Great Joy and Great Grief

Today my blog is one of great joy and also of great grief. Yes, this is always the case, but today will feel extra. I expect some judgement. It will not be the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. From my perspective, the greater benefit to sharing my heart with you is that I’m not alone, so sharing might be the very thing that gives you permission to be where you’re at too. Jesus gives us permission to feel what we’re feeling. He doesn’t try to stop our tears or fix our problems, but He holds us as our shoulders shake and the salty drops collect in His bottle (psalm 56:8).

We have known that we are pregnant again since 8/16/24. There were so many tears of joy as I brought that test in to Carlos blinding him with the bedroom light first thing in the morning! And despite Carlos’ prediction that we were having triplets this time, we learned that we were to be blessed with a single baby with an estimated due date of 4/27/25. For me that was a relief. The twin pregnancy did a number on this mama’s body and considering I now fall into the “geriatric” category I preferred things a little easier this time. To be clear, I’m still fully in love with the miracle of twins and how their multiplication continues to reflect the theme of Job (the difference being that his children were not doubled post-tragedy, but everything else in his life was).

Now for the great grief. Carlos and I have felt ready for another daughter since we found out that Kristian (baby #3) was a boy. Some time after I had a beautiful dream that I felt was a message from God. In my dream there was a baby girl, and she was born to the end of Carlos’ struggle with depression. When we found out we were pregnant and I “knew” that it was our last, I thought that it must be a girl. We already had a name picked out. I was so confused when we went to that 20-week ultrasound appointment and learned Kasper (#4) was a boy. Not for a moment would I ever want to trade Kristian or Kasper for anyone. How special they are brings tears to my eyes even now. Tears because I miss them with every fiber of my being, but even more tears because I am so incredibly grateful for the gift that they are to us, even for the very short time that they were on loan.
Back to the present time… we couldn’t wait to know baby’s gender this time, because, we “knew” that this baby would be our last and we fully expected God to give us the desire of our heart- a little baby girl who has had a name since 2016. And now, her middle name would honor both her late maternal and paternal grandmothers both of whom had since passed. We wanted to celebrate with all of our people too, and what better way to surprise everyone than to share in the festivities that were already coming for the “big brothers’”1st birthday. My “geriatric” category allowed me to get bloodwork that determines some genetic differences and also the gender of baby. The results were in just 1 day before we would share our pregnancy news. As we scrolled through my portal, I saw the word “male” and my heart broke.

I’d love to tell you that we celebrated this baby boy in that moment, but we had to talk ourselves through God’s promises. “For I know the plans…” “He works everything for our good…” The thing is, these verses are no longer naive one liners for us. We don’t pull them out and use them as Christianese platitudes that twist the truth because we fail to acknowledge the context in which they were spoken. Our maturity (far from arrived, but we’ve been through some stuff) tells us that these things really are true. That one day, when we get to heaven, we will fully understand how it all works together. And “when we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be”

We know the truth. We accept the true. And we fall more in love with our 6th son every single day. But knowing God’s truths does not erase the pain. We shelved our feelings to make space to celebrate Klark and Kharis’ birthday. But after the dust of their birthday settled, and things quieted down, a wave of grief caught me under and tumbled me over and over and over. All I could think about was my mom and our Kathryn. In the few minutes in which our tragedy occurred, I had lost my best friend and my future best friend. Another baby girl could never change this pain, but it would allow another channel for this love to flow. Memories with my mom and Kathryn have been surfacing everywhere I turn. There were the before bed time chapters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, late night apps at Applebees, our girls’ post-Christmas shopping trip, the day that I got to share with Kathryn how babies grew, the knowledge that one day I’d get to be there for her like my mom was for me during birth and afterward to help with those difficult first weeks, dresses, beauty, Eve and so much more! It all feels stollen from Me. It WAS stollen from me. The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

God brings life. God could have given us this one, and in His infinite wisdom, He chose not to. Once again, I found myself wrestling with God knowing that somehow, I needed to accept His sovereignty and our path.

But beyond loving all three of our boys currently on loan to us and raising them to know Jesus, what is our path? Adoption? What happens if we don’t get to name our girl because it is such a long difficult road to adopt an infant? Another pregnancy? What if God gives us another boy- will we still want to adopt then? IVF to choose gender? My body feels so very worn 7 babies later. Like cross my legs to brace myself for the sneeze and then have the muscles in my stomach yell from the tension kinda worn. Also, there’s the expense of both adoption and IVF. I now have to accept that the baby girl I dreamed about eight years ago might have been a random dream and not actually a dream from God.

In the last few weeks I’ve had to re-accept the loss of my mom and Kathryn, accept the gender of this baby and also accept that we may never again have a baby girl. Raising a girl and all of the things that come with that might never again be part of our story.

Then the loneliness set in. There are very very few people I shared these emotions with because I knew that they were too outlier(esque) to be understood. (Yes, I just made up a word.) A small few understood my heart well enough to recognize the pain without me having to explain, but most only celebrated the blessing of the new life growing inside. Most have not asked how I’m doing emotionally. Please do not think that I am in any way upset if you fall into the latter category, again, I return to it’s simply too different/difficult to wrap our hearts around. A few that I chose to share with didn’t understand the depths and tried (ineffectively) to help. I responded confidently and insistently that wrestling was right where God wanted me. Even Carlos, who watched me cry on and off for an entire week knew that he couldn’t understand the depths of my pain. Jesus was holding me. I knew that and I felt Him but I was hurting and I had permission to be right where I was. I was feeling the stab of grief and loneliness. What I needed was to cry and to wrestle.
This would be a good time to tell you to checkout psalm 69. It is no coincidence that I found myself here during this season. King David gave me permission to be where I was too.

The definition of “joy” leaves a lot to be desired. When we define biblical joy as “a lasting emotion that comes from trusting God” or “an internal state of being, rooted in peace” it fails to describe my heart during this time. And yet, like Job, I will insist on my integrity, I did not once leave His side I did not lose my joy. He knew where I was emotionally and encouraged me to be there. It was as I was wrestling with the definition of joy that I heard it described as “the banner flowing from the castle of my heart when the king is in residence”. I know, it’s not really a definition, but this is the first explanation that has made complete sense to me. The banner might have been ragged at the time, it might have taken me work to hold it, but don’t those things make the very fact that I still kept it raised even more meaningful and beautiful?

When I finally came out from under the wave, sputtering, we realized that Carlos too had been under. It was only upon acknowledgement that he was hurting profoundly because of all that we had missed out on with the loss of our beautiful Kathryn that he started to come out of a cloud of depression.
We never want the little boy that I’m carrying to think that he is less because mommy and daddy wanted a girl. The truth is that God knows he is the absolute perfect fit for our family and that’s why He chose him! And because God knows that, we do too. The grief of not having a girl is separate from the celebration we have for this little guy! It just happens to be that the two overlap. Why would I expect anything uncomplicated in this crazy journey where sadness and joy walk hand in hand?

To continue falling in love with baby #7, we started to work on finding his name. I realize that this is always an important (albeit difficult) task for parents. Think for a minute how difficult it must be to come up with meaningful “K” boy names after already having chosen five. “Kharis” was a challenge to figure out, and now we need a sixth. Even while the wave was holding me under, I began the search. I went through baby name lists in C’s and K’s, the dictionary, and a Bible concordance all to no avail.

A search revealed that there are multiple Greek words that begin with the hard “K” sound. “Kyroo” means to reaffirm, to ratify, validate, to assure. After all of our wrestling we still stand on Jesus as our Lord in confident hope that one day all of our pain will be gone and we will be in His presence as well as with our loved ones. Baby Roo will be among them <3

While the world wants us to have “good vibes only” and our Christian community (as a whole) struggles to accept emotions we consider “negative” please let this be your encouragement to “Keep going, Really!” Feel what you need to feel and wrestle those feelings with the Truth of God’s word. Sadness and joy do exist simultaneously.

Two things I need to add in at the end:
1. “Kaleb” his is the only one of our children’s names I did not mention in this blog post- so now I did.
2. Please check out the music duo “out of the dust” Their lyrics have been like a balm to my heart when I needed permission to be exactly where I was at. Soooooo many of the lyrics to “remind me” and “the wait won’t be wasted” are beautiful echoes of my heart that I had not been able to put into words.

-Markie
Keep Going, Really!