If you, LORD, should mark
iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with
You,
That You may be feared.
Psalm 130: 3-4
Soon after my mother’s departure, I plunged into unfinished home
building projects. Finish work abounded. Door trim needed sanding; molding
needed caulk. Paint awaited my brush. I launched feverishly and gratefully into
these tasks, dispelling the taxing quiet with music, my loud singing, and the
sounds and odor of sandpaper, freshly sanded wood and fresh paint. The work
absorbed my day, swiftly advanced the hours, and provided me with a sense of purpose.
With four weeks of remaining recovery time before returning to work, I happily
engaged in exhausting, satisfying physical labor.
Along with
my vigorous undertaking of necessary home improvements, I made plans to return
to the local junior college to continue my pursuit of a nursing degree.
Enrolling in a freshman health class during the summer fulfilled two goals:
obtaining necessary continuing education unit credits to maintain my athletic
trainer credentials, and obtaining preferential placement for matriculation
into the fall Microbiology class. It also fulfilled another purpose: running
away from myself and my pain. I was systematically, blatantly ignoring the
grieving process. I wouldn’t allow any time for it. Thinking I could do it on
my own, I wasn’t giving God a chance to heal my spirit. I just needed to be
strong and press on.
Yet moments
of deep emotional distress would strike unannounced and swallow me. During one
grocery store shopping excursion, my legs felt like iron anchors as I forcibly
dragged my unwilling body through the store. But what I really wanted to do was
stand rooted in the middle of the supermarket, flail my arms and shriek, “Don’t you know what just happened to me? How can all of you just go about your business as though
nothing happened? I’m in mourning here,
and you aren’t even commiserating with me in my agony!” I didn’t do it, but it
took every ounce of sanity I possessed to constrain my impulse. We need to go back to wearing black clothing
and black armbands signifying a death in the family, to provide visual
bereavement, I thought. At least,
that way, everyone might not be so damned happy acting around you, and, at the
very least, offer their condolences.
Instead, I
slowly migrated to the liquor department and wandered up and down the aisles. A
bottle of wine would be just the right additive to my painkillers—to obliterate
the physical and emotional pain. Didn’t I deserve a drink after all I’d been
through? Getting good and drunk—in complete solitude—and sleeping through life
sounded good, and forgivable. Did I
even want to recover from the drowning? I could just close my eyes and awaken on
the other side of this hell.
After three
or four return trips to stare at the wine bottles, I extricated myself—with
monumental effort—from their allure, paid for my groceries, and drove home. I
knew from experience that when the sleep wore off the pain would linger,
accompanied by negative effects of a hangover and deeper guilt from having
succumbed to a frail moment.
The final
nail driven into my sadness was the knowledge that they had intentionally
removed my baby from my womb for the sole purpose of saving my life. Never mind
that when Dr. Gordon opened my uterus he found an eighty percent abrupted
placenta, meaning that Victoria wouldn’t have survived much longer in my uterus anyway. I felt as though I’d been slapped with a repulsive label: “emergency
abortion receiver.” A placard that would hang on my mind and heart for life.
Nagging
questions ping-ponged relentlessly around in my brain: Since I’d actually gone into labor, was it an emergency premature
delivery, or would it qualify as an abortion? Was I now a member of a club of
women who endured the stigma of self-doubt, questions, misunderstandings and
political lobbing? If Dr. Gordon had performed the C-section upon my arrival at
the hospital, it clearly would have been an emergency abortion to keep me from
bleeding to death. Had the definition changed because I’d been in labor six
hours before he performed the delivery?
What would have happened to me if abortion
were illegal? Dr. Gordon didn’t indicate that he thought my placenta had
abrupted before making the decision to take Victoria and end the pregnancy, but
the immense blood loss must have given him an indication that was a possibility.
He’d actually admitted to Chris that he’d taken too great a risk by waiting too
long to go in. With humble honesty he to Chris, “I almost couldn’t bring her
back.”
Still other
questions rattled me: Did Victoria take a
breath? Dr. Gordon assured us she had not. Was he just trying to protect us from further pain? He had
described me as a time bomb waiting to explode. All I seemed to do was browbeat
myself with questions: What could I have
done differently throughout the pregnancy to make it last longer, giving
Victoria a better chance at life? Why couldn’t we have held on just
three-and-a-half more weeks? If I’d been transported to a hospital with a
NICU and specialists, might she have been one of those wonderful “miracle
babies” you hear about in the news? If my
original doctor and radiologist hadn’t misdiagnosed the previa, would complete
bed rest have bought us precious days, weeks, months?
My thoughts
were often self-accusations: You just
didn’t want her enough. You didn’t think of your health or the baby’s; you were
selfish, pre-occupied, reckless. You foot! You took this pregnancy for granted!
Yes...I did. One successful pregnancy to term, with a fairly uncomplicated
delivery, lulled me into complacent expectations for an identical outcome.
Other women had those problems, not me.
I’d never given any serious consideration to the possibility of an
insurmountable complication arising.
Regrettably,
I also attest to a time of resentment at what Victoria was doing to my body and
my pre-planned, well-ordered life and had set out with resolve and
determination to triumph in that battle. Now I was convinced I was paying the
price for that calculated, arrogant confrontation.
Early in
recovery, however, I decided that God must have a very good reason for allowing
Victoria to die. I don’t remember being angry with God, or questioning His
motives. I merely wanted to be apprised
of His intentions. But inwardly I recoiled violently during a phone
conversation with my mother when she blindsided me with, “Well, I sure don’t’ know what
you’ve done to deserve this!” The comment seemed so blunt, so harsh, so unfair
coming from someone else. Little did she know that for days I’d been way ahead
of her in my thinking: perhaps there was something in my past that required
such harsh discipline. If so, I was prepared to accept full responsibility for
my actions and failures. And when that acceptance occurred, something
miraculous happened: Beseeching prayers seeking only God’s desired results from
the circumstances slowly replaced my questions about why He allowed all of this
to happen in the first place. What did He
want me to learn from this? What was His plan now for my life? Where would this
devastation take me?
Was I being
too hard on myself? I didn’t think so. Perhaps I really hadn’t wanted Victoria
enough, nor loved her enough. Maybe I’d been too determined to avoid any
wrinkles in my life, to admit weakness or defeat. Pregnancy and delivery would
have been just a blip on the screen of my life’s-accomplishments-checklist that
year. Always the competitor, I’d been driven to continue working through my
pregnancy because other women seemed
so capable of this feat. Why couldn’t I
rank up there among those super women?
Maybe pride
had undone me.
With
remorse and repentance, I became aware of the tragic disarray of my priorities;
God started brandishing them before my eyes like blinding sunspots. My
achievement checklist had been a mile long; Chris and I were roaring through
life in a vacuum. We’d become too pragmatic, too worldly, too complacent, too
self-absorbed.
Then God
had pulled the plug.
Once again
in my life, He was dropping His benevolence of grace and mercy directly at my
heart’s front door. A firm knock to let me know He was there; a firm, disciplining
hand reminding me that I desperately needed Him, and that I shouldn’t—couldn’t—go on, and really succeed in life, without Him.
It was my responsibility to reach out, finish
opening the gracious, compassionate gift He’d extended to me so many years
before, and be completely engulfed in
its contents.
_______________________________________
NEXT WEEK: The
emotional fallout continues, Parker and Chris return me to the hospital…and we
bring Victoria home…
This Saturday, April 13, will be the 20th anniversary of Victoria's death. Chris and I have plans to take the next step to bring more healing to our hearts.
________________________________________
Thanks for joining me.
Until next week!
Blessings,
Andrea
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