On Friday we found out through the 20-week ultrasound that our baby is not going to make it. The baby has a number of severe abnormalities and the pronosis is terminal. The doctors suspect it is a chromosonal issue but that has not been confirmed yet.
I've obviously been doing a lot of thinking and praying these past few days and I decided to start typing them out so I would remember the blessings that we have experienced these last few days and to help in the grieving process. If I decide to publish these entries they will be published only after a time lag, mostly because I haven't had a chance to tell people yet.
The biggest blessings have been our doctors at Tepeyac Family Center. They are obviously encouraging us in the decision to carry the baby as long at he or she lives and providing us with perinatal hospice care. Our church family has also been a huge blessing to us, offering us help and inviting us over for meals and such. Our other two children have also been a wonderful blessing. After telling Dylan that the baby will go straight to heaven to be with Jesus, Dylan very easily put two and two together and said "so we'll see the baby when we get there." (I'm learning a lot about the emotional capacity of a 4.5 year old. He doesn't cry about the baby because he knows we'll see him or her in heaven yet he had tears streaming down his face this morning because we ran out of raisens for his cereal.) When we are sad, Dylan preaches to us and reminds us of the joy of our salvation. Lydia (in her 2.5-year old demanding voice) tells me to sing in the car when Dylan's VBS CD is playing (for example "How Great Thou Art" or "He Reigns"). It has been a good reminder for me to make sure I'm singing and talking to the baby in case he or she can hear us since this may be the only chance we get to talk to him or her alive.
Other than these blessings we have also seen the work of God supporting us in all this. From leading us to Tepeyac to giving me the wisdom not to tell work that I was thinking about leaving to giving us two other wonderful children before this loss, God has definitely lessened the blow from this devestating news. I shared this with one of my pastors over the weekend and he said "oh the sweet, compassionate sovereignty of God." Amen. Even last week, I had just read (and posted here on my blog) probably one of the most applicable Bible verses to apply to our situation. The Pharisees ask Jesus why a man was born blind, did he sin or his parents and in John 9:3 Jesus answers them with "this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in his life." I have no desire to ask why. (Maybe why us? but not in the sense of why is God making us suffer but why is God trusting us with helping to display his works.) So I also see God sustaining us with His peace in our hearts at this time.
