When Waters Rise
July 20, 2017

What do you do when your whole life seems to be falling apart? Start a blog, I guess. I’ve been sharing most of our journey with a fatal fetal diagnosis through Instagram, but lately have felt I want a more permanent place to tell our story. Grief is so isolating and my ultimate hope is that through telling our story, others who’ve walked or are walking a similar path won’t feel so alone.
I’ve spent this morning re-posting most of our pregnancy journey on this site so that those of you who are unfamiliar with our baby’s diagnosis can read about it from the beginning, if you’d like.
I decided on the name, When Waters Rise, for this blog because it feels really fitting to our situation right now. When my husband, Nathan and I first found out I was pregnant, we were a little nervous, but unbelievably excited. My stomach began to grow and so did our beautiful plans and expectations for our new life with a baby. Finding out our little one is not expected to live past birth has crushed those plans and expectations and thrown us into a dizzying whirlpool of preparation of a different kind.
The funny thing about grief is that it is SO vastly different for those who are experiencing it compared to those who are witnessing it. For most of my life I’ve really only ever fallen into the second camp. I have felt sadness and loss but never ever to this degree. I’ve only really witnessed the pain of others and I thought, foolishly, that I understood their pain. I absolutely did not. From my inexperienced albeit well-meaning perspective, I thought about all of the easy, cheesy, feel-good sentiments that are so often shared with those who are suffering, Pain builds character, or, God never gives us more than we can handle, and Just trust God! (I vow to never again think things like that about those who are suffering.)
But then all of the sudden I am laying on a physician’s table with cold jelly on my bare stomach and a doctor is saying big, scary things like “non-viable pregnancy,” “bilateral renal agenesis,” and “termination”. A nurse is cleaning me off and all I do is lie there sobbing, realizing that my whole family is at my house with balloons and party food and gender-reveal cookies, anxiously awaiting our return. I think of the stroller we just bought, the crib we stayed up late the night before assembling and I sob for the baby who they’re saying will never lay in either.
When we got home, my family came rushing to the door, smiling and giddy, I remember just shoving my hand out, sobbing, “No, no, no!” over and over again. I remember watching my parents’ faces fall and my sisters running to take down the balloons, hide the treats, put away the evidence that this was supposed to be a joyous night. I remember my mom holding my husband and my dad holding me as he cried too. The baby started kicking me and I had to gulp down air to not throw up from the horror of it all.
No, you guys. I did not understand grief before this. Before this, I thought faith was easier. I thought trusting the Lord was what I’d already been doing throughout my life. I was so very wrong.
Faith is easy when you have a wonderful husband, a loving family, a nice home, a fulfilling career. My husband and I said our faith before this trail could be likened to standing on the sidewalk and someone coming up to us and saying, “Everything is going to be fine.” We’d smile and nod and say, of course everything is fine! We love the Lord, we trust Him! Look at us standing on firm ground having no trouble trusting the Lord!
Wow. good for us.
After the news though, our faith feels more like being tossed into a raging, stormy sea. We are choking on water, furiously swimming toward a shore we can’t see, absolutely exhausted and about to go under. Now when that someone approaches and says, “Everything is going to be fine!” instead of smiling and nodding, I’m more tempted to drag them into the water with me and say, “How is this for fine?!!?”
Everything is not fine. From my very limited viewpoint before this ordeal, I really really thought that things would be fine. But I am a new person now, with new expectations, new prayers and new hopes. Everything is not fine. Things weren’t ever fine. We live in a world full of sickness and death, greed and starvation, war and violence and those things will touch all of our lives at some point, in varying degrees and ways. So no, things aren’t fine and they never were but we have a blessed assurance and hope in what WILL be when Christ comes and makes all sad things come untrue.
So there’s the reason behind the name, “When Waters Rise,” because it continues to do so. My husband and I aren’t done swimming. We know however, with each stroke that our solid ground is slowly returning and this time, it will be for keeps. Our trust and Faith in the Lord’s goodness before this journey was untested and unrefined. It was filled with impurities like pride and unwarranted expectation of how God would let us make our own plans. Now we are being put through the refining fire of suffering and those things are being burned away. It is incredibly painful and we absolutely could not do it without the mercy of God. At some point though, we will come out of this oven, and out of these waters with a more pure and gleaming faith. We are not fine. This is not fine. But the Lord is absolutely Good.
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior…Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” Isaiah 43, 2–3, 5
