. Every loss is unique, every baby has the right to be mourned. There is no such thing as "getting on with" something when you've lost a child. That loss will always be a part of your story.

I daresay the stats would support that if you are reading this you fall in one or both of two categories: someone who has experienced miscarriage for yourself or someone who knows someone who has. And let me be frank: if you don't think you know someone, you do. That's where the whole invisible thing comes in. Someone in your life has been through this. And after 4 years of processing, reading, ranting, praying, talking, listening and hoping, I've come to some conclusions about this silent loss. I share them today to stand in grief with my friends who are currently going through this. I love you, God loves you and I wish with all my heart you didn't have to go through this.

(1) You are never ready for how hard it is going to be.  There is no other way to say it. It's death, it's not expected and it hurts a ton. It doesn't matter how "early on" you were nor should you let people tell you it should hurt less if you were "only" a certain number of weeks along. It's real and painful loss.

(2) You and your spouse will likely grieve it in very different ways and wanting said spouse to grieve the same way you do will only add conflict and pain to your grief. Let him or her grieve their way and try to move towards each other as best you can even if you can't understand the other's process.

(3) Don't try to "get over it." Accept that this loss. Just like if you have children who have lived, this little one will always be a part of your family's story. Ignoring it in the vain hope that I'd eventually stop being sad didn't work for me and I doubt it works for many people.

(4) Don't try to replace that baby. Sometimes when we lose a child we rush back into the "trying" phase again under the false expectation that another pregnancy will heal that pain or fill that void. That is a unique child you lost - no other child can or will ever replace him and you are setting yourself up for even more pain and confusion if you expect a pregnancy to solve your problems.

(5) Expect the due date to be a hard day. You may have lost your baby at 5, 12 or 20 weeks. No matter how early it was, that loss is valid and that due date will feel like a sucker punch.

(6) Know that social media will be a minefield. Seriously, you can't swing a cat on facebook without hitting a pregnancy announcement or a photo album of a wrinkly, red newborn. Some days it won't affect you and you may even be able to rejoice with your friends, other days you will feel like someone is dancing on your heart and shouting "look what we have that you don't!" Try not to take it personally, shut down the computer and go for a run. Or sing 80's music at the top of your lungs. You know, whatever works. 

(7) God's sovereignty is tricky and people who try to comfort you with it maybe don't have it right. People might say "she is in a better place" or "God must be causing this to teach you something." Um, yeah, that's not helpful. None of it. Do I believe that anyone who is already in eternity is categorically in a better place - sure, God's a pretty awesome being to be around. Is that a comfort when I want my baby in my arms? Not really for me. Maybe for some people, though I can't say. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? Nope. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? Nuh-uh. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? No freakin' way! Can you tell this was a particularly hard lesson for me to learn?  My God is not vindictive or manipulative. He is love, he is good, he is life abundant.

(8) Church is hard. It just is. Most churches seem like baby factories, pastors talk about being fruitful and multiplying (can we PLEASE talk about context with that one!) or quote passages about God closing or opening wombs and everyone on the playground asks intrusive questions about how many kids you have. And nobody talks about miscarriage in public. Ever. We church people don't know what to do with it when our whole lives we were told that babies are blessings and God wants to trust tons of them to us to raise. But what do we do when we don't have them- what does that do to our understanding of blessing and God's role in fertility? Boom. Yes, that was the sound of my head exploding. There are no quick answers here. Sovereignty is tricky and since about a bajillion books have been written about how it works, many of which differ in their conclusions, I will not attempt to write the final word on it here.

(9) You are not being punished. This didn't happen because you parented a first child wrong or because you didn't learn some lesson God wanted you to learn. God is good. Satan is not. God hates death. Satan loves it. Bottom line.

(10) Life's not fair. You can't expect to only go through a miscarriage once - it could happen again or it could be followed, like us, with years of unexplained infertility. And it's fruitless and petty to keep score with other people on who has had this whole thing the hardest or easiest. If you could, I'd be mad at every woman I saw in Target who had 4 kids trailing her. It is my firm belief that Satan is having a field day when it comes to the fertility question. Miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, abortion, SIDS. None of those are from God. Not one. But trying to ask for fairness in the world is futile. We live in a broken world and no one, NOT ONE OF US, is guaranteed justice, fairness or freedom from pain while on this earth.  That is only reserved for eternity.

(11) Remember it. Some people get tattoos. Some have memorial services. I got a necklace with our daughter's would-be birthstone and wear it almost every day.  On the 4th anniversary of the miscarriage I named her because I could no longer bear to call her an 'it.' Not everyone needs to do this the same way- but if you choose to remember, you won't try to replace her. And if you don't try to replace her, you might actually find yourself starting to heal.

I could probably go on and on. If I'm totally honest here, I wish I hadn't learned these lessons or that I had learned them through research rather than through experience. I wish we hadn't gone through it. I'm certain that God has remained present and taught me amazing things as I have clung to him but I will never be, nor do I have to be to remain a God-honoring believer, thankful that it happened.

What I am thankful for is that I didn't stay silent. Oh, I did at first as many of you know. I hid it, I ignored it, I insulted my friends by not trusting them to love me in it. But eventually, I let people into it. Some of them didn't say the right things. Most of them did. We can't expect those around us to respond perfectly all the time. But we can risk letting them (maybe one person, maybe ten) know that we will not suffer our loss silently or, perhaps more importantly, alone.

The Naming

It's been over four years since we lost our second child. That first year was full of pain and secrets and transitions. The second year was full of questions and anger and the first stirrings of healing.The third year was full of hope and waiting. This fourth year has seemed to roll all three years into one huge, emotionally chaotic experience. One constant, though, through these four years has been the namelessness of that little one. Calling he or she an "it" or a "baby" but never being able to refer to that child with a name. It's kept that baby distant from me. Nameless, far, removed. 

When I first began to share what had happened, that loss, people always asked me how far along I had been. And each time I was asked that I was reminded again that our culture, including myself, thought of the pain as less real, as that child as somehow less human, the earlier its death had occurred. So with each asking of that question and each increasingly timid response of mine, I felt that my pain should be somehow less than it was. This wasn't really a baby, it seemed. Just a positive pregnancy test. Just a blip on a screen. Nothing that should have had a hold on me.

But it did. SHE did.

I've written recently about the time I spent at a retreat center. During that time, God was very present. And though I hadn't spoken to Him about our miscarriage in a very long time, I felt the freedom to bring it up again. To bring the loss back into the light. To ask some hard questions. And all the while, I grew tired of saying "it." I began to wonder, for the first time, if it would be alright for me to name this child. This faceless little one that I never met. And the moment I asked the question, I already knew the answer. Why not? God already knew this little one, had already given her a name, knew her intimately. Why shouldn't I? And as I sat there, just listening, just being quiet, I knew two things. I knew she was a girl and I knew her name was Amara.

How do I know that? No idea. Does God regularly speak audibly to me? No. But there was just this absolute quiet and a sudden knowing. And I have never been more sure of anything in my life.

That night I got home and looked up the meaning of the name Amara. I've actually never met anyone with that name. I hadn't chosen it in the short time we had to plan for her birth. And as I looked it up, I was astounded to see that it means "eternal beauty." After all, this is the only kind of beauty that I will ever get to see of her. The beauty of getting to carry her little body for a short time and the beauty I will see in her when I one day pass on and finally meet her. Eternal. Not earthly. Not here and now. But someday. And forever.

Recently I stumbled onto an e-book titled "Naming the Child." In this book, the author, Jenny Shroedel, describes infant death as "the forbidden room." It's a place no one wants to go, an off-limits place full of painful memories, secrets, images. A place no one wants to engage or deal with its stirred-up questions.

But it's a place all too frequented by so many of us. Because we don't want to speak of it or burden others by the silent deaths, we keep them silenced. We don't name these little ones. And for some people, I recognize, the naming will only be too painful. It's not what they need. But for me? This has been a long-awaited step of healing. Naming this child, naming this daughter has once and for all helped me to unashamedly declare that she IS. She is not a positive pregnancy test, she was not just a blip on a screen, she should have and still does have a hold on me. She always should.

For three of these years I have worn a sapphire necklace just about every day, the birthstone of the month she should have been born. Sapphires, a symbol of truth, sincerity and faithfulness. And the day I named Amara, I stumbled upon the following scripture:

"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, 
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, 
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you. 
O afflicted one, stormed tossed and not comforted, 
behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires."  Isaiah 54

I would never have asked for these four years. I would never have wanted to lose our daughter. I would never say those trite words that "this is for a reason," like some have said to me, but I do know one thing. Amara is a gift. And the years I've experienced after her death have been years that have changed me in different ways than maybe her birth would have. I'll never really know. I cannot. But since I cannot change the fact that I will never know her this side of heaven, I can continue to hope. I can be reminded that God's steadfast love has not departed from me during this time. I can, every time I glance down at my sapphire, be reminded of a precious baby girl who is a part of this family and is treasured.

Amara. Of Eternal Beauty. You have been named. You are no longer an "it."

You never were.

Five Little Words

"How far along were you?" You get this question a lot when you have a miscarriage. It's usually the first thing someone will ask and I don't think it's asked with any hurtful intentions. But last January, when I was going through a long and drawn out miscarriage, with ups and downs, positive days where hope prevailed interspersed with blood tests and ultrasounds, mood swings and private pain that ultimately ended in the death of our unborn child, those five little words ended up changing the course of my life. You see, for some reason, I interpreted that question to mean that if I wasn't "far enough along" in someone's eyes, then my pain shouldn't be as real. That the shorter the pregnancy, the less I should have felt its loss. In the grand scheme of how long a pregnancy is, we weren't very far along. We hadn't really told anyone. But here was this little life inside me, with a potential birthday looming and all the preparations and joys of expecting and waiting for him or her were already very prevalent in my mind. And that life was cut short. I never got to meet my second child. And for some reason, I felt like I wasn't allowed to dwell on it, that I needed to just put my chin up and keep going. So that's what I tried to do.

18 months have gone by since that final blood test that confirmed that everything was finished. Every day I think about those words that different people spoke to me, I know, out of care for me, just wanting to know my story. But even now, I still feel angry with myself when I experience pain over this. Even now, I still don't feel like I ever let myself grieve, like I never had the right to really be upset about it. I'm still waiting to experience a whole day where thoughts about that child don't enter my mind. And each month that goes by where there's not that promise of another child is just one more painful reminder of that loss and the fact that I never really dealt with it.

I've never been the most open person, never particularly great at letting people love me. This blog has been one big lesson for me in openness, in taking risks relationally, albeit through the written word. Since the first day I started blogging, I've wondered if I'd ever feel freed up enough to post a blog on this topic. It's felt way too risky, felt like something I wasn't allowed to share, something I should be "over." But the bottom line is, I'm not. I didn't grieve well when I should have and so all these months later, I'm still unsure how I feel about the whole thing. I still don't have closure. I barely even shared the experience with people I knew loved me and probably would've let me cry had I let them love me.

The bigger question that I've been pondering, though, is why I interpreted that one question so destructively. Why I took gentle questioning for accusatory denial. "Get over this quick, you weren't far along! It's not a big deal!" No one actually said those things to me and yet that was what my mind heard. It heard not love and care for me but scarcity, disdain and impatience. Maybe that's what I feel for myself when I experience something I'd put in the category of "drama." I've always been vastly impatient with the dramatic, which is one reason I can't watch even 30 seconds of reality tv before becoming either overwhelmingly angry or having the almost irresistible urge to live somewhere where television doesn't exist. I disdain it, I get frustrated with it, I revere rationality and even-headedness. I don't want to get worked up about much, to dwell on pain or anger, to really feel much of anything if you really get down to it.

So what do I do? Where do you go when you were supposed to talk through something almost two years ago but that still feels like fresh pain? And how do you do it when the last thing you want to do is actually do it? When you still feel like you shouldn't be feeling what you're feeling.

I have no answers tonight, just questions. Five little words that have left me with gaping holes in how I understand healing. One question that has come back to me each and every day for months on end. The only thing that has been sure as I've continually returned to this is that I am not alone. There were times in this last year where I wondered where God really was, why things like this happen and why I was so unprepared to deal with it. The only answer I've really gotten in the midst of it all is that He is with me. No deeply theological and profoundly comforting statements on suffering, no answers to the why. Just a very gentle reminder that I am loved deeply by Him.

For now, I will have to let that be enough.