Finding Out.

So I bet you can all guess what happened that day when I went to the hospital for an emergency ultrasound.

Yes, our baby girl was asleep.....

She had gone to sleep that morning in my womb and woke up in the arms of Jesus.

We learned that she had passed away, probably that Friday, judging by how my amniotic fluid had significantly decreased.

My husband was at work when I went to the doctor that day, and I had the kids with me at the doctor's office.

On the way over to the hospital, for some reason, my van made a beeline, seemingly of its own volition, to my church. I jerkily parked, stumbled out of the van (leaving my kids in there) and staggered into the office, barely coherent. I collapsed in a chair at the front desk and basically went into hysterics. Pastor and his wife heard me and, after trying to tell them that I was expected at the hospital, they totally took over.

Pastor's wife said she'd take the kids, someone called my husband, and my friend Kim took me to the hospital so I wouldn't have to drive.

Shortly after I got there Dave got there too.

The ultrasound was done and Janie's death confirmed.

We were given the option of inducing labor right then. But my favorite nurse was there and she said I could have the baby on Thursday when she was on shift.

I chose to have Janie on Thursday, May 13th.

I don't want to belabor the story further. It was a sad, seemingly hopeless time for me, a time in which I truly almost had a crisis of faith. I was so freaked out, leading up to May 13th. The time was surreal in its total nightmarishness and its total misconstruction.

Somebody told me that day that in God's plan, there is no such thing as premature death. All of Janie's days were written for her before she was even thought of, and she lived the appointed number of days that God alloted for her.

I know now that God didn't take her away from me because He didn't like me. I know that nothing I did or didn't do caused her death. I know that she wasn't in any pain, that she went from a supremely safe place to the safest place in creation.

My friend told me that she was absolutely certain she had heard from God and that God had told her He was going to heal Janie. She was totally devastated and embarrassed when she learned that Janie had died. But I held no offense toward her, because my spirit never witnessed to what she said. However much I wanted to hold on to Janie, I knew in my heart that she had died and flown to Heaven.

He did heal her. She lives now, totally perfect and totally at peace. She sees the face of the Ultimate Father, and gets to hold the nail scarred hands of her Best Friend and walk in the fields of Heaven with Him by her side. What more could a mother want for her baby? What better Father can a mother ask for for her baby?

It was a very hard Mother's Day that year, as Janie was born right before Mother's Day.......but I'm so much fuller and richer since having her. I thank God for every day I had with her, short as they were. I still miss her and sometimes wonder what she looks like and how it would feel to be able to kiss her tiny feet and smell her hair again. But God has done such a work in my heart and spirit since she was born.........

Janie Rose Gilchrist's birth was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

It was my awakening to Who the Lord really is.

It was the start of my becoming.