It'll be 3 years next week that Sophie left the world, then was born into the world. The pattern of this year for me is following the pattern of the previous years, which is that from mid August my distress slowly increases, peaking in the weeks immediately preceding Sophie's birthday, then to find relief when the day itself arrived. We've made it. We've survived another year.
Some people join a cause to help give meaning to their child's death. This may be a specific group that raises awareness and funds for a specific medical condition that caused the death or their loved one, or it may be a more wide reaching group like SANDS or Pregnancy Loss Australia (formerly the Teddy Love Club). This joining with others helps to make meaning from the death of their child. I have not done this. I am not really sure why. It just hasn't worked for me. In the early days I did speak to a SANDS counselor a couple of times, and went to a coffee morning, and that was helpful at the time to be able to talk freely, but it was hard work emotionally, being in the same room with 3 other women who'd all experienced the death of a child, and all we talked about was our losses. I am grateful for that time, but it hasn't filled the gap for me in the long term. I have leaned heavily on my faith in God who is Father, Creator and King. In the week before Sophie's death and birth, my bible study group was looking at the last few chapters of Job. There is no question in my mind that I was being prepared that day, for the sorrow to come. God is sovereign, and He does as he pleases. He doesn't need to justify Himself to me. "It's gonna hurt, but you can take it." Job lost all of his children, I only lost one child. Thus far, it's never occurred to me to be angry with God for taking Sophie away. I concur with Job when he said "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." (Job 1:21) Job's faith lead him to see the sovereign God's hand at work, and this gave him comfort even at the time of a calamity. The day Sophie was born, a visiting preacher was at our church, due to preach that Sunday and the next. He'd been led by God's Spirit to teach from the book of Lamentations, about finding God's rest and peace in the midst of suffering. Another gift. God was preparing this speaker to speak words of comfort, as he was prepared Sophie to come home. I have listened to those sermons many times since (you can find the links to the audio here). and they have provided great comfort to me, and I trust also to my church family. I have such respect for God's sovereignty, that I've never even allowed myself to thing about what Sophie would be doing if she was still alive, at the age she would be, had she lived, because it was never the plan. It was never meant to be. The formal ultrasound we had at the hospital, to confirm what we already knew by then, showed that the cord was wrapped around her neck 8 times. How can there even be enough cord for that? At the time I had a strong sense that this was a gift from the Father, a message to me about his sovereignty - "Be in no doubt, Kate. She was always coming home to Me." Another gift. No second guessing myself about whether or not I did something "wrong" during the pregnancy. As you know from an earlier blog post I wrote, cord entanglement wasn't the cause of her death, she died from an infection that she had for a good part of her short life. The autopsy report did comment about the extraordinarily long cord, but that wasn't it. God is sovereign, and he does as he pleases.
Thankfulness for what I have, rather than what I don't have, has been a revelation to me in the last couple of days. I started reading a book by Ann Voskamp (find her blog here) called One Thousand Gifts. A friend dared her to write down 1000 things that she was thankful for. As she listed the things, she began to realize that what she was writing was a list of evidence that God loves her. I began my own list a couple of days ago. I listed people to begin with. My close family. Other significant people in my life, some of whom I currently have no contact with, but they have been significant in my life journey. The first 10 on my list read a bit like an autobiography. I am grateful in my mind for all these people and things, and grateful verbally when I pray, but something about putting it into words on a page has been incredibly powerful. It makes it more real somehow. Gives it more meaning and value. As I've grieved in the lead-up to Sophie's birthday, deliberately writing down these things has produced a clarity in my mind that I've not had since mid August. I'm sleeping the whole night through again. How could I have not known this before? The secret of being thankful? An old hymn says "Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord had done." In naming these gifts on a page, these pieces of evidence that God loves me, makes the difference between being in despair, and being able to have joy in the midst of grief. Being deliberately thankful is making the difference.
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