I'd like to think that if we'd had a girl we would have named her Elianna. We could call her Eli, El, or even Anna. It means "God has answered" and it seemed fitting because the Lord had answered our desire to have another child.
We would have celebrated their first birthday in October, just shy of two years apart from Theodore.
Please know, this post is about a very tender topic. It is about miscarriage/loss. I desire to handle it with care but also, I will be straightforward in writing. If this is not beneficial for your heart or mind, I want to be candid and give you the choice of whether you continue or not. I understand.
It was near the end of lent when the miscarriage happened. In a season reminding us of our weakness, our frailty, of the dust from which we came, experiencing loss in the midst of it seemed to heap affliction upon affliction. By all other accounts it was a normal Sunday. We'd gone to church and grabbed take-out for lunch. I cannot tell you what happened beyond that except walking through loss and heartache; they take with them a future, both yours and theirs, meant to be intertwined but now experienced apart.
I do not know if it was a wise decision to allow my body to go through the miscarriage naturally. But I do know that whether by medication, surgery, or the body going through it, it's haunting and lonely and ends in emptiness—like a bold and beautiful wildflower that sprouted in the ground but withered before it could become all it contained.
Waiting was horrible. We knew it was coming just not when. Imagine being in the dark of night and knowing only more darkness was ahead. I don't have the right words to convey what those days held. A heavy, gray cloud hung over them and they were awful.
Our excitement was palpable as we arrived to our first doctor's appointment. We couldn't wait to see our little nugget! I'd worked at this same doctor's office and I had picked up bits of information during my time there. I could roughly understand what I was seeing on the ultrasound screen. When the sono tech delicately told us there was a gestational sac but no fetal pole it validated what my eyes and gut had already begun to question. Emptiness.
A week or two before the appointment I remember telling Brandon, "things just feel quiet".
During one of our drives a couple hours north into the mountains, I threw out ideas for names and we wondered what they would be like. Would we have a boy or a girl? Would they have brown, blue, green, hazel eyes? What sort of personality would they have? I loved imagining who they might be and holding the future with them in it. That's when I suggested the name Elianna.
I'd bought the onesie weeks or even a month or two before I was even pregnant. It had "BIG brother" on the front and when the time had come to tell Brandon, I would have Theo toddle out wearing it. And that's exactly what I did! Only, I was so excited I didn't even bother to snap the bottom before sending him out and waiting for Brandon to notice. Of course, it took mere seconds and he was thrilled!
I purposefully end at the beginning of life. Life is always worth proclaiming. Though, I do not know how restoration will play out in this story. But just as lent ends with the death of our Redeemer and is answered by His own conquering Life, I have to believe that He answers this, too, with life and redemption.
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