Skip to main content

Take This Cup

 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

In preparation for Easter, this verse looms around in my head. Also in this season of so many unknowns, this verse aches in my heart. 

We found out I was pregnant a few weeks before Christmas after trying to get pregnant for 11.999 months (as Ike says.) We told family and close friends on Christmas and in the weeks after. Then at 11 weeks, during an ultrasound, we learned the baby had fluid on the back of his head/neck, called a cystic hygroma. This could mean a million different things - will it go away in the months following or will we have a child with a severe disability or will he reach full term? We did genetic testing. We waited. Two agonizing weeks of waiting to hear results. Which came back normal. And a BOY! One excitement among the muddied trench of unknowns in this journey. 

I almost hesitate to call it a "journey." That term has connotations of long suffering and in the world of baby making a "journey" normally means nothing went as usual and I just hate that. Our experience has been doctors appointments, dreaded doctors appointments, waiting in the exam room knowing something wasn't right but not knowing what it was yet, phone calls to get appointments and referrals worked out, the awkward moment over the phone when the nurse changes her tone once she opens my chart, hearing the health professional say one thing but then my medical friends and family question it (and back it up with research.) 

We have gone to one appointment at UVA with Maternal Fetal Medicine and with Pediatric Cardiology but we left with fewer answers than we entered with. We go back again in 4 more weeks. 

And all of that weighty unknown in the tension with hope. Holding in both hands the desire for a perfectly healthy normal pregnancy and yet being grateful for the gift the Lord has given us no matter the details or dashed expectations. The line "your will to be done, not mine" feels like a stab in the hand that reaches out for answers but does so in hope knowing that He is good and that He is in fact interceding for us (Romans 8:34). 

The feeling of acceptance in the pain yet hopeful he will take this cup away. Not because we don't want a child with a disability - we will love any child God places in our family. But because as a parent, you want your child to be healthy, to not be limited physically or mentally, and you'd do frankly whatever is needed to orchestrate that healing. 

So we sit in the in between space - the tension of asking for this cup to pass but also asking for his will to be done. Trusting, hoping, and (trying to be) grateful in the waiting. 

Also - no we don't have a name and even if we did, we won't tell anyone until he is born. Waiting is hard isn't it? :) 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 32 - How grief changed me

 I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts.  I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years.  In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work.  First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “...
Post a Comment
Read more

Books for the Grieving

We received books on grief from lots of different people who have walked through different types of grief, loss, or suffering. I wanted to share the ones I have read (some I finished, some I did not) and which I love.  And hopefully in sharing these, if you are grieving the loss of a child or know someone who is, here is a resource for you.   A Grief Observed by CS Lewis - a book for all seasons of grief, a book that I will probably return to again and again.  Holding onto Hope by Nancy Guthrie - this book spoke directly to my heart because it’s about child loss. And it walks through the story of Job. I could probably read this every 6 months and it would speak to my heart in a new way each time. Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff - its short and concise, a love letter in some moments and a stream of thoughts on death and grief after the author's adult son dies hiking/climbing.  We actually read this in Uganda for an Apprenticeship assignment and I rer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 19 - Joy in the In Between

That phrase makes me roll my eyes sometimes. Joy in the in between. It feels like a quick way to brush off the troubles you are living amidst and force yourself to just "be happy" instead.  But, I think I am missing some of the sentiment of the phrase when I let my jaded heart get in the way.  When I look back at pictures from the days between Jack's second surgery and when his soul left this earth, I do see joy. I see the faces of my family members who came to see him for the first time. Like my grandparents meeting their first great grandchild. My friends coming to swoon over him even with all of his tubes and unable to hold him. I see photos of us with Jack, holding his hand, enjoying every moment we had with him knowing it was a gift, a miracle.  There was pain and sorrow during those days, of course. But essentially joy in the in between is life. We are living right now in the "not yet." We live among pain and sorrow daily (often not as grave in severity...
Post a Comment
Read more