Set Free

God spoke to me through a good friend the other day. I had been agonizing over what to do with the upcoming 2nd annversary of Nicholas' death. We spent last year's 1st anniversary quietly together, also not knowing what to do then.

What complicated it this year is that we are also planning a family trip with other family friends scheduled to start that day and into the weekend. Would we be disrespectful or irreverent or selfish by having fun together on a day that represents something so hard?

As I was trying to sort through my uncertainty about it all, she broke through with straightforward honesty and set me free. If you wanted to celebrate a person, wouldn't you choose something like their birthday? Why would you want to focus on the day they died? There's a difference to giving space to the energy that comes with the hard things that we went through when we had to say goodbye, and to trying to do right by making a monument out of the day.

I realized I was trying to do the "right thing" and by putting myself under that pressure was not giving myself the freedom to process the feelings around that day in whatever way was best. It is not wrong or selfish to spend time as a family together. Celebrating our family in the face of remembering our hard times is what makes us stronger.

Shrapnel

Since I wrote my last post, I've been thinking about shrapnel. About the process by which the human body heals itself from penetrating trauma by slowly and surely bringing the shrapnel to the surface so it can be released.

Instead of jagged pieces of metal and glass, I'm carrying around pieces of a different kind. A broken heart. Shattered dreams. Crushed expectations. And while I live and breathe and work and play and function, it still takes me by surprise when some of these jagged pieces work their way to the surface. I should know better by now.

I remind myself that this is part of the healing process and my wound was not a clean wound. It is one that will take time to heal.

If you're familar with the movie Ironman, you'll remember he had to have a magnetic device implanted in his heart in order to repel the shrapnel in his body that threatened to pierce his heart and kill him. I'm thankful that I don't have to depend on anything that is within my ability to create to protect my heart. My Healer is orchestrating my healing process and knows exactly what I need to ensure the jagged pieces of my wound work their way out instead of in.

Colored With Grief

I don't know why I get so annoyed with grieving. I told a friend today that if anyone else who had been in my situation expected to not experience lifelong effects of grief I would think they were crazy.

What I'm more annoyed with is everything now is colored with it. I've been very emotional lately and if I hadn't been through losing the twins I would have chalked it up to pregnancy hormones and laughed it off. But there's always the question of whether it is something more. Am I headed for another griefburst? Is there something that I'm not in touch with that needs to be released?

For me, grieving is not a continual ache or agony. It is a wistful longing, interspersed with storms of emotional release. It is long periods of peace punctuated with confusion and anger. It's the dark clouds appearing on the horizon just when I'm starting to think it's been quite a while since I've seen them. It's understandable that this pregnancy is going to be emotional. I just wish it didn't need to be colored with grief too.

How Do You Decide?

When we were fresh from losing Nicholas & Olivia, we had genetic counselling. We wanted to know if there was any way to conceive a child free of SMA. A complicated, expensive option told to us at the time was the possibility of creating fertilized embryos, and pre-testing them to determine which ones were "healthy" and which ones were "sick".

The question I couldn't answer was, what do we do with the "sick" ones? Each of them would be the beginning of a child that we created. Destroy them? Leave them in storage indefinitely? We could not go ahead with a procedure that created such a dilemma. [For those readers who have contemplated or gone through with this procedure, please read no judgment into our thought process. This is our personal journey and each couple in this situation faces their own unique way of making this decision.]

Time passed and the decision to try again lay dormant, resurrected from time to time by each of us in turn (usually when the other wasn't ready). What finally started to turn things for me was taking part in the Children's Hospital radiothon earlier this year. None of those parents would have chosen the path that they had been put on, but once on those paths, they would not have traded the experiences they had with their exceptional children for anything. I began to wonder what "healthy" and "sick" really meant, and whether we as a society have the right perspective in seeking perfection when it comes to our children.

I came to the realization that just as we could not make the choice between our "healthy" embryos and our "sick" embryos (they were all our children to us), we could no longer hold back a choice between conceiving a "healthy" child and a "sick" child. We had to lay down our fear and put aside the condition that we would only try again if we knew the outcome would be what we wanted. If we were able to predict the outcome that we wanted each time, would we have chosen to conceive Nicholas and Olivia? It's a scary thought.

Do you ever wonder what you may have missed out on because you were too afraid to try? I don't want to live like that. Because of God's amazing grace, I know He will lead us with infinite wisdom and extravagant love. He has promised good things for our family.

It's OK to Ask

Could it happen again?

Yes. It could.

Will you know ahead of time?

Probably not. We have decided that testing for SMA ahead of time is too risky to the pregnancy and will not change anything anyway. The decision to welcome another child into our family took the risk of SMA into consideration. We actually have a 75% chance of having a healthy child. We will test our baby at birth so that if SMA is an issue we can ensure the best quality of life that we can.

Wow, you're brave.

It is actually pretty exciting to toss caution aside and follow your heart. But I think that anyone who decides to welcome a child into their family is brave. You never know what can happen.

mom_of_4

Well, if you haven't noticed by now, I've changed my username from mom_of_3 to mom_of_4. Yes, we are expecting another child to join our family, around the end of March.

We are very excited and hopeful and continue to believe that God has good things in store for our family. It is quite exhilarating to take this step of faith and open our hearts to get to know another beautiful new life!

A Beautiful Story

This clip is about a family whose son was diagnosed with Trisomy 13 in utero, which meant that he would not live long after birth. It is a beautiful story to watch, but not for the faint of heart...

http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/photography/2009/thomas/

I still find it amazing that such hard things can be so beautiful.
I know. I lived it.