January 4, 2011

Although the effort to work through each day is often immense, today we felt a little of the weight lifted from our shoulders through a conversation with our Doula. Here I must share that this person has become our guardian angel come to earth, our counselor, and our friend throughout the past months. Yet, through our inability to see the future we turned away from her early in the pregnancy and needed to be guided back through gentle nudges by a God who knows our every need. This afternoon we talked about Jesse's prognosis, which happens every time, but through her questions and our reflection we have come to a deeper level of acceptance of Jesse's fate. Paradoxically, that has brought some unexpected peace to our minds and hearts.

While my mind cannot yet fully connect between experiencing the living, moving child in Hanna's womb and the idea that this same child will not come home with us, I am closer to closing that void... and I can now write this sentence. This does not diminish what I feel for Jesse and the weight of the sadness that goes with that reality, but it does allow me to realize that my parental instincts to protect and preserve our child, while valid and necessary, are being achieved in other ways. I recognized that much of our concern over how and where Jesse will be born were related to those instincts. Now, with greater acceptance, those concerns begin to fade, and in their place we are discovering the heartfelt values and hopes for this birth and Jesse's life that we hold close to our hearts. We feel more at peace with the paths that we have to choose from that will lead to his birth day.

With acceptance comes the grace to continue on. With acceptance comes clarity. With acceptance, we have drawn closer to our true vision of what we believe Jesse's life really means. He has touched us and so many others by his life to this day, and I can only believe he will never stop reaching out when his physical body is no longer here.

I have learned again that God does not speak to us through fear. God's voice is the gentle nudge, the kind word, the subtle sense of peace that flows through us when He is speaking and we are listening. For today, I think we heard His words again, and that has brought us relief.