When He Loved Me Anyways.

But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  – Isiah 43:1

      I learned at an early age what it felt like to feel unloved. In fact, every time my mother handed me over to another foster home while mentally unable to care for me, it caused me to question if anyone could possibly love me a little bit more. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t get it. What could I have possibly done to deserve to be ripped from my home….from my familiar? Why was I not loved enough? What was wrong with me?

   I would continue to ask myself those same tough questions…and to try to find blame for years to come. Each foster home I would encounter would once again cause me to fear that at any moment….that at any wrong doing, I could have to pack up my few belongings and walk out of that front door into another social workers back seat. I strived to be perfect. To do the right things. To say the right things. I lost all sense of who I really was in order to be accepted, kept, or loved. I was good at it….really good at it. But through doing it I also did not get to learn what it felt like to mess up….and to be loved through it all.

  Broken, I thought I found love for the first time in the backseat of a boys car….but those few minutes of feeling wanted quickly turned in to even more shattered dreams, guilt, and abandonment as I stood on the front step of my then home and watched as he drove away to never be seen again. I wanted so badly….so desperately to be somebody’s somebody.

  As an adult I brought to my marriage insecurities, unfulfillable expectations, and resentment. I struggled to find myself as I alternated between my true self, and who I thought I needed to be to be loved. I questioned my worth when my husband raised his voice, I became frightened when we didn’t disagree or he didn’t live up to my expectations, and I watched in desperateness as he would drive off to clear his head, wondering if he was going to come back.

  When my children were born I became anxious that I couldn’t be the mother they needed or that I wanted for them. I wondered if they would grow up resenting me for the lack of material things I could not afford to buy, the mickey mouse ears they would never wear on their heads, or if they would remember each time I would ever raise my voice at them. I loved them deeply, so unconditionally….but it wasn’t until Audreys death that shook me to my inner core and left me shattered in a million pieces that I was finally able to see that I had been loved all along.  

    He had been with me every time I stepped foot through another doorway of a new home, I was already wanted as I stood on the doorstep watching that boy drive away, and I have always been loved through every mistake I have made sense then.

  As I began to pick up the pieces of my life…..of myself… I was shown that I had the opportunity to throw out the broken, to fix the damaged, and to restore the forgotten. I will never forget the life changing moment when I realized that I have been somebody’s somebody all along. Somebody that knows every single wrong doing and bad thought I have ever been guilty of. Someone who has continually not only watched every time I have fell against his words, but has welcomed me back unconditionally with open arms regardless of the crime. Someone I cannot hide from.

  Not only does he love me through the pain I have caused myself or the hurt I have been given in life,  but he has loved me regardless of the pain that I have caused to him…to His Son. That even though I am the reason for his blood shed, and his scarred hands he still loves ME.

  So today if you are feeling inadequate, unappreciated, or unloved. If you are sitting there questioning your worth, or your faith…..left wondering where to go from here. 

Remember this one thing;

That regardless of the world we live in. That never less the numerous ads and articles that tells us our worth is in our image, in our home, in our relationships, and even in our children, that we in our selves are enough. That regardless of whether we are known to the world, he knows our name. That in the brokenness of abuse, of divorce, and even death…he will always remain our familiar.

 Because we….we are HIS.

To The Medical Examiners Office Of Nova Scotia…..

        You don’t know me. In fact, you have never seen my face before……but you have seen my daughters.

        After my baby girl suddenly passed away, my heart not only broke to learn the grisly news that she would be leaving my hands for yours…but as a parent…as her Mama I was frightened. Scared not because I didn’t know what an autopsy would entail, but because I knew it was going to be performed on my most precious of treasures.

    I was given no choice but to entrust you with my beautiful little girl. I had no other alternative but to physically release her from my desperate arms that awful afternoon and watch helplessly as she was carried out of the hospital room to be handed over to you.

  See, I felt guilty. I felt anxious. Part of me felt responsible for her death and you were going to be the place that would provide me with the answers I needed to move on. You were going to be my healing…….my closure. When your call came that next day to tell me you could find nothing…..no cause as of yet, I was devastated…. yet I remained hopeful that the answer would soon come.

   But it didn’t.

     My husband and I waited impatiently for months, we called insistently, we got angry, and we cried. We became disappointed in the lack of compassion, empathy, and support we were given. We almost gave up every time we were greeted with an annoyed voice at the end of the phone or we never received a call back as promised.

   But we didn’t.

   See, my daughter, my Audrey was not my job….she was my life. She was to me what you leave your work to go home to each night. She was not a lifeless body or a combination of slides and tissue samples….she was full of life. Her smile could and still can brighten even my darkest of moments.

   Thirteen months later, when frustrations and exhaustion had finally set in…..you once again cheated me of my closure. Reading through those two pieces of tear stained papers, the words “Undetermined” killed me more a little bit each time. 

  You wrote, ” Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a classification  that has been used in infants one to twelve months of age for whom no environmental, anatomic, or functional cause of death can be identified…..many who certify these type of deaths prefer the classification of “Undetermined”. As I continued to read how you had found no changes that would have had revealed themselves if my baby girl had suffocated, but how you did find that my sweet girls case was identifiable to SIDS….. you also went on to say because of bed sharing, that because of my choice to pick up my baby and lay her beside me…that because of your new system based on what you “prefer” to call these tragic sudden deaths…..that my Audreys death would forever be undiagnosed.

   I want you to know that your “preference” will always haunt me. That your undiagnosis will forever cause me to think what-if? I want you to know that this case may be over for you….that this report may be filed away in some back room never to be looked at by your eyes again, but that I……but that other families in my position, will continue to see it every single day for the rest of our lives.

  So today…..as I sit in anxiousness……anxiousness that I could have been responsible….anxiousness that I could have prevented it….and anxiousness that I may never truly know an answer……..

  I am thankful that my God is bigger than you.

When The Proof Is In My Arms.

 

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. “~ Romans 8:28

     Asher,

Three-hundred and sixty five days ago you were merely the size of a blueberry in my tummy. When some would consider you nothing but a cluster of ever changing cells… to me you were a child. My precious child. To me, your fragile life became a new hope, an answered prayer, a promised blessing, and an indescribable feeling of Gods amazing love for me.

Today you are four months old. You are and always will be cherished and loved. Not only by me but by your Creator. Your life so far has been nothing but a breathtaking tale of hope, faith, and healing. A story that proves with exhaustion, comes endurance…….and that with fear, then comes peace.

Because of you I have never been so thankful for middle of the night wake-up calls. I have learned to see my unwashed hair and sweatpants not as battle scars, but as badges of honor. Thankful that I have been chosen to be a part of this battle in the first place. I am so blessed to be a part of such an awesome testimony of Gods love and redemption.

Your beauty does not just exude from those long eyelashes, perfectly positioned ear dimples, or your round chubby cheeks….but already radiates through your spirit. I have found beauty in your chest as it rises and falls while you sleep…thankful for each breath you take. I have learned to not only be grateful for nap time, but also for your fussy spells in the evenings.

In these past four, short but quickly passing- by months….through you, God has shown me that in my mistake making, grief stricken, messy, and imperfect life…that you Asher are truly living proof of a God that really does cause all things to work together for his good.

Love, Mommy