One Race

I’ve seen a lot of posts regarding the Lovings lately, as June 12 commemorates SCOTUS holding bans on interracial marriage are unconstitutional, due to the Lovings taking a stand for justness and their marriage.

The Lovings decision logically follows the fact that there’s one race: the human race, not based on a social construct, but a biblical one—that we, no matter our skin tone, are made from one man, in the image of God. Acts 17:26. My Hispanic husband and Caucasian self don’t make an interracial couple, we’re intraracial. We are both made in the image of the one true God, and we are both born again, by God’s grace and our faith in Him. Our marriage works because we committed before our God, our family, and our friends to love each other for the rest of our lives. This love, of seeking the best in each other and not keeping records of wrongs, is not achieved passively, but is sometimes an uphill journey, made far more bearable by focusing on our similarities rather than our differences.

When people dwell on their differences, they begin to feel less united, less understood, and less compatible. Our duty as a people with different skin tones, is to find what makes us similar, starting with Who created us and the purpose for which we are created and called, charting courses from that starting point to overcome experiential prejudice and bias to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31), and ending in our heavenly home, hopefully with a “well done, my good and faithful servant.” If we can agree on where we start, the ultimate goal of our lives on this earth, and our eternal destination, we can overcome anything, as couples and as a church in culture.

Redeeming Suffering

Avery was miscarried around August 1, 2016, Lucas on April 21, 2017, and Charlie on September 28, 2018. When Lucas died, people didn’t know about Avery. Women came up to me and told me stories of their own miscarriages, and they often seemed to go something like, “I had a miscarriage, too, but a couple of months later, I got pregnant with baby Jane, and Jane is so wonderful, I couldn’t imagine life without her.” Jane redeemed those miscarriages; Jane made those losses feel worth the pain. But, that’s not my story.

My miscarriages have not been redeemed on this side of heaven.

For me, my only hope of my miscarriages being redeemed this side of heaven is sharing them with you. Hoping they inspire you to appreciate life at its earliest stages; encourage you to trust God’s goodness when you can’t see (or feel) it; and, motivate you to live in light of eternity, considering who you may be united with in heaven.

If, by God’s grace, the deaths of my Avery, Lucas, and Charlie bring God glory, that will redeem the loss of their precious lives; not a next baby or a rainbow baby, but God’s glory, redeeming the time, because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).

God’s Grace in Our Suffering

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

I think the hardest part of experiencing the death of a loved one is that everyone else’s world doesn’t stop. When I lost a friend a couple of years ago, I remember feeling shocked and disappointed that everyone who lived around him wasn’t mourning with me. He was a great man, and a great witness for Christ. This world lost so much when it lost him. I feel similarly now. Not that my baby had done great things for the Lord, but that his potential was endless.

My husband and I went out to pick up lunch and I stayed in the car. We were at a shopping center and I watched people buzz around me, going into shops and restaurants, their lives unchanged by the loss we’re experiencing. It makes sense. I’m sure they’ve experienced losses I couldn’t sympathize or empathize with as well. It’s still overwhelming though, that something so world-changing for me doesn’t even begin to affect the people in the car next to me.

To say we are devastated is an understatement. But, the Lord’s ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. I cannot comprehend His works right now, but I know that they are good.

The Lord is not surprised by our loss. Not a sparrow falls without the Father’s knowledge. I wish knowing that was a salve to my wounds, but right now it’s merely a reminder of His power and sovereignty. Right now, we focus on reminding ourselves of who God is, and how He has shown us grace, even through our suffering.

The timing of my water breaking was a blessing. I was with my husband, we were together, able to go to the hospital together, hand-in-hand. I can’t imagine having to begin this process from work or by myself.

We feel fortunate to have had our baby with us long enough to see him wiggle all over the sonogram for us, but not so long that we would’ve had an even more difficult miscarriage in our second trimester. Things could’ve been much worse, particularly if this occurred during the babymoon we were planning to take. In fact, it’s a blessing we hadn’t yet finalized those babymoon plans.

It was so gracious of the Lord to allow our baby to arrive in this world whole. Our perinatologist told us to expect to see white “tissue” mixed in blood and that would be the baby. But, we had seen his head and his hands and his legs and his feet via sonogram, and I think it would’ve been so much harder had we not delivered our little guy intact. Not only that, but we had the blessing of having the doctor tell us that our baby boy was beautiful. I will always treasure those words.

The timing of our delivering our little guy was also a blessing. It just so happened that when we left the hospital it was too late for us to go to our pharmacy, that we just so happened to think of a pharmacy close by, that just so happened to have a single stall bathroom at the front of the store, and that just so happened to be less than a mile from the hospital for an easy jaunt back after then bleeding began. None of these circumstances just so happened, and we are so thankful we didn’t get all the way home (25 minutes away from the hospital) and have the bleeding start.

It was also such a blessing that the hubs was back at the hospital when I fainted, so that I didn’t hit the floor, and before I went down to surgery so that we could exchange I love yous.

Before this situation developed, I was incredibly disappointed with the perinatology practice I was referred to. They rotate you through the doctors so that you’re comfortable with all of them for labor, and I hadn’t hit it off with any of the doctors at the practice, which works closely with the high risk floor of the hospital I went to. That said, there’s one doctor that I didn’t see at the practice that happened to be working at the hospital that night. She saw me at each stage of our miscarriage’s progression. She provided condolences for the loss of our son, she said my baby is beautiful. She seemed informed and intelligent, but also compassionate, and she made me feel comforted and validated, which was not something the other doctors at the practice provided. She was such a blessing to me.

There are so many ways in which we could see God’s grace in our suffering. I suppose the greatest evidence of that grace is, as one of my friends put it, our “son is where we all long to be.” He has achieved his eternal glory, and made my longing for heaven that much stronger. May we all live lives worthy of saying, as Paul did, “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”

Trusting God after a Miscarriage

Growing up in church, I remember seeing the old hymn that goes “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” And, I’ve always taken comfort in that verse, and the fact that the Holy Spirit enables both our trust and obedience as believers.

But, my recent miscarriage has left me confused, to say the least. I know what I need to do, but I’ve forgotten how to do it. Where trust came quickly and easily for me before I lost my precious baby, my instincts trigger defense mechanisms and weariness of the Lord’s goodness now. It is also difficult to trust the Lord, while acknowledging His sovereignty and goodness.

I keep going back to the fact that “children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Psalm 127:3. And, while I am trying to remember that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, it is more difficult for me to maintain the refrain “blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21. I suppose admitting that is the first step to overcoming the difficulty.

We are called to be steadfast in our faith, even under trials, and my husband and I may as well learn how to trust the Lord now.

I’ve been incredibly blessed in my life to have been spared significant loss. I had one grandfather to pass away just before I was born, but the family that I have known remains with me today. That is, until I lost my baby. While I had felt loss before, this was a new kind of loss, the kind with a reunion, but one that seems forever away. One that hurts deeper than any loss I’ve experienced before; one that has caused my trust in God’s goodness to waiver.

However, as I’ve begun the ascent to trusting Him again, I’ve realized that trusting Him with the lives of my loved ones is not a choice, it’s a necessity. My brother is a cop. His life is on the line every day, especially in today’s climate of anarchy. My mother suffers her own autoimmune diseases and health issues, despite which she consistently shows amazing grace and faith. My grandparents and my father are only getting older, too. But, even beyond that, with the freak –accidents that happen on a regular basis, with car wrecks, and shootings, with SIDS and terrorists, we do not know what tomorrow might bring. Proverbs 27:1. Therefore, we must trust in Him.

Even if the Lord blesses us with additional babies, and we have smooth pregnancies and healthy deliveries, every day of the lives of our children will be an exercise of trusting in the Lord. This Christian life is not one in which we master an art and have arrived at, say, nirvana. Rather, it’s an active life of pursuing God and the things He loves, and in trusting in His goodness. It may not always be easy, but He is always worthy.

Johnny

This week we celebrated World Down Syndrome Day, and all of the beautiful lives that day represents.

As March 21^st came and went, I thought about my grandmother’s brother, Johnny. Johnny was a beautiful man who lived with Down Syndrome. I remember loving Johnny as a child. He was always so joyful and kind. He loved so well – he loved my grandmother and us grandkids, he loved pennies, he loved hamburgers so loaded with condiments he could hardly fit the burgers in his mouth, and he adored Elvis Presley. He could do a pretty good imitation of the King of Rock and Roll, too.

I remember cuddling into Johnny’s lap as a kid and feeling the warmth of his adoration for my cousins and me. He was an absolute pleasure to be around. I only remember Johnny being sad or difficult when he had to leave the presence of his loved ones. Johnny lived a long life and is in heaven now, and I know he is anxiously awaiting a reunion with his loved ones.

I enjoyed reflecting on Johnny and those who share his disability earlier this week, but it also made me sad.

Reminiscing about Johnny pushes me to confront the worst in myself, my pride, my sin. As I reflected, I remembered growing out of Johnny. He was fun to be around when I was young, but as I grew older, I also grew embarrassed in Johnny’s presence. Johnny had Down Syndrome – Johnny looked funny, Johnny walked funny, and Johnny talked funny, and being around Johnny in public was an assault on my pride.

I thought of the women who, flooded with embarrassment themselves, and perhaps a feeling that they could not provide for a child with Down Syndrome, have aborted their babies. I became frustrated with the weight of sin.

I was reminded, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”

It is devastatingly sad for me to think about how much laughter and joy has been lost to the abortion of unborn babies with Down Syndrome, and that thought makes me miss Johnny more than I’ve missed anyone in a long time.

I wish he were here so I could take him in public and show the world unadulterated happiness and joy, the kind I’ve only seen in people like Johnny, beautiful people with Down Syndrome.

Thursday, March 24^th, Indiana became only the second state in the nation to ban abortion because of Down Syndrome, joining only North Dakota. The worst kind of discrimination is the kind that ends in death, even death in the womb.

Late Again

The hubs and I are different in a lot of ways, but one of the most profound is in how we view time. I don’t like to be late. I was raised in a military home and was taught that you’re not on time unless you’re five minutes early. The hubs is Latin American. If you know anything about these two cultures, the military culture and the Latin American culture, you know they deal with time VERY differently.

So, needless to say, time is one of the biggest things we argue about. He is late home from work and I have dinner on the table, or has told me multiple times that he is leaving work, only for me to find out that he ended up in a conversation with his co-workers that held him up, you name it, if it’s about time and tardiness, we’ve argued about it.

Side note and confession: the get-home-time-problem is probably exacerbated by the fact that I am home alone all day and cannot wait until the hubs gets home so that I can share in life, communicate, laugh, and cuddle. We are borderline co-dependent in that way.

At any rate, just last night, after Life Group with other married couples from our church, we were talking about last Friday, and how I could be more patient with the hubs in his lateness and how he could be, well, more on time. It was a wonderful conversation where I felt that we really committed to meet in the middle, to compromise.

And, less than 24 hours later, Satan brings our differences to the forefront yet again.

He texted me in the afternoon that he would leave at 6:30. That’s a relatively normal time. I wasn’t prepared for normal though, because he’d told me he would be late coming home this week. So, I hopped in the shower and quickly started dinner. It was about 6:55 pm when I put the chicken in the oven. It only takes 30 minutes to cook.5 minutes later, I got a text message saying his boss diverted him for 30 minutes and he was running late. Then, I got another text at 7:30 pm. He had been diverted by another co-worker and then a call from his brother and he was just leaving. He would be home an hour later than anticipated by his text just a few hours earlier, and dinner would be cold.

Didn’t we just talk about this? Didn’t I just tell him how it makes me feel when he reschedules on me multiple times? I texted him that he made me sad and went into our room to cry. I went into our room to mourn the days that I felt like I mattered, like I was important, and like I was at the top of his priority list.

Then, I thought about grace.

Boy do I hate being gracious. How many times had the Lord been gracious to me, giving me what I hadn’t deserved? How many times have I been commanded to forgive my neighbor? Seventy times seven? For the same thing? Over and over again? Ugh! While I had no desire to forgive his untimeliness yet again, I realized 1. I do not help our situation by sulking, 2. I can only hope for as much grace as I’m willing to give, so I need to learn to give it in abundance (I need it in abundance!), and 3. I am commanded, not encouraged, to forgive. Commanded. Seventy times seven times.

Fine. Today, it is my turn to forgive and forget, to show a little grace to the one who matters most in my life. Today, I’m not going to go for a run right when he gets home — I’m not going to pout or sulk. Today, I will love the hubs like Jesus does. Hopefully, I can learn to make grace my go-to reaction, rather than one I have to work so hard to arrive at, but until I do, thankfully, the Word is hidden in my heart to remind me of that which God commands of us for our good.