Oh, Happy Day???

In a few days we will move from October, a month marked for me by Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness, into November a month dedicated to Thankfulness.  This time last year our time with Mira was ticking away much too quickly and November was to be our last full month with her alive.  The idea of Thanksgiving and thankfulness really overwhelmed me.  I think mostly because I knew I had a ton in my life to be thankful for, but I also knew, if I was being honest with myself, that it was hard to feel any thankfulness when your child is so sick.  I can be crazy thankful for all the support and good doctors and more, but at the end of the day, I would rather not need any of that and have a healthy child.

This morning while I sat in church next to my husband and read the bulletin that feeling came rushing back to me.  Our church was asking everyone to send in a picture of something they were thankful for and one of the examples listed was a picture of your family.  I immediately thought that we should send in a picture of Mira, because, as parents, the thing we are most thankful for is our child.  Then I felt the overwhelmed-ness I felt last November hit me.  Yes, I am thankful for Mira, but… there is always a BUT.  I am thankful for the time I had with Mira BUT I would rather it have been much longer.  I am thankful to have been chosen to be her mother BUT I would rather have been her mother and have had her healthy.  I am thankful that we got the miracle of meeting Mira alive BUT I wish we could have had the miracle of her being healed.

These thoughts bothered me as we started morning worship.  More than bothered me, they overwhelmed me.  I thought and thought about this and missed the point of the first song we sang.   Then we started singing “Happy Day,”  which obviously did not fit the mood was I feeling as I struggled with the idea of thankfulness.  Then all at once it hit me.  I am thankful that I will see Mira again, that is indeed a happy day.  I have thought that so many times before, and felt that thankfulness deeply, but what hit me today is the deep realization that I would rather have eternity with Mira (even if it means waiting without her now) than have several decades with her here on Earth and have that be the end.  Along with that, I felt the deep thankfulness that God allowed a way for me to know, without any doubt, that I will spend eternity with Him and Mira will be there with me.  I can be angry with God that He did not heal my daughter, and he allows me that, but I can also let go of that anger because He gave me assurance of eternity in Heaven for Mira and I (and Joe and everyone who accepts His gift of salvation). 

This realization moved me further along in a place I have been stuck since Friday.  On Friday, I had a session with my trauma therapist, who in conversation about having hope of healing used the phrase ‘letting go.’  Not in a way to tell me it was time to let go or anything like that.  The phrase was used as part of a bigger conversation and the conversation went in a different direction after that, but later I recalled that phrase she used and was very bothered.  I knew she did not mean to imply that to heal I would have to ‘let go’ of Mira by loving her any less or forgetting her or thinking of her less.  We have talked about these things before.  But I was not sure what I needed to let go of on the path to healing.  I wished I had asked more in the moment, but now I would need to wait to talk about it until I saw her again.  In the meantime, I couldn’t get the phrase “letting go” out of my mind all day.  I worried that she may want me to let of Mira, which I did not agree with.  But my gut told me that is not what she meant.  I have been working with her for four months now and she has been wonderful and never gave an indication that she would believe that the healing from grief meant “moving on” from the person you lost. 

I then reached out to an online support group I have found to be so helpful.  I asked these fellow loss Moms what they thought “letting go” meant, as it clearly cannot mean letting your child’s memory or love go.  They all had wonderful answers, many of them from women further down the loss journey than myself.  Their answers about letting go of anger and pain and holding onto joy and love gave me great comfort, but I still struggled to really understand how to separate it all.  I know 10 months into grieving, this is “normal,” but I still wanted to understand better what the goal of all this healing is.

Going back to this morning, it all kind of came together for me.  I haven’t fully given my grief and pain over to God, and because of this, I haven’t fully given my daughter over to God.  Though I can say I believe God has a plan bigger than myself and loved Mira even more than I do, I hesitate as I say it.  Logically I know it is true, God loves His children and is capable of a kind of love humans are not.  But this love I feel for Mira, how could He love her more?  A few weeks ago I was singing to “I Will Carry You” in the car on an especially hard day.  I lost it, crying at the lines, “But there's a greater story, written long before me, because He loves you like this.”  I literally yelled out loud, like a crazy person, “You better love her like this because you took her from me!”  I knew He did, but I couldn’t feel it in my heart.  A mother in my group brought up this exact struggle when she commented on my question about letting go.  She spoke about really knowing that God loved her children and if He did not heal her children there must have been a very good reason because He loved them even more than she did and would not bring them harm and that letting go meant deciding to trust in all that (very loosely paraphrasing her words).  I agreed so much with her words, because I know them to be true, and knew that healing could happen when I let go enough to feel them in my heart.

This morning I think I took a big step towards that in realizing that I am more thankful for the gifts God has given than I am mournful for the gifts I asked for and did not receive.  I think it will take a lifetime to fully let go of all the pain, as it will always be there in some way until I hold her again.  But I think over the next months and years I can keep working hard at healing (like I have been) and eventually give all of the pain surround Mira in my heart over to God and still hold all the love for her with Him. 

In the meantime, I will send in my picture of Mira to the church and be thankful I will spend eternity with her.  I will keep trying to make the choice each day to hold the love and let go of the pain.  I will do things to honor and celebrate her life, instead of things to highlight the pain of her absence.   The overwhelming support Joe and I are receiving to give books to CHOP in her memory truly show us that so many of you want to do the same, and for that we are exceedingly thankful as well.  (You can learn more about what we plan to do with the books here: https://www.gofundme.com/mirasbooksforchop). 

Thank you Mira for the love you brought into my life, and thank you Jesus for the way to see her again!

The greatest day in history

Death is beaten, You have rescued me

Sing it out, Jesus is alive

The empty cross, the empty grave

Life eternal, You have won the day

Shout it out, Jesus is alive

He's alive

Oh, happy day, happy day

You washed my sin away

Oh, happy day, happy day

I'll never be the same

Forever I am changed

When I stand in that place

Free at last, meeting face to face

I am yours, Jesus, You are mine

Endless joy, perfect peace

Earthly pain finally will cease

Celebrate, Jesus is alive

He's alive

And oh, happy day, happy day

You washed my sin away

Oh, happy day, happy day

I'll never be the same

Oh no, forever I am changed

Oh, what a glorious day

What a glorious way

That You have saved me

And oh, what a glorious day

What a glorious name

Hey, and oh, happy day, happy day

You washed my sin away

Oh, happy day, happy day

I'll never be the same

Oh no, forever I am changed

What a glorious, glorious day

I'll never be the same

(Tim Hughes)