ART

I missed my baby on Sunday. Not Ellie or Noah...but my first baby, my miscarried one.
During worship time at church we were singing "Nothing Without You" by Bebo Norman. I absolutely love this song; it has great meaning to me. When we went in for our 12 week appointment with our first pregnancy, we found out by ultrasound that our baby did not have a heartbeat anymore. Though my body still thought I was pregnant and as a result had not started the miscarriage process, my baby's body had already stopped living and growing. That was on September 16, 2004. Our doctor gave us different options to consider and, because the following week we were planning on travelling to California for a youth workers conference we felt that a D&C would be the best choice. That way I wasn't on the other side of the country in the middle of a seminar when the miscarriage process started. On the 18th, which was a Saturday, I had my surgery and started wading through the emotional recovery process.
The Monday after my surgery I was foolish enough to think I could go into work and be fine. Part of me didn't want to take more days off since I didn't have paid leave or vacation, they were just days I wasn't paid. Part of me thought throwing myself back into work would relieve my pain by not giving me time to dwell on it.
As I drove to work that Monday the station I was listening to started to announce the debut of Bebo Norman's new song, "Nothing Without You." They had a clip of him explaining the back story of the song. He was saying he was newly married and woke up one morning and, although he loved his wife, realized that his wife is not his life - Jesus is. And without Jesus, we have nothing and are nothing. I was so struck by it because I started thinking about how I had been placing my trust in my pregnancy. Once that little test displayed two lines, everything in my life revolved around the pregnancy. I had forgotten that the Lord gave me that baby.
I wish I could have at least known what I was having. I would have liked to give him/her a proper name. Instead, I just think of him/her as "ART." The day Tim & I found out we were pregnant we had dinner with our friends, Dave and Holly. While there we were talking about little nicknames we could refer to him/her as. We had joked and somewhat settled on "ART" because it is our initials, but rearranged in a way that could be a name, not like RAT or TAR. I also liked it because I thought of him/her as God's art, His creation He was sharing with us. Like He had painted a picture in my womb.
So I was standing in church on Sunday and we start singing "Nothing Without You." I looked down at the baby I was holding, which was not Ellie, but Eli (both his parents were on worship team this week so I had "Eli Duty" during the music.) My thoughts roamed to ART and all the things that weren't and aren't since God took him earlier than I would have liked. I am thankful to have the opportunity to carry such a life for so little time. I am blessed to have helped conceive and carry for a short time another soul in heaven.
"Take these hands
And lift them up
For I have not the strength
To praise you near enough
For I have nothing
I have nothing
Without You."

So my big idea. Here it is.....I am going to soon be unveiling a new blog. This one will remain the same, with family updates and random thoughts, etc. The new one has a mission that is a passion of mine and dear to me. After my miscarriage, the thing that helped me most in the healing process was being able to hear the stories of other women who had miscarried. I took great comfort in knowing it was ok to feel the emotions I was experiencing and that I wasn't dumb for grieving so hard and so long for a child I had only known for 12 weeks. I felt a connection with these women as they walked alongside me in my healing journey.
I have been compiling stories from some of these women, and more, in the hopes of publishing a book with them one day. I thought, if it helped me hearing the stories of these women than others could probably receive the same benefit. There are not many books on miscarriage - especially within the Christian publishing world - that really help. They do a good job at making you feel safe in knowing your baby is in heaven, but that's about it. Some are even written by men! Although I believe men grieve, too - I have watched Tim - a man cannot connect with how I feel as a woman experiencing this loss.
Anyways, I decided recently that a book is not really a good idea at this time. It is hard to be published, as well as expensive. But I continue to have this desire so it hit me the other day that I can form a blog and accomplish the same thing! I can still collect stories from women and put them on the blog. I am even planning on categorizing it for stories of miscarriage, stillbirth, and loss of a newborn. My hope is that through word of mouth, or people happening upon it, news of it will continue to spread in a way that women from all over can find it and find comfort and healing...to know that they are not alone. Some women need a feeling of closure, and they could find ideas from other women. I am hoping to contact parenting magazines and woman-targeted magazines to give them the blog address in an attempt to get the word out to other women.
Please help me in this. Be in prayer that this idea could work. If you know women who have lost a child through miscarriage, stillbirth or soon after birth, please let me know if they would be interested in sharing their story on the blog. I obviously only have so many at this point and will be forever continuing to look for more. If they are not comfortable with writing it, I could always make up an "interview" type form if they are just needing to know what to say. This is an idea I have been holding close to my heart for three and a half years, something I have wrestled back and forth with on whether or not it could work or if I was wasting time. But then I realized that even if one woman came across the site and found help, comfort, connection in her healing process...if there was a place for her to cry and relate to the stories she was reading, the emotions she was wrestling with that she was too scared to talk to anyone about...then it is not a waste of time.
I found it appropriate that when we finished singing "Nothing Without You" we started "In Your Arms of Love." The tears continued to roll as we sang:

"I sing a simple song of love
To my Savior, to my Jesus
I'm grateful for the things You've done
My loving Savior, my precious Jesus
My heart is glad that You've called me Your own.
There's no place I'd rather be than
In Your arms of love,
In Your arms of love.
Holding me still, holding me near,
In Your arms of love."

Oh, Father, may others be able to find comfort in Your arms of love. You hold us near, you are constant and unchanging and I thank You and praise You that You see what I can't, You know what I don't, and You have promised me that nothing can take me from Your arms of love as long as I remain there. Thank You, Lord. Thank you.