Midway Point

by Sarah
Well, we have made it to the midway point of the month and I have to admit, it has been a LOT more difficult than I had prepared myself for.  BUT, in spite of the struggles, we have made and continue to make significant progress on our plans for Luke's brief time here with us.  As stated earlier, Luke's arrival will be early in the new year and we are planning a celebration service to honor his life to be held a few days later.

We have met with and spoken to pastors, friends and musicians, several different doctors, various organizations, counselors, social workers, photographers, genetic specialists, family members and friends as we have made our way to this point.  There have been days, events and conversations these past few weeks which have pushed me past my emotional limit and I have found myself unable to stop crying for hours. Then, there have been other days and moments where I am surprised at the peace I feel in my heart while planning how we are going to send our little boy off to meet Jesus. I know that the peace we feel and the comfort we receive is thanks to a lot of prayers being lifted up on our family's behalf and we are grateful.  Walking along this path is literally a day by day, hour by hour process.

When we first started this month, I was terrified to even think about or imagine what those precious few moments with Luke would be like for us.  I could not imagine saying both hello and goodbye in a moment's time. I'm still scared of that unknown....of the afterwards and knowing he's not with us any longer but I'm doing better in at least being able to think about it for more than 10 seconds at a time without breaking down. While I know that those moments must remain "unknown" until God brings them to pass, I'm finding small nuggets of comfort as we come into contact with people who have walked this path before us and are kind enough to share their experiences with us. It helps me to prepare my heart and my mind as best as I can little by little. I still become extremely teary thinking about it all, but I'm learning that that state of being is pretty much my new "normal" so it does not upset me (the crying all the time) as much as before.  Strange what some forms of "progress" look like!

As we continue to prepare, we are learning about all kinds of ways we can honor Luke and preserve our memories of his presence with us.  We plan to make molds of his tiny hands and feet, we look forward to our little ink prints of his hands and feet as well.  Our dear friend Todd Messenger (who captured our wedding through his beautiful photography) is going to be our photographer on Luke's birthday. He volunteers with an organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and will be with us the day Luke is born. We are so thankful for the gift of his presence and talents that day.

So we continue forward with our list of things to plan and prepare, but recognize that despite how difficult this journey has been so far, we are thankful for all of the love and support that has been lavished upon us to get us this far. We could not do this without the help we are receiving from our families, friends and church community.  Thank you for walking beside us on this difficult path.