We will deliver her tomorrow

May 12, 2011

I want to give an update because it must seem like things have been pretty quiet over here for the last several days and there may be some confusion about what is going on. Last Saturday morning I was admitted into the hospital to start an induction and allow our baby to be born “naturally.” After 4 days being separated from my babies here at home, my doctor finally consulted with the specialist again. I am (not surprisingly) in the small percentage of people whose body resists such an induction. In fact, my body was doing everything it could to retain this baby, and even still protect her. The nurses kept telling me that my body believed it was much too early to deliver a baby at only 20 weeks gestation, and even after several different drugs, my body was not letting go of this baby with out a fight. (No problems with preterm labor here!)

It was very hard to be away from my family for all those days, and I was ready to move on. Everyday the nurses listened to me voice my frustrations, concern, and sorrow for the kids who needed me at home. Some of the nurses even prayed with me, asking the Lord to touch my body and release this child within me (just the shell of a baby who had already gone to be with Him anyways). For whatever reason, the Lord didn’t decide to do that.

Instead, the doctors decided that the best route of delivery would be a D & E surgery. This is not pretty, and this is not what I expected would be the end of my precious child—but like I said—it’s only her shell I carry now. Still, we were hoping for the privilege of seeing her, getting her handprints, and experiencing a natural birthing process. None of these hopes will be realized with the D & E surgery. As disappointing as this is, at this point, we just need to be able to move forward.

We are realizing more and more, that the Lord is asking us to be willing to give up everything for Him. This is not only a sacrifice of my sweet baby to the Lord, but also a sacrifice of the hopes I had for the way she would depart. Probably no single part of this has happened the way I would have liked it to, but I am learning to surrender everything to Him.  I love what I read in the book, “I Will Carry You.” The author reminds us of a woman named Mary in the Bible, who shattered a very valuable bottle of perfume (estimated to be worth approximately $30,000 in our economy) over the feet of Jesus and wiped her hair along His feet as a form of worship unto Him. She compares the perfume bottle that was shattered to the valuable “bottles” we all hold dearly now. She says, “I still struggle with my false sense of control. In the weeks and months that followed Audrey’s death, I could feel my fingers tighten around the bottle He was asking me to pour out. My three daughters, my husband, my house, my parents—everything I could physically put my hands on—felt dangerously out of control…If you have been through this, you will know that what I am about to say is true. It never brings relief. The more we try to cling to our babies, our jobs, our bank accounts, the more we realize that they are not ours.” (pg. 123)

I know I am not elaborating much on this story, but it is worth studying and it applies to a lot of the things in our life, including my own situation. In short, I have broken my perfume bottle over the feet of my Lord and am pouring it out. I am fully surrendered now to whatever He is asking through this offering.

The plan is to go to the specialist’s hospital now (UC Irvine) in the morning and remove this little (one pound) baby from my body. If all goes as planned, I can go home about an hour and a half after surgery and resume “normal activities.” The thing is, I don’t think I’ll ever be “normal” again, but I’ll be just the way He wants me to be. Forever changed and armed with an entirely new testimony and sense of surrender to Him.

A couple last blessings in all of this that I want to mention: One, the fact that the Lord has chosen to preserve my body and spare me a c-section in this loss (granted everything goes as planned tomorrow), and two, that we have been presented with an amazing opportunity to minister to a person who performs abortions on live babies. I don’t think I would ever be in a position to talk to a person who does this type of thing and the fact that the Lord has brought us into contact with this woman causes me to believe that He wants to use us even in her life.