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Friday, October 15, 2010

Held, four years later

Today--October 15th--is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

In the past, I have sat alone and pondered the emptiness and loss with aching arms and a grieving soul. With shaky hands, I scrolled the archives of my blog until I found this post, which I read solemnly, quietly, waiting for more tears to come.

This year, there were tears, too-- but they were the tears of someone who has been given eyes to see. As I thought about the years of fruitlessness, I pressed my newborn daughter to my breast and breathed in the scent of her sweet baby head. Not my will, God ... but yours.


Nothing can take back the pain I have felt. No one--not even my beautiful little Seven-- can replace the little ones I never got to hold. But it's true: time, growth, and new blessings can ease some of the hurt.


I still remember. I still mourn. But I do so with new hope. I am, after all, still being held.







5 comments:

Traci said...

::sigh:: you know where I stand where I am being held. You get it.
Sniff Seven for me and give her an extra cuddle for me.

Unknown said...

WHAT A PRECIOUS story. Thanks for sharing your story of how God's grace leads us to miracles. We feel the EXACT same about our precious miracle girl after many years of yearning... HUGS!

Missus Wookie said...

I didn't know it was a national day - thank you for sharing the story and reminding me that being held isn't the same as having everything go the way I'd like. Good reminder and much needed just now.

Enjoy those baby snuggles.

NotaSupermom said...

Beautiful picture. Enjoy that baby!

John Albiston said...

Thank you so much for sharing! I think that this issue needs to be raised in the church far more often than it does. For all our church-talk about believing that life begins at conception we do a *very* poor job at recognizing that those who suffer a miscarriage have lost an actual child. Their grief needs to be respected and honoured.

While I’m not a Catholic, at least they have a special ceremony for parents who have lost their child through miscarriage. We, on the other hand, tend to look the other way and pretend that nothing happened. I think it is time that we put our actions back in line with our beliefs and start showing a lot more care and concern for these grieving and hurting families.

Sorry for the rant,

John