Joy is Coming... March 2017

Yes, you have read this correctly and no this is not click bait!  We are very excited to announce that Baby #3 is coming in March 2017! And yes it's a BOY!

I know what you might be thinking right now, "wow, that was fast!"  And yes, it was VERY fast, almost too fast but God's timing is incredibly mysterious and perfect.  The truth is, I was pregnant with this sweet baby the day Callie passed away.  I just didn't know it yet.  In fact, as if the timing couldn't get anymore mysterious....we found out we were pregnant the day AFTER Callie's funeral.  

I have learned and believed more in God's sovereignty more than ever since Callie died. And this baby being conceived before she died is a part of God's sovereign, mysterious, but beautiful plan for our family.  The mix of emotions we had were very hard to process.  We didn't tell a lot of people right away because it was very overwhelming.  How could we be happy at a time like this?  It was hard to even explain.  A part of me was happy but at the same time a part of me was confused.  I didn't want to get pregnant again this fast.  It felt too soon.  It felt like we were "moving on" from Callie and I didn't want to move on!  But of course we are NOT moving on.  It is impossible to move on from losing a child.  We can move forward, but we will never just move on.  

The day after Callie's funeral, when I saw the positive pregnancy test, I just sobbed.  The tears would not stop.  I remember saying out loud, "God, you can't take Callie away from me and give me a new baby to make it all better.  This isn't going to make it better. I don't want a new baby, I want Callie!"  Of course God knows my heart, he knows what we need, he knows what is best for our family.  And this baby is not a consolation prize.  I don't understand the timing at all, but I know it's for our good and has a great purpose.   It's not something he is giving our family to "make it all better".  Just like every baby that is conceived, this baby has a huge purpose, a specific personality, and is a blessing from the Lord. 

I do believe that a small part of this baby's purpose is to bring JOY to our family.  Ever since I saw that positive pregnancy test, I felt like the Lord was telling me, "Joy is coming".  And what's even crazier is I can't even count how many times people have told me this when I told them we were pregnant.  So many people responded with the phrase, "Joy is coming".  I can't get it out of my head. We actually have something to look forward to again, and that is something I didn't think possible.  When you are in the worst grief of your life, there is literally nothing to look forward to.  Someone just asked me innocently yesterday, "are you looking forward to the holidays?"  And I just said, "No".  Because I'm not.  I'm dreading the holidays, I'm dreading December and spending Callie's birthday without her.  I dread most days where Cooper and I spend our days by ourselves without Callie.  I will dread the 4th of July for a very very long time.  I dread the mornings when I have to remind myself that Callie is not here and some mornings I go through grief all over again.  I dread waking up from a wonderful dream about Callie.  Just a lot of dread.  But God is telling us, "JOY is coming, Tracy...there IS something to look forward to."  We know this baby will never replace our Callie, but this baby is a gift from the Lord and will bring Joy to us again.  

This boy will also always be our 3rd child, not our 2nd.  I know it will look like to the world that we have 2 boys and this is our 2nd child.  But it's not.  Callie will never be forgotten and we will always have 3 kids.  Callie would have been such a great big sister. I can just picture her being so curious about the new baby and being so loving towards him.  This boy will always have a big sister and I'm so sad for him that he will never know her, at least in this lifetime.  

"The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the LORD".  This is a verse that I think about often.  The Lord took away our daughter at almost the exact same moment he was giving us a son and creating him inside me.  It  really is possible to grieve but also have joy.  Because the Lord is giving us another baby, it doesn't mean we will not grieve as much over Callie.  It just doesn't work that way.  We are still so incredibly sad and will be grieving her for our lifetime.  But God is blessing us with another baby boy and we are incredibly thankful.  

But if not, He is still good

This verse in Daniel has been on my mind for awhile now.  Our community group is going through the book of Daniel.  I have always loved the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  There is so much good stuff in chapter 3 that gets better and better the more you read it.  A month or so after Callie passed away, our community group was going over chapter 3 in Daniel.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's faith was so incredibly strong. I would hope that I would have that same response when they were about to be thrown into a fiery furnace and die a horrible and miserable death.

"If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.  But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." Daniel 3:17-18

I love this for several reasons.  First they acknowledge that God IS ABLE to deliver them from the fiery furnace.  Of course he is able, He is God and He is sovereign.  He was completely able to save Callie that day.  No question about it, He could have saved Callie in an instant.  Then the second part of the verse states, "BUT IF NOT.."  Did they KNOW that God was going to save them from the furnace?  Did they KNOW that the hairs on their heads would not be singed, their cloaks would not be harmed, and they wouldn't even smell like smoke??  NO, they definitely did not know that.  Did they know God was able to do this?  YES!  Did they know God was going to do it?  No.

Sometimes I think we as Christians believe we have some power over God by the words we speak.  A lot of the prosperity gospel today teaches that what you speak will come true. That if we speak that our child will be saved, it will happen.  That if we speak and believe that God will perform a miracle, it will happen.  That they KNOW God will save their loved one.  And it definitely CAN happen, as God is able to, but it doesn't mean it will happen.  I've been reading the book "Holding on to Hope" by Nancy Guthrie.  I cannot recommend this book enough for those who have lost a child.  The book goes through Job and one section she writes...

"Often I see the body of Christ put so much into pursuing God for healing.  With great boldness and passion and persistence, we cry out to God, begging for physical healing.  And in these prayers, there is often a tiny P.S. added at the end where we say, "If it be your will."  But shouldn't we switch that around?  Shouldn't we cry out to God with boldness and passion and persistence in a prayer that says, "God, would you please accomplish your will?  Would you give me a willing heart to embrace your plan and your purpose?  Would you mold me into a vessel that you can use to accomplish what you have in mind?  And then, perhaps, we could add a tiny P.S. that says, "If that includes healing, we will be grateful."  Isn't real faith revealed more through pursuing God and what he wants than through pursing what we want?

I honestly haven't thought much about this until Callie died.  Since Callie's death was so sudden, we didn't really get much of a chance to really pray for her except for the few minutes in the hospital before we knew what was going on.  And we most definitely did pray for a miracle!  We cried out to the Lord to save her, to not take our baby away from us. But the Lord's will was much different than what we were praying.  And we have had to learn to submit to His sovereignty.  This was one reason why we wanted 'Thy Will' to be played at her funeral.  Thy Will be done Lord.  We so wanted our baby girl to be saved, but IF NOT, we will still praise you Lord.

Nancy Guthrie goes on to say:
"At the end of Job's story, we begin to catch a glimpse of how God used the pain in Job's life.  I think this is the same thing God wants to do with the pain you and I experience in life.  After all the crying, after all the questioning, God revealed himself as sovereign over all Creation, and Job recognized God's authority over the universe and God's authority in his life. He came to a place of submission to God's sovereignty."

"Submission to God's sovereignty means bowing the knee whether or not we understand, whether or not we have it figured it out, whether of not we agree.  In that submission, we find the strength and grace to keep going.  We even find joy in the journey."

I could probably quote the entire chapter, or really the entire book, but I'll stop there.  I have had to truly submit to God's sovereignty.  Not just say I believe in God's sovereignty, but REALLY believe it.  It hasn't been easy.  I don't understand why this happened to us.  A pain so deep that doesn't happen to most families.  It really really stinks and it's not a good thing.  What happened to Callie wasn't good....God can and will USE it for good, but it in itself isn't good.  But I have truly learned to submit to the sovereignty of God, to trust Him, and believe Him in a way I never have before.  And if NOT...HE IS STILL GOOD.

Callie's Little Lamb

I wanted to write to remember the very special meaning of Callie's favorite stuffed animal, her white Lamb.  Her Mimi (Justin's mom) gave it to her when she was born.  I can't remember at what age she started to become attached to it, but it was pretty early on.  I thought it was so cute to watch her become attached to a certain stuffed animal especially since Cooper has never been attached to one.  He has gone through different phases of wanting a certain stuffed animal, but never had one that he was attached to for a long period of time.  We never had a name for the lamb, but for some reason we started calling it Lambie and it kinda stuck.

She wanted her lamb close by her all the time.  When she woke up in the mornings, she would usually ask for her lamb after getting her out of her crib.  If she got distracted and didn't ask for it right away, she would definitely be asking for it within the hour.  I would usually find her in her room by her crib trying to pull the lamb through the crib slates.  She would get frustrated that she couldn't get it out, so she would either start fussing or calling for me to help her get it.  If I didn't know where she was and I could hear her fussing, I knew she was in her room trying to get her lamb.  And when I got it for her, she would immediately give it this huge hug and giggle and smile.  It was adorable.

She pretty much got to the point where she couldn't sleep without it.  She slept with a lot of stuffed animals, but she would not go to sleep without her lamb.  Since she got it out of her crib everyday, we never knew where she ended up putting her lamb that day.  We always found it in the strangest places.  When I remembered to search for the lamb before putting her to bed, I would say "Callie, go get Lambie" and there she was off looking everywhere for it.  Of course she couldn't really remember where she last put it, but I always loved watching her look for it.  If I forgot to search for Lambie before putting her to bed, I would put her in her crib and she would sit up and just look at me like "um, aren't you forgetting something?"  I sometimes asked Cooper to get her Lambie for her or go get it myself.  When Justin would put her to bed at night, I always remember him calling out "can you get her Lamb??" And once we brought her Lambie to her, she would hug it and then lay down to go to sleep.  So sweet!

A lot of times she wanted Lambie to sit with her to eat. I never really liked that because I didn't want the Lamb to get food all over it.  But when I would take it away from her, she would get so upset!  It's funny because she wasn't the type of kid that got so mad when you took things from her.  She was laid back in that way.  But when it came to her Lamb, don't even think about taking that away from her.  She also wanted to take her lamb with her the first time she went to the beach.  I again didn't really want her to take it to the beach since I knew it would get sandy and dirty, but in the end it was so darn cute seeing her with her lamb at the beach. She wanted Lambie to enjoy her first beach experience too.

The Lamb is very special to us now.  The funeral director asked if she has a special stuffed animal that we wanted her to be buried with.  At first we told him about the lamb, but then we said we didn't want it to be buried with her as we wanted to keep it.  And we know that it's just her body there that is buried, we know she is with Jesus with all the lambs she wants, so we didn't see a point in burying it with her.  We did bring the lamb to her visitation and to her funeral.  I ended up putting it right in the middle of the flowers on her casket and it looked really sweet.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

** Update-thanks to my friend Staci for getting a picture for me....

We decided to have the lamb custom drawn on her stone because it has been so special to her and to us.  From the draft, it turned out really well and looks just like her lamb.  It takes a couple of months for the stone to come in, so it will be awhile before we see it.  It is a nice personal touch to her stone that we will see every time we visit her grave.

The first few weeks after Callie died, Justin had the Lamb sitting on his nightstand so he could see it all the time.  Then one day, Cooper picked up the lamb and said "this is Callie's" and put it back into her crib where he felt the lamb belonged.  So that is where it is now.  I'm not really sure what we will do with the lamb or where we will keep it long term, but I know it is a very special memory that the 3 of us have of her.