Current mood: okay, loved, sad, peaceful, grieving Our Miscarriage... The Promise of Isaiah This will be a bit lengthy of a read. Much ground will be covered, so I ask you to bear with me. God's graciousness covers this whole ordeal, and I can say with all truthfulness, this has truly been a blessing, in many many ways. It has been hard, but a blessing. Now, for the story....The Promise of Isaiah. Two years ago God woke me up in the middle of the night and told me He would be giving us a 3rd child. Those have been a long two years for me. My heart has teetered from excitement to anxiousness, from faithfulness to doubting, from confidence to anger. Through it all God remained patient with me. God was teaching me that He alone is "Creator" and He has a very specific purpose for each of His children. There are no "accidents", they come exactly as He has preplanned according to His will. And no matter how badly I want it, I can not change what He has planned. New Year's of 2006 proved to be a wonderful time lol, far more wonderful than either of us expected or knew. About 1 week later I was praying and God said something to me that was highly exciting, but also disturbing. In the most gentle, kindest, softest tone He told me the name of our baby. It was exciting as we had not even taken a test yet! It held confirmation, yet it was not a bold statement or command of "Your baby shall be called blah blah blah" it was very very soft,... kind,... sweet,... gentle,.... the softest of whispers to my heart underlined with an intense love that said, "Your baby's name is Isaiah." From that point on that name weighed heavily upon me. I looked up the meaning and mentioned it to Joe, but I didn't push it, and I didn't go into the detail behind it. There was something about that soft whisper, that extreme gentleness, a kind of special comfort behind it that disturbed me, as though He was telling me out of reassurance for a doubt yet to come, an answer to a cry I hadn't even called out yet. I knew this deep down, and it was chilling. My friend's Sherry and Sara whom have just experienced heart wrenching miscarriages were incredibly hard and real for even me to deal with, not even touching the sorrow they felt in their hearts. It was all too real a possibility and I know I am not immune to such sadness. So I mentioned the name to Joe, but kept the details to myself, somehow believing if I just tucked it as far away into the recesses of my mind, maybe it would keep sorrow away, maybe it just wouldn't happen. Tuck away the bad parts, keep the good ones,... but I was hiding such a gift of God's grace...I didn't know it yet, but there was so much more to it than I thought. A week later or so Joe came home singing Garth Brooks "Two of a Kind Working on a Full House" to a very happy, surprised, and shocked wife! Was my hubby really ready for a baby? Finally? After all this time? God's timing is perfect, although He is rarely early, He is never late! Screams of excitement, disbelief, shock, joy, along with tears of happiness filled our house that very same night, when a digital pregnancy test read "Pregnant" in under a minute. The time had finally come! Our third child was on its way, just as God had promised! Talk and chatter filled, with excitement and impending nervousness, like a sweet aroma ebbing in and out of quietness. Joe hungered for a boy, and deep down I truly desired another girl to cuddle with, afterall girls are familiar to me. But saturday night came with some light spotting intermixed with nervousness and impending sadness. I drank tons of water and stayed laying on my left side, waiting, hoping and praying baby would stay put. It seemed to have worked, it stopped. Morning would show different though, much different. Simple spotting turned far worse and I crumpled into tears as I knew my baby was being called back home. I was almost 4 weeks along. We went to the ER and spent a long tiring afternoon running tests. The doctors finally concluded the hcg levels (the hormone released in your body once the zygote implants into the uterine lining, also the hormone that home pregnancy tests test for.) were way too low to have gotten a home pregnancy test a few days earlier, and they questioned perhaps a false positive on the test. Now I can understand misreading 2 pink lines when really only one is there, even faint ones can read positive if you want it bad enough. But we'd taken a digital test, and one that had a lower sensitivity rate on the market... meaning there had to be a substantial amount of hcg for it to register. It is impossible to misread the word "Pregnant", there are no lines or stripes or plus symbols to imagine. It is a simple word. And I'm running this over in my head and then it all clicked, The Holy Spirit whispered and I was overwhelmed in comfort and assurance... "God had spoken a name had He not?"... Therefore there must have been a child! He hadn't spoken the name Isaiah to me just because He knew I would wonder whom this child was, but to reassure me that there was indeed a child! It was God's graciousness towards me that answered my questions before they even arose, He met that need before I knew a need existed! This did not take him by surprise. He knew, and He began reaching out to me in comfort from the very beginnings of it all. To hide now how Isaiah's name came to be, would be to hide the very essence of God's grace and provision! It was a testimony within itself! "But God, what about the levels? I believe you, but the docs don't even believe me! Why did you let them fall?"  And then I realized, that was part of God's grace and provision as well. Because of this I didn't have to endure a physical exam, nor did I have to be sent to an OB to have my levels constantly rechecked over the next weeks to ensure the levels were falling and my body was releasing and rejecting all things "baby". He saved me from even more hurt, even more torture. That through all this, He prepared a way for me! I was sent home to rest, which was all I wanted. I just wanted quietness and stillness, to cry, to breathe, to let go, to sleep on my soft, inviting flannel sheets with penguins and polarbears... "He leads me beside the still waters, He makes me to lie down in green pastures."   I do want to spend some time talking about names. Holly did some great ramblings about choosing names, and where is God in all of it, over on her blog at the Choosing Home forums. Her blog is titled "The Baby Name game". It is such a good read! It is worth scrolling down past the first 6 entries or so to this one which was written on December 16th.  It was this blog that got me thinking about names and praying that God would put on our hearts the names for any future children as He seems fitting. And it was Kari's blog about Her daughter Anna that opened up a new world to me about children, about names, about miscarriages, about understanding more of God and exactly how much He loves us. I had read this several months ago when Sara was grieving over her loss and it just resonated with my heart. Like me, Kari didn't have any "proof" from the doctors that she'd had a second daughter. Just a: "looks like you *might* have had a vanishing twin, but hard to tell, and you probably didn't." When man is ever so doubtful, God steps in ever so strong and gentle. God took her hand ever so graciously and took her on a journey not only to reassure that yes, she actually was carrying twins, but also revealed the indentity of the gender, the name of the child and bits of her personality! The whole thing brought tears to my eyes. For her loss of the child, for her gain in getting to know her anyway, for her gain in getting to know more of Our Father,...that God cares SO very much....that the miscarriages, aborted babies, dumpster babies, stillbirths,... these are NOT random beings with blank faces up in heaven somewhere without names or purposes or indentities! They are JUST as precious to God as you or me! And when situations prevail that keep us from being able to name our own children, it doesn't render them nameless. God knows them. God created them. God cares for them...name and all. WOW! That our God cares so much! Just....w o w!  And having known so many others to have felt pain with miscarriages or with infertility, or with stillbirths, I couldn't help but to wonder and cry out, "God? Why?! Why do we feel this pain? Why do you allow it to happen? Are we being punished? Have we failed somewhere? What are we suppose to learn from this?" and in my cries He answered, again so gently, so lovingly, His very touch quiets my tears and His voice stills my aching confused heart,... "No, my child, it's because of The Fall." And it began to make sense, in a whirlwind in my mind the Holy Spirit began to piece things together. We are not being punished, there was nothing I could have done differently to prevent it or to "earn" a child. He creates life, and it is the death brought in by Sin that takes it away. There were certain things that just happened with the Fall of man, certain things that came into the world when sin came. Our bodies were never suppose to grow old! They were never suppose to age or die. When Adam sinned he died immediatly spiritually and began immediatly to age (to death) physically. When sin came, so did sickness, so did sorrow, so did pain,...so did death. Christ took sin upon him and died for us as the punishment of sin, so that our spirits may never die. But we still live in a fallen world, People still get sick, our bodies still fail us. These are more or less ramblings from things that have been newly born to me, these are not absolutes and I'm not really up for any spiritual debates at the moment, lol. It just made so much sense to me then, I had to share. For all the others out there struggling with grief, with loss. It isn't your fault! It wasn't my fault. It was a by product of living in a fallen world! God created life and answered my call, and knowing what was to come as a by product of living in a fallen world, He held me in the palm of His hand and gave reassurance before I thought I even needed it! God kept His promise that He made two years ago. Just because I will not get to hold my baby in the next 9 months does not mean God forfeited what He said! We still have a 3rd child! I'll just wait a little bit longer to meet him is all. But some day I will. Someday I will turn around to a young man standing before me and know him instantly, and then be given something I will have waited years for...a hug from my son. On a side note: Some may think it odd to give a name to a miscarriage, but is it so odd if God thought enough to name him, should it be considered so wierd? Afterall, should he be doomed as "poor little V**** miscarriage #1" forever in eternity? Lol! Of course not! all have names, all are special, All are His! And what a blessing and testimony it has been for God to hand choose the name Isaiah! It means: "The Lord Saves." How awesome is that? I will be making a small memory box for him as I do all my children. The first outfit Joe and I picked out that first night and the booties I'd bought will go inside. A copy of this letter will go inside, as well as several verses the Lord has used to minister to me during this time. It's not going to be a shrine or anything like that lol! Just my way of not diminishing a "simple miscarriage" away as nothing, as the world has come to favor doing. Isaiah is very much real and alive. That the Lord took the time to name him Himself and pass it along to me, assures me of that. Each of our children has a biblical saying or verse that we kind of adopted when we were pregnant with them. With Julia it was, "We prayed for a blessing and God sent us you." With Megan it was James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above..." I prayed and asked God to give me a verse for Isaiah. Is it any wonder the verse I came across is actually from the book of Isaiah? No joke! This *just* happened! I promise I did not go and scour the book of Isaiah to purposefully find a verse fitting LOL! It was just given to us: Isaiah 65:24 (New International Version) 24 Before they call I will answer;        while they are still speaking I will hear. How fitting is this? The promise and testimony of our little Isaiah goes beyond knowing we have a son waiting for us in heaven. It is a testimony of God's love and faithfulness. That He is very concerned about us and very active in our lives. He keeps His promises and redeems us. What is taken from us in the physical is redeemed in the spiritual. When our baby was taken in the physical, God brought him home in the spiritual,..."The Lord Saves".  And when I begin to doubt, to fear, to weaken and grow weary, I have but to remember the Promise of Isaiah...before I call, He has already heard, before I knew of a need, He had already provided ...And there is such safety and comfort resting in the palm of His hand!