Beth Morey

Jan 27

They Don’t Know

Since my daughter died inside me, I been commended by many people.

You are so brave, they say. Your faith is so great.

They say that because they don’t know. They don’t know the truth.

They don’t know how, the night we arrived home from the hospital without our daughter and for many nights after that, I lay on the bed, alone, and cried out to God for comfort, for answers, and heard nothing. How I hated Him for that.

They don’t know how I was crippled with fear that my daughter, because she died before she was born, was not enjoying Heaven (I am no longer afraid of this). How I was paralyzed by the terror that my husband would also die too young and too soon (I am still afraid of this).

They don’t know that I tried to stop believing in God. How disgusted I felt that a so-called loving God would let a deeply cherished, innocent child die before she drew breath.

They don’t know how in spite of myself I could not shut God out. That, no matter how hurt and angry and hateful I felt about Him, I could not not believe. That whatever faith I have is because of Him, not me.

They don’t know how I raged at this God who wouldn’t save my daughter and wouldn’t let me go. How I asked Him to let me die, too.

They don’t know that I hate to read the Bible now. That I am afraid of coming across passages that wound me with their words of how God brings pregnancies to fruition, because the first-fruit of my pregnancy was death.

They don’t know how afraid I am all of the time. Afraid of what will become of me, or not become of me. Afraid that I have been ruined. Afraid of the future, because the future is a gaping void threatening to devour. Afraid that I will die alone. Afraid that, for the rest of my life, I will only lose and lose and lose.

They don’t know how God has met me in ways small and large. How deepest grief and sharpest fear have enlarged my soul with the sweetest intimacy with my Maker that I have ever known. That this intimacy is because He is reteaching me to interact Him, and not because I prayed the perfect prayers or kept a perfect faith.

They don’t know that, even with this reteaching of prayer, I cannot pray. I cannot pray for material needs, for practical requests, because I do not know what prayer means now that I prayed for my daughter and she died.

The people who say that I am brave and that I am faithful — they don’t know how terrified I am, how doubting, and how weak. They don’t know that it’s not me the things they see me doing, but God. God, and God, and God again — hearing every broken sob, tasting every tear, healing every part of me.

If I am brave, it is with the courage that He has given me. If I am faithful, if I am trusting, it is with belief whose genesis is in Him. If I lived only by my own power and strength, I would not be able to breathe, let alone stand, let alone trust.

I am nothing. God is everything.

For that I am grateful.

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Posted in eve, God, grief, stillbirth

Jan 25

Tired

I feel so done.

Grief is really hard. Yes, there are some gifts to be found within it — but those gifts don’t make the reality of death any easier. The cavern in my soul is just as deep, just as black. The gifts of grief only dress the edges of the darkness up a bit.

I keep wondering why I didn’t die, too.

I have a really, really hard time envisioning any kind of a future for myself. This, apparently, is a part of PTSD. Officially defined as “numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by . . . a sense of foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span).”

That doesn’t make me feel any better.

Well, that’s not completely true. I suppose it’s good to know that it’s normal to have no sense of future in the midst of grieving traumatic loss. But that doesn’t make the future any easier to face.

I can’t believe that it’s already January 25. That it’s almost February. The first Valentine’s Day that I was supposed to celebrate with a baby on my hip draws closer. And after that the first Mother’s Day with empty arms, and then beginning of the first anniversary season of my pregnant days. A future of wondering if that family I almost had will ever exist.

I am tired. I want to be done. This is awful. I can’t stop crying, and don’t think I ever will.

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Posted in eve, grief, stillbirth

Jan 22

Two Months Later

Two months ago today, I held my daughter in my arms for the first and last time.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already and only been two months.

Looking back, I feel amazed that I survived those two months, especially the days immediately we after we received the worst news that parents can hear — that our daughter had died before she breathed, of no known cause. I was in shock, unable to feel my grief, to cry, to wail for my loss. I felt strangely normal.

And yet, looking back from today, I can see how dark that time was. How afraid I felt, how alone. I can see that every moment, every movement was torture, even though I couldn’t tell in the moment. From today, I can see how hard it was to breath, how each inhalation was a desperate, gasping clutch at life. I can see now that I breathed like a drowning person. That I was a drowning person.

Sometimes — most times — I long to go back to those days. My daughter felt nearer, and my husband’s grief was more obvious. I wish I could stay in the hospital cradling my daughter’s body forever. In spite of the pain all around, I felt safe there.

But every so often I want to live, live into the future, even though I cannot see what the earthly future could ever hold for me now. Because if I keep living, then although I am moving away from my daughter’s death, I am drawing closer to the Life everlasting with our Father, and with her.

That is what I am living for, two months later.

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Posted in eve, God, grief, stillbirth Eve's candle Heaven jason gray music

Jan 21

Too Small

Last night I opened Eve’s memory boxes. I hadn’t looked inside them since packing the casts of her hands and feet away. But I thought that her due date was a good occasion to take them back out again, so I did.

As I unwrapped each cast, horror rocked me all over again.

Her hands, her feet – they were so small.

How could I have forgotten already?

The photos, they make her hands and feet look big, look normal-sized. But they were not, and she was not. She only weighed three pounds and three ounces. Her hands were less than two inches from wrist to fingertip, and her feet less than three inches long.

She was too small. Too small, too early, and too dead.

Even though it hurt that I had forgotten so quickly, I sat with the casts, clumsy reminders of the strength and life that was in her. I sat, cradling the tiny replicas of the hands and feet my daughter once moved within me, and wept.

Baby girl, I miss you so much.

“Sorrow is better than laughter,
for sadness has a refining influence on us.”

~ Ecclesiastes 7:3

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Posted in eve, grief, stillbirth casts due date

Jan 20

January 20, 2012

Today is my due date.

Or perhaps I should say — today was my due date.

It seems strange, and even offensive, that I made it to this date and my baby did not.

My daughter is dead. Today, she has been dead for two months exactly.

Today is hard.

But.

I expected it to be harder. I expected to be lost in despair. I expected to die from grief. How can a mother arrive at the date her expectancy was supposed to blossom into fullness and not die?

But I am not dead. And today, this day of emptied expectancy, has been far sweeter than I could have dreamed.

This morning the world was beautiful. The clouds, the snow, the sun — beauty all around.

The beauty was in people, too. When my car got stuck in snow, strangers materialized out of nowhere to help — twice.

I went to get blood drawn, and the man who did so remembered me, remembered that I used to have a baby. He was kind to me.

Friends and the other babylost remembered what today used to be. They did not leave me alone in the remembering.

Sweet sister-friends called me, wrote to me, listened to me at length, and lifted me up. They helped me to remember that God knows the pain of this day, and the days previous, and the days to come. That He cares.

Today I saw babies and pregnant women during my travels, and did not hate them. This gives me hope that there is beauty yet bloom in my heart as I heal.

At the store, I found a lilac-scented candle that whispered of Eve to me. I bought it, and the burning of it is comforting me as I write this. The lilac smell is all around me and will forever belong to her now.

There was so much good today, so much sweetness on a day I expected to taste only bitter.

I am blessed. God has not forgotten me. He is carrying me, tending me like the gentlest farmer with the most tender shoot. I have given myself to Him, and He has not failed.

So today, the day that was my due date, I will remember the good that He has given. I would never give up this pain because that would mean giving up the good that came before it.

My daughter, you have been worth every tear.

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Posted in eve, God, grief, pregnancy, stillbirth anniversary due date gratitude january 20

Jan 17

PTSD and Me

Today I had an appointment with my therapist. She asked me if I was having nightmares, specifically repetitive ones. I told her that yes, I’ve had a few. Then I told her how I have been experiencing anxiety and small panic attacks, especially when going into social situations that involve more than one other person. How being in or near some places around town triggers uncontrollable flashbacks in addition to the panic. How sometimes I can’t stop thinking about a certain few moments of time from when we were in the hospital with Eve.

She told me that I have PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

I know that this is not an uncommon thing for babylost mothers. I know that I lived through — and continue to live through — something bitterly traumatic.

But a diagnosis? It scares me. A lot.

Because this is not the first time I’ve been handed a psychological diagnosis.

If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that in 2008 I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. A year after that, I was diagnosed again, this time with depression. Both of these diagnoses were paired with intense struggle and suffering that went on for years. That nearly robbed me of my life and my marriage. That did rob me of countless opportunities to live and love and experience joy. Those diagnoses were harbingers of devastation.

I don’t want another diagnosis.

I’m already going through hell. I don’t need to look forward to more psychological wrestling. I don’t want that.

I’m trying to remember that my therapist also said that PTSD is experienced on a range — that it can be more or less intense, and that in my case it is closer to the “less” end of things.

But I am scared.

Because I want to know what it means. Will this anxiety ever go away, or will it get worse? Does this diagnosis mean that my present struggling will go on and on long past the grief has healed? That it will prolong this hell that I am living in?

I know that God is bigger than this, bigger than everything. But He let me live in my eating disorder for years and years — seventeen years, to be exact. So while I know that He will redeem whatever this diagnosis means, that He has healing in His hands, I don’t know when that redemption and healing will come.

This journey of grief and pain and trauma — it’s going to be a long haul, I think. Longer than I can fathom.

So I will not look at the future and let wondering about when? rob me of now. I will look at my hands and my feet, and shed the tears from the heart-well that has no bottom. I will look around me at the sky’s brilliant blue and the frosted grass. I will breathe and breathe and breathe.

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Posted in eve, God, grief, mental health anxiety mandisa music PTSD

Jan 15

The Gift of Carrying Death

During church today, I found myself looking around at everyone and thinking — I am one of a very few who has held death inside of her.

I wonder if that is a gift.

Here’s what I mean: I used to be afraid of death. Although I believed in God, in the saving work of Jesus, I was not altogether sure if Heaven was a place I wanted to be. If God was more loving than angry. I believed in life after death, but my view of it was gray and cloudy, and I was afraid to investigate my beliefs on it further.

When my daughter died inside of me, I was forced to consider death, and life after death, more carefully.

Here is what I decided: death is horrible. Death was never meant to be. God did not create death, but He did defeat it. That in turn made Him able to offer us Life — here, and after death. The Life He offers in life and the Life He offers in death are of equal importance. We are not made to wait for Life later, but can accept it and enjoy it now.

As for Heaven — well, I still don’t know much about it. I can’t, because there’s not much said of it in the Bible, other than that it is different, and that it is good. When Eve first died, a lot of people offered me their ideas of what Heaven would be like, how Eve would be when I saw her again. At first I wondered if I’d see her again at all, and if it mattered. After all, if she is with God, complete, then I am satisfied.

But before too long I realized that I do want to see her again — I want it deeply. In thinking about this, I came to another realization — that God values relationship. He prioritizes it above all else. More than anything He wants to simply be with us, and to love us, and to have us love Him in return.

This makes me wonder — would the God who values relationship above all else erase relationships from our hearts once we die? This doesn’t make sense to me at all. So I have slowly come to the conclusion that after we die we will have relationship with our loved ones, and even the other people in Heaven with us. Although I have no doubt that those relationships will be far different from what they were here on earth, I can’t believe that God would ever throw away love, because He is love.

Of course, this is all the result of my own musings. It is not drawn from scripture because, as I said, there are no scriptures that really describe what we can expect in Heaven. But I know that we can expect God. And if God is love . . . well, you get the picture. I will live in hope that I will see the people I love here when we get there.

Here is the gift of carrying death: that I am no longer afraid of death, but long to go Home, and that I think Heaven is a place worth being.

In my mind, this is Heaven: to stand shoulder to shoulder with my husband, our daughter, and all the rest of our brothers and sisters in worship of the One who puts all things right.

I bet I’m wrong. I bet it’s even better than that.

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Posted in eve, God, grief death Heaven

Jan 14

What Life Is

These past few days have been hard.

Reminders of what I have lost are everywhere. Little girls with dark curly hair, pregnant women, families delighting in their children — all of these things bring not only a fresh assault of grief, but also visceral physical pain. I feel like I am being knifed in the gut. My mouth flaps like a landed fish, lungs aching for air. I cannot breathe deeply enough.

My throat is always raw, my eyes always aching. There is no end to the tears. Even when I am falling on my Father as I should, I cry and cry and cry. Even when I take comfort in the fact that He understands better than anyone, that He was babylost, too — even as I run to Him, I know that the pain will not leave.

Not that I want it to.

Everyday I feel like I am shrinking. I feel lonely, yet fall prey to anxiety when I spend time with others. I wonder what my place in this world is. When I was pregnant, I felt like I had become a woman at last. Now I am a mother, but I gave birth only to death. Am I still a woman? Where do I fit in between the new moms and older moms and singles and young couples and grandparents? There is not space for people like me.

And then along comes the shame. I see, everywhere, women who are carrying their sons and daughters within them, sons and daughters that will most likely be born and live and grow old before they die. These women, they remind me of my failure. Although I know that Eve’s death was not my fault, even though I have been reassured again and again and again that there was no cause for her death, nothing that I or anyone could have done to save her — although I know these things, I feel shame. My body did not work. I am a mother who is mother only to the dead.

Sometimes I feel that the people around me who know ours story wonder what I did wrong. Wonder if I killed my daughter.

I know that I can’t help what people might think, might wonder. But it hurts. Because how could they not wonder? It’s too senseless of a thing to believe.

And yet it’s the truth — my daughter died, and we don’t know why, no one can tell us why. She was born perfect, but she was born dead. I want to know why, but I can’t know why. There is no answer that anyone but God can give, and He’s not saying.

And so, there is the shame. I can fight it off most days, most nights. But not today.

Last night I dreamed of the moment my husband showed my daughter’s body to me. Again and again I relived it, the moment when I first knew that this horror was forever. When I saw her bonnet covered head nestled too still, too quietly, in the crook of her father’s elbow. I dreamed of this moment last night, over and over and over.

I awoke bathed in her death. I cannot stop reliving it.

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Posted in eve, God, grief, stillbirth fear shame

Jan 12

My Little Sparrow

Yesterday this special photo of a sand drawing was waiting for me in my inbox when I got home — it’s Eve’s peace dove, made by CarlyMarie. I really love it. What a beautiful gift.

It’s interesting — although I’ve never had any great love for birds (and often a great dislike of some), birds are tightly woven into my memory of Eve. I feel like I’ve had a heightened awareness of birds since she died, even though I don’t believe that their appearances have a particular significance. They just make me think of her.

The other day, I was looking at a photo of my little girl. And as I was looking at her face, I thought, “Hello, little sparrow.” And it felt just right — she is my little sparrow, at Home and sweetly tended by her Daddy.

I just wish that we could have flown together here in this life. I miss her terribly.

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.” ~ Luke 12:6

“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself . . . a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.” ~ Psalm 84:3-4

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Faces of Lost, Faces of Hope has included my guest post in their series on creative healing! It just went up today. I am so honored to have been asked to participate (thanks, Beryl!). I am also giving away one of my art prints as a part of the series. Find my post and and enter the art giveaway here.

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Posted in blogging, eve, God, grief carlymarie christian's beach create. heal. inspire. faces of loss giveaway healing peace dove

Jan 11

Hurting, Again?

Why do I do this to myself? I keep reaching a place where the pain subsides and I think, “Ah. This is it — I am finished grieving.” Why do I keep thinking that grief ever finishes? And even if it does, why would I expect it to reach it’s end so soon? It’s only been seven weeks and three days since I birthed our daughter, dead.

Today I woke up afraid. Afraid that Eve was our one and only child. That she really was a miracle baby, that my body cannot bring children to life, ravaged as it was by an eating disorder.

Also — afraid that we will not be able to adopt. That agencies will learn of our stillbirth and reject us, thinking that I am too sad, too broken to love another woman’s baby. Or that we will be asked to wait years and years, that I will be forced to be an old, old mother with a too-young child.

Or worse, that we have been called to be childless.

I don’t want that calling.

What will become of me if this it turns out to be true?

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Posted in eve, grief, stillbirth fear