Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Some old Christmas carols have been giving me so much comfort this year. Thought I would take some excerpts and compile them together in a post. It's a meditative exercise for me, and I hope it brings you comfort and joy too.

Come to Bethlehem and see
Christ Whose birth the angels sing;
Come, adore on bended knee,
Christ the Lord, the newborn King.

See Him in a manger laid,
Whom the choirs of angels praise;
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid,
While our hearts in love we raise.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy!

Merry Christmas, from our house to yours.

White Horse for Christmas

The other night while I made dinner, I heard a song called "White Horse for Christmas" by the group Over the Rhine. It's a wonderful lullaby that we played for Liza Jane while she was in the hospital. You can listen to it here.

The song took me back to the night in early December 2010 when we played it for our three-week-old baby girl. At the time she was doing fairly well, and although we knew she would need some difficult surgeries soon, we were still optimistic.

I held her in my arms that night in her hospital room, and later we gave her a bath. Those moments were and still are so precious to me. And I had no idea the horrible ordeal we were about to experience, culminating with having to remove her from life support several weeks later and say goodbye, as we sent her into the sky to meet Jesus on his white horse.

As the song played, I cried for missing her. I also cried for myself in that moment, because at the time I was still so innocent and unaware that I was about to lose her. And I cried because my baby is riding her white horse through the sky now, and I cannot be with her.

This past week there was a terrible tragedy in Connecticut. My heart is going out to the mothers there. When they packed their kids' lunch that morning, bundled them in winter coats and dropped them off for kindergarten, they had no idea they were about to lose them in a terrible massacre.

I pray for those mothers, that somehow their broken, shattered hearts will survive through this Christmas season. We never know if the moment we have with our loved ones will be the last one we will ever have on this earth. And this was a terrible, unfair way to learn.

I'll close with the words to the song, "I want to speak with the angel who said 'do not be afraid.'" It is a small comfort that we must not fear what comes after death. Those words, "do not be afraid," are what I cling to, now more than ever.

Living Intentionally, Grieving Intentionally

It's summertime, and the living is... busy. This post is long overdue because we have had lots of summer activities going on - picnics with friends, family gatherings, and warm-weather-inspired fun.

I'm a firm believer in living intentionally, so while the weather is warm and the sun is shining, I've made a conscious choice to get out there and enjoy it. And I've taken my time getting back to the introspective (often indoor) activity of blogging. So here it goes...

Sometimes as grieving parents, I think we need to make a choice to let ourselves remember our children. The other day I did this by taking Liza's scrapbook, the chronicle of her life, and sitting in a room by myself. I looked at the whole book, remembering the good times and the bad times. And I cried.

A page out of Liza's book, and a page out of our lives.

This, to me, is what it means to be intentional about grief. Sometimes memories and emotions come spontaneously. Other times, I think we have to make time to let ourselves process our feelings.

The same is true about life in general. We can be intentional about the way we choose to live, where we focus our energy, where we pour out our love.

One of my choices is to remember my daughter, to spend time recalling her life. I think it honors her memory. It is also a way that I can be kind to myself by acknowledging that I need time to grieve her, I need time to love her, I still need time to be her mommy.

I'd love to hear from you... what do you like to do to "be intentional" about living?

Our Butterfly - Part 1

This is the first of what will probably be several posts about butterflies.

I use butterfly imagery a lot on this blog because butterflies are significant to our family. They remind us of our little Liza Jane.

When I was carrying her in my womb and we were learning of her difficult medical problems, a couple of people independently told us that Liza would emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon. That she would surprise us and that she would be beautiful.

At the time I interpreted those words in a specific way. There were other words tacked on to those statements about healing. And I believed she would surprise us by being miraculously healed and made whole on this earth.

That wasn't meant to be, apparently. Our delicate, beautiful little butterfly girl did not last long in this life. After she died, Luke and I took some time to get away. One of the things we did was to visit a butterfly farm in St. Martin, FWI, as a tribute to her. We learned some pretty interesting things about butterflies there.

Butterflies usually only live a couple of weeks once they emerge from their cocoons. During their brief lifespans as beautiful winged creatures, they have one primary purpose: to reproduce. All the lovely show of color that they put on is to help them attract a mate. Male butterflies will dance and twirl around a female, hoping she will choose them. This ritual goes on for a few hours at a time. And if the female rejects the male, he will go off and mope by himself for a while. We actually saw these behaviors at the butterfly farm.

So maybe those people were right about our Liza Jane in a way. She did emerge from the womb like a beautiful butterfly. She was more delicate and fragile than we could have imagined, and her life span was only a few short weeks. And in a way, I think she was here for the purpose to reproduce herself. Her life produced a drastic change in many who came into contact with her, as well as quite a few people who never met her.

Since I've joined some online communities about the loss of a child, I noticed that many other people are reminded of their children when they see a butterfly. It seems to be a common theme among grieving parents, and I think it is a fitting one.

I'll close today with a quote that was on a sympathy card someone shared with us after Liza died. It really meant a lot to me. If you are remembering a loved one today, I hope this will resonate with you too.

"It is not how long the flower blooms, but how beautifully."

- Unknown

A time to mourn and a time to dance

I had to look up this verse from Ecclesiastes to remember exactly how it is worded. In my memory, it was "a time to mourn and a time to be comforted." It was kind of ironic, then, to find that it actually finished the phrase with "a time to dance."

We danced last night at a family square dance event hosted by our church. I've always found dancing very cathartic, and last night was no exception. I'm thankful for times to dance, times of joy in spite of the sadness that still lingers. It is comforting to come up for air, to enjoy the bright spots in life. We had all types of people enjoying the dance: young and old, athletic and not. One in a wheelchair, one on crutches, one precious young man with Down syndrome who reminds me constantly of the daughter I lost. Everyone thrilling in the joy of movement, the joy of being together.

Lately the subject of comfort has been at the forefront of my mind. I didn't realize at the beginning of this journey of grief how great the comfort of God would be. That sounds too simple, too trite, so let me try to explain.

I grew up in a Christian home, blessed by parents who taught me from a young age about a God who loves us and gave his own son to die for us. I felt the conviction of my need for salvation strongly at a young age. Even growing up in a rich spiritual environment, though, I've always been afraid of suffering. In the past I have avoided verses like "blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matt 5:4). Why would I want to mourn? I didn't like the sound of this. So although I knew that verses like this were in the Bible, I chose to frame my point of view around other scriptures instead. The bits about mourning, or suffering, sounded too terrible to bear. My life was relatively simple, actually quite easy, and I didn't want to think about hardship or pain.

What I didn't know was how great the comfort would be. And, I'm starting to believe that we are only able to experience the comfort of God in direct proportion to the severity of our suffering. Now, I'm no theologian, and I don't have a list of scriptures to back this up. This is strictly my personal experience speaking, no more, no less.

So, personally, I believe that I would not have experienced the comfort of God to the extent that I now know it unless I had been through this trial. It may sound like a small consolation for losing a daughter, and don't get me wrong, this does not diminish the painful hole that she left behind. But if the void had not been this great, I would not have had such a need, such a capacity, to receive the comfort of God. There is a reward in the depth of the comfort that is there. And it took me about nine months of pain to be able to open myself up, just the tiniest bit, to begin to receive that comfort.

Here is one of those verses that really scared me in the past - still does, to tell the truth.

And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

I Corinthians 1:7

Let me be blunt: I hated verses like this. Sharing in suffering does not sound like a good time. It doesn't sound like something a God of love would allow. And I'm still wrestling with a lot of questions about this. I have learned, though, that there is hope. There is comfort, and it increases exponentially compared with the level of pain I have endured. It is this comfort that has allowed me to go on, that has allowed me to embrace both the mourning and the dancing.