every life matters

TRIGGERS: We lost a baby today. And I needed medical help for suicidal thoughts. And I'm grieving racially charged violence.

I've called this baby "Glimmer" since the little pink line showed up on the pregnancy test in early April. I found out over a week ago that our baby never started growing. That's when the bleeding started. Not enough to be able to get a doctor's appointment or to go to the hospital. Just enough to erode away the fragile progress of my healing psyche and my vulnerable mama heart.

In my tiny world of the people inside the four walls of my locked down house, the ugly intrusive suicidal thoughts crept back into my reality. It started when I first saw the bloody confirmation that our baby really wouldn't meet us this Christmas. Sitting on my toddler's swing set, I pictured my lifeless body  hanging from the frame, free from pain on Earth forever. I told my husband, I told my psychiatrists, I told my therapist, I told a few friends. But the thoughts didn't go away. They got stronger.

I started bleeding on Friday. There had been the tiniest hope that Glimmer would make it and test after test in Tacoma. But Friday, we knew: Glimmer had never been. Memorial weekend has never felt like such a LONG weekend as it did this year. I called the doctor's offices over and over, sending messages pleading for a surgical end to the trauma. My mind, constantly reliving the terrible labor pains of losing Whisper in October and the dark, scary season of suicidal thoughts that followed.

On Wednesday morning, we had to drive to Tacoma to see for ourselves that the "threatened miscarriage diagnosis" was a "confirmed failed pregnancy" or its uglier twin medical name: "a missed abortion." I was told that I would get a surgery scheduled and waited all day for a scheduling call that never came. When I asked again, they told me it would be scheduled some time in a week.

That was too much.

I laid on our couch, weeping. Beau went outside to build the giant deck (his grieving project that I'm grateful for). Our son played trucks on his play mat. Looking past my son, I noticed our block of kitchen knives and lucidly decided how I wanted to die. The intrusive suicidal thought tore into my mind and I wanted it, for the first time. I was mourning but deceived.

I'm so grateful that God placed my son in the room. He was right there joyfully and peacefully, between myself and the weapon that usefully belongs in my kitchen. I ran outside to get Beau and called a 24-hour helpline. Ultimately, a beautiful supportive team surrounded me with care and prayer. They battled for me and my family. I am so grateful for friends who answered urgent texts and calls, for family who came as quickly as possible, and for medical professionals who helped make miracles happen for my hurting brain.

That's how our baby Glimmer is gone, now, though. Our baby who never got to grow (inside me or outside in the world) is no longer part of my body. I had the surgery that I spent so much time pleading for this morning. Now, to grieve. Now, to mourn. Now, to heal.

Being pregnant and struggling with mental health has burdened my heart with a woman's story from a few years ago, still awaiting justice. Charleena Lyles was 14 weeks pregnant and struggling with her mental health when she called the police instead of a helpline. She didn't have a husband like Beau home with her, just her four kids under 12. Her mind told her she was being burglarized, like my mind said I should kill myself with knives. But nobody told Charleena to go to the emergency room or urgent care. A social worker didn't call her at 8 pm. A counselor didn't call to pray with her, like mine did. There wasn't time for her family to come watch her kids while she got help.

Charleena was shot 7 times, after two armed police officers say she tried to attack them with knives. Her one-year old and four-year old were reported to be in the room. Her autopsy revealed two bullets in her back. Two bullets in her uterus. Her fetus never had a chance.

My story is different from Charleena's in many ways. I've had so much more support my entire life. As my mind unravels with grief and hormones, there are societal structures that caught me.

Charleena was black, though. She lived an hour away from me, in a different world. Her unborn son would be at greater risk of police violence than my unborn baby ever could be.

I can call the police unafraid, and I have. I respect the women and men of my local police force, because I genuinely feel that they use their role to respect every life in our community. I am so grateful for the place I get to live, so grateful for the I life gifted to me. Even when my mind welcomed the thought of death, it wasn't at the hands of a service officer at my front door. My whiteness gives me a different set of outcomes.

I rode the elevator to the surgery waiting room this morning with a black couple on their way to the OB. The daddy was singing to his baby trying to make it dance. The mommy was laughing at him. Even grieving my lost baby in the moment, I laughed with them and said "Yeah, babies don't listen to what you want them to do." The mommy replied, "That's the truth". We went our separate ways, for her to hear her baby's heartbeat and me to have mine removed from my body forever.

I wonder what life is like for that mommy right now though. Does she have older kids she's worried about? Does her husband ever get to feel safe in his community? I'm praying for all of the black mommies out there, in Minnesota and Georgia, in Seattle and in Tacoma. I'm praying for my friends in "mixed race marriages" feeling silenced because of their family tree. I'm praying for the black babies trying to be born, and the black mommies carrying them, knowing that fetal and maternal outcomes are terrifyingly worse in America than the outcomes for white mommies and babies.

I'm mourning a personal loss. I'm mourning an evil in my own society. I'm repenting of benefitting from a system that let me think I earned my whiteness. I'm repenting a Savior complex that celebrated working in other nations and in "rougher" schools right here. Every life matters.

It's taken two deaths within me to see how I think God deserves to bless me.

I intend to rest in this grief for my unborn children. Not without hope, but because of hope. I intend to rest in this grief of the evil of racism in my nation. Not without hope, but because of hope. Grief is teaching us to listen. Grief is teaching us to love.

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." -Romans 5:3-5 NIV

We will mourn our brothers and sisters lost to violence. We will weep for our brothers and sisters believing the lies of racism. We will battle for our brothers and sisters caught in the tyranny of suicidal ideation.

BUT WE WILL HOPE.