As I look at my amazing, handsome, perfect twin boys, I can’t help but feel guilty as I write in tears of the big brother or sister that we’d be celebrating a year of life on this Earth now. My mother’s heart still aches and grieves for a child that I won’t meet this side of Heaven, a child still so perfectly created by my Father, yet one He chose to keep with Him. How perfect that his or her (I still believe it is a girl) birthday would have been in March, the beginning of Spring, a time when all things appear new, fresh, reborn, alive. Yet there’s still a part of me that wants to crawl into bed and just remember. Remember the excitement of thinking that we were going to be parents to a perfect human being. Remember the switch in your mind when you realize how fragile you are now when you’ve been such a strong, independent, busy woman for so long. Remember wondering what she will look like or whose personality he will have. But if you remember that, you have to remember the pain of knowing the inevitable, something you can’t stop from happening, nature must take its course. Remember the physical pain that lasts a short time, but the emotional pain that may subside, but never fully goes away.
There were two verses given to me by friends that I taped to the wall behind my desk at work. I looked at these verses every day, and I believed them. God knew what he was doing. He knew two brothers needed to be born, needed to go through life together. Discover their toys together, chase each other, play in the mud, worry their Mama and Daddy to death! How great the Father’s love for us, How vast beyond all measure. I don’t just feel guilt when I look at Caleb and Jacob, I feel profound joy, blessing, gratefulness, cups overflowing. Our tree of life is bigger and fuller than I ever could have imagined, prayed for or dreamed. Someday I will tell them of their brother or sister waiting in Heaven for them. Until then, I will remember…
A hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12
Let Him have all your worries and cares, for He is always thinking about and watching everything that concerns you. I Peter 5:7
