Life really does go on......

I’ve heard people say this before, that life goes on but I never knew how real it was.  If you have experienced a significant loss, like the death of a parent, sibling, child, spouse, grandparent or close friend, you know how absolutely devastating it is when you realize just that, life goes on.  You still have to pay your bills, which means you have to go to work.  You still have to buy groceries, which means you have to see people.  While you are out, learning to live what is your “new normal”, you shockingly find that everyone else is living their lives with what seems like no regard for your agony.  It’s such a difficult thing to work through.  You understand that others are not being hurtful but in your heart it does hurt to see people who can somehow be happy with everyday life while you feel like your whole world has been shattered.

We have said that we feel like what we have experienced is worse than a death.  I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s devastation of losing a child, so let me explain.  When a child passes away, or anyone you love, for that matter, they are gone forever.  As horrible as that sounds, there is a finality that death brings with the promise of seeing your loved one again in heaven.  In our situation with Jensen, he’s not dead.   He’s very much alive, just with someone else.  It would be better compared to a kidnapping.  We know he’s out there somewhere but we have no way of knowing whether or not he’s hungry, crying, cold, anxious or lonely.  For me to say that worrying about all of that breaks me over and over again each time I think of it is a huge understatement.  I can’t even begin to accurately describe what it’s like to worry about someone who you know you will probably never see again.  He’s 2,000 miles away from us and will probably never even know who we are, how he changed our lives or how much we love him.

Tomorrow, Jensen will be 9 weeks old.  Yesterday marks 8 weeks since he was taken from us.  As I thought about how much time has passed since I was able to hold him in my arms, I remembered the words to a Reba McIntire song.  “If I had only known it was my last night by your side, I’d pray a miracle to stop the dawn.  And when you’d smile at me, I would look into your eyes and make sure you know my love for you goes on and on.  If I had only known, the love I would have shown, if I had only known.”  Those words ring so true for me.  I can remember Jon talking on the phone that awful Tuesday morning to his sister in law, Rhonda and him telling her that I wouldn’t put Jensen down.  That was absolutely the truth.  As we waited for the news that would devastate us, I could not do anything but hold that sweet baby and look at his precious face.  The only time I wasn’t holding him, his Daddy was.  I wouldn’t have done it any different.  I just wish I could have had more time.  I know that sounds bizarre since I know how it ended but I would give anything to have just one more second with him.  Just because the ending wasn’t what we planned, doesn’t mean I would trade a single second that we had with Jensen.  Garth Brooks sang it well when he said, “Our lives are better left to chance.  I could have missed the pain but I’d have had to miss the dance.”  I was lucky enough to have experienced the amazing joy of what it feels like to be a mommy, even if for only 5 days.  I would do it all over again, even knowing how it would make me feel, just to touch his soft skin, see his dark eyes and smell his unforgettable scent.

Now, without Jensen, we are learning to live our “new normal”.  That may be hard for you to understand.  You might be thinking, “Living without a baby isn’t different for them, is it?”  Our “new normal” is learning to live our lives exactly the opposite of how we expected them to be right now.  I shouldn’t be back to work yet.  We should have car seat bases in our vehicles.  I shouldn’t have time to write a blog.  Jon should be telling his work buddies a funny story about his cute baby.  We should have a baby room full of presents for a baby who is loved by so many.  I should be posting pictures on Facebook, like every other new mommy.  And we should be waking up at night to feed a baby, not from nightmares.

Life goes on and there really isn’t a damn thing we can do about it but go on with it, hoping we can somehow learn something valuable from our loss rather than be swallowed up by our all consuming grief.

Sometimes, there is no reason.....

 I have been thinking a lot lately and have spent some time trying to gather these thoughts so I can share them.  This post is just that, my thoughts, take them for what they are worth…….

As JP and I have made our way together down this journey to have a family, I have come to conclude some things about life and its unexpected twists and turns.  One thing I have come to know for sure is that sometimes bad things happen to good people, period.  We, as humans, try to justify and rationalize every little thing that comes our way, from finances to career moves, losing loved ones or in our case, trying to have a family.  I am a thinker, in fact, I am an “over thinker”.  I go over and over conversations, situations and motives in my mind to the point of exhaustion.  I even over analyze potential circumstances so that I am prepared, “just in case”.   I have tried to figure out why something is or has happened so much that I don’t sleep.  As humans, our attempt to analyze the “why” of a situation is our feeble need to be assured that we are not being punished for something we have done in our past.  We have been taught from an early age that if you are good, you are rewarded and if you are bad, you are punished.  The extension of that thinking is that we all believe that when something bad does happen to us, it must be a direct result of something we did and are being punished.  This is simply not true!

I read a great book this summer that put this entire line of thinking into perspective for me.  The god that I believe in does not sit arbitrarily on a majestic throne with a sparkling scepter waiting to decide who to bless and who to punish.  There are plenty of people who are considerably more faithful than I who have experienced life changing devastation as a result of unanswered prayers.  To that end, there are also people in this world who I believe are far more wicked than myself and they have experienced the joy of an answered prayer, only to go on living their lives as before.  Your level of righteousness is not in direct proportion to whether or not God chooses to answers your prayers.  The fact of the matter is that in most situations, there are others involved who choose not to do what they should and that affects our lives negatively.  For instance, the young mother killed by a drunk driver was not being punished, neither was her family.  Instead, someone made a choice to drink and drive and as a result, an entire family had to suffer the consequences.  Our lives are affected so greatly by the choices of others, both in a positive and negative manner.  God specifically created us with the ability to make our own choices, good and bad.

We have moral freedom.  We can choose to be kind or selfish, caring or hurtful, honest or dishonest.  If we choose to behave in a way that we know is morally wrong, God is not going to stop us.  God created us with our own free will, to do with our lives as we please.  When we are living our lives seeking after God’s own heart, we strive to make the good choices, being kind, caring and honest with others.  God will not stop you from hurting others or making choices that hurt yourself.  He has told us that certain things are wrong and we will suffer consequences from making such decisions.  We can either take His word for it or learn the lesson afterward.

I’m not here to say that God does not perform miracles, because I can think of 4 people right off the top of my head, who by all accounts should not be alive today.  What I am saying is that when we don’t have our prayer answered that we are desperately pleading God for, it has nothing to do with our faithfulness to him.  We can not think that, period.  It is purely self-destructive and absolutely wrong.  When things happen to us, when tragedies come our way, it is so hard not to ask why.  We will never be able to give meaning to the senseless and horrible things that happen to us.  What we can do, after we have allowed our hearts and minds ample time to process the situation and grieve, is ask ourselves what we are going to do about the difficult circumstances we are facing.  We can either let it define us or just be a part of our story.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I have spent a lot of time being angry and even more time being sad.  God doesn’t expect us NOT to deal with the problems we face.  He made us with these powerful and sometimes overwhelming emotions.  Nothing that we feel is new to God and I am certain that he can handle all of the emotions we experience, especially anger.  Our chaplain from California told us that a healthy relationship, whether with another person or with God, is one in which you are comfortable and free to express all of your emotions, even anger without retaliation.  God works the same way.  If you are angry at him because of something that you have endured, tell Him, He’s big enough to handle anything you throw at him.  We were never promised a life free of pain but we were promised that we would be given strength and courage to deal with the pain.

Another thing I have come to further understand is that those who love you are also hurt by the things that break you.  I don’t want to say that I enjoy seeing our friends and family in pain but it has brought comfort to my broken heart to see that our friends and family are hurt by our suffering.  While others are hurting for us and with us, we are able to get a small glimpse of how much we mean to everyone which shows us that we are not alone.  To be prayed for and loved by so many has been so helpful to us.  Quite honestly, when I see others cry over our situation, it helps to solidify my feelings of not being alone in this extremely painful time.  If you are willing to cry for and with us, you have shown us how important we are to you and that is something no one can ever take away from us.

We prayed for Jensen to come home with us.  Nicole chose not to do what she should have done.  This was not caused by God or anyone's fault.  It simply happened.  We prayed for strength and courage to survive this unspeakable horror that we have been through.  We may not have received the miracle we had so desperately hoped for but what we did discover is that we have amazing people around us for support, God beside us for courage to face another day and strength within ourselves to hold each other when needed.  This is definitely not what we asked for but I refuse to spend another moment wondering why this has happened to us.  Instead, I chose to ask what am I going to do about it and the answer is simple.  I am taking one day at a time, praying for Jensen and Nicole and waiting for our forever baby.