OUR STORY
It's that moment...
that moment when your heart stops...
when your lungs stop taking in the oxygen...
when all you can do is move.
There is only a singular purpose.
Go to him.
Be with him.
Save him.
If I were to give a survey to the people that know me, most of them would tell you I’m
kind, generous, loving, and I’ve probably even fooled some of them into thinking
I’ve got my stuff together.
The reality is this… I smile to hide the hurt. I
tell people I’m fine and then go home and cry. I kiss my son and then am wrecked
with guilt for how I spoke to him today. I am terrified of those unexpected
visitors who might see my house a mess or see me wearing the same pajamas for
the 3rd day in a row. I put so much pressure on myself that some
days I’m so overwhelmed that I get physically ill and honestly, I find myself
angry at the hand we’ve been dealt and that anger often spills out and hurts
the people that I love the most.
I pretend to have it
all together because I want to have it all together. I pretend to have it all
together because if someone were to see the real me, the messy me, then they
might think about me what I believe to be true of myself… that, well… I’m a
mess.
The Mess Spreads
Life really started getting messy about a couple years ago. We have
been trying to have more babies pretty much since our first son was born in 2003.
Unfortunately, until 2012, I hadn’t been able to conceive again until...
In February of
2013, while on vacation, I miscarried for the fourth time in a little over 12
months. I was now able to conceive, but can’t carry our children for more than
a month or two before we lose them. It shattered my world each time.
These losses spurred a conversation between my husband and me. What did we want
our future to look like as a family? One thing led to another and we decided
that my husband would join the military…at 39 years old!! I know it’s a
leap…miscarriage to military, but somehow we made it. As soon as we returned
home from vacation, he started the process. And a few months later, he was leaving
for boot camp.
Jumping back a bit…
In hopes of adopting, we pursued foster care and on April 25th, 2010, I got a call asking
if we could take a little boy who had just been born that day. I was over the moon!
Of course, I said yes, and the next day I went to the hospital to pick him up.
He was barely 5 lbs and was so wrinkly and pink. He was also
born drug affected so for the first few months he was pretty much attached to
me at all times. Being held was the only way he was comfortable while his body
adjusted to the drugs not being in his system.
As time went on, we were all but
guaranteed that we would be able to adopt him. I was over the moon. I loved
that little boy. Our whole family loved that little boy. Once again my world crumbled when early
in December of 2011, we were told that our sweet son would be returning to his birth
parents.
He was just shy of 2. He had only seen his parents about 2 dozen times
ever. He called us mom and dad. Our biological son and he were so attached that they insisted
on sharing a room even though there was plenty of space for them to have their
own. But still, CPS was sending him home. We were devastated.
On December 23, two years ago, his social worker came to
take him home. We had lost our baby, we had no idea we would lose him again not even two years later.
Thankfully our contact with him didn't end there. In a short amount of time, we had worked out an arrangement with his birth mom to take him every weekend and sometimes during the week as well.
Since our sweet boy had been home, he had developed
asthma and it was a constant battle to manage it. We all managed the best we
could though and he was doing well. He was so smart and loved tractors and
trains and while his life at his parent’s house may not have been my ideal for
him, I knew he was loved and I was just thankful that we were able to have as
much time with him as we did. Even after he left our house, we were still mom
and dad.
In December of 2013, when I was dropping our son off at the end of our visit, I saw the
condition of their house. It was a mess to put it nicely so I offered to come
the following weekend to help his birth mom clean. She took me up on that so on December
13th, I went to her house and got to work.
She needed to run an errand so she left our son and his little brother at the
house with me.
Our sweet boy was so excited that I was there and we spent most of the
time working on the dishes together. He was drying the dishes,
and he said, “Mommy,
I’m a good dryer. Aren’t you proud of me??”
Of course, I gushed over the job he
was doing. His asthma hadn’t been great that day so having him stand in one
place helping me was better than him running around. After some more praises
and hugs.
He said “I love you, Mommy.”
About an hour later, his mom came home
and he was back to calling me by my first name. It made me smile to know he had that
figured out. He was a smart kid. After a few hours, I left to head home. It is those moments that I will never forget.
I got home and was getting some work done and about 11:30pm,
my phone rang. It was hiss mom.
I still replay what I heard next.
They were
at the hospital and my son had stopped breathing. I needed to come immediately.
I was in total shock. I instantly hung up and started moving. I was terrified. I kept telling myself that he would be fine. God wouldn’t
take my sweet boy that I’d already lost once. I had just seen him a few hours
ago and his asthma hadn’t been any worse than it had been hundreds of times
before. Surely his mom was exaggerating the situation, but still, I knew I had
to get there.
I started feeling pretty frantic and probably broke every traffic
law there is trying to get to the hospital all the while praying for God’s
mercy on my sweet boy. What should have taken an hour took me about half that.
A nurse took me back to his room and there was my sweet boy lifeless on a
table hooked up to machines that were now black.
My baby boy that was so tiny
and helpless when he was born, was gone.
A million things rushed through my
head including that somehow what I was seeing wasn’t real.
His mom was
there and she was a mess and all I could think of was “don’t lose it, because
if you lose it, this girl next to you will never come back from this”.
So I hugged her.
I comforted her, even though the grief was
consuming my own heart.
The thought that not only was my son gone, but I was
going to have to wake his big brother up in the morning and shatter his heart
flooded my mind.
What mother does that…breaks her child’s heart?
A million
questions were going through my head and as we were sitting there waiting for
all of the official people to do what they needed to do; his mom began to tell
me the events of what had happened. She said that his asthma had started
getting bad so she left for the hospital, but that he’d stopped breathing
before she reached the hospital and the doctors weren’t able to get him back.
What
she said after that filled me a mix of even more emotions.
She said “You know, he slipped up a lot and called you
mom in front of me.”
I was instantly on edge. In the foster parent world, it’s
a hard line to toe…the line of being that child’s parent and loving them like
your own, but still maintaining and respecting the rights of the birth
parents. I always felt like we did a
good job with that, but kids are gonna say what they want and while our boy was
smart, I always had wondered what he called us when he was home with his
parents because to us and to him, we were his parents just as much as his birth
parents.
What she said next totally caught me off guard. “It never bothered me
because I knew that you were his parents too and I know that you have loved him
as much as we have.” It was powerful and I
know God was there in that moment.
My husband was able to be home for 9 days at Christmas and
actually made it with 5 minutes to spare to our son's funeral, which I was so
grateful for, but, it was hard planning our son's funeral without him and knowing that he too was grieving without me.
I
have struggled with feelings of doubt wondering why God would let me lose so much in
such a short time. I have struggled with why He would give me a heart for children
and yet allow my life to be filled with the loss of so many. And I have struggled with a lot of anger.
Because our sweet boy wasn’t our son by birth and we didn't have a legal custody agreement, I have had
to justify our relationship and why the grief is so profound. People have said
“I’m sorry for the loss of your friend” which makes
me want to scream!
He is not a friend or acquaintance or some kid that we spent
time with.
He is our son and we grieve for him just as we would have had it
been a son I had birthed.
In all of this I have realized:
I can question every decision I make.
I can even question my
worthiness of grace and love.
And even if the darkness in my heart doesn’t
match what I know in my mind to be true
and my days are filled with “Why, God?” and “Why me?”…
I am redeemed.
I am
redeemed by a God who NEVER leaves and NEVER forsakes.
Just because I may not always
feel God working in my life, doesn’t mean He isn’t.
Just because there are
moments, days, and weeks even that I feel alone, I’m not.
Relationships aren’t
built on feelings and thank God for that because feelings are unsustainable.
Matthew 6:6 in the Message Bible says “Here’s what I want
you to do: find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play
before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus
will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense His grace.”
I have found that quiet place…
the
place where I don’t have pretend to be something I’m not or pretend that I’m OK
when I’m not…
the place that I can show my mess and be challenged and loved
toward living a life more fully with God...
and I am so grateful that God in His
providence brought me here.
