The next weekend, Alex was able to get a 4-day weekend because of Columbus day. For those of you who aren't in the military, this is very common that on a typical 3-day holiday the government tacks on an extra day of vacation. I don't really know why, but I sure did appreciate it.
We had decided earlier that we would drive to Midland that weekend, and then my Mom would drive me back to Dallas for a doctor's appointment the following week while Alex had to go back to work. The drive from El Paso out to Midland is about 4 hours if Alex is driving, probably closer to 4 1/2 if somebody without a lead foot is behind the wheel.
All week long I had been dreading going back to Midland because I knew it would be the beginning of the end of our time as a "normal" married couple- meaning that we lived together and got to see each other every day. Alex and I have been together for 4 1/2 years now, and we have never lived in the same city. We are very use to living apart, but we both cherish and protect the weekends since that is the only time we have to spend with each other.
I'm going to let myself get sidetracked a little here and tell the story of why we decided to try to get pregnant when we did. Like I said, we have never lived together, so you can imagine that actually trying to get pregnant would kind of be like a game- trying to coordinate two events so that magic could happen and we would conceive. We knew since the summer after we got married that we wanted to have our own kids (those of you who know me know that when I moved to Dallas 5 years ago I did not want kids), and we even had Kaitlyn's name picked out since then. I can remember driving down to Austin for the weekend with just Alex and I in the car (we didn't even have a dog at this point) and talking about names and timelines and dreaming about our future family. We talked about naming our kids after one of our family members, and I liked my Dad's middle name of "Lynn". We also had a friend named Kate in high school that was just phenomenal. She was the girl that everyone wanted to be, absolutely gorgeous, talented, and smart. Combine the two and there you go.
I always test out the names by announcing them in a "graduation voice" to make sure our kid would have a great business name, and then we would talk about short names or nick names. Kaitlyn Sophia Munoz was such a great name, it sounded almost regal to me (you know you just said that in your "graduation voice" in your head and agree with me). Then we realized that we could call her K-So (As in... Queso...), and it just completely put us in stitches because it was SO perfect! A professional sounding name with a kickass nickname built right in. DONE.
Anyways, we talked about timelines. I knew that I couldn't handle being a "single" Mom in Dallas (for very long, anyways), so we continued to put off starting our family until Alex's active duty contract got closer to being done. Then he got the deployment assignment.
He was set to leave in February of 2013, and we decided that we would give it a try about 6 months before he left. I wanted to be pregnant, ideally, right before he left so that he wouldn't miss too much of our child's life (we knew it was a 9 month deployment from the get go). We "officially" started trying in October, but like I said it was trying to get two events to fall exactly at the right time and one of those events I wasn't tracking very seriously until about December. I had come to terms at that point with the very real possibility that we were not going to get pregnant before he left, and I was okay with it. The whole time we had been trying I had been praying that we would only get pregnant if it was in God's will for us. So obviously, it was in His divine plan that Kaitlyn was going to be here during this time of our lives.
We found out we were pregnant in January. To be more accurate, I found out I was pregnant on a Wednesday morning in January by myself. I hadn't really been paying attention because I had been interviewing for my new job, and it was funny because I was talking to one of my friends at work one day and I said "Guess what!" and she said "You're pregnant!" and my response was, "Well... Maybe. I'll check on that tomorrow, though" and continued on with my story. The next day it was "Guess what!" and she said "You got the job!" and I said, "NO, I'm pregnant!" HA! Anyways, I found out early in the morning that the second pink line was on the stick, and I waited about an hour to call Alex to tell him (just because El Paso is in a different time zone so I didn't want to call him at 4 am, even though I know he would have answered and been just as excited as he was).
Ok back to present day: On the drive back from El Paso, I was a complete wreck. I had some severe anxiety about going back to Dallas without Alex, and being in the house without him for the first time in nearly a month. Over the past few weeks, I had been keeping myself so busy and I knew that being alone meant falling apart. I was anxious about being alone, I was absolutely dreading the doctors appointment that next week, and all those emotions had started to manifest into physical discomfort. I had stomach cramps and didn't feel like eating. But I mustered through, and Alex, of course, was my rock through all of it.
That weekend we visited the church my parents go to in Midland and it was there that I heard it.
"Lift up your eyes on high
And see who has created these stars,
The One who leads forth their host by number,
He calls them all by name;
Because of the greatness of His might
and the strength of His power,
Not one of them is missing."
Isaiah 40:26 NASB
It was something I can guarantee you nobody else in the auditorium felt. It hit me in the stomach like a gut-punch. The worship leader was the one who read it, arbitrarily, between songs and I lost it. I sat there in the chair and let the tears just stream down my face (once again, waterproof mascara is awesome for Sundays!). Alex rubbed my back while I cried and cried. God had done such an amazing thing for me. He had used this worship leader and this church that I didn't even belong to to remind me of His grace. I have always loved stars. Growing up out in West Texas meant having plenty of opportunity to go star gazing, and it was a regular activity for me. I just loved that no matter your angle they were always there. They were always plentiful, and you could never sit there and count them no matter how much time you have.
I couldn't tell Alex right then that verse was what I wanted to put on her urn. We had been talking about it for the last few weeks and we could just never pick out something fitting. Do we put her name? Do we make it like a headstone and put her date of birth and death? I knew I didn't want something sad on there, but like Stella said (read previous posts), no matter what we put on there it will always make us sad to think of our missing daughter. But that's the beauty of it. Because Kaitlyn is, was, and always will be a child of God, she is not missing. Because He is mighty and powerful, He calls all of the stars by name to the infinite reaches of space and time. He knows where our daughter is, and because we know Him, so do we.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.