Like a Flood

I have met a lot of amazing women and gotten to share a lot of hopes and heartaches. I love how God has used our hurts for good. It is so comforting to find His grace in all of the heartache. A lot of the time I get to rejoice with women as they bring their babies into this world and get to take them home. Today was not so lucky. A women I met through an incompetent cervix support group asked for prayers last week because she was dilated and her water had broken. I admit when I heard this I thought the worse. I expected she would deliver within 24 hours. Fast forward to this week and she was still holding on to her baby with all of her might. But as I have found out from personal experience, you cannot carry a baby to term by sheer will itself. Today she delivered her baby way too soon. Her daughter's heart beat for an hour and a half and then she was gone.

I am still surprised at the rush of anger, grief, hurt, and sorrow that overcome me when this happens to others. It brings back my hurts, but it also makes me feel an almost physical pain when I think back to the day we lost Mason and think of all this woman will have to endure in the coming days.

Unless you have not been there, you cannot imagine the overwhelming pain that comes with having to pick an infant sized casket for one of your babies. The pain of picking music for the funeral when you can't think clearly, but you want so badly to convey everything this child meant to you and the change in your life because of them. The emptiness that comes in the days after the funeral when you wish a person could simply will themselves to pass away so you can be reunited with your child. The hole in your heart that feels so big and raw that you don't understand how everyone is not able to see it. The effort it takes just to go to work, church, family functions and try to put on a normal facade. The anger that comes because you expected to have a normal facade. All of this is something I hope to never have to go through again. I would not wish it on anyone, and yet here is a woman who through no fault of her own will have to endure it. My heart hurts for her and my prayers go out to her. Please ask pray for her as well in your prayers tonight. She is going to feel like she is drowning in a flood of emotions, but I hope in the midst of it she reaches for the only lifeline available. The love and peace of our Savior Jesus.