“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
–Wiliiam Shakespeare
Today's post is in honor the unborn child we loved and lost in a miscarriage a year ago from today's date.
Dear Abby,
My dear beautiful daughter, your Heavenly Father whispered your name to me before your father and I could ever whisper it in your little ear…. Abigail is your name. Abigail is the word we exchanged for the intense sorrow and grief our broken hearts experienced a year ago… the day you left my womb and took a piece of our hearts with you. While I didn’t know it at the time, Abigail, you see, means “the Father’s joy,” and it is truly the Father’s joy that you added to our lives.
Through you, Abigail, I was able to experience the Father’s joy so much more fully than I ever would have without this experience of intense grief and sorrow. Perhaps, Little One, the Father used your death as much as your life to teach me… Although you never experienced the beauty of the world when you would open your eyes for the first time, you opened the eyes of my heart to so much… to the fullness of love, hope, and comfort afforded me in depths I would never otherwise have known except through the unknown depths of pain, suffering, and sorrow I plummeted into.
It was you Little One, my Abigail, that the Father used to clearly illustrate to me the principle of exchanging death for life…
... of exchanging the ashes of my brokenness for the hope of what beautiful things God might create with such unconventional elements…
... of exchanging my tears of grief and mourning over your death with the ointment of joy over the Life still within me- the Life you and I share- and the joy that, despite these mere moments we are apart, we will soon be together in the present reality of eternity…
...of exchanging my spirit so heavy with despair with the light and beautiful garment of praise for a Sovereign and trustworthy God - praise which, when wrapped around my heavy, hurting, disappointed, and grief-laden heart, slowly began to lift me in the reality and peace that you are wrapped in our Father’s arms, just as you always were... and as I always am.
Through your brief life and even in your death, God used you to birth new things in me, Abby. I have been inspired to live a little more… laugh a little more… give more of myself to the things that really matter and let go of the things that don’t. You taught me to more fully appreciate the miracle of life all around me... to treasure the gifts of each day, each moment, to be spent with the precious lives of those around me.
It was you, Abby, who God used as a light to reveal treasures to me that I didn’t even know I had or was even looking for… treasures that I would only discover in the darkness of an abandoned womb... an empty tomb in my body which will forever echo in my heart with the good news of an empty tomb of long ago... of one our Savior once abandoned. That, my dear one, is an amazing legacy to have left in my heart for such a short life you lived... for you have taught me all that I ever hoped to teach you. You lived your life fully, my Little One, and I am forever grateful.
Little One, my Abigail, you are my treasure forever laid up in my heart and in heaven. I love you.
For Further Reading: Isaiah 61:1-3
