♥ Honor Noël Serafino ♥

How can this have happened again? I feel betrayed. I was trusting God. I prayed for this baby! And yet, now we have another tag to buy for my husband's necklace. 23 April 2012. Our second baby's born to Heaven date.

I suppose I should find comfort that Miracle now has a little brother in Heaven with her (strange that just as we feel in our hearts that Miracle would have been a little girl, our hearts are telling us that this one would have been a boy...). I suppose I should be grateful that we now have been pregnant, not once, but twice... proving I am definitely not infertile. I suppose I should thank the Lord for the amazing man who lends me his shoulder to cry on and holds me through my pain. but I can't do any of these things.

It's so unreal. 17 April 2012, we had the first of 4 positive pregnancy tests. I had every early pregnancy symptom in the book... every symptom I had had with Miracle. And this time... there was no cramping... slight pokes, but that just felt like ligament stretching... my heart was sure... this baby would stick. Come 21 December 2012 (Okay, I was really hoping for the 25th, a little Christmas bundle...) I was certain we'd be holding our little boy in our arms.

I went into get my blood work done on the 23rd. About an hour later the cramps hit, and I started to bleed. It was getting heavy by the time that I got a call from the doctor... I was 2.6 HgC... not pregnant. It took a bit to convince the nurse that I had been pregnant... She said that it seemed impossible for my quants to drop that fast (most pregnancy tests are sensitive at 25mL of HgC and it had only been 3 days since my last positive...). I explained that with Miracle, my quants went from 2400mL at a (supposedly) normal check up on 10 February 2012 to a mere 100mL by the time I was in the ER miscarrying on 14 February 2012. Within a few hours of the call, I passed the exact same tissue I'd passed at the ER when we lost Miracle.

They decided it was a "chemical pregnancy". Which means as far as they're concerned... it's just a late period. Like I wasn't investing in this baby since we found out about him. As though he never was, even though the baby "starts", and just stops its development before implantation. What makes it worse for me is that I was holding off on being excited. I wasn't as connected to Honor as I was to Miracle. That makes me feel like a bad person... even though I know I loved my little Orange Seed baby more than anything. And I'm fighting my rationality so that I can grieve the loss of this precious baby.

It seems so unfair. In my head, I hear the lie of the enemy, the words of Job's wife, mocking me... "Come on Lydia... He is stealing your dreams... don't be a fool... you have nothing left... curse God, and die!"

But resonating in my heart, born up on the butterfly-Angel wings of my two precious babies is the response from Job, an arrow strait to the heart of the enemy: "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD."

Honor Noël, my precious child. I love you, and my heart is full of joy that you were born into the arms of your Heavenly Father. I know that you are safe in the arms of Jesus. Give your sister hugs and kisses from me. Be good to your Nana and Great-Grandpa, and tell them that I love them... Tell them that we'll be there soon... so save a place for Daddy and I. I give you ALL the love in my Heart --Mommy 

For my Miracle Celeste... 

'Cause you'll be in my heart. 
Yes, you'll be in my heart. 
From this day on, now, and forever more.

You'll be in my heart.
No matter what they say.
You'll be here in my heart, always.

...My little butterfly who was set free. ♥

Woman of Courage: Ruth; Chapter 1, Verses 1-5

Ruth 1:1-5 - ESV

Verse 1: ...and a man of Bethleham in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
Verse 2: ...They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

Sojourn as listed below, means a brief travel, so what on earth was so attractive to them that they would 'remain there'? The scriptures do not say, but one can assume that there was a draw to the earthly aspects that this family found in this pagan country.

Main Entry: sojourn  [n. soh-jurn; v. soh-jurn, soh-jurn]

Part of Speech: noun
Definintion: brief travel; visit
Synonyms: layoveer, residence, rest, stay, stop, stopover, tarriance, vacation

Verse 3: But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons...

Verse 4: These took Moabite wifes... they lived there about ten years...

Verse 5: And both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and husband.

How horrific! A couple weeks ago, my husband was at a music recital for his siblings, and I was supposed to meet him there. We'd been having starter problems with our jeep, and after getting off work about half an hour after the Recital started, I found that the car wouldn't start no matter what I did. Eventually, a kind stranger helped by climbing under the car and banging on our old starter, but in the moment, I was panicked! After not being able to reach my husband, it hit me that I was alone in this crisis! I had to find out how to solve the problem on my own. 

I wonder if that is how Naomi felt. She and her husband had decided to go on a trip until the famine in their home country was over. Together, they could do anything! So, she agrees. They reach Moab and life is good. So her husband decides that their family should stay put. What a hard pill to swallow. I imagine she thought something along the lines of 'Okay, life without my family, my mom, my friends? Well... we're together, so we can get through anything!'

And then her world shatters. Her husband is gone. Not only is she in a foreign country alone, but she's in a foreign country alone with her two boys. The scripture doesn't say how old they were only that they married and lived there 10 years, so I'm imagining that they're little boys... say 11 and 9. Old enough that within that time frame they could marry, and yet young enough for it to be a daunting task for a widow to carry on alone. 

My link to BibleStudyTools.com finds in the definition of a widow: Weeping, mourning, and desolation describe her personal experience after the loss of her spouse. Poverty, and indebtedness were all too often descriptive of her financial situation, when the main source of her economic support, her husband, had perished. Indeed, she was frequently placed alongside the orphan and the landless immigrant as a representative of the poorest of the poor.

So here is Naomi, a widowed immigrant caring for two half-orphaned sons. Very much so the "poorest of the poorest of the poor". And then her sons grow up. They find wives. No doubt these women came with dowries, so perhaps the sons had enough to truly care for their mother for the first time in their lives. Until they too, like their father die.

I can imagine the budding hope in Naomi's heart, and I can here the thud of her heart dropping when not one, but both, of her sons die. All she has left of the family she loves are two girls from the country that brought the death of all three of her men.