For at least 10 years now, I have wrestled with my feelings about this particular holiday. While it will always be a special opportunity to honor my own mother, grandmother, and all of the other special women in my life, it also has become a day that pierces my heart every time it comes around. Any of you who have experienced infertility, lost a child, or both, know exactly what I mean. The longing for a child you may never have or the longing for the child you once had runs so deeply through our hearts. And for those of us who haven’t experienced these things, the mere thought of these possibilities in our own lives causes our hearts to be gripped by a fear that can be so terrifying we immediately bury the thoughts by replacing them with other distractions that are more pleasant or at least allow us to function normally.
For me, my first official Mother’s Day came just 3 weeks after Julia’s birth and only 2 short weeks after her death. And all of this was preceded by 12 years of praying, hoping, and longing. It was a lot to take in, and even more to process. I felt so completely overwhelmed by the suddenness and the shock of it all. The confusion and the utter disbelief. The deep sense of loss and the unrelenting grief. And the fear… oh, the fear. Even though my worst fears had already been fully realized, I found that I was rapidly being consumed by a new set of related fears.
This new fear centered around the feeling that between Julia’s absence and other people’s well-intentioned concern for me that it would become easier for everyone to “move on” in such a way as if Julia had never been present in the first place. Of course, no one would ever consciously think something like that, much less actually suggest such a thing to a little girl’s grieving mother. Nevertheless, death makes us uncomfortable. And somewhere along the line, many of us have picked up on the following two theories:
The best way for us to help someone who is grieving is to help them get back to “normal” as quickly as possible.
And the best way for us to handle our own grief is to push any noticeable aspects of it aside after the funeral is over so as not to be too demonstrative and make others uncomfortable.
I was already beginning to see signs of this approach in a few people around me. Some were reluctant to mention her name and would avoid talking about her. Some focused on my own physical recovery from my emergency c-section and the fluid retention that resulted from sitting day and night by my daughter’s bedside in the NICU. On the other hand, there were a few who even seemed to think that I would go back to work the next week, although my doctor certainly did not seem to think that my physical recovery from childbirth or the emergency (read: surgery) c-section had been shortened simply because my daughter did not come home with me.
At any rate, however well-intentioned, these attempts to help take my mind off my loss and place my focus on my physical health and getting back to “normal life” did little to make any of that happen. In fact, just the opposite. The last thing in the world that I wanted was for anyone to forget Julia or avoid talking about her because they were afraid of upsetting me. I had quickly realized how much better I felt when people would talk to me about her, ask to see her pictures, and call her by name. Of course, there were many times when it would bring tears to my eyes, but what many people never realized was that the tears came with or without their presence or our conversations. And there were many times that the tears actually came later in private because I knew people had avoided talking about her or my loss and my grief. While I knew that everyone wanted to make my pain go away, it became very clear to me that it hurt more to avoid the subject than to meet it head-on.
As my first Mother’s Day approached I could sense that my family was unsure as to how to handle the situation. Should they acknowledge Mother’s Day for me or should they avoid the whole thing? With this feeling of awkwardness on my mind, my newly developing fears initially came out in the form of a question to my sister-in-law, Maggie…
Am I still a mother?
There was no longer a living, breathing child in front of all of us to love, hold, and care for, so there was no one present to define me as a mother. As painful as this thought was, it actually led to another that truly lay at the heart of the matter. And this one wounded me so deeply I knew I could not bear to allow it to become a reality.
If my motherhood does depend on Julia’s presence here, does the value and impact of her life depend on it too?
So it was on Mother’s Day that I realized on some level that my motherhood was more about her existence, her life, her value in God’s plan, and her impact on myself and others than it was about my own status as a mother.
Over the next few months, I had thoughts of my own and conversations with others when one of us would express our confusion over God’s plan in all of this. Why would He give us a child after 12 long years of infertility only to take her from us after 6 short days? Wouldn’t it have been more compassionate to just leave us alone in the first place? Why give us this never-ending heartbreak?
But no sooner would that thought cross my mind or ring in my ears that I would shudder to think about wishing Julia away just so I could save myself the heartbreak. And how could I possibly trade away all of the wonderful and amazing moments that she brought to me through 9 months of pregnancy and 6 days of getting to hold and love on my little girl? Every one of those moments is a joy and a treasure that I will carry with me every day for the rest of my life and I would not trade any one of them for all of the riches in the world.
And what about that day I so look forward to when she and I will be reunited in the most perfect and glorious place of all with the One who gave us this precious gift? Would I ever give that up? You already know the answer to that.
So the question then became…
If I wasn’t going to give up the joy of having Julia, how was I going to cope with the grief of losing her (temporarily)? (See some hints below…)
More to come…
Stephany
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Luke 1:30-31, 38 ~ (30) But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.” (31) You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus.” (38) “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered . “May it be to me as you have said.”
Luke 1:45 ~ “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!”
Luke 2:19 ~ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
Luke 2:34-35 ~ Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, His mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, (35) so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
John 19:25a ~ Near the cross of Jesus stood His mother,…
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Hebrews 11:13-16 ~ All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. (14) People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. (15) If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. (16) Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 12:1-3 ~ Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (2) Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (3) Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 ~ Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. (17) For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (18) So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
