Jesus Carries Me

Dear Angie,

A friend recently loaned my your book, I Will Carry You. About 2 years ago, my husband, Andy, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Then a couple months later, the diagnosis of Parkinson's was added to the Alzheimer's. Needless to say, this was very difficult to deal with. Andy has been a pastor for many years, a Senior Pastor as well as Associate Pastor. God has blessed us with a loving, wonderful relationship with many good friends. Since Andy's diagnosis, our church has rallied around us, offered many prayers in our behalf, as well as helped us financially with a huge love offering.

When my friend loaned me your book, I think her purpose was to encourage me in my walk with the Lord in the trial we are facing right now. Your testimony of the Lord's grace, comfort, and presence during your pregnancy with Audrey and subsequent loss really blessed me and I cried many tears as I read your story. What my friend didn't know is that almost 40 years ago, Andy and I also had a child that died. Our situation was different than yours in that, we didn't know ahead of time that our child would not live. I felt movement from our baby even the day before I went into labor. Ultrasounds were not done that long ago, so there was no reason to suspect anything might be wrong. But even if there had been an ultrasound, I don't know that things would have turned out differently. I went into labor at 43 weeks. Yes, that's right, I was 3 weeks overdue. When we were in labor, the nurse tried to find the baby's heart beat, but was unable to detect it. I was hooked up to ekg and monitoring machines, but still no heartbeat. I was in labor for 24 hours and was told I would deliver a still born baby. The doctor wanted to give me an anesthetic so that I would be unconscious when the baby was born. He said it would be better if I didn't see the baby because it would be easier to bear if I never got attached. If I knew then what I know now, I would have insisted that I be allowed to see the baby. But I was young and inexperienced, and the whole thing caught us so off guard. The doctor seemed to think the baby may be starting to decompose and wouldn't be good to look at. However, after the delivery, he told us that the baby was perfect, with blond hair and blue eyes. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 5 ounces! The hospital took care of the burial but Andy and I never got to see our precious son or hold him. I still cry when I think about this. Things are different today. I think doctors, nurses and health care officials are much more sensitive to the need for connection to the life the mother has been carrying and preparing for.

There were a number of evidences of God's fingerprints involved over my reading of your book and my personal circumstance. Before reading your book, I had just finished Jesus Wept by Bruce Marchiano. He uses the story of Jesus with Mary, Martha and Lazarus to show how Jesus sympathizes and shares our sorrow. So your using the same example was another affirmation of the truth. 

I had never heard of you, but when I googled you to find out more about you, I discovered you were the wife of Todd Smith, lead singer in Selah. This was another little evidence of God orchestrating details because I had recently heard some of Selah's songs and even downloaded two of them. And then I saw you were also involved with the Women of Faith, so you have the potential for many opportunities to minister to hurting women.

I love the title you chose for your book because it's a beautiful picture of how God carries us, protects us, nurtures us, loves us lavishly even while we are so needy, inadequate and terribly flawed.

Thank you for your transparency and vulnerability in telling your story. It had to be very difficult, but I've found that even though life is hard, it's therapeutic to talk/blog/share about it and wrestle with the grace of God through it all. He is writing our story, and his desire in everything that he allows to touch us is that we become more like Jesus. Hard times also remind us that this is not our home, this is only a temporary stepping stone to our eternal home. Some day we will see our babies again and spend eternity with them and our dear Savior.

I pray that you would continue to grow in your walk with the Lord. God bless you.

 

A Sister in Christ...