Hope in Jesus

I've been putting my hope in other things lately.

I've noticed I tend to pick up my phone a lot. I used to pick it up and open the Bible app when I needed hope. Lately I pick it up hoping there will be a text or email or message of some kind bringing inspirational words or words of comfort from a loved one. I cycle through the apps on my phone endlessly opening and closing them looking for hope.

I've also been blindly holding on to a promise I haven't been given - that there are rainbow babies at the end of this storm. That this isn't the end of new life coming to our family. That my body will in fact be able to "get it right" next time and that maybe it won't take as long or be as hard next time to get pregnant. Holding on to the hope that my story will reflect T&M's or K's and not B's or A's.

I've been putting my hope in Michael to fulfill his promises to me and come home on time each day even though my head knows better.

On the drive to my BFF's last weekend I listened to a podcast from Joyful Mourning - a Christian podcast with an online blog and support group for moms of pregnancy/infant loss - and a mom talked about how she'd prayed so hard that her daughter with anencephaly would be born alive. But that prayer wasn't answered. She talked about putting her hope in the Lord.

I have a whole laundry list of prayer requests for God. So many "no"s from this year and yet admittedly many "yes"es as well. The yeses have given me courage to keep asking despite the nos.

And the stories from women in my support group of their yeses have given me the idea to make a list for God. One woman recently in my group shared a whole list of prayers that were answered for them. The one that stood out to me is how badly she wanted to be able to bring her son home and sit with him in the sun in her yard. She got to do that.

I want Abigail to be born alive.

I want her to have the palmar grasp reflex - for her to hold my finger with that strong newborn grip from her little hand. The closest thing to a hug a baby can give.

I want her to be born seeing and hearing so that we can look into each others eyes and she can hear every bit of my tone and every word of my "I love you. You're so beautiful."

I want to have enough time with her to not be rushed. So that we can hold her and spend time with her for as long as we want before inviting others in.

I want Theo to get to meet her alive.

I want the people who need to meet her most to be able to meet her alive.

I want wonderful, beautiful, full color pictures of her. And I want really great, clear 3D/4D/HD pictures of her face from an ultrasound still too.

I want videos to keep of her forever and ever.

I want to get to celebrate Halloween as a family of 4 - whether she's still in my womb and overdue or she's been born and still hanging on to life.

I want postpartum recovery to be painless this time. (What? I pray big prayers, alright! A girl can dream.)

I want her passing to be peaceful. I don't want her to have seizures at all or to show any signs of struggling or being in pain.

I want to be holding her with Michael when she goes. I don't want to miss it.

I want her birthday and her death to be on different days.

I want her birth certificate to be a birth certificate. Not a stillborn certificate.

You know what? Shoot. If I'm praying big prayers, then here:

I want to bring her to church. I want to have her dedicated with all the other babies. I want to take her trick-or-treating with her big brother.

I never want to stop holding her. I want to rock her in a chair and read her stories and sing her songs.

I want to hear her voice.

I want to keep a lock of her hair.

I want God to heal her.

But the mom on that podcast didn't get a yes to her prayer. And B came over on Wednesday and shared how after her first loss she got pregnant again only to lose NJ at 20 weeks. How heartbreaking it was when she had thought she was supposed to get to keep this one, this one was supposed to be her rainbow baby.

And as I reflected on those two stories, I realized I need to restore my hope solely in God. Not in my phone. Not in sinful coping mechanisms. Not in Michael. And certainly not in the false promise that my faithfulness or God's goodness requires Him to compensate this suffering with a specific comfort or reward.

God has not promised Abigail will be born alive. He has not promised we will make it full term. He has not promised we will have any more surviving children. He has not promised a rainbow.

In fact...the rainbow only ever represented a single promise and while I'm not opposed to the term "rainbow baby" I think for a moment there I forgot what the rainbow was created for and decided it represented something God never intended. The rainbow has actually fulfilled its promise: Jesus. He came and He bore God's full wrath so that no one, and certainly not the whole earth, ever has to face His wrath again. Jesus was and remains the only true promised rainbow baby ever born.

So I confess that I have not coped well recently. My hope has not fully or exclusively been in the Lord.

At the end of my weekend away, as I opened my Bible app to do my reading plan, I had it on my mind that I was withholding this confession and I wondered what today's Psalm would be about. God has a way of bringing the confession texts to my attention when I need them. Sure enough, today was Psalm 38. A confession Psalm. David was being disciplined by God and he took responsibility by acknowledging he fell short and then says:

Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God (Ps. 38:15).

After meditating on that Psalm I journaled: I have no desire to let this go on so long that God has to get my attention through more firm discipline. So I've decided to confess and now, Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God. I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin. Lord, do not be far from me.

After saying goodbye on Sunday, I plugged my phone in to the car stereo and turned on a completely different episode from a completely different season of The Joyful Mourning Podcast.

I wish I could tell you the answer I got was that I'm being silly and overly harsh on myself and that of course God is going to grant all my requests. But it was eerie what was actually shared.

The guest shared that she had two babies with anencephaly. (Her second specifically had acrania but the conditions are so incredibly similar that the terms are often used interchangeably)

I kid you not, the mom literally said that she realized when her second was diagnosed that she had been putting her hope in the assumption that God would never let her go through this a second time. That it couldn't possibly happen again.

She had been putting her hope in a rainbow promise just like I have been. And she learned the hardest of all ways that putting her hope in anything less than or in addition to Jesus does not work. Because we are not guaranteed those answers.

I heard a new song this last week - "Evidence" by Josh Baldwin. And as I think about that song in conjunction with all the stories I've been hearing in the past couple weeks and with the question of where I'm placing my hope, these lyrics stand out to me most:

See the cross, the empty grave The evidence is endless All my sin rolled away Because of You, oh, Jesus

If I look at just Abigail's anencephaly right now, it's hard to see how God is good. If I look at the "no"s others have been given, it's hard to see His goodness. But even in this circumstance I can say with Baldwin "I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life." I don't know if that's the message you're getting from reading this blog but I can't even look back at the hardest of these entries and not see how God is present and good and working in the midst of it all.

If this happens again...the infertility or God forbid the life-limiting prenatal diagnosis...I fear it will be very hard to see the evidence of His goodness. But I can make a choice today and every day to not make my hope in Him circumstantial. Ultimately, regardless of what my circumstances look like, the evidence is on the cross. In the empty grave.

Lord Jesus, give me the strength to place my hope wholly and solely in you. Give me the courage to keep asking all those things for Abigail. But give me the kind of faith that even if you do not say "yes" I can still stand firm in you and see your goodness and trust in you.