For some reason, Christmas compels me to share a couple. Maybe it’s because there’s so much frickin’ happiness at Christmas, and I remember feeling so desperately unhappy those first couple Christmases. I remember getting the album Snow Angels at Christmas time in 2007, our first one without Felicity.

I have particular memories of playing–no, blasting–this one over and over with tears streaming down my face anytime I was in the car alone.

I don’t want to explicate why it was so comforting to me. That’s not how music works. If it grabs you, it grabs you. If it doesn’t, then no amount of my explaining it will help you feel what I feel when I hear it. It punches me in the gut still today, in the best kind of gut-punching way.

Don’t forget to pray this week for people shedding more tears this Christmas than sharing smiles. Remember them. Listen to a song for them. Light a candle for them. If they can’t ask for the white horse for Christmas for themselves, hold out hope for them and ask for it for them.

White Horse
(Words and Music: Detweiler)

Bring me a white horse for Christmas
We’ll ride him through the town
Out into the snowy woods
Where we will both lie down

Underneath white birches
Our faces toward the sky
We will make snow angels
With our white horse standing by

Hush now baby
One day we’re gonna ride
Hush now baby
Our white horse through the sky

Bring me a white horse for Christmas
We’ll ride him through the snow
All the way to Bethlehem
2000 years ago

I wanna speak with the angel
Who said do not be afraid
I wanna kneel where the oxen knelt
Where the little child was laid

Hush now baby
One day you’re gonna ride
Hush now baby
Your white horse through the sky

No bridle will he be wearing
His unshod hoofs they will fly
Keep a watch out this Christmas
For that white horse in the sky

Hush now baby
One day we’re gonna ride
Hush now baby
Our white horse through the sky

Hush now baby
Let every angel sing
Hush now baby
One day we’ll ride again

I recommend it if:

• it feels like the holidays suck
• you’re battling for joy at Christmas
• you’re in the throes of a grief journey
• you know someone on a grief journey

Maybe you fit into all those categories.

So if you want a good cry at Christmas (I personally love crying) go ahead and hit play. If you want to wait til you can have that good, cleansing cry, wait til later, light a candle or ten, and then hit play.

I love the sentiment of the song–we’re gonna grieve. We’re gonna grieve hard at times. And then there’s still going to be joy for some things, too.

That’s the epitome of the holidays if you’re in the early days or months of a grief journey. There are times when it’s just hard. Christmas? That time of family togetherness? What if you’re family isn’t together and never will be this side of heaven? And what of the warm, fuzzy feelings? What if there are none of those? What if they’re further off and farther between than they’ve ever been?

I know some of you who are experiencing your first Christmas without your son or daughter. They should be there. They should be gathered up in your number, bundled into coats and carted off to Christmas Eve service. They should be whisked off to Grandma & Grandpa’s house and endlessly adored by all privileged enough to know them. That’s why it hurts, right? They should be there.

We’ve had four Christmases now, and I still cry. And somehow there’s still joy at Christmas.

There’s Still My Joy (by Indigo Girls)

I thought I’d post the lyrics here too so you can read along:

I took my tree down to the shore
The garland, and the silver star
To find my peace, and grieve no more
To heal this place inside my heart

On every branch I laid some bread
And hungry birds filled up the sky
They rang like bells around my head
They sang my spirit back to life

One tiny child can change the world
One shining light can show the way
Through all my tears, for what I’ve lost
There’s still my joy
There’s still my joy
For Christmas day

The snow comes down on empty sand
There’s tinsel moonlight on the waves
My soul was lost, but here I am
So this must be amazing grace

One tiny child can change the world
One shining light can show the way
Beyond these tears for what I’ve lost
There’s still my joy
There’s still my joy
For Christmas day
There’s still my joy for Christmas day

It’s been four years now, and I still have a desire to buy you something, Felicity. (Will that ever go away?)

It’s been four years now, and I wish I could see your eyes light up with excitement over the decorations in the kitchen for your birthday breakfast. (I wish we were busy tonight with last-minute birthday preparations, instead of sitting here writing blog posts.)

It’s been four years now, and I often find myself wishing I knew what you’d like. (Would you be a chocolate cake girl like mama?)

I’ve been working on this scarf for myself for months, Felicity. Months. The hubbub of our lives prevented me from finishing it until this week. So now it’s my birthday present–to you…for me; for you…to me. I don’t know…

But I love it. And I know I’d love you more.

Daddy calls it the “Starry Night” scarf. I like that.

There’s been a lot of dark nights since we lost you, no stars in the sky. Just the black expanse. I remember one night a couple weeks after you died, I was out in the country and we turned the light off to sleep and it was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. That was year 1 and year 2 without you. So dark. So paralyzingly dark.

But then, just like a night sky, stars began to appear, little glimmers breaking through the pitch. They’ve lit my way a bit. They’ve taken the edge off of the darkness. They’ve shone some beauty into something so horrific I thought it might swallow me whole (and at times, wanted it to).

So for your birthday I’m gonna wear the Starry Night scarf. It’s from me…about you.

Someday we’ll see the stars together the way they were meant to be seen.

love

care

protection

nourishment…just over.

And while I know it’s not truly over, but that her son has true meaning and value in this life (and in the next), I feel the rawness of her loss sometimes as though I’m re-living some of my first days and weeks. It’s been a hard, but good, thing.

Here’s something I’ve been reflecting on the past couple weeks:

When we say to grieving people, “Oh, I can’t imagine” we might be saying “I don’t want to imagine.”

I say that because, if we took a few minutes and put ourselves inside that person’s situation, we would (in part) imagine.

And I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that anything less than that is not love or care.

Now, there might be people who say, “But I’m not a mom…” or “I’ve never lost a baby…”

“…when someone loses their baby, I really can’t imagine, because I’ve never been there.”

(I’m using my example, a stillbirth, as the example here. You really could fill-in-the-blank with any tragedy or heartbreak you’re seeing someone through.)

And while that’s valid on some level, it really isn’t the whole story. I have dear friends who aren’t married, have never been pregnant, and yet are extremely sensitive and caring about things they haven’t experienced. It just means that they’ve taken the time to enter into someone else’s heartbreak.

And no, you won’t imagine it perfectly, because it is what it is–an imagining…an image. You will probably never understand what it’s like to labor for hours with a dead baby. You’ll probably never understand how it feels to have terrors in the night, horrified that you forgot the baby somewhere or awakening to imaginary baby cries.

And I’m not trying to be overly dramatic here. These are real things that really happen.

I think another reason we shy away from imagining is that it’s not going to be pretty or comfortable. It’s often horrific and terrifying and depressing. But it’s your friend’s reality.

Real love gets into the trenches of grief and suffering. It imagines. It lets it’s mind’s eye linger. Real love will not avert its eyes. It won’t say, “Your disaster is too much for me.”

As I’ve watched friends walk through tragedies like mine in the past few years, or some others walk through tragedies very different from mine, I’m trying to be really mindful to not say, “I can’t imagine.” Because in some cases, it’s all I have. It’s the only window I have, with my puny little brain, into prayer, into continued love and care for that person–imagining their pain, imagining their grief or loss, imagining their ongoing need and brokenness.

Imagination is what will take you closer, even when you feel very distant from the situation.

I think we underestimate imagination. We shut it down too quickly, afraid we’ll either presume too much understanding or that it’ll just hurt too much.

You might be wondering

What do I say in that uncomfortable moment, when all I want to say is ‘I can’t imagine?’ What are some alternatives?

I think it would be okay to say, in the most heartfelt and heartbroken way, “I can only imagine.” And then go on from there, telling them some things that you’ve been thinking and feeling on their behalf, how it’s led you to pray, whatever. This communicates a love, a presence in their pain–even if from a distance.

Let’s gather the grieving in our imaginings. You might find it to be a powerful point of connecting, doing what you can to understand.

Orison came to the door and announced, with a big smile, “It’s boy time in here, and girl time out there!”

Then a couple minutes later he ran out to the “girl time,” kissed Cadence, and said to me very brightly and happily “I wish Felicity was right…[pointing to the empty space on my lap] there.”

He flashed me his million-dollar smile, backed up a few paces, then jumped, face upturned, and kissed the sky.

We miss you, little girl. And we’ll throw kisses at the sky for as long as it takes until we see you again.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_9GNQwEB3o

It was amazingly timely, too, because last week, a family in our church suffered a 35-week-gestation stillbirth. And for a relatively young church who hasn’t experienced much death or grief, people came around them so well.

I was particularly struck by the line:

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short?
Come on up to the house.
The seas are stormy
And you can’t find no port.
Come on up to the house.

What I took from it was a simple confirmation to just come to Jesus. I feel like I can hear it in ways I wouldn’t have been able to when we were so freshly living our tragedy. I also felt like I was able to call to mind times that I was able to “come on up to the house” in the last three years that changed me in such deep, irrevocable ways.

And I’ve experienced his welcome every time I’ve come on up.

This is a video of Alice Sommer, the oldest Holocaust survivor alive. She’ll turn 107 next month.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw

I was moved and heart-broken by so many things she said. I don’t think everything she said is spot-on (the whole “music is God” thing), but I want to run it through the sieve of Truth and hold onto the lessons that are worth learning, namely, that I have a choice to love. I have a choice to be joyful in difficult circumstances. I want to take what’s true and beautiful here and let the Holy Spirit point me to Jesus.

And while I’m not comparing her Nazi prison camp experience to my experience of losing a child, I still see lessons and similarities. There’s no use in comparing what she went through and what I’ve gone through. They’re different. But there is pain. Pain is universal, no?

There’s potential for all kinds of hatred and anger in both of our situations (and probably in yours). But can I forgive? Can I move toward healing? Yes. Oh my, yes. I’ve experienced measures of healing I didn’t think possible. And you can hear it in her laugh. Healing exists.

The other thing that I can totally relate to is the power of music. I grew up in a very musical family, and music was a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I love to listen to music, I love to play or sing music, I love to enjoy music.

When Felicity died, when I was going through some of my darkest days, I developed a soundtrack. A song would hit me as I drove down the road, or sat on my bed, and it would inspire my shriveling faith, or encourage me toward (what I felt was non-existent) hope, or meet me right in the midst of my anger and challenge me toward love. I have a playlist now. It’s the “Grief Mix.” I still love that mix. I remember pulling up to the graveside on one occasion, blasting Sandra McCracken’s “Guardian” over and over on repeat and just sobbing until I had nothing left. There was promise there for my soul.

When you go out, when you come home;
like a hedge, like a shield, I’ll be your guardian…

It was as though God used the music to break through the hardest parts of me, and dig into the deepest depths. And it’s funny, because it was like those songs were for me only. It’s like my own little secret language with the Lord. Because no one will hear those songs and know exactly how it makes me feel, or know exactly what I was experiencing the first time I heard it, or know why it has a place on the “Grief Mix.” It’s just mine. I own it for my soul. And that’s kinda like Alice. She owned those Chopin etudes in the camp and they transformed her.

I don’t think music is God. But I do think that there was so much power in it for my healing. God used music to change me.

So I hope you feel inspired by Alice today. And, more importantly, I hope you want to heal.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Hayn1tNpE

My brother-in-law Karsten posted this song on 9/11. I couldn’t help owning it for today, Felicity’s birthday, three years later.

The line that makes me cry today:

Your house is waiting…for you to walk in.

I never saw her steps. What I wouldn’t give to watch her walk into our house–watch her strut around the place without a care about mortgages, utilities, broken stuff. It would just be her home, that safe place she calls hers.

But, I’ll join her at her place someday. And somehow…somehow I won’t regret all the years we spent apart.

Today I do.

After dinner, Abraham’s dad wanted to drive out to the suburbs to look at a treadmill he was thinking of buying from Craigslist. We ended up driving through a deluge on the way, which made the trip memorable and funny at times. Seriously, the wind was blowing so hard that the water laying on the street was moving uphill. Lightning and thunder were crashing everywhere around our little minivan.

With my trusty mother-in-law navigating, we arrived at this really nice suburban home and were greeted by a beautiful woman in her mid-late 30s (I’d guess). Dark brown hair, very fit, very smiley. She started demonstrating the treadmill for my father-in-law and things were going well. The rain had let up considerably so I got out of the van to go take a peek.

There’s no hiding at this point that I’m very, very pregnant, so we had a conversation about the obvious. She asked where I was delivering, and I told her. She perked right up, and asked who my doctor was, and I told her. When she heard my doctor’s name she just gushed and said, “I delivered my twins there. She was one of my doctors!” Then, kind of waving her hands in front of herself dismissively, she continued, “But I’m not even going to get into it with you.”

There was something she didn’t want to tell me because I was pregnant. So I just went ahead and told her: “One of the reasons she’s my doctor is because we had a full-term stillbirth in 2007. Dr. Sent-From-God (*not her actual name*) is my rock star doctor.”

Then she just opened right up. She told me about her twins who were born at 25 weeks back in 2002, after 6 weeks of her being in the hospital to try to save the pregnancy. One died soon after birth, and the other lived for a couple months before dying as well.

So there we were, two women standing in a suburban garage with real-life horror stories no one should ever have to tell. But I’m so glad we did. The differences between us were no longer there. We were just two women who’ve gone on living, even while we miss our children.

I was honored to be there, to hear the abridged version of her story. She asked that my father-in-law email her when our twins are born.

We drove away (treadmill in our possession) into a beautiful rainbow that had formed after the huge storm. I’m not kidding–it really happened. None of us had our cameras with us to take a picture (which is extremely rare if you know my mother-in-law).

It felt very profound and symbolic for me, though–terrible, blinding storms followed by a beautiful calm. I don’t know if this woman feels that same peace and calm in her soul. She mentioned “God’s plan” and “keeping the faith.” I was just touched by God’s special comfort to me after our interaction. It was like he was saying, “You’ve gone through horrific times, but there will also be repose. I cause grief, but I also show compassion.”

But even more than that, I felt just this utter sense of God’s presence, his plan, bringing me into this stranger’s garage. I was reminded once again that we never know what’s just below the surface, what trials others who we meet have faced. In some strange way it’s comforting, this crazy bond of suffering. We’ll meet each other in train stations, on airplanes, on the other side of the world, on the internet, at work. It reminded me to keep my eyes and ears and heart open.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

God bless Mommy, Daddy, Janae, Preston…

When Orison was born, he got a little stuffed toy that had a very cleaned-up version programmed in when you squeezed it:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

The angels watch me through the night

And keep me in their blessed sight. Amen.

I remember at the time thinking I didn’t like the cleaned-up version. It felt like it was giving the message of, “Uh-oh, don’t teach kids the d-word.”

It’s an epidemic in our culture from the earliest ages on up–no one wants to talk about death. You’re considered morbid if you think about it, ponder it, plan for it.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, the organization

I’ve been wanting to write a post about this organization for months now. I don’t know why it’s taken me this long. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep is a photography organization that captures family moments with their baby who has died or is dying. They have thousands of trained volunteers (professional photographers) who make this happen. And, amazingly, they provide these services for free.

I get quite a few emails from people asking what they should do in the immediate moments surrounding the death of a baby. One of the things I always tell them is: 1. Contact Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep to see if there’s a photographer to go to the hospital. 2. If they’re not available at your hospital, take pictures.

I remember it being a strange decision to take pictures of Felicity. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep wasn’t operating at our hospital back in 2007 (and I didn’t even know about them anyway) so the pictures we have were taken by us and our parents. They aren’t professional, but they’re precious.

When your brain is completely overcome with shock and grief you aren’t thinking about the long-term. You aren’t thinking about how you’ll remember this baby 2 years, 10 years down the road. But you’ll want to remember that baby, and your already-fuzzy brain will grow fuzzier with time. Having pictures of your baby will help reconstruct some of the memories of your time together.

I felt so much pride for Felicity, just like I did with all of my other children. My maternal instincts were very much a part of our time with her, and I felt very, very proud.

I would encourage you to browse their website and see some of the beautiful work they do. Also, NBC aired a heart-wrenching news story back in ’08 about their work. Be prepared to cry pretty hard if this is an issue close to your heart. But it’s worth your time and tears to watch it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlKhrCORF8w