My Story Continues....

     I have been struggling to continue posting and struggling to share more of my journey. Between finding time, finding the right words, and wondering if it was worth the effort, I gave blogging a rest for a while. Today, I was contacted by a reader. She is expecting her own Rainbow Baby and stated that God had used me yesterday as she read through my blog to help bring her peace. She requested that I continue writing.
     I cannot think of anything more motivating or any better purpose for this blog. I want my journey to encourage others and help strengthen hearts. Even just ONE heart is worth the effort it takes to write. So now, my story continues with the battle inside of me...
      When I look back on the rest of my pregnancy after loss, I see one dominant struggle: the battle between faith and fear. Through this constant battle, I learned to trust in the Lord to a whole new extreme. Now when I reflect on my journey, I see my character being stretched, I see God's faithfulness, I see just how much I loved my baby even though I was yet to hold her or meet her.
 
     I am a dreamer. I dream a lot even when I am not pregnant, but when I am pregnant, my dreams are more extreme, more meaningful, more real. While I was pregnant with our Johnny, I dreamed that he was born premature, I dreamed he was a boy (remember we always wait to find out our babies' gender at their birth.), I dreamed that there was something wrong with him and that he was considerably smaller than our first 2 children, I dreamed we named him John Israel and that I was insistent that he be called "Johnny". This dream became so real after we learned that he was dead at 36 weeks. Flashbacks of my dream came to me all at once and I knew that I needed to stop passing my dreams off as "just dreams" and pay more attention to them. I knew I needed to pray after such dreams. While I was pregnant with our new little one, the dreams came. In every dream about my baby, my baby was born premature. I paid attention to this and began asking my Midwife how early was too early to birth at home and what would we do in case of prematurity.

     At 28 weeks I wrote the following:

     "I am now 28 weeks along. Our baby is growing and moving more with each day. I feel so overwhelmed by such a mix of emotions lately. I am excited beyond words, just yesterday I cried tears of joy because I stopped and pondered the idea of having a baby to hold again. Beneath the excitement, there is this struggle between hope and fear. It is daily. I wish I could say that once I've made up my mind to fully trust in my God and to lay all fears aside that the struggle was somehow magically over and hope instantly wins. But, reality is that the struggle is continuous and I have to fight to keep hope not only alive but to keep the flame so kindled that it consumes my fears."

     Dreams continued. I dreamed that our baby was a girl and we named her Eisley. It was a name that wasn't even on our list but it stuck with me. I looked it up and discovered that it means "Cheerful". Eisley Hope became my new favorite girl name option and I didn't hesitate to begin trying to convince my husband. I wanted my baby's middle name to represent something special, Kris and I agreed that Hope was perfect if our baby was a girl and if it were a boy, we would use Freedom as his middle name. Hope and Freedom seemed to represent what our little one was bringing to us, what God was teaching us through our baby's existence. Hope that survives tribulations and Freedom from the fear that both my husband and I battled and would battle through the rest of my pregnancy and our baby's birth journey as well.