Shaken

There are times when the pressure behind my eyes is to great a thing. It comes mostly at bed time. When I close my eyes it is impossible to not see sad images. The harder I try to push them out the more they seem to stay. A lot of the times it is flashes of my hospital stay or Nathan's funeral. I say flashes because the whole scenario seemed like an out of body experience at times. Sometimes I only have pieces in my mind. Other things jump out at me and I remember every horrible detail. I work very hard to control my thoughts and focus on the positive. Most of the time this is when I write to you all. I also read book after book. There is a constant flow of the written word in my life. It does help distract my mind.

But there is this horrible image I just cannot shake. No matter how many blogs, or late night prayers, this horrible image of the nurse shaking my belly that hits me every night like clockwork. It is a terrible memory and has been very traumatic for me. Why do they do this? I get the idea of it, move the belly, and the baby will move. But what about the times when the baby does not move? What about the effect this has on the mother? This is what I remember most. I cannot speak for every mother, but I would bet that this is the one thing they remember most. It is that moment when you realize what they are checking for. In that moment you hold your breath, and are not sure you will ever breath again.

But alas you do breathe again. It is a different way of breathing, but breath all the same. I think a lot about that moment. That is when I knew in my heart that He was gone. Before all the monitors and machinery. I guess I knew because a mother just seems to know about her child. He always moved. He moved until he simply didn’t.

It is this particular memory where I struggle the most. Sometimes I wish I could wipe it from my memory. But I know I really wouldn’t. Because to wipe away any part it would take away from the time I had with Nathan. Unfortunately I must take the painful moments just as I do the wonderful. The painful ones are a part of my story as well, and just as important. The painful parts remind me that it was real. Nathan’s heart did beat and the silence of it in the end does not erase the beginning.

Sometimes late at night that is what I focus on. The beginning of Nathan….
And I can keep going because Nathan WAS before I even knew he WAS. He is such an important beginning and in Glory there is no end. He did not cease to exist, and no amount of shaking, can shake that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made” I carried Him and the LORD carried Him the rest of the way.