Last week I was putting something on our family calendar and shook my head at the quickly passing month...only a week until we would be in April and moving ourselves quickly toward the summer time. I noted that April 1st would fall on a Tuesday this year and mentally ran through what would be on our schedule for the day. Jordan would be back at work after his two week paternity leave, the kids and I would be fumbling through our first week on our own and trying to get a new schedule and routine into place around homeschooling, baseball, ballet and Awanas. I went back to my task and wondered how on earth I would find time on that day to get alone with my thoughts and remember Miles. I would just cross that path when I got to it, every year is different.
On Saturday, March 29th, Holland was admitted to the children's hospital for a severe case of RSV. She had been congested during the week, but it had gotten progressively worse and then turned scary when she her coughing fits led to turning blue and vomiting.
I knew she was really sick, but my knee jerk response to most things is "it'll be fine". I was shocked when they admitted us and even more shocked when we had to stay the night. I kept feeling like at any moment the doctor would come in and say we could go home. I just didn't think it was that bad.
I was wrong. Instead of sending us home, every time a nurse or doctor came in, they increased our level of care. First adding oxygen, then fluids, then breathing treatments and nose clearing. Throughout the night the nursing staff came in and checked her vitals and listened carefully to her breathing. By the morning the respiratory therapist came back in to report to the doctor that Holland was getting worse and not better. She was recommending we move her to the PICU for closer monitoring.
Every time, I was surprised and felt caught off guard. I was in denial or shock or disbelief when they helped me gather my things out of our pediatric room to go to the PICU. Holland was in the hospital bed, wires and tubes connected to mobile monitors and oxygen machines. I followed behind the team of transportation nurses to the large elevators and to another floor. I was so tired. I hadn't slept on Friday night (after a trip to a different ER with her where we were sent home) and hadn't slept Saturday night due to the hospital bed, the beeping machines, the nurses coming in and out, and the disorientation of being overnight in a hospital room with my infant. I was still claiming postpartum hormone fluctuations for my emotionality and fragility. I just hadn't gotten one second to actually process what was going on. When we stepped out on to the PICU floor, my heart starting beating faster.
They took us to a new room where a receiving team was waiting. Multiple doctors and nurses crowded around Holland's bed, working together to get her unhooked, re- hooked, moved over, settled in and stable. I kept stepping out of the way, until I found myself in the corner of the room just observing everything that was happening. All of a sudden it hit me. I have been here before.
Not in this room, not even in this hospital, but in this place. My baby in distress, in danger and sick and myself standing by and watching, unable to do anything to help. I was starting to lose control of holding it together. I grabbed my water bottle and snuck out to go refill in the family lounge. As I walked down the hallway, there was room after room after room of babies and kids, strapped to their beds and hooked to machines. Walking faster did not solve the problem, by the time I got to the family lounge I was crying a protected and hidden cry.
Once in the PICU, Holland was totally attached to her bed and unable to nurse. I could do nothing to soothe her, I couldn't hold her. I hadn't fed her since the night before, but no matter how hard I tried, my milk would not let down for the pump. I sat next to her bed for the entire day. I sang songs, I hummed, I prayed, I ached to hold her and care for her and be closer to her.
Late that evening I got a phone call from Callie. After filling her in on Holland's status, we moved straight to the heart of the matter. She asked how my heart was feeling. I just began to cry, out loud, for the first time. Here I was in the PICU with my daughter, 8 years, nearly to the day, as I was in the NICU with Miles. It was so overwhelming and painful and emotional. She asked me what God was talking to me about. It wasn't until I started talking that I felt like to truth came to me.
Every year on Miles' birthday, God does something to make it special and unique. I never know what to expect, but there is always a way for me to take time to remember the day. In my heart, it has always felt like God whispering to me that he remembers, too.
Last year I studied the story about Jacob wrestling the angel. When I first got to the passage I wanted to just breeze over it and move on because the depiction of the Father is very hard for me to understand. He appears to Jacob in the form of a man (but in a way that let Jacob know it was not an ordinary man) and engages in a wrestling match with him that lasts throughout the night. At the end, the man is "overcome" by Jacob. But, God shows himself to Jacob by a demonstration of power, he touches his hip and then asks to be released. I had such a hard time putting my powerful and mighty God into this scene.
I kept reading it, kept praying over my time in the word. I spent at least a week stuck on the story, knowing that this particular account was in here for a reason and it revealed special truth about who God is. I wanted to get a glimpse. By His grace, one morning, he spoke to me.
"I came to Jacob as a man, to wrestle, because I know who Jacob is. I created him. He is a fighter. It is through a battle and a struggle that he creates connections and bonds. Wrestling is intimate. For hours, we engaged each other in full contact. He used his mind to strategize, his heart to propel him forward, his strength and muscles to maintain positioning and endure, and his spirit to keep him fighting. I wanted to be there with him as he did this, right there with him. When I allowed Jacob to overcome me in the battle, it was affirmation for him. A time to remind him that I gave him incredible strength and endurance. Those are gifts that he can be confident in. But then I touched his hip, as a display of my power and glory. Jacob's gifts are not meant to separate us, but instead to unite us. I did not do this to shame him or humiliate him. I did this to show him that he is safe with me. Even though his physical strength is great and his ability to endure is remarkable, I wanted to remind him that I am not asking him to fight all of the battles alone. I want him to know the source of his strength and that it is an everlasting supply. I touched his hip the way I did as a permanent reminder. It is too easy to forget, to change a situation in your mind, to minimize an interaction that I have with my children. So I touched his hip in a way that could be a forever reminder of our time together, of the truth I gave him, or the intimacy of our relationship. I love Jacob. I wanted to come to him and show him."
God brought that study time to my mind as I was talking to Callie about being reminded of our time with Miles. God has done this in other areas of my life as well, but his strong and sweet truth rushed over me as I recalled the details of it to Callie. He gave me truth about Jacob that morning in my devotions, and then on Sunday evening he gave me truth for my heart.
"Sommer, I love you and I made a strong person. I am the one who equipped you with endurance and resilience. I did not give it to you so that you could be independent from me and try to survive your life on that alone. I gave it to you as an illustration of my power and endurance. I gave it to you so that we could connect through it, that it would draw you to me. When I gave you Miles, I was there with you. I allowed for you to get to the end of your strength and endurance so that I could be there with you...us together instead of you on your own. When I took Miles home, I touched your heart. It wasn't to shame you or hurt you or wave my power in your face. It was as a forever reminder of our time together, the way I came to you, how we engaged together, our relationship and our intimacy. Just as Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life, I give you reminders as often as I can of our relationship, because I don't want you to forget and try to become independent. When Jacob woke in the night with a pain in his hip, I wanted him to come to me and be comforted by me. When you arrive at April 1st every year (and often more times in between), I want to give you a way to remember. Not just to remember Miles and the struggle, but remember the intimacy and the relationship and the truth and how I came to you. I am still here. I remember also. And I love you."
Oh how my heart was soothed! Oh how I sunk down into the comfort of his embrace. It's true. I don't have to handle everything going on with Holland on my own, I don't need to muster my strength or put on a tough face. I go to my source, to remember these are the gifts I inherited from my Father. It's what makes us alike and he loves to see in me, a piece of himself. It draws us together. It is me on my path to becoming more and more like him.
After Miles passed away, people sent us flowers in remembrance. I struggled with the short life of the flowers. Every time I threw away a drooping stem it was a reminder of Miles' short life. My mom told my co-workers from school to get me live plants instead of cut flowers. They bought us a beautiful cherry blossom tree. After we planted it, we had a major wind storm and our old wooden fence cracked under the force, falling over onto the weak little sapling. I was standing in the kitchen and saw this happen out the window. I responded as only a postpartum, mother bear, grieving heart is able to respond. I threw on my shoes and jacket, raced outside, and with hulk-like strength I lifted the fence off the tree. I was literally able to physically remove a very long and heavy section of the fence off the tree. But I would have had to stand there and just hold it, there was no where to move it to and further down the fence was still secured in the ground so I could not push or pull it away. I carefully propped it up so it was only bending the baby tree and not crushing it. I sprinted to the garage and got Jordan's chain saw. Oh yes, I did. I fired that puppy up and with angry and frustrated tears, chain sawed the fallen fence away from the secured fence and then pulled away the section I had removed. It was pouring rain and whipping wind. I sat on the back deck looking at the little sapling and bawled. I was terrified to lose this memoir of my son.
The next year, we moved away from that house. Here I had put all of this effort and strength and endurance into saving this tree and then we moved. I kept trying to make Miles a piece of something on earth that I could be in charge of preserving and hanging on to. This year, on his actual birthday, my sister, Daniela, sent me a text to check in on me. I confided that I was having a tough time. I wanted to cry and I wanted to be strong for Holland where she is right now and I didn't know how to do both the right way. She sent me a text back, telling me that she felt like I was a strong and brave woman, and that I was honoring Miles in my every day life, as a mom and just in the way I live as a person. I cried when I read it, because she is right. God made me strong and gave me endurance, when I walk with him in those things and when I am reminded of our intimacy and relationship, I live it out to my kids and my extended family and my friends. But if I think I am doing that on my own, in the same way I saved the cherry blossom tree in our yard, I need only another April 1st to remind me that he is here with me, he is my source, he is my intimate Savior.
"but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them."
Oh my Lord, most high, you intercede for me. How can I praise you more?
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