Entering the darkness

My dear, dear friends, I have put off writing since Poppy’s birth because my heart is so full and near to bursting in so many areas that I don’t really know where to begin. I long to share with you what has taken place over the last 48 hours, but how can I use words to paint any kind of picture that would come close to giving the reality justice? Nothing in my life up to this point is comparable to the past two days that God has carried us through. Indescribable happiness, joy, and fulfillment have been inextricably woven with grief, sadness, and loss. These intense emotions don’t seem to be compatible, yet they have existed side by side in our hearts throughout our stay in the hospital.

Poppy’s life is like a dream in so many ways. Her three hours here on this earth were so full yet so short! She was the answer to every single prayer that was cried out on her behalf. She was the fulfillment of a promise—a miracle in every way. Never have I seen God’s faithfulness shine more vividly than it did for those precious three hours Poppy was with us. I want you to know that her time here with us was not marred by a single second of sadness. All fear and uncertainty about her future was driven from my heart and mind from the second she began breathing on her own outside of my womb. I knew that she was sick, and I knew we still had no idea how long she would be with us, yet none of that mattered once we had her in our arms. All I could do was thank Jesus for her and enjoy her. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed her during those hours. I felt like my heart would explode with love and happiness and joy as I held her or watched other people hold her and love her. Looking back, I would not change one thing because every second we spent with her was so full of life and hope. Darkness was driven from that little room, and while there were certainly tears, all stemmed from joy and thankfulness over the precious miracle that was living and breathing right there with us. To sum it all up, her time with us was perfect.

Just as beautiful as the way she came into the world was the way she left it. I freely admit that her death was something I feared. I have never seen anyone die, much less my own child, and I couldn’t comprehend how I would be able to live through those moments. But once again, just as it has been each step of the way, God provided for us and gave us strength the moment we needed it. All of our friends had just left the room, and someone returned Poppy to my arms. I looked down at her, and in that instant I knew she was gone. Her beautiful eyes, which were opened almost her entire life, were vacant and still. It was not until that moment that grief entered our hearts. Nathan and I, surrounded by our parents and siblings, spent 45 minutes with her as her heart beat slowly faded away. It was bittersweet in every way. My tears flowed as the reality that we were saying goodbye settled over us like a blanket. My heart began to ache with loss as I looked over each of her tiny features and tried to memorize every detail and engrave it into my mind. At the same time, even in the midst of that sorrow, we were overwhelmed with peace. Poppy’s exit from this world was the very essence of peace. She didn’t struggle or experience any kind of pain; she simply took one final breath and went home.

In the hours that followed, the time we had spent with her didn’t seem real. I felt almost like I was replaying scenes from a movie that I had just been to see rather than scenes from my own life. But while it was strange, it was also a very sweet time. I was surrounded by a pervasive calm throughout the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday, and I believe that was a direct result of the countless prayers that you have been lifting up for us. The sense of safety we experienced as we were surrounded by the love and comfort of our friends and family was beautiful. I know that God has set His angels around us to give us a hedge of protection from the violence of the emotions that Satan would like to defeat us with. To be even more specific, I feel like He gave us about 36 hours under the protective blanket of emotional numbness before He allowed us to begin to experience the full weight of her death.

It wasn’t until last night that I felt the corner of that covering being lifted, allowing Nathan and me to begin the grieving process. In the quietness of our room, after all of the many visitors had left for the night, we climbed into the hospital bed together and wept as we clicked through the beautiful pictures that captured almost every moment of Poppy’s life. A physical pain began stabbing in my heart as I processed the reality of the loss. I looked down at my stomach and hated the fact that I no longer had her with me. I miss her; there’s just no other way to say it. I know that her body was not made for this earth, yet it’s still impossible for me not to miss her and want to hold her again. It makes me smile through my tears to think about her being with Jesus, and knowing she is whole and perfect and experiencing even more love than she knew here brings me comfort. But for myself, and for Nathan and Marianna, and all of the rest of our family and friends, I grieve the loss of her presence. I grieve what is not to be, while at the same time rejoicing over what was.

Something that Papa said many times has stayed with me over the past few months. He said “Do not doubt in the darkness what God has shown you in the light.” God has poured out His truth on us over the past months, and I want to cling to that even when it doesn’t seem nearly as clear as it once did. This is a season of darkness, but His love, compassion, and truth is just as real as it has ever been. God allows darkness, and He will bring us out in His own timing, but until then He will keep us safe. He will set me on that rock that is higher than myself.

Poppy Joy

A Million Thank You's and One Goodbye

Our dear, precious Poppy was born at 10:26 AM and she weighed 5 pounds, 11 ounces. In the first few minutes after her birth, I waited anxiously by Angie's side as the neonatologist and her nurses stood over Poppy and discussed her. We later learned that the doctor was a little uneasy because Poppy's heart rate was low and she was having trouble breathing. However, while we were still in the operating room and the OB was stitching Angie back together, Poppy started doing very well—she was coloring up and her heart rate increased. Angie and I had a terrific time being with her during the operation, although Angie couldn't hold her herself until we were being transported back to the room, which was around 11:30.

In the room, our family came in and Poppy continued to improve until the neonatologist estimated that we might have a day or more with her. (It was at this point that she expressed that she had been concerned about Poppy in the OR.) My favorite moment while we were with our family was when Marianna offered her outstretched hands with palms up and said, "I want to hold Poppy!" She did a great job with her big-sistering duties and our terrific photographer took lots of wonderful pictures of Poppy with different aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, great-grandmother and the like.

After the family time, we had a slew of dear friends who were here to see Poppy, so we let them into the room en masse to see Poppy and spend some great time with us in celebration of our sweet baby. Angie proudly held our beautiful daughter while everyone ooed and awed over her. Thank all of you who came in and thank you all who would've been here if you could've! It meant so much to me to see so many of you with us as my amazing wife got to share Poppy with you all!

As many of you know, we have prayed months for two specific request: one, that God would allow Poppy to be born live and two, that all of you would be able to share her with us. The Lord answered both of these requests in a vivid, unimaginably beautiful way, to our hearts' desires and beyond our wildest dreams. Within minutes of the last friend leaving the room, Poppy stopped breathing. We shared some sweet time with our immediate family as the NICU nurse came in and out every 15-20 minutes to check Poppy's heart rate: first 60 beats per minute, then 30, then 8, then...

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift! II Corinthians 9:15

Poppy Joy spent three precious hours in this world, this cruel place that her body was never meant to know. As Angie and I spent Poppy's last few minutes alone with her, my sweet wife commented that she could picture Poppy in Heaven with Jesus, saying, "Don't cry for me, Mommy and Daddy." While our pain remains, Poppy is healed and she now knows what we long for.

To those of you who have read, commented, prayed, gifted, cooked, visited and ministered to us in a thousand ways, we will never be able to properly thank you. Still, thank you! To our precious families, thank you! To our sweet daughter, who changed our lives before we ever kissed her dear face, thank you! And most of all, to our dear Savior Jesus, who has wholly and solely given strength and peace in the past months and who will continue to energize us in the difficult days ahead, thank You!

Goodbye, Poppy. We love you so much!

IT'S TIME!

Poppy will be born today. The nurse came in just minutes ago and delivered the news that I will have a c-section at 10 this morning. I feel like I need to say that over and over to make myself really believe it, because it certainly isn’t sinking in. As I write, I am sitting in the hospital bed, counting down the hours until I will hold her, and to say this is surreal would be the understatement of my life. We are really here, and the next 24 hours will undoubtedly change my life forever. Right now, all I can say is that words fall short.

I woke up this morning at 12:30 with steady contractions, and after debating with myself for an hour and a half as to whether the definition of “in labor” applied to my circumstances, I decided to err on the side of caution and come into the hospital. We arrived at 3 and I was put on the monitor shortly after. My contractions have been coming 5-7 minutes apart since I got here, leading the doctor on call to go ahead and make the decision to deliver our baby today. The plan that we have been waiting so long to understand is slowly starting to unfold. We now know the first bit of the story—Poppy’s birthday will be December 1st.

I know I don’t need to say how much we need your prayers. I feel like more than any other time in my life, I need Jesus today. Please pray that He will take care of us. We are at Methodist Germantown, and if you would like to come up at some point today and pray for this baby, we would welcome anyone who can. Thank you for your love, support and prayers for us throughout this pregnancy. We will keep you updated.

One day at a time

Yesterday turned out to be a bit of a roller coaster. I was scheduled to go in for my final ultrasound and doctors appointment in the afternoon, and the timing was perfect because I started my day off with some fairly consistent contractions. I felt good knowing that I would be able to go in and have them check everything out and tell me what we needed to do. I went ahead and did some hospital packing, preparing for the small chance that that I wouldn't return home from the appointment, and then I headed out to my car to leave for my appointment. I turned the key, turned it again, and again, and nothing. My car wouldn't start. After going through a few attempts at a quick fix, including pouring a bottle of Pepsi over the battery and trying my hand at jumper cables, I took my mom's car and headed off with just enough time to make it to the first appointment. Stress levels were higher than normal walking in, and then the news that met us what not what I was hoping to hear. There was nothing surprising about Poppy's measurements, as they were virtually the same as last time, but what did alarm me was the fact that her heart rate had dropped almost 20 beats from our last appointment. For some reason, I've had it ingrained in my head that if her heart rate started declining, it was time to get her out. By the time I walked into the doctor's office, I was ready to ask him to go ahead and deliver her immediately and not take any chances on her heart continuing to slow down. However, while in the appointment they took her heart rate three more times, and all three times showed a faster rate. My doctor explained that the variation was not only normal, it was actually a good sign! I admit that it took some time for this to sink in and for me to feel truly convinced. My hope is to make it to the 6th, but far more important than that is having the chance to hold her while she is still with us. Yesterday, I felt blinded to everything else but that one thought.

Yet, before I went in to talk to my doctor I stopped and prayed that God would give Dr. Sullivant wisdom to know exactly what to do. I was in such an emotional state that nothing but sending me to the hospital felt like the right thing, but the doctor told me with no equivocation that she was fine and that she needed to stay this one extra week if at all possible to give her little body the extra days to prepare for life outside of me. I asked about the contractions, and he told me that if I go into labor, I should go to the hospital. That was a little too logical for someone in my supercharged emotional condition, but now having slept a night on it, I am feeling good about his decision and grateful to God for using him as a tool to keep Poppy inside until it is His perfect timing for her to be born.

But, the contractions, while not increasing in intensity, are continuing to come at fairly frequent intervals. It certainly gives a new meaning to walking this journey one day at a time. It is shocking to realize that each day from here on out could be the day we meet Poppy. Somehow I became so consumed with our little timeline and the countdown to December 6th, that this new reality threw me for a loop. Nathan reminded me yesterday that nothing about this pregnancy has been according to our plan or what we expected, so who knows why I am surprised that the end should be the same. What has been clear is that even though this road has held many unexpected twists and turns for us, none of it has been a surprise to God. The same continues to be true.

I am asking God to provide me with a new peace. One that will allow me accept the timing of her delivery no matter when it is. I am also asking Him to send his angels to surround us and protect us from physical and spiritual attacks. Psalm 34:7 says "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them." I claim that promise! The other night someone also shared a blessing from Psalm 61 that I am clinging to. It says "Hear my cry O God; Give heed to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Right now I feel as if the waters could come crashing over our heads at any second. I just don't have what it takes to swim and make it on my own. I need Him to place me on that rock that is higher than the waters. He will be the one to keep us from being dragged under by the current because He offers the only safe place to stand.

her name

Over the past months, I’ve had many nights when I’ve woken up for seemingly no reason with someone on my mind. I believe these “angel nudges” are God sent to wake me up and pray for someone at that specific time. Usually I find that after I have prayed, I drift back to sleep almost immediately. Last night, however, I experienced a slightly different twist on this familiar scenario. Instead of a gentle nudging, it was the sound of the dog’s turbo propeller ear shaking that jarred me from my sound sleep at about 2:30. Evidently something was stuck in her ear, because after nearly 15 non-stop minutes of this attempted self-remedy, she had still not settled down to sleep. I eventually had Nathan lock her out of the room, but not before I was wide-awake and past the point of no return. At this point, I realized I had two options: I could try to fight the wakefulness by counting backwards from 500, or I could just surrender to it and tell God I was alert and listening. I opted for the latter.

My mind immediately turned to Poppy, as it usually does, and I found myself thinking back specifically to when Nathan and I sat on our couch together back in July and decided to settle on her name. As I replayed the story in my mind, I felt God encouraging me to share with you exactly how we came to the name Poppy Joy. At the time, we had known for less than 24 hours that there were problems with our baby. The shock, the rush of emotions, the process of trying to absorb the reality of the situation, all of it was overwhelming. Yet, as we were sitting together, just beginning to dip our toes into the crazy rushing waters that awaited, I realized that in order to help fully embrace the fact that our baby was indeed alive and still just as much our little girl (you might remember that we had just been told the day before that she was most likely dead) we needed to decide on a name. I feel terribly guilty admitting it now, but to be completely honest, I didn’t initially want to even consider using any of the names that we had come up with prior to going into the ultrasound. In my warped state, I didn’t want to “waste” a name that I loved on baby that wasn’t going to live. This almost makes me cry to think about now, but it is just a reminder of how far God has brought me!

I began throwing out new names that came to the top of my head. Names that were pretty but that had no significance to me whatsoever. All of them fell flat. Then out of the blue, Nathan said “What about Poppy?” This is shocking for several reasons. First of all, Nathan has almost zero opinion when it comes to baby names. I run everything by him, and almost without fail his answer is “sure, that sounds good.” I can get virtually no direction beyond that under normal circumstances. The second reason that this was odd is because Poppy is a name that I had decided years ago was my “ultimate” name. The very first time I heard it, something inside of me latched on and never let go. I just loved it without being able to explain why. It is also a nickname that I had for my Papa when I was a little girl, which added an extra dimension of nostalgia to it. However, when I began tossing it around as an idea when I was pregnant with Marianna, I received just about 100% negative feedback, so I let it fade away. But for some reason, when Nathan said that, I knew immediately that this was going to be her name. It was like God immediately spoke to my heart and said “Angie, you are right. You can’t use those other names you were considering. But for an entirely different reason than the one you were thinking. They are not special enough for this baby I am giving to you.” Poppy is a name that I knew was special before I knew why, and God reminded Nathan of it at just the perfect time. A few hours later we settled on Joy for her middle name with a two-fold purpose. Joy is my middle name, and I wanted to share it with this baby as a symbol that even if God does take her early, she is no less important than any other future children God might bless us with. It was also just a small step of faith to vocalize and acknowledge that we knew that her life would indeed bring joy. How true that has been already!

The name God gave us for her has been almost like a promise. Her life has already brought unbelievable beauty and joy to my life and hopefully the lives of others. I was reminded last night that there is absolutely no strength or inner fortitude intrinsic in my own character that has allowed me to get to this place and be able to say that. Without God’s overwhelmingly real presence and constancy in my life, I would be lost. Frustrated, bitter, depressed, overwhelmed, angry… any of these emotions would take over if I tried to do this on my own. But Jesus has been real. My only part in this has been in allowing Him to carry me. He has done it for the past 127 days since we found out the news, and He will carry us the remaining 7 to her birth, and then indefinitely on from there. I read a few verses from Romans 12 the other day that are speaking to me during these final days of waiting. This passage says

“Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever, Amen.”

We don’t know what lies ahead, but that is okay. His ways are beyond my ability to comprehend. No one gives Him wisdom or counsel. Everything is already His. It is in these perfect Hands that I can place the future of my baby and know she will be safe.

10 days and counting

I feel like the countdown is definitely on. We have ten days left before we walk through the doors of the hospital without having any idea whether we will ever walk out those same doors with our little girl. The unknown is daunting, even overwhelming, yet as I consider that the moment when I will be able to hold Poppy is almost close enough to touch, I am excited. When we learned the news back in July, I had no idea if we would ever make it to this point. But here we are, right on the brink of finding out what the reality of Trisomy 18 is going to look like in our life. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared, but somehow, at the same time I know that I am not living in fear. I have wanted to get here desperately, just to be able to see her, and hold her, and share her as long as God gives her to us, and I am so grateful to have been brought this far.

The remaining days already look as though they will fly by at a whirlwind pace. I was remarking to Nathan this morning that the only evening we have at home without any other obligations is tomorrow. A sense of unreality surrounds me as I consider that the last “normal” uneventful night as just the three of us will be over by the time Tuesday rolls around. I realize that it is overwhelmingly likely that it will be just the three of us again at some point in the future, but even then it will be different. Even if Poppy is not physically with us in the weeks, months, and years to come, I know she is going to leave an imprint on us that will never allow us to go back to the days before she was born.

All of this settles in more firmly with each passing day. The light-heartedness I have felt so often over the past months is being replaced with a heaviness that stems from the awareness of what is to come. It is not oppressive, but it is a real, almost tangible feeling. The tears that have come so inconsistently in the past are now at hand often. This morning in church was just one of those times as I found myself crying at different moments throughout the worship service, not out of bitterness or despair, but from the depth of what these words mean to me right now. The most poignant of all the words I sung from my heart this morning come from the song “In Christ Alone.” I love the entire song, but today this verse in particular spoke the words of my heart more eloquently than I could on my own. It says

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

Thank you for praying for us this week. I go in for my last doctor’s appointment and ultrasound on Thursday, and barring anything unexpected, we will go in the following Thursday for the delivery. We know we don't walk these final days with our own strength, so thank you for asking God on our behalf to provide us with what we need to make it through.