"For I know the plans.."

My sweet Baylor and Griffin,

I've only used this blog once before to write to you instead of your brother.  It was just before your first birthday when I wanted to capture how I was feeling about your big milestone.  This morning, thoughts about this week have been swirling around in my head, and I wanted to write them down and share them with you.

Being a parent is hard.  Being a parent after experiencing the loss of a child is a different kind of hard. Every loss parent's story is different, and I can't pretend to understand how the type of loss, timing of loss, or other circumstances surrounding the loss impact one's journey and experience through raising other children.  I know what it feels to lose your firstborn to stillbirth, and I know that experience has profoundly impacted the way I parent you.  I hope that the impact has generally been for the good, although I worry that the constant anxiety I feel around your safety and well-being may one day negatively impact you.

You may remember the special Bible verse that God gave us at the time of your brother's stillbirth.  It was a bible verse tucked into a prayer book that I had read the day before we delivered Morris, and it brought me peace as we said our goodbyes.  For that reason, we call Psalm 94:19 "Morris' verse":

"When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul."

The truth is, while the story of that verse and its meaning has brought me comfort over the years, it has also oddly brought me anxiety.  I began to see songs, verses, and devotionals that popped up about hard times or pain as a foreshadowing of something to come in our life.  There have been many days when I've opened up my inbox to an email devotional with a triggering title like, "Why is this happening to me, God?" and immediately felt my heartbeat begin to rise and anxiety forming in the pit of my stomach.  I've quickly deleted these emails without reading and tried to forget them.  I've turned the radio station when certain songs talking about trails or tribulations began to play.

Earlier this week, Baylor suffered an unexplained high fever that came on in the midst of a round of antibiotics. The doctor chalked it up to a virus picked up on top of an ear infection, and she told us to monitor it and come back if it didn't go away.  Later that day, I opened my email to a devotional titled, "Even If", which I knew would be about trusting God in hard times.  I instantly began to worry it was a sign.  What if the doctor was wrong and Baylor was facing an illness much more serious than a common virus?  I wanted to believe the doctor was right, but for the next 2 days, I was Dr. Google and worried sick.

Baylor has now been fever free for over 24 hours and appears to be on the mend.  As I've thought about my immense fear and anxiety, something important occurred to me.  I'm not really sure why it hasn't before.

God gave us His Word as a gift of love and peace.  He would never intend it to cause pain or anxiety.  I don't know exactly how many verses in the Bible address anxiety and fear, but a quick Google search points to at least 50 verses that instruct us to not be fearful and tell us that God is the answer to the anxiety we feel.

God doesn't intend His Word to cause anxiety, but the Devil has different plans.  The Devil attempted to use God's word to tempt Jesus in the Wilderness (Matthew 4). He still uses it today to tempt us, to make us feel unworthy, and to make us fearful. As someone else on the internet eloquently put it in an article I read, "History is strewn with people who have twisted the Scriptures to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:16 warns us against being fooled.

I share this with you today because I don't want you to live a life of fear and anxiety.  I am not the perfect example of the life you should lead, and this is an area where I struggle even more than most. But I want you to live in the truth that God created you to live a life that is without fear..a life that is full of peace. I want you to stand strong on the promises He's made you.  "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."  Bad things will certainly happen as we go through life together, but your Daddy and I are proof that God will get us through them.

Love,

Mommy

Home

Morris,

A whole season has passed since the last time I wrote you.  We enjoyed a beautiful, but wet summer.  Your brother and sister have grown tremendously in the last several months.  They are capable of full conversations now, and their personalities are really beginning to come through. Griffin loves cars and "Papaw's trucks", and he's full of adventure and always on the go.  Baylor gravitates towards caring for her babies and pets, and she is fiercely independent.  They are the best of friends.

We are moving to a new house next month.  Daddy and I decided a few months ago that we were ready for more space and a yard where Baylor, Griffin and Izzy could play and run.  Our house sold very quickly, and although I panicked about it, we found a beautiful home that we know will be perfect for us. In the midst of packing up this house and planning for the new house, you are heavily on my mind. 

We really haven't announced that we've bought a new house to many people.  I guess I haven't wanted to jinx it since we are still waiting on home inspections and other items to wrap up.  The topic came up with a fellow loss mom through Facebook chat one night several weeks ago though.  I had shared the real estate posting of our house earlier that night.  This friend messaged me, laughing about how she got chocked up seeing my post and how she was feeling emotional about a house that she had no connection to at all thinking about the experiences we've had and the memories we've made here. She reminisced about her experience of finding a new home for her growing family years ago and the bittersweetness of it after loss.

I've known she was right about the bittersweetness.  Leaving this home means means leaving the home where I carried you for 8 months, and it means leaving the home where I have grieved you for three and a half years.

This morning was the first time I realized though what I'm moving on to...a home that will never physically house you.  In the new house, there is a bedroom for Mommy and Daddy, one for Baylor and one for Griffin.  In buying what we hope is our forever home, we planned for the size our family is today, not the size it should be.  It's impossible to not shed tears over a realization like that one.

And yet, you are forever part of our family, which means you will forever be part of our home no matter where that home is.  Our memories from this house will come along with us to the next house, as will treasured items and trinkets and pictures.  I know that you will always find a way to be part of the love and laughter that fills our earthly home, and you'll be our connection to the home that is being built for us in Heaven.

Home is where your heart is, and part of my heart is always with you.

Love,

Mommy

Legacy

Sweet Baby,

It's been a long time since I've written you. It's harder now than it used to be - I rarely have time to myself, and when I do, I tend to enjoy a cup of coffee and relax.

Our Finch family is back!  We spotted them the first time in Spring of 2015, just a few months after you were gone, when Momma Finch built a nest in your special Morris wreath on our front door.  A few weeks later, we celebrated when five sweet baby birds hatched.  I was sad that we had to throw away your wreath (the baby birds had distroyed it), but I was happy knowing that Momma Finch had gotten her family.  Since Finches tend to return to the same spot each year, we removed the wreath from our front door last Spring.  But I forgot this year, and to my surprise, I opened the door the other night and Momma Finch flew out.  She has 4 little eggs snuggled safely in her nest this year.

It seems silly to tell you that a rush of emotion hit me when I realized she had rebuilt her nest in our wreath.  It's weird how something like that just takes you back to what you were feeling at some long ago time. This Finch family represented so much hope for me in 2015, and I felt so grateful to watch them experience a second chance at happiness.  They gave me hope that one day we might see the joy restored to our own family, and by the grace of God, we did.

Barbara Bush, former First Lady, passed away last week. She was an amazing lady, one who understood the depths of grief that come from losing a piece of yourself.  She lost her daughter Robin, just three years old, to leukemia in 1953.  Barbara talked about Robin often over the years.  Grami shared this quote from her with me:

"The death of a child is so painful, both emotionally and spiritually, that I truly wondered if my own heart and spirit would ever heal...I soon learned that I could help myself best by helping others...it wasn't until Robin died that I truly threw myself into volunteer work.  That precious little girl left our family a great legacy: I know George and I care more for every living person because of her.  We learned firsthand the importance of reaching out to help because others had reached out to us during that critical time."

Barbara Bush was a beatiful and inspiring woman.

Last week, Daddy and I took Baylor & Griffin on an early morning walk in the neighborhood then decided that we should go get breakfast.  We went to a small diner down the street that makes everything homemade and only accepts cash (pretty uncommon in today's world).  As we walked towards an empty booth, someone I knew caught my eye. She was a mother in the Pregnancy Centering Group I participated in when I was pregnant with you.  Her daughter, born not long after you, was sitting beside her.  We exchanged hello's, and as we sat down at the booth next to them, Daddy asked me how I knew her.  Suddenly, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn't get the words out.  In that moment, all I could think was that you should be in the booth with us.  Our Saturday morning breakfast should have come with a fifth placesetting.

This happened before Barbara Bush passed away, but hearing of her death has made me reflect more.  The former First Lady carried her grief for 65 years.  Sixty-five years that her daughter Robin wasn't there to blow out her birthday candles.  Sixty-five Christmases without gifts under the tree for Robin.  Sixty-five years spent with a deep longing and wondering of what would have been...and thousands of breakfasts with a missing placesetting. The thought of living with grief that deep for that long is soul-crushing.  Yet, I look at your sweet brother and sister, and I hope that I am lucky enough to do the same. Even more, I hope that we leave a legacy for you through helping others in the same way that Barbara Bush left one for Robin.

Today Grami and I will be walking in your memory at the Sadie Rose 5k.  As you watch from above, I hope you know how much you are loved and missed.  I think Barbara said it best when she said, "Robin to me is a joy. She's like an angel to me; she's not a sadness or a sorrow." I feel the same way about you, sweet Morris.

Love,

Mommy

Rest in Peace, Barbara Bush. I am crying tears of joy for your sweet, longawaited reunion with Robin.