Beauty For Ashes

To all who mourn... he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory.

We have some wonderful news and we are now able to share it with you.  Our dear cousins,( Carter Lee's mommy and daddy) are now expecting a baby boy.  He is Trisomy free and is expected November of this year.  How glad we are, and how we celebrate in the goodness of God.  A beautiful new life!  

Congratulations Brittany and TJ.  We love you!  Brittany has gone and finished her college education and just graduated with her degree.  We are so proud of her!

If you would like to follow Brittany's journey, her FB page to raise awareness for Trisomy and Carter's story is here . You can also check out her blog Twinkling Stars and Forget-Me-Not's here.

If you would like to know the story of Carter Lee see our blog posts here: Carter Story 1  Carter Story 2

The Other Side Of The Waiting Room

Yesterday my dad and I rushed to the hospital three hours away to meet a cousin who had broken all of  the doctor's expectations. We got to the hospital moments after Carter Lee was born. He was the tiniest baby I have ever seen, being just two pounds four ounces and was 15.8 inches long. Everyone said it was like holding a baby doll. I spent the day with my aunt helping her photograph his beautiful but all too short life. You see, my little cousin Carter lived only an hour and twenty minutes outside of his mother's womb.  

Later in the waiting room, I sat there watching the other families laughing and smiling and then I looked at the other side of the waiting room where a sister silently sobbed, an aunt stared off at nothing at all. A Grandparent sat with tears in their eyes instead of a smile. And I look at the others caught up in their own little world and it seems almost cruel that time can go on. I wonder how you ever can heal. I wonder how broken hearts can ever be put back together?  Who's hands can find all the tiny pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and craft them back together again? 
Who can make it look beautiful again?

Psalm 139:13  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

Isaiah 61:3 To all who mourn... he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair...

How a mother can ever move on? 
How can a photograph of a foot knit together your memories? 
How after so many tears and so much pain you can ever be whole?
 It amazes me how different our story was compared to those so happy around us. How tears and happy laughter could mix. How life could change you forever in a blink of an eye. 

Psalms 34:18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Today, it seems as if it is cruel that everyone else's life goes on while someone else could be so shattered. Today, I sit and I edit the photos I took yesterday and I cry and I pray that one day there will be beauty from all of this pain. 

Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

And yet in the midst of the pain and heartbreak, I saw overwhelming love.
I saw why God gave us family.
I saw my dad kneel at the foot of my cousin's bed as she held her baby and I saw him pray.

I will never be the same. None of us will. So for now, we will grieve. We  will smile at the memories and we will wait for joy to come in the morning. 

I will not say goodbye sweet cousin because I know that you wait for us in heaven.  I know that my siblings must have met you at the gates and you all wait for us with our Savior.  I long to be together with them and you.  Until that day... we send our love.

See part two Long Road Home 

Infant loss, death of a child, Trisomy 13, holoprosencephaly, HPE, infant mortality, miscarriage support, child loss, death of an infant, spina bifida, alobar holoprosencephaly, prognosis, survivors, diagnosis, infant death, infant funeral, grieve, prayer, faith, hope, love, empty, arms, childless, infertility, brain division, cephalic disorder, forebrain development, semi-lobar,  Syntelencephaly, stillbirth, middle interhemispheric variant of holoprosencephaly, proboscis, cyclopia, seizures, gestational diabetes,  chromosomal abnormalities, pax 2, Pax 6, malformation, meiosis, patau syndrome, Aneuploidy, Karyotype, Monosomy, extra chromosome, visual cortex.