For One More Day

WARNING: This is a long post and is a little bit all over the place :) Don't say I didn't warn you. Stick with me until the end... that's where the pictures are. :)

Our trip to Bethany was great. It always is. Each year my Dad rents this house that is ocean block, so it's a short walk to the beach. The house is a great beach house... mismatched furniture, outdated paint... the place is indistructable, and has a lot of "beachy" character. It's a great place to relax, and you're never worried about messing up something in the house, since you pretty much can't.

We had wonderful weather... not a drop of rain. I had the chance to play some games on the beach, go for walks with Spence, jump waves in the ocean, do a little Sudoku, and sit and read a few books. If you're looking for a good, mindless, funny book, I highly recommend Emily Griffin. Sort of like the Shopaholic series, but different. I read another book about losing a baby, and there was some good information in it. I started, and have yet to finish (even though it's short) C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors, and here he discusses the anguish of losing his wife to cancer. It's taken me a while to get through this book because it is so full of statements that cause me to stop and really think. One such statement was this:

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

There have been so many things through this journey that Spencer and I have had to decide what we truly believe about them... things like if it's ever okay to terminate a pregnancy, what we believe about medical intervention and life support, and needless to say, who we truly believe God to be.

Lewis continues by talking about how the Bible admonishes us to not mourn like those who have no hope. I have mentioned in the past how the whole idea of hope in our circumstances is something I have been having a hard time wrapping my head around. Hope for what? For a miracle? For future children? Lewis provides a great explanation...

What St. Paul says can comfort only those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any time, will she have her son on he knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan his future, or see her grandchild.

In a way, it was a source of great comfort to be reminded that Isaac isn't going to lose what he was created for. He is going to be able to be with Jesus. It was a source of comfort, too, to know that through all of this, neither Spencer or I are losing a greater thing... our relationships with God. And in those things, we can continue to have hope. But there's truth to the last part of what Lewis was saying about how there's still a sense of loss with regard to motherhood, and the times I would want to enjoy with Isaac.

That's the part that made our trip to Bethany bittersweet. Growing up, we always went to the beach in the summer. I remember digging deep holes in the sand, making sandcastle villages, jumping waves with my Dad... many of my favorite memories were made there. I saw little children all over the place making those same memories with their parents this past week, and it was excruciating at times to be looking at a reality that won't be, barring God's intervention, for our sweet Isaac. I wanted so badly to be sitting there this summer thinking that next summer, I can take Isaac in the surf. Or that next summer, I could carry him as Spencer and I take a walk on the beach.

I titled this post "For One More Day" because as I was sitting there having those thoughts, I recalled a book I read a while back by Mitch Albom that has that title. The book is essentially about what you would do if you had one more day with a person that you love and had lost. Somehow, as I was thinking about that, I found myself asking God for just one more day with Isaac... one more day to be able to jump the waves while he's in my tummy, one more day to be able to sit and watch the sun rise and tell him all about it...one more day to feel him wiggle and kick.

This whole process has caused me to look at life so differently. I am not sure I can fully articulate that yet, except to say that I have certainly learned to be so much more grateful for one more day. It's easy to get caught up in the tempo of life with work, commitments, and other things going on, that we forget to be grateful for just another day with the people we love. That in itself is a gift.

And now, the long-awaited pictures from our trip....

Mornings at the beach...





Isaac's name...






Little photo shoot compliments of my sister...








Other random photos...