Molly Piper

My Nana (my great-grandmother), whenever we spent the night at her house, would lead us in our bedtime prayer:

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:

I know it’s kinda late in the week to be posting about Mother’s Day, but I just wanted to share about the weekend. I had a lot of FUN this Mother’s Day!

It started on Friday when Abraham told me he’d been given 2 tickets to the new Target Field (home of the Minnesota Twins) for the Saturday afternoon game. It was supposed to be rainy and cold but we decided to be true Minnesotans and go out to the game anyway! I took my 24-week picture, of course…the twins at the Twins!

By the way, those weren’t our seats. Ours were up in the top deck, but we decided to explore a bit after the game. It was fun to just get to sit together for a couple hours, even if we could see our breath and had to wear winter hats!

Then on Sunday, we had a lovely time at church, went out to lunch with Abraham’s parents and sister, and then went home to lay down!

After naps we went out to Dairy Queen, where I got my favorite Butterfinger Blizzard. Here’s an attempt at a good picture:

After DQ, we went to the cemetery. The kids just run and have fun there, which is kinda cool. I had to bribe them to sit for this one.

I was able to snap a quick one of Morrow while he was on the run:

The only sad part was when we were driving away, Morrow said, completely unprompted, “Bye-bye, dee-dee-dee.” Translation: Bye-bye, Felicity.

Here’s a couple more pictures from recent days, just because I’m crazy about these guys:

I’m so deeply thankful that I get to mother these two characters. And I’m happy to report that this Mother’s Day brought more smiles than tears. That’s a blessed change.

I’ve written a little bit since finding out about the twins about how I’m afraid to hope.

One thing I’ve relied on a lot since losing Felicity is letting others hope for me. Seeing their faith and hope helps. It really does.

I think I’ve heard my friend Barbie say over a hundred times during our friendship, “I have great hope for you, Molly.” She’s said it so many times and in so many instances that the tone of her voice, the look on her face are burned into my memory. I need that mental tape to play for me often.

One of the ways I’m exercising hope during this pregnancy is allowing my dear friends to throw a baby shower for me. I was super hesitant about it for a number of reasons:

• I’ve only been to one baby shower since Felicity died. I don’t really do the baby shower circuit anymore.
• This is my 4th pregnancy–who has a shower for their 4th pregnancy? I thought people would think it was weird.
• I didn’t want to get excited (or get a bunch of gifts) and then have them die.

But…I’m moving forward in it. My best friend Danielle designed invitations for the event, and I love them. Even just seeing evidence that this is really happening helped me get excited. Plus, Danielle will be in town for the shower, so I’m thrilled about that!

Here’s the invite that made me so happy:

This design just oozes hope to me, for some reason. Maybe because the person who designed it designed it with deep knowledge of what I was/am opening myself up to in going ahead with a baby shower.

I have no idea how I will fare as the guest of honor. It feels very foreign and scary.

But I’m thankful that there are people willing to come around me and rally my heart in hope and faith and love for my children, no matter how this pregnancy turns out. I need their strength when I feel like I have none. I need their excitement when all I have is fear. I need their joy when sorrow is pressing in.

I need their hope, because hope is a beautiful thing.

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Also, if there was any way to transport all of my supportive, amazing readers into this baby shower, I would do it. So many of you have shared your hope and excitement with me through these years. I would love to see your faces around the circle in that room. Consider yourselves all invited, at least in my heart.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people about grief in the last two and a half years. Some I’ve been able to answer personally, some I haven’t. There’s really no formula for how I decide which ones to answer and which ones not to. It’s more of an in-the-moment thing, where I have 15 minutes and can pour my soul into a response to a complete stranger.

Many of the emails come from people who know someone who just lost a baby–someone from church, a family member, a close friend. That’s probably because the people who just lost the baby are not even sure what’s happening and are completely and utterly in shock. The people on the outside have their heads on straight enough, relatively speaking, to put an email together and ask for help, or even just commiseration.

The one thing I’ve found myself writing to these people over and over again is this: Give brokenhearted love. Ask God to give you a broken heart. That will go further with your friend than any meal or house-cleaning ever could. Granted, I think meals and house-cleaning are immensely important to offer, and some people will be particularly gifted in giving those things. But if you want to go deeper into the loss with your friend, you’re going to have to be heartbroken.

For one thing, grief is really isolating. Especially when it’s a baby who is stillborn, people can sometimes think things like, “Oh, well the baby never lived outside the womb. It’s not like they knew that baby or anything.” And when you come home without a baby, there’s very little evidence that that child ever existed. So when you’re going through the hell of grief, it can feel like you were the only one who lost that baby, and that everyone else’s life has just moved on.

And in some sense, that’s true. Most people are not marking the days and weeks the same way as you are. But there will be a few who will.

And I suppose that’s who I’m writing for, the people who remember.

In our culture, people don’t like to talk about death. And dead babies??? Forget it. That’s because it’s horrifying. I’ll never forget how terrified I was to look at Felicity for the first time. And she was my child.

But brokenhearted love will choose to take on the horror and bear it with you.

In the first few weeks after we lost Felicity, a stranger who I didn’t know (but who went to our church) was signed up to bring me a meal. I kind of had my brave face on to answer the door, get through the interaction, get the food, exchange a few pleasantries back and forth, and get back to my existence.

But there was something very different about this person. As she handed me the food, she was sobbing. I’m not exaggerating here–tears flowing down her face. I was completely disarmed. I remember eventually she asked me if she could see Felicity’s room, if we had it set up. And before I knew it, I was climbing the stairs with this complete stranger, taking her into one of the most sacred spaces in my home.

It felt kind of crazy, but it felt safe. Because she was heartbroken. Just like me, heartbroken.

And even just last week, I had someone tell me that she stopped at Felicity’s grave. And she told me, through her tears, what she was thinking and feeling about that. It’s been two and a half years. She’s never told me anything like that before. And so we stood in her back yard and cried real tears together.

This is the bravery of brokenhearted love.

People who are grieving need to know that they’re not alone. They need to know that their loss is somehow your loss too. Tell them that you visited the cemetery–not for brownie points, but because you want to remember with them. Tell them that you cried in the bathtub the other day. Tell them that when you hear a certain song it takes the breath out of your lungs.

I’ll warn you: you might cry when you tell them these things. HALLELUJAH! You have NO idea what that will mean to someone who’s grieving. Let it FLOW! What are we holding it together for anyway? So our mascara doesn’t run? So we won’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable? There’s a reason that lump forms in your throat. It’s because you’re holding something in that wants to come out!

So if you’re wondering what you can give your grieving friend, I know it sounds totally cliche, but…give them your heart. Lay it bare. Entering into their pain and sharing your experience of the loss will be profoundly comforting.

I’ve made it through the last two years and seven months because of brokenhearted love. It’s been a gift to me, from those who were willing to give it.

This weekend our family went to our church’s Spring Retreat. The theme of the weekend was “I Hope.” We looked at lots of Scripture passages about hope, and talked about how we can apply hope into our daily lives.

But for me, hope is a really scary concept–really scary.

I remember feeling, in my darkest days of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), that hope is what God tells you to do so he can distract you, then sucker punch you in the gut with reality.

At that time, hope for anything good from God felt impossible. It felt like we only got calamity. And I know I “should’ve” stepped back a bit from our circumstances, taken a broader view, looked at the big picture and then I could’ve seen how good we had it–one healthy child, a home to live in, a car that got us where we needed to go, a job that paid for all of what we needed and much of what we wanted. And that did help sometimes. But I still had a deep, gaping, bloody wound.

I was stuck. So deeply stuck in the hopelessness of Felicity’s death. So confused. So wounded. I don’t think saying, “People in Cambodia (or North Korea, or Congo) have it really bad, Molly. Just look around and get over yourself,” would’ve have been healing for me. It might have taken the “bad thoughts” away quicker, but would it have healed the wound I was feeling or mended my broken view of God?

I think taking a broader view of God’s world can be incredibly helpful for getting us outside of ourselves, don’t get me wrong. But it’s insufficient by itself for healing when you’re up against some deeply painful personal issues.

I was dealing with questions like:

• Is God trustworthy?
• Does he listen when I pray?
• Does he care about me and my anguish?
• Has he forgotten me?
• Have I wearied him with too many requests?
• Am I being punished or “taught a lesson”?
• Is my loss “small” in the big picture of things? Does it matter to God that I’m still so sad?

And of course a really simple division that one can make about hope is that there’s hoping in our circumstances and hoping in God and who he is. As you can see from my list of questions above, my circumstances and who God is were pretty enmeshed. And I think that’s probably the case for most of us. Our hearts aren’t so easily compartmentalized, are they?

Anyway, there was (and is) lots of undoing that needed to happen for me to begin healing. That’s another post. But I realized this weekend that I am still so afraid to hope for the arrival of the twins. Kind of like, if I want it too much, God’s going to teach me a lesson, smack me on the hand, flex his muscles, and show me who’s boss.

I want to believe that God flexed his muscles already and showed me who’s boss by giving these babies to begin with. I don’t want to see a taking again. But I suppose on some level, we all have to be prepared for that.

So how do I hope that these babies are going to come? How can I hope in God (who gives and takes away) and not get that tangled into my circumstances? is that even possible for those to be completely separate?

I’m afraid I can’t wrap this thought up with a pretty bow and present it to you all figured out. These are my wonderings, my laments, my questions that I wade through as week #20 with two babies in my belly pushes on. I desire to hope, but I’m still slogging through what that means. It’s messy, this slogging. Who’s with me?

Most people post Friday Funnies or something like that. I’ve not been in a very funny mood today, so these were the posts that grabbed me and I found myself wanting to share:

• My husband wrote a really thought-provoking piece on his blog that I thought some of you would enjoy reading. Sometimes his wanderlust scares me, sometimes I encourage it. It’s part of who he is, and I love him. So…I live with a husband with a serious case of wanderlust. Regardless, this is a great post. And also kind of ironic, since he takes a couple lines to hate on having a car, and we’re in the market for a minivan.
• My friend Elizabeth Esther wrote a gut-wrenchingly honest post about losing our joy in motherhood. I can so relate today. And knowing that she’s a mother of twins, it’s a sobering thing for me to read. But it’s also good for me to have people like her in my life who don’t pretend that everything’s peachy-keen. It helps me pray and prepare for the hard days ahead, as well as the joyful ones.
• And lastly, my dear internet friend, Mrs. MK, lost her baby at 18 weeks yesterday. I’m crushed and devastated every time I think about it. She lost a daughter just after I lost Felicity, and we’ve grown to love each other over these here internets. I was so excited that she and I were pregnant at the same time. Perhaps you have some time to drop over and share an honest condolence. And if you don’t have one to give, then don’t feel obligated. I just know she’s hurting. So many of you have reached out to comfort me. Let’s share the love with my friend Mrs. MK.

It would seem weird to say “Have a good weekend!” after all that heaviness. But that’s life, isn’t it? Not all of us are having “a good day” today. I want to live honestly and share openly, even if it’s a Friday.

Every year around major holidays, there’s a particular sting for a mom missing her only daughter. It comes when I set out to find a decent-looking set of clothes for my sons to wear.

Here’s the criteria I’m usually looking for:

• Nothing with cartoon characters on them (or skulls & crossbones, thank you very much).
• Something affordable (I don’t want to spend more than $20-25 per kid), but still made nicely.
• Something handsome, usually with a tie and collared dress shirt (Orison loves a good clip-on).

You’d be surprised how difficult this quest can be. I try department stores, and then the lesser-expensive department stores (Target, Kohl’s), and then move onto stores like Marshall’s.

What I hoped would be a fun way to buy some cute clothes for my kids usually turns into frustration and anger, though. I spend five minutes just trying to find the boys’ dress clothes amidst the sea of girl dress clothes. Eventually I might find a rack or two, and I’ll think from looking at the front, “Oh, this one looks nice…” and then I turn it over and there’s a HUGE applique on the back that says something like “Little Devil” with a demon face on it. What?!?! Do people buy this stuff???

I’m sure the equivalent for little girls would say something like “Perfect Angel” or something sweet like that. Because we all know that girls are just so sweet and perfect, and boys so…not???

I’m sorry, I know it probably sounds like I’m bitter. I’ll admit it, I get angry. It really sucks to go in the kids’ clothes section at all sometimes. And then to be so poignantly reminded that I have no business shopping on 90% of the racks hurts even more. It’s like there’s a big sign slapped on all those racks:

“You Don’t Belong Here.”

I know there are other women like me, living without their only daughter. There’s a particular hole for a mom, a woman, who loses her chance to raise her little girl. So many hopes and dreams die with that little girl.

One thing I’ve learned on my journey is that if I take the time to listen to what’s going on in my heart, all this anger and frustration, and let God pull me deeper, past the self-protectiveness of the anger, I get down to the pain of it. If I will get honest with God there in my anger, he always shows me just how much I’m hurting. Somehow the wall of anger crumbles and I’m left in the rubble, weeping.

Because underneath the anger is always the pain. I can stay there in the anger and grow bitter and hard (trust me, the temptation is there), but God has helped me see that it’s always better to let myself feel all of the emotions (first the anger) and then search for what’s really going on in my heart. Pretty much 100% of the time, under the anger is pain. More pain to feel, more tears to cry, more aspects of the loss that I need to grieve.

Sometimes I don’t want to go there. Sometimes I just want to rant and rail against my situation. Sometimes I just want to buy clothes for my sons. It’s hard and frustrating. Sometimes it feels like there’s nowhere to go from the pain–it can rise up anytime or anywhere. Grief is not just for grieving places, like the cemetery. It happens in other stranger places–you know, places like Kohl’s.

I suppose the other option would be to pretend like I don’t feel the anger. “No, no, no…it’s bad to be angry. God took Felicity away and I have to be happy and content with that.” If I decide on this option, I also miss the chance to grieve, just like I would have if I would’ve stayed hard and angry and bitter.

But Jesus doesn’t turn away the grievers. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” I am called blessed. And I’m promised His comfort.

This is blessed assurance. It’s like a great big sign at the foot of the Cross that say:

“You Belong Here.”

Last week I wrote about the fear that kept me from blogging about being pregnant. This is another post written during my post-Felicity pregnancy, the one that brought the blessed arrival of Morrow. Morrow is now 17-months-old. So this post is old.

The first reason was fear; the second reason I didn’t post about my pregancy was time.

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Aside from the fear of telling people about our upcoming arrival, I also had a deep longing during this unique season to focus on my daughter.

From the time this pregnancy started, I’ve felt this desire to protect her place in my life and heart, not ever wanting to feel like I was trying to replace her.

I’ve also known that these months where I could focus my energies more on her and her memory were limited. Especially as we got closer to having our second son, I kind of wished that I could be pregnant longer, just so I could keep focusing on Felicity.

I knew that the instant he arrived, my affections and heart would be different, because I would have so much love for him. But what would happen to the feelings I still want to have for Felicity? Will there be room enough for all of them? I almost felt like her territory was being encroached upon. Not that this would be the fault of our next child AT ALL; I just felt like her little spot in my life would get even smaller. And as her mother, I dreaded that.

I never, ever want to leave her behind. And in some ways, I know I won’t. But in other ways it’s inevitable that our life will move on. And I’ve wanted to hope so badly that it will be good when it did.

I just finished an excellent book by Jerry Sittser called A Grace Disguised. A dear sister gave it to me. Her full-term daughter Addie died due to complications during birth just over a year ago. Anyway, if you have ever experienced any kind of loss, this is an excellent book. One of the closing statements really shed light on what I just described.

The accident remains now, as it always has been, a horrible experience that did great damage to us and to so many others. It was and will remain a very bad chapter. But the whole of my life is becoming what appears to be a very good book.

Since I’m writing this before the arrival of this child, I don’t know how all that is going to shake out. I suppose you’ll hear more about it in the coming months. I’m thankful for the book that God is writing. I never thought it would include a chapter like Felicity’s, but it has. By no means is the chapter finished, but now there is another chapter called “Morrow.”

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Reading this post again after so much time has passed is very interesting. I thought that having another child would be so healing for me. And ultimately, it was. But I was expecting it to be healing in the short run, too, and it wasn’t. In reality, having another child sent me into a new wave of grief after his birth.

It was after his birth that I finally came to terms with my depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was after his birth that I got the most counseling (professional and non-professional). His birth didn’t remove me from the pain of losing Felicity, it blew the lid off of it.

I thought I was focusing on Felicity in the year after her death when I was pregnant with Morrow. Looking back on it, what I can remember at least, I was still in shock. I was pregnant (And happy to be!) 3 months after her death, but it caused me to focus on the pregnancy and what was ahead more than focusing on healing from the wounds of the past. So much so that when we got through the pregnancy with the hoped-for result (a living baby), all the pain of the pregnancy with the unhoped-for result forced its way to the top.

And that had to happen. I had to come to terms with the deep pain and loss. And I did that with a new baby at my breast.

In some ways, he saved my life. He ushered me into the darkest, most painful places I’ve ever been, where I wrestled and struggled and thought for sure I would die. He was my constant companion through those dark, dark days—grunting, smiling, filling his diaper. It was like his presence and the regularity of his need for me kept me alive, kept me waking up every morning, forced me to go to my counseling appointments (since I only had a small window until he’d need me again), and gave me a reason to want to get to the other side.

He was God’s little catalyst for my healing, ultimately.

So there I was, my whole pregnancy with Morrow, worrying about having enough time to grieve. Turns out, God had hardly begun the mega-process I was in. He gave me just the right time, with just the right people, and one very special baby who remained a mystery to all of you while God knit him together.

This post was written right after the birth of our third child, Morrow. Today he turns 17 months old. So this post is about that old.

I never published it—not sure why.

For those of you newer to our story, our third child was born 8.22.08, 11 months after the stillbirth of his sister, Felicity. But… I kept my pregnancy a secret from my blogging audience until the day I was going in to deliver.

Here’s the original post, written sometime in late 2008.

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Many of you were probably a little bit surprised by the news of our third child’s arrival. I am too.

There are a few reasons I haven’t blogged about it.

1. Fear.

Women who have experienced the death of a child often deal with irrational thoughts. I’ve dealt with so many since Felicity’s death. Many of them have been those “if only” thoughts:

If only I had gone into the hospital the night I was having some painful contractions, maybe they just would have let me stay and I’d have her right now.

Others have been more like:

My baby died inside of me. My womb is a place of death.

So much of me has struggled to believe that the birth of a healthy, living child could ever happen for us again.

Maybe God will never do this for me. I’m going to live with the agony of another stillbirth so that he can keep making an example out of me and my suffering.

I don’t want to be an example. I want to be the mother of more than one living child.

So, though I don’t believe in jinxes, I shied away from announcing my pregnancy for a long time, mostly because I was afraid to actually say the words and then have God snuff it out because I was presumptuous and he was going to teach me a lesson about that.

I know these thoughts don’t reflect a belief in a loving God. And I’ve wept even thinking the thoughts. But they’ve been there.

I didn’t even tell my parents for almost five months that we were expecting. It was as though my mouth went dumb every time I tried to bring it up in a phone conversation with them 900 miles away. It was just easier to talk about weather or Orison or what I was making for dinner.

The fears I dealt with throughout this pregnancy were ones that I wanted to deal with personally, first between me and God, then between me and Abraham, then between me and my family and close friends. These concentric circles of trust and support have been what I needed for the duration of my pregnancy.

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It’s been about 17 months since I wrote those words. And since then I’ve given birth to a healthy, full-term, living baby. That should prove to me that it’s possible, right? That should take care of my fears, right?

God has indeed proven his faithfulness in many ways in my life since September 2007. But… fears remain. This Christmas I was struck over and over and over with how each person responded to the announcement of Christ’s coming. What was the first thing the angel told each of them (Mary, Joseph, the shepherds)?

“Fear not…”

It’s like the angel knew what a human’s knee-jerk reaction would be—fear.

We’re so stinkin’ fearful, every last one of us. But one thing I’ve been clinging to recently is something my mentor told me when I was dealing with something very fearful for me.

“Hell dances when God’s people are afraid.”

So I can either add to their revery and stew in my fears down here, or I can bring them to the Cross, where God is not spurning them, but hearing them and calming them. If the angels know that we will react fearfully, then surely God knows our inclinations. He’s not surprised by my fears. So I can run to him, and he will embrace me.

I just keep telling myself: He is a loving Father, and not my adversary.

I just signed up for a scientific study about traumatic loss. Here’s the description from their site:

We are a team of researchers from Arizona State University,  University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Austin College. We are exploring the experiences of those aged 18 and older who have experienced traumatic loss and bereavement.  The purpose of this study is to determine the individual, familial, and societal effects of trauma and to improve standards of care to the bereaved and a model of compassionate caregiving and intervention that fosters resiliency at every level.

The lead researcher for the study is Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. Here’s how I know about her:

The first book I read after Felicity died was one called Stillborn: The Invisible Death by John DeFrain et. al., researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They did a study back in the 80s and published it in book form. It’s mostly stories of peoples’ experiences with stillbirth. It was deeply helpful for me just to read that other people had gone through what I had.

Then, I emailed Dr. DeFrain because the book was out of print. He so politely and sensitively emailed me back and suggested I look into the MISS Foundation, the organization founded by his former doctoral student, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, who had also lost a child.

I really appreciate her continued research into the topic of stillbirth and traumatic loss. I thought, since so many of us here have lost children traumatically, we should contribute. We can be a means of further research into this painful, under-studied area by sharing our time and our stories to help others.

So here’s what you do:

• Go to http://tearstudy.org .
• Enter your name and email.
• They’ll send you an email right away, and then you just click the link in the email to confirm your email address.
• Wait for them to email you with further details.

I say, let’s do this!