Three years ago I gave birth to our baby boy, Alder, a feisty little micro preemie who battled it out for his life in the nicu, picu, and various children’s wards around the globe. He is home now, thriving, battle behind but still as full of fight as ever. Me? I’m not home, but I am still full of fight. I don’t want to have to be; I had hoped and prayed for this baby boy I’m carrying now to have a story different from our Sapling Boy. His story is different, but not in the ways I had imagined it would be. What we want and what we are given are very rarely synchronized, and while there is grief in the syncopation I am relearning to look for the graces.
Covered in blood and shaking with fear, I left my children in the dark of night three days ago. No chance for goodbye and no hello in sight. I’ll spend Christmas and New Years in hospital room, a state spanning the space between my children and me. It will be months before I feel Evelyn Rose’s round cheeks pressed against mine, curl up for a nap with Alder, receive my thousand kisses from Brooks. If my water breaks, my baby will exsanguinate in moments. The danger to my own life is uncertain…I don’t understand. It’s not supposed to be this way. How is this OK? This is not where I want to be. The grief here is so hard and so real that sometimes it knocks the wind out of me.
But then new thoughts—moments of grace—pierce the pain and shine hope into the darkness of despair: Christmas. Christmas: that day Mary birthed her baby Divine in a stable and brought the greatest joy to the world. That day an infant turned a filthy cow pen into a radiant palace. What will He do here? My room is not where I want to be, but there is a sacred gift in the stripping of holiday glitz: an opportunity to revel in the Light of the world.
I turned these thoughts over in my heart through the day and night, and woke to a text from my sister this morning:
“Praying for you this morning and thought about another young mom who wasn’t where she wanted to be on Christmas week, who was away from her family as she waited for her son to be born. Maybe this Christmas you can understand Mary in a new way? I know your child isn’t the Savior of the world, (though I’m sure he’ll do big things!). but there is something universal about the expectant mother’s waiting…”