Kleenex Required

On Saturday, Mike, Colin and I went to the Frederick Meijer Gardens with my parents and Jason, Janna, Ethan and Micah. It was a nice sunny warm afternoon. We went into the packed Butterfly exhibit and then went outside to the children's part. Afterwards, my parents took us out to dinner. During dinner, we had a fairly brief but thought provoking conversation about infant death. Jason or Janna, I can't remember which, brought up the story of someone having to bury their infant child. I hope I have the facts correctly but the jist was the baby was noticed while still in utero to have his/her brain growing on the outside of their head and would not be able to live a full life outside the womb. They decided to abort the baby. We had a quick conversation about what we would do if God forbid it happened to us. We talked about how although it would incredibly painful to carry a baby full term knowing the baby would never survive, it would be worth it to have even 5 minutes with your baby. In those 5 minutes, you would know how your baby looked, felt, smelt. You would be able to take photographs and have memories to last a lifetime. The conversation shifted and was never brought up again. It has been something that I have continued to think about.

Fast forward to today. I went to one of my favorite Christian band's website and saw a short note about one of the band member's had a baby and it died that day. There was a link to read more about the story. I'm nosy and Colin is napping, so I clicked on the link. http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/ I have spent the past 2 hours in a dark hotel room with tears pouring down my face as I read the painful words and look at my miracle sleeping.

The blog affirms what we had discussed on Saturday; that as painful as I'm sure it was for Angie to carry the baby full term, she was able to have Audrey with her. She was able to love Audrey, to give her life, to bring her joy by eating PB&J sandwiches and having daddy sing to her. It's a tremendous story of sorrow, peace and strong faith.

I highly recommend reading the entire blog starting from the first entry in January but it comes with a warning ... have a box of Kleenex handy.

**Sidenote: I'm not looking for agreeance (is that even a word?) in whether you should or shouldn't carry a baby full term. I'm not posting this to start a long deep conversation about anything really but rather because of it's beauty, pain and promise.**