We had not shared the news yet with anyone.
For 10 weeks, I was biding my time with cruel morning sickness accentuated by the polluted city smells and Thai street food stalls.  My plan was to wear a cute “Made in Thailand” maternity shirt home when I went back to the States for my sisters wedding to announce our surprise to my family.
But that moment alone in a Thai hospital…..with C out of the country…..the doctor confirmed there was no heartbeat, and my dreams dissolved into tears.

This process of grief.  Of longing and pain and wishing to rewind….or fastforward….or “skip” the chapter that holds so much hurt.
Natural.
Human.
We know that Jesus wept too.

But death doesnt only rear its ugly head in the physical sense.  There is no one exempt. We all deal with grief.  We all encounter disillusionment.  “Death” is a part of our daily lives and relationships.
We die to ideals, to dreams………and at times, to hope.

This world, so full or heartache and pain and injustice.  Its all around us.  Our homes, our marriages, our communities and our jobs.

This fallen world.
So far from Eden!

Im usually the forever optimist.  I love life.  I dont find it challenging to find joy daily in my blessed life full of little people and their little worries.  Innocence is bliss and my 6 children’s’ naive perspective is infectious.  But this week my heart has been heavy.  The rose colored glasses I viewed life through….frankly, Im kinda over it!  Im growing more discontent with what at times has brought me stability.  My settled, comfortable life which once held such luster, is fading and phony.  Im not drinking the Kool Aid anymore.  The protective walls Ive erected have been battered and beaten…..and Im coming to terms with the fleeting nature of life as we know it.

And it leaves me longing.
Longing for heaven.
Longing for home.

I think my perspective on this first began to shift in the early months following Evie’s brush with death. In the weeks after, so full of questions and doubt, we saw other heart-babies like our Evie whom God called home early.  And my heart broke in a way it has never quite recovered from.
Encountering the reality that everything that I held dearest could be taken away from me in an instant…..and watching a Godly grieving mother embrace hope after unspeakable loss and tragedy…..forced me to begin taking a long hard look at the reality that this world indeed is not our home.

These verses have come to mind often as I have been praying for my dear widowed friend Carla this week:

1 Thess 4:13
“We do not grieve as those who have no hope”

“Where, O death is your victory?
Where, O death is your sting?
…He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Corinthians 15:55)

Death is inevitable.  And for those of us allowed to linger, that loss is an unbearable burden to bear.  But, we are not without hope.  This spinning world is not our home!  We were made for more.  And eternity beckons.

Im reading Randy Alcorns book Heaven.
Im devouring the biblical outline for the hope that is ours if we are in Christ.  It resonates with the premonition in my heart that we were created for more…and that one day, this will pass, and we will be face to face with our Savior.

Having two babies in heaven now means Im a little less enthralled with this world, and a little more eager for heaven.  When I consider the earthly world my other 6 children are currently living in, it makes me homesick…for heaven.  We’re not really “compatible” here.  There’s something better waiting!  In this is our great hope!
Im brought comfort when the children reference our baby Sophia being in heaven with baby Matthew.
I now have two babies who will never know the pain of this world.  Their reality is what I long for.  But, until that day, heaven holds a piece of my heart and leaves me longing for the day this world fades and all we have seen dimly, we then will see clearly.  Im longing for when He returns to bind up the broken hearts and wipe away every tear.  Come Lord Jesus, come!!

“I shared evie’s story with the students. We were discussing different heart defects, and I always try to associate a story to a defect to help them remember it. Anyway, I printed off your blog post that discussed the night that evie was diagnosed (that’s putting it lightly isn’t it?). I was so proud to brag on evie and us her story to hopefully help 9 future nurses understand the impact of CHD and pediatric nursing. Her story is still impacting others. I’m just so proud of her……….Her story will continue to impact me the rest of my life. I can’t think about a TGA and teach about the importance of that little PDA without thinking of Evie. She is a true miracle.”

I was moved to tears at the realization that her legacy lives on and that God continues to be glorified through her story that is such a miracle. The thought occurred to me that there may be some reading this blog (probably not many:) who dont know the backdrop for this blog. So at risk of being redundant, (you faithful old friends who have read this before will have to forgive me), I wanted to share the post (written a while back to be included in a CHD Awareness collection) with you that our sweet nurse friend shared with her students.
To God be the glory!! Great things He has done!!






Our 10 day old baby girl Evangeline (Evie) was thriving, or so we thought.  She was a whopping 9 lbs when she was born and aside from the brief moments after birth when she appeared “blue” and was given blow-by-oxygen, we had every indication that she was healthy and normal.

At 10 days old, her behavior began to vary slightly throughout the day.  When I would nurse her, I remember her feeling sweaty and clammy.  Odd, I thought.  And then I noticed some bruising on her arms.  I called the pediatrician who told me to watch it and bring her in if it changed or got worse.

It was a Friday night and we had dropped our other 4 children off at Grandmas house and gone to dinner with some new friends.  I slipped into a back bedroom to nurse Evie.  She refused to eat.  I wasn’t overly concerned.
Returning to the living room of our friends, we began to notice a strange breathing pattern in Evie.  There was a “catch” in her breath whenever she would exhale.
Id had 4 babies prior to her and was familiar with “varying” breathing in new babies.  They all breathe a little funny sometimes…..right?
“Is she ok?” my friend Wendy asked.
Looking back now, this was the first of many life-saving “red flags” that began to prompt something in C and I.

Leaving their house at close to 11:00pm, we decided perhaps it would be wise to swing by Urgent Care just to be on the safe side.
The lights were out and the parking lot was vacant.
Nuts.
They were closed.

Back at my mother-in-laws house, I tried to feed Evie again while C roused the kids to load them up in the car for our 45 minute trip back home.
Again I took her to breast.
Again she refused.
Again the catch in her breath left me feeling uneasy.

With a foolish sense that we were “over-reacting” C and I decided to leave the kids with Grandma and drive back into town and take Evie to the ER.  The whole way there we speculated that we’d be sent home….eyes rolling by annoyed nurses….at our making a mountain out of a molehill.

I carried my bundled baby snuggled warm and safe in her blue fleece and wrapped in a crocheted blanket and filled out forms at the desk.  We were kindly escorted back to triage where a routine examination began.  It was here that my own blanket of security began to rapidly unravel and our world came crashing in on us….

Evies weight check showed a dramatic drop in weight.  With a sense of alarm, the triage nurse called for help when she couldn’t get a pulse ox read on Evie (this measures oxygen in the blood.  Sats should be close to 100 for “normal” children…Evie’s were in the teens) We stripped her down to her diaper.  She was cold….very cold!  The thermometer taking her temperature registered at 70 degrees.  Evies body was shutting down and we didn’t even know it.

The nurse urgently swept Evie up in her arms and ran through the double metal doors.  “I need help NOW” she yelled.
(Looking back now, we realize that arriving at the hospital even a few minutes later would have been…..too late)

We found ourselves shoved in the corner of Evies room as doctors and techs from every corner of ER left their patients and came hustling to Evie’s side.
Dr. B was a commanding presence that took charge.
A sick, sinking feeling washed over me as I watched the medical personnel file in one after the other. 
This was not standard procedure. This was not “nothing”. 

Twelve individuals in scrubs circled her bed jockeying for position.

I rode in the ambulance as the transport team escorted Evie to the next hospital.  Dozens of papers requiring signatures were given to me during the drive.  Numbly I signed.

They explained that Evie had Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA).  Basically, the two main arteries coming out of the heart developed opposite.  So instead of blood flowing through the body and mixing, her blood was not circulating through her lungs and oxygenating.  So since birth, she had slowly been suffocating.

The morning of her scheduled surgery, we arrived at the hospital at 6:00am to hold her…”one last time”.  

During the 7 hour procedure, we received periodic digital pages from the hospital updating us while she was in surgery.  Never have I prayed so hard as the hours her heart was completely stopped.

Returning to the hospital, a nurse met with us to “prepare” us for what Evie would look like post-surgery.  Our baby had been through unspeakable trauma, but our little fighter could not have been more beautiful to us.  

This began a long, slow and sometimes painful road to recovery.  It wasn’t smooth sailing, but with “two-steps-forward, one-step-back,” (and a lot of scares along the way), our Evie has come so far!  Her road to recovery took a few detours through multiple dangerous heart rhythm (tachycardia) issues that had to be controlled through medication.  Then 2 additional surgeries to investigate chronic lung disease.  She battled Congestive Heart Failure for the first year post-surgery.  She’s overcome GERD, Failure to Thrive, and auto immune disorders. She’s spent cumulative weeks in the hospital for recurring pneumonia of her weakened lungs.  She’s undergone over 20 chest X-rays, 4 urinary cath procedures, 4 blood transfusions, multiple CAT scans.  She’s been intubated 6 times and had 22 ECHO’s and 16 EKG’s.  Lets not even count the number of blood draws to date!