I was completely blind-sighted by the pain that she would feel. But that’s life. We can’t always predict how certain people are going to take certain things.
I was at the kitchen sink, doing the dishes Saturday night when my daughter arrived home with her dad and her older brother. I noticed the truck sitting in the driveway, but no one was coming into the house. Assuming that my husband was either finishing a phone call or a conversation, I went back to my dish washing. A few minutes later I heard the door that connects the house to the garage open and then close. I heard voices and turned my head to notice Lydia walking into the kitchen. She immediately spotted me and walked right over to me. Wrapping her arms around my waist, she buried her head in my shirt and began to cry. In a very strained voice she said something about lost babies and being sorry.
My counselor gave me a rule a while back: “When someone is on fire, put the fire out before asking questions on how it started.” Heeding this, I embraced my daughter without a second thought. She needed me and I was going to be available to her in that moment.
I didn’t fully understand what she had said so I lowered my face down closer to hers and asked what was wrong. Again, something about being sorry and lost babies and “I thought Daddy was joking but he wasn’t.”
I knew in my spirit that somehow my sweet daughter who embodies empathy had just come to learn about my miscarriages.
Realizing that a conversation about my “lost babies” was necessary, I scooped Lydia up in to my arms and carried her - shaken as she was - to my bedroom. I set her on my bed and turned the lamps on. I told her to get comfortable and quickly stepped out of the room to grab the tote of plastic counting bears from the school room that I’ve used throughout the years to teach counting and sorting in arithmetic.
As I opened my bedroom door and walked back into the room, I prayed a silent prayer. Holy Spirit, I need you now. Help me navigate this in a way that brings Lydia some comfort and peace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I locked the door behind me in an effort to keep out all possible interruptions, and Lydia caught my gaze as I walked over to my side of the bed. She looked so small lying there on our king-sized bed nestled in my white, down comforter with her dark, brown eyes trying on “distraught” for the very first time. I set the tote of counting bears down on the bed and sat opposite her, lying down on my side. I then very calmly asked her to help me understand what was upsetting her.
Still getting bits and pieces, I gathered that there was a conversation that had happened on the ride home that brought up the fact that I had lost some babies. Lydia not fully understanding (as well as not believing) that babies could die before they were born left her clearly shaken.
She was upset because it was a sad thing to learn. She was also upset because she processed that those babies were her mommy’s - as well as hers.
After I had context of what she had heard and knew, I started off by saying that I wasn’t hiding anything from her. We were about to have a conversation that I had planned on having with her - she had just beat me to it.
Establishing that, I proceeded to open up the tote of counting bears and walked through the storyline of my miscarriages and live births. For each loss I set out a small purple bear on the bed. One by one I pulled out bears representing the miscarriages as well as the babies that were born - four for her and her brother and four for the babies that had sadly died in my womb.
That part felt familiar. I had done the same thing with my oldest about four years ago when he had overheard a conversation about me losing a baby. I had used the same bears to represent loss and life, and found it helpful to use a visual for him to understand the storyline better.
She listened as I explained how sad I was when the babies had died inside of me and how I had cried and cried (and cried). And then I told her the story of her - that during my pregnancy with her I experienced both loss and life simultaneously. It was bitter/sweet in its purest form as on one hand I was devastated to experience yet another miscarriage, and on the other hand relieved to hear a confirmed heartbeat.
“So, I was maybe a twin?” Lydia asked me in disbelief with eyes that could’t have been any wider. I nodded and she fell into a heap on my comforter with her face in her hands and just sobbed.
Having done the very same thing eight years prior, I realized that - on this side of Heaven - grief is never fully done grieving.
I had also put my own face in my hands and sobbed just like she was when I found out about my very first miscarriage. The pain took my very breath away. Yet, as Lydia lay on my big bed and her small frame shook with tears, I found myself strangely comforted as my daughter mourned the fact that her mommy had lost babies and that she had four siblings that she would never grow up with.
But this was all news to Lydia and she was feeling the full weight of it.
I asked what her "three big feelings” were and she was able to express “Sad,” “Upset,” and “I don’t understand.” (which we know also goes by the name of “Confused”).
And I’ll share with you what I shared with her…
Sometimes babies die. And it’s really sad.
But God is always good. His plans are good, His timing is right, and we can trust Him.
I also told her that our babies are in Heaven with Jesus where they are completely safe and loved because Heaven is a place of no pain, sickness, death, tears, hard days or even skinned knees.
This brought some comfort to Lydia, and as I found the conversation wrapping up, I asked her if she had any other questions - which she did. The one that pierced my soul was when she looked at me and quietly asked with that same strained voice from the kitchen, “Will I get “babies-dead?”
She didn’t have the vocabulary to ask if she would have a miscarriage, but I knew what she meant. Terror filled her eyes as she processed the pain of what that would be like to experience it for herself. Are miscarriages something that you catch? Like a bad cold or sickness? And if I do catch it, will I survive it?
Without warning, tears immediately formed in the corner of my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. I felt their warm presence serve as a reminder that I was fully present in that moment.
Having just told her that sometimes babies die and yet God is always good, I quietly answered, “If you do, Lydia, I’ll come over and cry with you.”
She then buried her head again in my comforter and sobbed some more. We lay there in the silence for a little while, the lamp spilling some light into the dark corners of the room - much like hope does in the heavy of our sorrow laden hearts.
I placed my hand on her back and gently rubbed it. She continued to cry and I realized that my sweet baby Lydia was grieving and would need the time and space to do so.
She was experiencing real life, true story, authentic pain. Pain because she wouldn’t grow up with her four other siblings - one her age and three older than her. Pain because she wouldn’t know their faces or the sound of their voices. Pain because she’d have to patiently wait until Heaven to meet them. Pain because she was worried if they would even recognize her when she got there.
And then there was the pain that Lydia was feeling for me. She was sorry that I had to suffer the loss of losing babies. She was sorry that I never got to meet them or hold them or name them. She was truly sorry for my loss. And that was where my 8-year old daughter ministered to me in a very powerful way that night. Her pain and my pain became our pain…and that somehow brought comfort to each other.
The Bible instructs us to:
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Romans 12:15
And in the “grief that is never fully done grieving” I was given something unexpected. Lydia’s distraught eyes that spilled tears and shook her soul comforted a part of my heart that flares up from time to time. There are just certain moments and memories that remind me that my body had cramped and bled and passed the life that my womb had held all too briefly - over and over and over and over again.
And it was like her pain looked at my pain - square in the eyes - and simply said, “I see you.”
We ended the conversation with a heartfelt prayer to the “Father of compassion and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (see 2 Corinthians 1:3-4). We asked Jesus for His peace to guard and protect Lydia’s heart and thoughts and sleep; and then I assured her that things would look and feel better in the morning because (as I often tell myself on difficult days) “The birds will sing in the morning."
Hugging Lydia once more, I helped her get ready for bed and tucked her in with an extra hug and kiss ‘Goodnight.’ Stepping out of her room that night I realized that we can’t always predict how certain people are going to take certain things, but we can make ourselves available to sit with them in their sadness and allow ourselves to be comforted by mourning.