How Do You Explain?

Since we have started at a new church, most of the people there do not know the journey we are on. When asked which baby Joy Michelle is I answer 5. I am sure people wonder when they see us where the missing child is. :) Joey asked for prayer for Joy Michelle a couple weeks ago in Sunday School and said that we had lost our last baby girl in December due to a rare disorder. Well, they don't really have a clue what that means.

This past Sunday, our teacher told us that most people in the class had been touched by that and even he had through his children. I so wanted to say ours wasn't a miscarriage because I assumed he was talking about that. I should have asked him what he meant. I wanted to clarify that our baby girl lived. She was carried almost to term. She has touched my life beyond words. She has changed our family. I do not want to make it sound like Janie Beth is more important than a miscarriage, but she affected me far more than either of my miscarriages did. I have walked the miscarriage road twice, and Janie Beth's journey is far deeper. When counting my children, I do not count the miscarriages, but I do think about them being in Heaven and wonder who they are. Janie Beth already knows. :)

I felt her move. I saw her precious body on u/s with her heart beating. I held her body. I bathed her. We have many pictures of her. We knew she wasn't going to live, but we carried her with us and tried our best to cherish every moment.

How do you explain to someone the impact such a precious life has made on you when they weren't there to watch the journey from the beginning? How do you do it without disgarding their pain over their loss? One person's pain over one thing can be just as deep as someone else's over another. Grief affects us all differently.

I may ask next week if there are any in the class that have lost an infant. I think I felt bad that I hadn't spoke up for Janie Beth. We knew her. She has a special place in our family.

I know this is all part of the journey and it will get easier in time and every situation is different. That was the first time I had been faced with that particular situation, and I felt like I downgraded Janie Beth by not saying anything. I think in reality, it made me miss her. It is hard to have someone touch your life so deeply and not be there. No one can see except God, or those that walk the journey with us.

Being new is never easy! :)