Pictures of Grant

Yesterday i posted my 8 month blog on Grant....but today being the actual 8 month anniversary of his birth i wanted to share a couple pictures of him that make my heart smile

                                         Grant @ 30 weeks...Our last ultrasound of him...he died 3 days later

                                                       Daddy giving Grant his first bath

My handsome little man

8 Months...Missing my Grant

Tomorrow April 30th will be 8 months since Grant passed away!  That little guy has been a part of our lives for 16 months.  Even though it has been 16 months i feel like he has always been a part of our lives...i think it is because for so many years we prayed, longed and hoped for him...even though we did not know him we dreamed of him, dreamed of being his mommy and daddy.

At the 8 month mark of Grant dying and going to be with Jesus..i am feeling so much thankfulness in my heart.  I am thankful to the Lord that he heard my prayers and gave me my firstborn son Grant.  I am thankful that i got to experience all the joys of pregnancy with him.  Don't get me wrong i love my husband with all my heart but being Grant's mommy gave me the ability to be filled with a love that is so pure and so BIG and so powerful.  I am so thankful that i got to hold his beautiful perfect body in my arms...stroking his soft skin and holding his hand while telling him how much i love him. 

I wish to God that Grant was alive right now and that i was given the opportunity to raise him and watch him grow into the man of God that i knew he would become.  But that was taken from me. But I'm learning that if i focus on what was taken from me i wont be able to see and appreciate what has been given to me.  And what was given to me was the gift of being his mom.  The gift of knowing him even though it was for a short time, the gift of joy and hope and also for the gift of sorrow which in turn is changing me..

8 months ago we said goodbye to Grants earthly body...a body that i love and still visit weekly...but so thankful that it was not our final goodbye.  Even though it may feel like forever here on earth...when i am standing before my Lord with my boys in my arms it will feel like a blink of an eye as if no time has passed. 

Thank you Lord for showing me these things as i continue to walk this road with you.

Hallmark and God Moments...

Today Tom and i went to the Hallmark store to look around.  We walked in and right there in front of me was a wall art that had classic pooh (we did that as Grants theme for his nursery) It is a rare sight to find anything classic pooh....when Tom and i were decorating Grants nursery we had to go to thrift stores and buy things online...stores just did not sell classic pooh anymore.  Seeing this made me sad, but what it said brought a bittersweet feeling to my heart.  It said "As long as we walk this road together our memories will be our guide"

Tears started to form so i walked away...i did NOT want to cry in hallmark! Right in front of me was the the book "Guess How Much I Love You" in a recordable version where you could record your voice reading it.  It was the book i read to Grant all the time and it was the book we had read at Zachary's memorial service.

Tears started to stream down my face as i was trying to make my way to the back of the store so no one would see me crying and to my left and right were blue items saying "congrats on your baby boy" etc.  I wanted to scream...Hallmark was becoming a true nightmare for me, i could not turn around without things screaming out reminding me that my 2 son's were dead.

 I walked over to the Willow Tree Figures (that was the reason why we were there in the first place...we wanted to get a figure to represent our boys...i started collecting these figures to represent the special and memorial times in my life)  I looked around and something stood out to me that made my heart swell up with love and deep sorrow at the same time.  It was 2 little boys sitting and the caption for the figurines were "Two Together"  I knew in that instant that this was the perfect one to represent my 2 boys who are together in heaven.

We were driving home from the mall and i had this urge to go to the cemetery...we had just been the day before but i felt like i had to go. When we arrived we noticed that there were more people there then we normal see.  For the first time i saw another family in "Baby Land" (its where  my boys are buried) I sat by my boys grave and just sat there quietly.

I have been struggling lately with feeling so lonely...not a lot of people that i know have experienced what i have gone through and most if not all of those few people live far from me and its such a lonley  place to be...don't get me wrong i am glad that people have not experienced what i have gone through...i would not wish it on the most horrible person in the world...its just a lonely road to walk for me especially right now.....but i know that i am not really alone...I am walking it with the Lord knowing that He will be my closest friend and will walk with me me through every low and high moment that i face.

So back to being at the boys grave...a sweet woman came up to me and she was the one that was in babyland with her family visiting her 2 children that were buried there 18 years ago. I felt it was a God moment...because i have been feeling so alone in all of this and I was able to talk to another mother face to face who knows what i am feeling and going through and it really blessed my heart.  She and her husband gave us 2 beautiful roses to place at our boys graves and that was so sweet and really blessed us. I am so thankful that i serve a God who sees my pain and the times of loneliness and brings people into my life that help bring comfort to me and bless my heart at just the right moment.

Serenity Prayer

  The other day i was watching an old Oprah program where she was interviewing Paula Deen.  I thought it was going to be a fun show talking about cooking, i was wrong.  There was a conversation between Oprah and Paula that hit me hard and made me stop the TV and start to think and pray about something.

Paula was talking about her struggles (i wont go in to them but they were hard) and one day she heard the serenity prayer and the line that stood out to her and to me also was "God grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change"  i googled the word serenity and it means "The state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled" 

In that moment it hit me and i realized that i have not really accepted the death of my two sons, in fact i refused to accept that they died (i know that they are dead but my heart could not accept it) i thought that if i accept it then it means that i am ok with it and i am definitely not ok with it.  But i realized that the moment i acknowledge that they both died and they wont be coming back and that they really are in heaven with the Lord,  i need to have that peace that untroubled spirit to accept that i cant go back in time and change things and somehow make it so that my boys are still alive, because i daily have those times where i wish to God that he would rewind my life and with the knowledge i have now i could maybe, just maybe save my son's and they could be alive today.  But i cant, and when i ask the Lord to help me to give me that peace that he has my boys with him and in that moment i have to start making the steps to move forward never leaving their memory behind, taking it with me as i move forward with the Lord, knowing He will help me to accept all the things that i cant change.

This was and is a hard lesson for me to learn on my grief journey, but as the prayer continues "to have the courage to change the things i can"  There are things in my life i can change in order to grow closer to the Lord and to be the women He wants me to be.  This is all a daily process asking the Lord to give me that serenity that peace to accept that i have no control over the past, that i need to surrender that feeling of wanting to be in control over to Him and let him be the Lord over my Past, my Present and my Future.

1 Month....Missing my Zachary

Today at 8:15am marks the one month anniversary of my 2nd son Zachary being born and going to heaven.  To be honest it feels more like a year has passed then a month...i think because i have been on this grief journey for almost 8 months now...it kind of blurs together...but now the loss and grief is X 2. 

Last week i got the official pathology report regarding the death of Zachary and it confirmed that nothing was wrong with him...he was perfectly healthy, everything with my placenta and uterus was good.  Something unknown caused me to bleed and in turn caused my uterus to contract making me go into pre-term labor.  My doctor is working hard to find out what the cause is and we are hoping soon to find the answer. I have the best doctor and feel so blessed to be under his care.

With Grant he passed away before i knew it had happened and that was so hard to face. 
The thing that breaks my heart the most is...  Zachary was alive the whole time, so healthy and active with a strong steady heart beat till the end..he was just too little to live outside of me and during the last hard moment of my labor is when he went to be with Jesus.  I remember the evening before he passed away, not knowing that he would die just talking to him and telling him how much i love him and how wanted he is, and just praying...praying that God would stop the bleeding and Zachary would be able to go to full term and live.  I am comforted to know that in the last hours of his life Zachary heard and knew that his mommy and daddy loved him so much.

 As Zachary entered heaven the first person he saw with his eyes was Jesus..I wonder if the 2nd person he saw was his big brother Grant, i like to think that they ran into each others arms, and that Grant showed Zachary all the wonders of heaven.  I also wonder if they talk about me and tom and if they remember us and know how much we love and miss them and how we look forward to the day when we can hold them in our arms again.  I don't know the answers to these questions but i know i will find out when i am standing before the Lord greeted by my precious 2 sons.

I miss them...i just miss them.  I was thinking back to how i wrote my first blog about a month after Grant died and i read it again today and i saw the deep intense pain but i also saw a women who was so mad at God but she decided to start to open up her heart once again to the Lord and allow him to start working and to start the healing process on the broken mess that was her heart.

Here i am almost 7 months later and I'm still a broken mess but a beautiful broken mess i am...because i have allowed the Lord into the most ugly and rough pieces of my heart to begin to heal and mold me into the women he had designed and destined me to be.  I still have a long ways to go...i wont be whole and completly healed till the day i stand before the Lord in heaven....but I'm choosing to let Him shine through the hurt and pain and trusting Him to bring hope and joy into my life once again...and just thanking the Lord for his strength and those times of quiet stillness when he speaks peace into my aching heart.

First Easter in Heaven

This Sunday is Easter.  A year ago i was pregnant with Grant and was planing and dreaming for  Easter 2012.  I would get him a cute little suit to wear to church, we would try to "help" him decorate eggs, i would make him an Easter basket that he would never remember or really have interest in :)   I know i would have taken so many pictures documenting his first Easter holiday.

Here it is...Easter is in just a few days.  A month ago i knew it would be Grants first Easter in Heaven but i did not know that he would be spending it with his little brother Zachary in heaven. 

I wish my boys were here, Grant would be around 5 months and Zachary would still be inside me and be 20 weeks.

Even though it is so hard knowing they are not with me, i know that they get to spend their first Easter in heaven with Jesus.  Easter is not about all the fun and traditional things i mentioned above...Easter is about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ dying for our sins and rising from the dead.  If Jesus had not paid the price for my sin...i would not have the opportunity to spend all of eternity with my sons.  Because of His sacrifice i have the assurance of being in heaven because i chose to accept him as my personal Lord and savior.  He laid down his own life so that i could have eternal life. 

Even though i don't know exactly what my boy's will be doing on Easter Sunday i can only imagine that they are spending it in the throne room of God, in the very presence of the one who created them worshiping Jesus and singing with the angels and this gives some peace and helps to quiet the aching in this mommy's heart.


1 John 5:11-12 "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."

Romans 10:9 "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Hope.....

This week Tom and I were supposed to go to my doctor for an ultrasound and if the baby cooperated we would learn what we were having.  I remember when we got the little appointment card in mid February giving us the the date of April 2nd for our appointment for my 19 week ultrasound...I was filled with so much hope and excitement as I began to look forward to the moment of learning the gender of our baby...when I stop and think about it I cant help but imagining the Lord looking at us as we find out that we were pregnant and so soon after Grant had passed away watching as joy and hope started to flood our hearts...watching as i held that appointment card in my hand so excited for the future only tknowing that in 4 months that would all be taken away from us...i cant imagine how hard that must have been to watch us dream and pray and thank Him for this new miracle...That’s a difficult thought, and I wonder if you have ever been there....not in my situation of course but maybe in a moment where you had so much hope in something and soon after it was taken from you?  It would be easy to allow the world to tell us that it wasn’t worth the risk. Why bother to hope at all? 

For me, hope has led me to pray....the moment i found out i was pregnant with Zachary i prayed for him daily it brought me to a deeper place of intamcy with the Lord...trusting Him with the tiny miracle within me. Hope has led me to believe Him. To have the strength and boldness to say that I trust Him above the hurt. It has given me a reason to lift my head, to stake my claim, and to dismiss the shadows that whisper, “it will not be redeemed.” We do not know the ways of the Lord, of course. I’ve heard it said a thousand times and I agree. But there is more to say, isn’t there?

I wish i could know the mind of God to know why he allowd this to happen to Tom and i two times in such a short period of time, but i dont know His ways, but one thing i can know is Him.

This may sound crazy to some, but when i found out i was pregnant i had a feeling that it was a boy and so early on if we were to have a boy I chose the name Zachary because it means "God Remembers" he remembered my pain of Grants death and blessed me with a new baby and that filled my heart with so much hope (and i was right i gave birth to a tiny but beautiful baby boy) being pregnant with Zachary did not answer the questions or silence the hurt of loosing Grant, but it helped me to trust the Lord with my heart once again and bring joy and healing and hope to my aching heart.

Zacharys life and death made me relaize that at times i have put my hope in people and in things and they have let me down or things happend like the death of my sons that seemed to shatter all the hope i had...but in the past week as i have been seeking the Lord he used Zachary and Grant's life as a reminder of the power of hope. Not just in tomorrow. Not just in this life, actually.  But the hope that demands a response in the way we live our lives....

Zachary is with Him

Grant is with Him

So while my feet reach one in front of the other as i walk this hard road, for all the years to come I will remain steadfast and faithful in this:

I have hope because I have Him