A Little Life Inside

June 30, 2018 | 1 Month I walked through a fatal diagnosis & am now on the other side of it. The doctors were right. Our baby Mila did die. May 31st. It was the saddest, most painful experience of our lives. But we are not alone. The Lord is near to the broken-hearted (Psalm 34:18), and He surrounded us with a whole army of support, and with many other broken, bereaving mamas who came alongside me to understand me, encourage me, and give me practical wisdom for the hardest journey of my life. Praise God, we made it through the first month. Some friends came over for a couple of hours this week. I haven't felt very social at all. Being back at church was hard. And I knew seeing local friends again, starting up music classes again, and going back to our regular life would be hard. I didn't want to just resume all our normal activities & pick up where we left off as if nothing ever happened. I have to remind myself that just because we're returning to all of our ...

June 22, 2018 | Week 3 Ever since Mila’s funeral, it has been very difficult for me to experience pleasure. It’s hard to smile and enjoy things while my heart is still in such immense pain. Everything in me wants to shut out the happy and wallow in the despair. I remember one day, soon after Mila was born, I made a funny and made Aaron laugh. I let out a chuckle, too, and it literally made me feel sick inside. How can I be laughing at such a time as this? There's nothing funny about anything that's going on right now. Yet over and over I’ve seen the joy of the Lord seeking us out in the midst of the pain, just like the song we sang at Mila's funeral: 🎶 O, Joy that seekest me through pain,       I cannot close my heart to Thee...    🎶 Our 3 older kids went to family camp for the week. I knew they would genuinely enjoy themselves there. While they were gone, Aaron and I had to choose (force ourselves) daily to open our hearts up to this joy that seeks us....

June 17, 2018 | Week 2 Happy Father's Day, Aaron. You deserve to be celebrated. You have been through so much. Because of that, you now love so much more, and we love you so much more. Having lost a child, we think about all the things we miss about her. But now I think about you...what would we miss about you if the Lord took you from us? We would miss your funny and not-so-funny jokes. Your harps. Your hardy har har outbursts of silly laughter. The kids would have no one to help them walk on the ceiling. Your scruff and fluff (and nothing). Your good taste in wine. Your music that I'm always turning down, but that I honestly do delight in. The way you scribble in all-caps. Your ever-growing t-shirt collection, of which the kids love to pick out which one you should wear. We always save the white chocolate chips for you. We get so busy with life that we don't often realize just how much we love you and appreciate you. I want to soak it all up. I remember our Father...

June 16, 2018 | Week 2 I need to go back and read my own birth story. We left that hospital with no regrets. But weeks later, regrets have crept in. I should have sung to Mila after she was born. I should have prayed with her. I should have read Scripture to her. I should have prayed for her by name. All the time she was in the womb, I only referred to her as "baby" because we didn't know whether we were having a girl or a boy (although, now when we look back at the pregnancy, we realize it was Mila all along). I should have called the kids earlier to come to the hospital so that they could meet their baby sister sooner. I look back at the timestamps of the digital pictures (technology...too much info...sometimes better just not to know) and maybe Mila was no longer alive when they finally came in. Her heartbeat was slow at 4:20. We cut the cord soon after. The kids arrived another ten minutes later. I don't remember whether she moved or not on me once they arri...

June 14, 2018 | Week 2 Yesterday, the first day after Mila's memorial service, Aaron stayed home from work. How was he going to return to work after having just buried his daughter the previous afternoon? So he took the day off of work, and we spent the day home together as a family. We did the most mundane things together, but the point was that we were all together, experiencing life together. We went to the grocery store together, and Tillamook ice-cream happened to be on sale, so we each chose a carton and came home and had an ice-cream party. There was an incident that had taken place in our home at the dinner reception, an incident that left us feeling violated, disrespected, and deeply wounded at the already lowest point of our lives. It added a layer of complication to the grieving. Aaron and I had a lot to process from everything that had just taken place, but we wanted to make sure our kids had the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings, too, so we did our b...

June 12, 2018 | Day 12 So many thoughts and emotions on this day, the day we buried our daughter. I will update later, but for now, I wanted to share the slideshow video that we had made for Mila.

June 11, 2018 | Week 2 Death is ugly. It took my sweet baby girl's face and shriveled it. It took her delicate fingers and stiffened them. It was hard to see her "embalmed", but I felt the need to take care of her, whether in life or in death, whether in the womb or out. And even though she is no longer with us, I still feel this maternal desire to nurture her and care for her. I guess this will play out by putting flowers at her grave and having remembrances of her throughout our home. Her shadow box, her pictures. Her videos. Talking about her with the other kids to keep her memory alive inside of our hearts and minds. Even in death, I felt like I needed to take care of her body. I wanted to be the one to do it. I'm Mila's mom, and I will be the one who takes care of her. So I went to the dressing yesterday. I'm glad Aaron came with me. I didn't think I would ever see her face again, this side of eternity, after handing her lifeless body over to the ...