God is good...

He is good when he chooses to give unexpected blessings, and he is good when he chooses to take them away.

Matt and I have had the opportunity to live this pretty vividly with Reuben (see the second half of this post) and have been reminded of that again over the last few weeks.

On June 19th, the day after Rinnah's 2nd birthday, and coincidentally the day after she started sleeping in her "big" bed and didn't need her crib anymore, we learned that we were very unexpectedly expecting our sixth child. This took us completely by surprise (we have both hoped that I would be pregnant again at some point, but just weren't expecting it at this point), and I remember trembling for about two hours that morning after finding out. I took that little home pregnancy test out of the garbage can twice to look at it, and sure enough, that second pink line was really truly there! It made sense of all sorts of quirky things from the week or two before. For example, I'm not the kind of person to cry in front of our pastor two days in a row. That's just not like me! And I was tired. And lightheaded. Etc. etc.

After two hours of "I can't believe we're having a baby!" we started to get excited. We decided that instead of taking Rinnah's crib down completely that we would just move it to the little space at the top of the stairs that Owen had just vacated with his move down to the former guest room that he will share with K. The big kids were really excited when they heard the news, and we decided to put a pink sheet on the bed since Owen, who's big into patterns, figured it *had* to be a girl since we've had boy (Owen), girl (Leah), boy (Reuben), girl (Rinnah), boy (K) and now needed a girl!

So many questions - God, this really seems like a ca-razy time to have a baby! We won't even all fit in our van come February 2014 when this baby makes [her]self known!

[Interlude: I noticed at the beginning of the summer that I was stepping back and marveling/staggering at the sheer scope of what God has been asking us to trust him with over this roughly 12 month period. I realized that there was a part of me that felt like once we got through "this" that it would just be smooth sailing from there on out. And it hit me. This year is not all there is. This life of depending fully on a God who is way bigger than we are is simply just life as someone who is living as a follower of this Master. If his business in this world is to show everyone how wonderful he is, he's not going to do that (most likely) by giving us cushy lives where we can just coast along. Where's the greatness in a God who can help you through that? No. His best way to show how awesome he is is by leading us into situations that are beyond human ability to navigate with contentment. There is nothing like realizing you're pregnant to push your frame of reference beyond the 12-month period that you'd been living in!]

So, two lovely weeks of anticipation. Two weeks of realizing that this was an even crazier life than we had expected, and that we were going to get to see God provide for us in even more ways than we'd been thinking (a bigger vehicle for one! as well as the sleep implications of a newborn, and my decreased ability to simply carry K around myself as he puts on weight but is not yet strong enough to do much for himself physically).

And then on July 2nd I started bleeding. I have never miscarried, nor have I ever had any bleeding for any other reason during a pregnancy, so have no reference point for how much bleeding is okay, how much means a miscarriage...I was also at 6.5 weeks, and my quick research on miscarriage revealed that 6 weeks is kind of a turning point for what to expect in a miscarriage - it could go either one way (less) or another (more). But I couldn't believe anything other than that we were losing this tiny person we had so come to love already. Leah and I cried together that night. She was so sad that the baby would not know [her] mother and even more concerned that the baby would not know how much we had loved [her.] I comforted her, telling her that the baby knew - even without being able to see, hear, or feel us. We had a six-year-old level conversation about hormones and how when she would snuggle the baby every night, and bring me water to drink to help that baby that those things made my heart happy, and when my heart is happy, it makes happy chemicals that share with the baby. This little one knew [she] was loved.

The next day we went out of town for a family reunion. I spent the days of the reunion either spotting a tiny bit, or not at all, and on Friday started wondering in a tiny little way if maybe, just maybe, we had not lost this little one. Though I tried hard not to dwell too much on that, but simply to turn to God. "You know, and you are good. Period."

By Monday (the 9th) I was really confused, and emailed our midwife, who said it could go either way and that we should look into it further. So I visited my family doctor who recommended we do blood work Tuesday and Thursday (today) to see where my pregnancy hormone levels were. I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning having NO IDEA what to expect. But there was definitely hope - maybe there really is still our tiny one with a little heart beating in there!

Yesterday afternoon my doctor called saying that my levels were low enough (I was at 6, and under 5 is considered not pregnant) that I didn't need to bother coming in Thursday. Our baby is gone.

God gave us a beautiful, unexpected gift. He is SO GOOD!

God chose to take this precious gift away from us. We are sad. But we are not devastated, because He Is Good. And we know that, and it is enough.