On Tuesday after our big trip to Vegas, the local area Hope Moms were doing a dinner at a little Italian restaurant. Sweet Elyse had thought this up after the group that met at her house weekly for Bible study through Hope Mommies ended and none of the girls wanted to quit meeting. So instead, we implemented a monthly dinner for moms in the area to get plugged in.
This particular meeting was small: there were only four of us total that were able to come including me and Elyse. The other two girls were Michelle, who had lost her son Jaxon last November, and Jenny, who had recently lost her daughter in July. Jenny was just a month out from her loss, and we went around the table to share our stories before she shared her daughter with us.
When it was my turn to speak, I talked about how heavy September was already weighing on me and how much I wasn't looking forward to the month. I knew that the lead-up to the day Kaitlyn was born was going to be awful because I would probably be reliving every day as the dates matched up. Luckily, Elyse knew exactly what I was talking about because our anniversary dates with our daughters are so close together: she lost Emma Kate on Sept. 26, a week and a day after we had Kaitlyn.
There are few phrases that Hope Moms tend to use when it comes to an anniversary and a subsequent pregnancy. This is going to be a partial rant because one of the phrases really bothers me, and the other really bothers Elyse. The one that I really don't care for is that moms will post about their babies and then finish their thoughts with, "One year closer to seeing you in Heaven." Now, realistically, I get it. I know that we are, in fact, one year older and one year closer to seeing our babies again. However, I really don't like that it feels like we are counting down to our death. I don't think that honors our children, and it certainly doesn't honor God. If we were meant to have a countdown like that, I think God would have given us the knowledge of our individual death dates to actually count down to instead of keeping us in the dark about them. I also really don't like this phrase because I think it negates our purpose here, which is something I have always felt passionate about. God didn't make a mistake by leaving us and taking our babies. He left us here because He has purpose for us, and because there are tasks that need to be completed before we get to go to Heaven to be with them.
The phrase that bothers Elyse is the term "Rainbow baby." This is the name that some Hope Moms use when they are pregnant with their next child after their loss. I don't mind the phrase that much, but it certainly implies that our loss was a storm of epic proportions. Is the loss of a child beyond what most losses are? Absolutely, but at the same time it implies that there was nothing good about the time, that it was all darkness and rain. That's not how I feel about Kaitlyn at all; I'd rather picture rain clouds with streaks of sunlight coming through.
However, Elyse made a really interesting point that night at dinner when we were hashing out out our thoughts about these two phrases over dinner.
"I hate that term, 'rainbow baby', because it implies that God is making a promise to us that can't be broken, a covenant. This child," she paused and put her hand on her belly, "is not promised to me. She is a gift from God, but she is not promised. She is His first."
I agree with Elyse about our children not being our own, but at the same time, there are some powerful scriptures about faith when it comes to our kiddos:
"Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."
Psalm 37:4
"By faith even Sarah was given the ability to conceive, though she herself was barren
and past the age for having children, because she believed that the one
who made the promise was faithful."
Hebrews 11:11
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