Now my heart is pounding almost out of my chest. "Is it Baby A?" "Yes," she says. I'm ready for her to say, "He is sick" or "We have to deliver". But instead the blow was, "His heartbeat is gone."
"How is Baby B?" Now the kids are screaming at one another, my mother starts crying and I snap into what I like to call instinct mode. "Mom, please take my kids outside, away from here." As they are carted out with Abuela, I'm still lying on the table and Theresa is trying take pictures of my now deceased baby.
The un-attentive doctor who had mismanaged my whole pregnancy comes into the room. I look at him and say, "But....I felt...." "You don't know what you are feeling when you have twins," he cuts me off. I continued lying on the table for what felt like an eternity. I was sobbing and kept asking Theresa, "Are you sure? Are you POSITIVE, Theresa? Could this be a mistake???" Staring at the ceiling as they spoke my mind drifted. It took all my strength not to stick my fingers in my ears and run off the table telling them that they are liars and they are wrong.
I'm sure another time I'll write more about this day. This dark, dark day of my life. When the unexpected happened. I still cry when I think about it all.
I know of another dark day. A day of shattered hopes and dreams. When all the effort of a man's life ended abruptly and unfairly in a shameful death. How do you think the disciples felt watching their leader, their Savior hang naked on a tree receiving a punishment he did not deserve? They had to watch his body die and then be buried. The hopelessness they must have felt. Shattered dreams. Questioning everything, even the God, they'd always believed in. I felt like this that day.
But Scripture tells those who have lost and suffered:
"Turn you to the strong hold, you prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double to you." Zechariah 9:12
It can be easy at these times to become a prisoner of your own making. Jailed by bitterness and fears, you can no longer see the good things that still lie ahead. You are too afraid to believe again. This had to have been how the disciples felt as they fled in fear and then as Peter denied and even cursed Jesus' name.
What no one could have known the day Jesus was crucified (except, of course, for Jesus), was that a Resurrection Day was coming. He would conquer death and the cross and that everyone from then on that believed in him would never have to be a prisoner of the grave. Even at that blackest hour, glory was coming.
I know that in my suffering, I cannot forget the glory of the resurrection. Scripture tells us that not only did Jesus raise from the dead, but that he is coming back again. And when he returns, there will be another resurrection day. Wow! I never knew that until my stay at the hospital. The dead in Christ shall rise. My son, Julian, shall rise first and then we will be caught up with them.
"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
I remember reading these verses and immediately being filled back up by the Spirit of God. There is hope! All is not lost! So I wait for this day as I live my life as gratefully as I can. Waiting for the return of Christ. Looking to the clouds. Knowing that hope lies ahead, I stay safe and sound in it's prison, never wanting to be freed.
No comments:
Post a Comment