So by now you probably know the drill: Write for 5 minutes on a topic without editing, looking back, or stressing, and then moving on with life. So, for today's Five Minute Friday:

On waiting...

Well, as I sit down to write this little piece, I'm waiting for the husband to turn down his computer so I don't have to listen to polka music for the next five minutes while I try to pour my guts out.

No luck yet...

As fate (read: providence) would have it, we've all been waiting a lot around here: we've been waiting for March madness to start, waiting for spring to come, and most recently, waiting for a sweet family member to open her eyes and be healed.

She's a cousin, our cousin, the youngest of the bunch, having just turned 20. She's the youngest of three sisters, but everyone of us thinks she's ours. Over three weeks ago she was admitted to the ICU with severe pneumonia which was found out to be H1N1 and several infections and tubes and tears later, yesterday she was about to leave us. So we - my sister, my mom, my cousins and aunts and uncles, and several hundred other friends and strangers - waited yesterday for news, any news, and a miracle. It just did not seem possible that she could die.

So we waited, and prayed, and tried to trust, and cried... and when the wait was over and the machines switched and the lungs drained, the doctors and the sisters and the mom and dad waited and saw that she began to breathe easier and the numbers began to go up and she slowly, so slowly, began to turn a corner...

I've waited for a lot of things: babies, diplomas, support, signs, but never have I waited for something like this. Never before have I waited for - and then seen, even from afar - a miracle. And still, we wait and pray and see that she just might get better... but before that, there will be a lot more waiting.

So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try...

Eliott

5 years ago I was pregnant. It should've been great news - we had been trying for nearly a year for our second baby. But it was never meant to be. I had no idea I was pregnant until it was too late and the baby was gone. As an ectopic pregnancy, there was no chance for survival, and in the subsequent two weeks (discovery, blood tests, diagnosis, then finally surgery), I grieved. A lot. After it was all said and done, I spent a good amount of time in mourning, exhausted by the process and devastated by what never was. Then, news of Ella. Joy quickly replaced pain and we moved on.

But now it's 5 years, and I'm feeling it this year. I say to myself that it was never meant to be. That there would be no Ella, no Asher, and probably no me. I try to convince myself that it was an inconsequential loss and nothing compared to what others have suffered. But for some reason, 5 years later, I feel it in my heart and in my belly... and I know God is in control and that He actually saved me and gave us a second and third chance at more children and healed me of the unknown condition that caused it all in the first place. But I do wonder... why did there have to be a baby? Why did it have to be a baby that was sacrificed to save me and our future family?

Still, I thank God for it. I cry, but I thank God. I get angry, but I look at Ella and Asher, and I thank God.

And I look forward to meeting Eliott, who gets to spend his whole life and eternity seeing and knowing Jesus.

************

So, anyway, a story I wrote when I was pregnant with Ella.

A SMALL, SACRED GRIEF

I lost a baby once.  Not in the lost-in-the-mall type of way.  But as in: one day there was a baby growing inside me, and the next day… not.

My story pales in comparison to others I have heard.  I made no plans, picked out no names, painted no nursery.  I did not know I was pregnant.  I did not know until it was over and the baby was gone, and all that was left inside me was a grapefruit sized mass on my right fallopian tube, the result of an ectopic pregnancy. 

I was in pain and sick for weeks, but I did not know why until minutes before I was wheeled into surgery.  If the mass was not removed, I would most likely never have another child, and I could quite possibly bleed to death.  Even then, the thought that panicked me most was the removal of the mass.  Was the baby alive?  Was it not?  Was I “removing” a viable child?  No… this pregnancy was doomed from the start. 

An ectopic pregnancy is the implantation of a fertilized egg on a woman’s fallopian tube, not in the proper housing: a uterus.  The bleeding for weeks beforehand was the actual miscarriage; the surgery that followed was to repair the damage.

As fate would have it, within a week of my miscarriage and surgery, this exact scenario played itself out on Grey’s Anatomy. I watched this episode thinking how selfish I was for grieving something so small and insignificant (I thought the acting was a bit on the melodramatic side).

After the deed was done, the baby gone, the mass removed (along with fallopian tube and ovary), I had this overwhelming sense of guilt.  I told myself that I hadn’t really lost that much, when I had seen other women in my life suffer much more tragic losses.  I have seen a friend endure three consecutive miscarriages.  Seen as from a distance: through heartbreaking emails and silent phone calls.  I have witnessed a woman grieve the loss of twins, and heard her cries as she not only grieved for herself, but for her older children who had no blueprint for grief and who could not yet understand why their siblings could not be born.

My pain seemed so inconsequential.  I didn’t even know!  I never felt that excitement and unadulterated hope!  This baby would never have been born!  Nothing really to grieve, right?  My problem here was so small in light of all the women I knew who had lost so much more and braved the future, minus one.

And this is when God spoke to me, maybe for the first time.  Weeks after my surgery, as I laid in bed still feeling this suffocating weight of both grief and shame, I heard God say to me, “No pain is too little for me to not bear it for you.”  Ok, He didn’t actually say it, but in my heart I heard it.  He was giving me the permission to grieve because He had given me this script to live out.  I believe that God gave me this small thing - an unknown baby - so I could rest in Him, cry out to Him, and rely on Him for the strength to endure.  I do not know if I could have survived had God given me more, but He gave just enough for me to bear, wanting me to submit this burden to Him.

So I grieved for myself, and for my husband.  I grieved for my son who did not know to hope for a sibling, but who was affected by our sorrow.  I grieved for the loss of my baby.  But I rejoiced in the sweet peace that comes when you rest in Christ.  I can rest in Him because He who suffered the most for me, did it so that He could comfort us in our sacred and small moments of pain.