A letter to our sweet John Paul

Dearest John Paul,

After four and a half years of praying and waiting for you, we found out on a Sunday we were expecting you and by Friday of the same week we found out we were going to lose you. During that week I loved you as much as any mommy could love her sweet child. I talked to you, prayed with you, and spent so much time with you. Your daddy was very quiet most of the time but I knew his thoughts were deep in prayer for you and me. Your grandma spent so much time with me to help me rest and take it easy so that my body would help you to grow. Your uncle talked to you and begged you to hold on. One of your aunts hugged your mommy tighter than she ever had. Your other aunt came to visit mommy after you left us and that was so good for my healing. Several of your ‘aunties’ prayed so much with us that you would hold on to us as tightly as you could. A couple of them visited and others sent me messages saying they were praying for you.We had a priest who we are very close to pray over you. There was so much love and prayer over you sweet one. So many of our family and friends were praying for you sweetheart. They've been praying for you for such a long time.

 

Wednesday of that next week was the day you were going to leave us. Your daddy came home as soon as I called him. We didn’t talk much that day, but we sure did pray a lot. One of your mommy’s friends brought us some flowers while another one kept in constant contact with me and your daddy. I was in a lot of pain that day, but that pain didn’t compare to the pain that was in my heart and your daddy’s heart. The only saving grace was that we knew Our Lord was going to welcome you into Heaven with open arms.  Your daddy spent most of the day outside making a little bed for you to rest in peace in. It was the most beautiful thing someone had ever made. He sure does love you.

When I held you in my hand, my heart ached so much that I would never get to see you grow up to be a little boy that tugged on my sleeve when you needed me to hold you and would wipe your tears with that same sleeve. God put it on my heart that you were a boy. It was only fitting that we named you John Paul. You see, you were conceived within two days of me asking for Pope John Paul II’s intercession. Your great grandpa asked me to kneel under a picture of Pope John Paul II and ask him to pray for me and your daddy so that we would become pregnant. And it happened. So, see? We had to name you John Paul in gratitude for our beloved Pope’s intercession. Your daddy baptized you and prayed over you. Some close friends of ours who lost a baby also talked to us about baptizing you and it gave me such peace knowing I did everything I could to get you to Heaven. Daddy placed you in the little bed lined with lace and covered it with the top that had your initials engraved in.

We took you to our priest and he prayed over you. He had us pray over you and he held a beautiful small prayer service for just us. We then laid you to rest in a garden across from the Church. We placed one of the flowers we received over you and after it had wilted we placed a resin stone that had Psalm 23 inscribed. This was the scripture that our priest read during our little service.

I hope you know how much we love you and will always love you. Please give your Uncle Brian a big hug from us.

This week is Infertility Awareness Week dear sweet one and while I’m thankful you are where you are, I can’t be a little sad you aren’t with me, but most of all, I’m thankful I had you for a small short of time. I’m thankful that we were able to finally conceive after a long, hard, road. I pray that our story helps other mommies cope with losing their little ones. I pray that some of the things we did to honor your short-lived life will help other mommies in their faith and healing as it did mine. We love you sweet John Paul, and may you be an intercession on our behalf for your future brothers and sisters.

Love with all my heart,

Mommy

I had a close friend of ours make these when I found out we were pregnant. This is how we were going to tell our mothers the great news. They now are in a keepsake box along with our flowers as a constant reminder. I think its hard for some people to grasp why we took this miscarriage as hard as we did and why we went to the extent we did to honor John Paul. Aside from the fact that we loved this child before we  knew him, we respect the dignity of life and that life began at conception. Society believes otherwise and wants you to believe that as well, but we have to stand our ground. These are our children. These are our tiny saints in Heaven praying for us. These are our children who will continue our faith.

It's okay to mourn the loss of a child through miscarriage. In fact, it's probably a lot more healthy for the healing process mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I've seen far too many women who never mourned the loss of their baby and had a hard time healing from it emotionally. Our process of healing is an ongoing one as it's still fairly new, but I couldn't have come this far without family, friends, prayer, and above all, grace from God.This week I offer up my prayers to those who have suffered through the struggle of infertility, subfertility, and the loss of a baby.

Pope John Paul II, pray for us.

Charity = Love

Preface: This is kind of just a bit of rambling of something that recently happened and I'm not good at evangelizing but I pray that anyone who reads this version of the cited scripture will be impacted as I was....

 A few weeks ago I went to confession and my penance was one I had been given a few times. My confessor is a sweet 82 year old priest who I just figured forgot that he's given me that as penance a time or two...or five. This confession was different though. This confession marked the year anniversary of a hard time in my marriage, my fertility, my husband's life, and my life.

Rewind to 2013: The morning of our friend Brian's funeral I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Quelle coïncidence! What a beautiful circle of life! We lay to rest one life and welcome another! Unfortunately days later we were saddened to find out it was a false positive and I'd rather not go into the reason for that, but needless to say it was a very dark time in our marriage. Aaron had a very hard time dealing with all of this and was in a lot of pain emotionally and physically (he had just had surgery the day after Brian's death). I went to confession with our priest and it turned into an ugly cry fest for about two hours, yelled at God, yelled at Brian, yelled about my husband, yelled about every thing possible and followed up with Father James praying over me and leading me to find comfort and solace in Our Blessed Mother. Thank God for Her!

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago: So as I'm wrapping up this confession, Father James sits in silence and prayer and finally speaks "It's really quite beautiful to see where you are now from where you were a year ago around this time." How did he remember this?! Why did he remember this?! I thought priests were supposed to just hit the Confession Reset Button and not remember those embarrassing confessions!!!! However, it was nice to hear that he had seen some sort of spiritual growth in me. So anyway, he then moved on to my penance... the penance that I had already done... several times. "Read First Corinthians chapter 13 five times." What?! Five Times?!?! I didn't even do anything that bad! I had no mortal sins! This was more so for graces! This chapter is engrained into my mind and my home! I have pictures frames with passages from this chapter! This chapter was read at my wedding!!! I know this chapter!!! Ugh. Five times. Okay. Fine. Five times. I smiled and nodded and said 'okay'. He said he felt there was something I needed to understand in that passage. Five times. Seriously?

The first night I started my penance I was too lazy to get my Bible out so I just pulled up my Bible app on my phone. I began to read and to my surprise I seriously did understand something I had never understood. You see, the King James Version, New International Version, and all the other versions have this version:

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

(you all know it)

The Catholic Public Domain Version that I was reading said this...

Charity is patient, is kind. Charity does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not inflated.
Charity is not ambitious, does not seek for itself, is not provoked to anger, devises no evil.
Charity does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Charity suffers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all.

Charity. This hit me like a ton of bricks. Well played God, well played. All this time I've sort of correlated 1 Corinthians 13 with my marriage because it's so often read at weddings. It made sense to. These have kind of been rules for a happy marriage. However, this time it didn't just hit me as a wife, it hit me as a Christian woman. So may times I've had discussions with my dear friend about being uncharitable with words, actions, thoughts and us working hard to not be uncharitable. This scripture made me realize that it's not enough to be uncharitable: I need to be charitable. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines charity as "benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity" and  generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering; also :  aid given to those in need". How often do I do this? How often do I feel the need to do this? I tell you, its not of much as it should be. 

So, my goal for now is to be more charitable as a Christian to humanity. Not just my husband.