Mourning the Small Things

#tbt to the place I miss the most, to a time when I didn’t even consider the possibility of owning a mask or giving someone a wide berth when walking down Front Street. A time when you could smile at strangers and they could actually see your whole face and smile back.

Most days we wear our masks and get on with life as normal as best as we can, but yesterday, one of my kids broke down. He had had enough. He needed to mourn. Mourn the fact that Covid has changed our world and given us a new normal that means if someone has a sniffle, things are canceled. And he’s tired of things being canceled. We both are.

I told him I could relate. Yesterday I walked into a restaurant without a mask. This was completely unintentional. My scattered self has done this a couple times before (ALWAYS on accident), but this time was different.

I was confronted immediately by an employee demanding that I put on my mask. I was embarrassed and then I was angry. I wanted to shout at her, “this is NOT normal!”

Don’t worry, I didn’t. #enneagram9

I walked back out and got my mask and processed my reaction.  Usually I'm a happy little rule follower, but it hit me afresh that wearing a mask is NOT normal.   And while I understand why we wear them, I hadn’t really allowed myself to grieve the, yes small, but in many ways profound loss of freedom that cute fabric from Athleta represents. It is a daily, sometimes, hourly reminder every time we leave the house that something is not right in the world.  And when we don't take the time to mourn, to allow ourselves to feel sad, the grief turns into anger or bitterness and the bigger loss is that we miss out on the comfort of the Lord (Matthew 5:4).

 

I reminded my child (and myself), that we mourn but not without hope and not without comfort. And as believers we look at our suffering through a different lens than the world. Instead of asking, “God, why are you doing this to me?” We ask Him, “God, what are you doing?” Asking Him to open our eyes, hearts, and minds to the good we see Him bringing about in these bizarre times we are living in instead of just waiting for everything to go back to a normal that might not come.

God what are you doing? 

This question takes trusting Him that the path He has us on is right. He is not surprised that there is a worldwide pandemic.  He has not stopped being able to use what was meant for evil for good (Genesis 50:20). We trust Him with the big picture - that He has the end planned, and we can only see the piece of the path we need to see in this moment. And He is with us (Psalm 23:5).

We can trust Him because what looked like the biggest train wreck in the history of the world, the Cross, was the very thing He used to save us.

So we mourn our losses big and small. Process them through prayer and conversations with empathetic friends.  We have a God who leads us in paths of righteousness, comforts us through the valley of the shadow of death, and walks with us on every part of the journey.

If you’re struggling with this too, I highly recommend Psalm 23, Genesis 37-50, Romans 8 for meditation.

 

Our Boy

As most of you know, we found out that we lost our baby on October 9th at our mid-point ultrasound.  I was almost 18 weeks along.

As we were in the hospital doing this for the second time, Taylor and I reminisced back to our first loss in 2009. It was so different than this time.  We had no idea anything was wrong with Tristan only that at the ultrasound where we thought we were finding out she was a girl, we were finding out she had gone to be with Jesus.  It was a total shock, a gut check.  Our grief was acute.  I wrestled night after night with what I could've have done to cause this until we received her autopsy results.  Relief filled me when the results came back that a chromosomal issue was the culprit not me, but now our grief was not only over our lost child, but of the possibility of no children at all.  The Lord rocked me to my core during this time, carving out deep places of trust and dependence on Him where there had been independence and self-focus.  Taylor wrote a poem describing the Lord's work in our lives through our loss:

As water seeps into the fissures in the rock
and hardens into ice when freezing weather comes,
splitting stone and leaving space behind,
so has the grace of God this year filled
the shallow places of our souls,
hardening and cracking,
then leaving deeper pools behind
to hold His grace when He is done.

The Lord had replaced levity with gravitas.  Losing our daughter to Heaven, made us feel more solid on earth.  He gave us purpose in a time we teetered on the edge of despair.  And His mercy was new for us each morning. If that scripture wasn't true, I wouldn't have been able to get out of bed each day. But He was with me.


This time we were able to grieve over time knowing at 11 weeks our baby was sick and unlikely to make it to term. We prayed for a miracle, and marveled over the two miracles the Lord had already given us.

Photo by Strauss House Photography

Photo by Hunter Lawrence

The Lord prepared us for the loss through the prayers of three year old Seth who at first fervently prayed for his sibling's healing, and then refused to two days before our ultrasound saying, "No. I don't need to pray.  Our baby is well.  Jesus' blood is on him."

Out of the mouths of babes.


Friday, October 11th I went alone to the hospital to take my first induction drug.  The kids were being watched by a friend, Taylor had a meeting with his supervisor, and my mom was flying over the Atlantic.  I didn't worry about going by myself because I knew it had to be done; I knew Taylor needed me to be strong, so he could tie up loose ends, so that he could be fully present once I went into labor two days later. But as I walked alone across the parking lot, the loneliness hit me, and despair tried to take grip, but just as quickly my mind flooded with  surely I am with you always.  He was still with me.


Seth has been dealing with fear lately and so our latest scripture memory verse has been Joshua 1:9 and I have been so struck with the reality of the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.  Ours has been a hard journey these seven years, but He's always walked alongside us.  Oh had we known the significance of the song we chose to herald the beginning of our wedding ceremony seven years ago. It rang true when we chose it, and we know it even better today.

A few days ago, we found out that our baby was a boy.  This is what we suspected the whole pregnancy, so it was nice having that confirmed, and being able to name him.

From our first ultrasound I wanted to name him William for various reasons.  I was looking for a name that meant "determination" because I knew that if he was born with a handicap, that would be meaningful.  We also wanted a name that was Scottish.  So William means "will or determination" and well, you know that slightly famous Scottish guy, William Wallace...so William it was from around week twelve.  As for his middle name, if you know me well, you know my silly fascination with names and monograms.  I liked the idea that his monogram could spell "WIL," so we started thinking about names that started with "L."  I really liked Luke from the start because it means "light."  Taylor preferred Lachlan (pronounced Locklin) because it was a Scottish name we had come across early in our time here in Edinburgh that we both really liked but felt we couldn't use because it would be too difficult once we lived away from Scotland.  So since our baby is going to be buried in Scotland, we thought it appropriate to go with a thoroughly Scottish name, so Baby Ince # 4 is now officially William Lachlan Ince.  We will bury him Wednesday where we'll grieve and celebrate our boy's short but significant life.

In Memory of

William Lachlan Ince

son of Robin and Taylor 

brother of Tristan Joy, Seth, and Avery

October 13, 2013

Edinburgh, Scotland

Ecclesiastes 6:3-5

We look forward to a glorious reunion one day and smile knowing that William and his big sister, Tristan Joy are playing together at the feet of Jesus.

Photo taken in August when William was still with us
Photo by Hunter Lawrence