Guard your heart

Four days ago I held my baby in my hands. It was precious, amazing and so very, very heartbreaking because my baby was so very tiny. Way too small to ever have a hope of living. It was gone before it came into this world.

The day before I lost the baby my midwife warned me to guard my heart, to prepare myself for the possibility of losing it. Guard my heart.

Against a baby I loved from before conception.

Guard my heart so I wouldn’t hurt. Guard my heart so things would be easier on me. Guard my heart from…hurt, pain…but most of all against my baby. I knew when she told me that there was no way I could do that. But even if I could have I wouldn’t have wanted to.

To guard my heart would have been to distance myself from my baby. To protect myself no matter the cost. At this moment as I struggle through the aftermath of losing the baby I wanted so much I’m glad I didn’t even try to guard my heart. It would hurt a whole lot more today to think I’d locked my feelings away from my baby just to protect myself from pain.

Instead I can take comfort in knowing that my baby was loved for all of its very short life. It was wanted. It was protected, even from the so-called protection I was supposed to put in place against it.

I’ve known people that have lost babies, children, that go through life as if that child never existed. They hardly mention their names, don’t acknowledge their birthdays. I know everyone deals with loss in their own way but that is a way I could never live with. My baby, given to us for such a short time, never ours to hold in life, was a gift from the Lord. It brought blessings and happiness simply because it was alive in me for a time.

We don’t know the Lord’s plans, His will isn’t our will. I would never have chosen to lose my baby but knowing now how it turned out…if I could go back and choose whether or not to conceive that child all over again…I’d choose the baby. We’re all given a certain number of days on earth. To live is to die. It’s a simple fact of life. Everyone that lives will someday die. The Lord knew long before any of us how many days each one of us would have. Some are given so many days they live to be a hundred years old or older and some…like my baby…only get a handful of days.

I’ll never snuggle my baby in my arms, never kiss its cheek or tickle its belly. I’ll never know the pure joy of watching it sleep or know what color hair it would have had. But I had the joy of carrying it in my womb, of loving it for every one of the days it was given. I had the painfully amazing experience of marveling over tiny arms and legs, a little body that was beyond precious to me. And I’ll have the joy of carrying it in my heart for the rest of the days I’m given.

Guard your heart.

Protect yourself.

I understood what the midwife was telling me. Prepare yourself for this possibility. But guarding my heart was never an option. Not all that long ago I was told something kind of along those lines about a completely different matter but it was over something that has the potential to be very painful. Prepare yourself, get ready…

It doesn’t matter how you word it, it all comes back to those three little words…guard your heart. Protect yourself. There was a time in my life many years ago when I did just that. I didn’t trust and I didn’t love. It was a cold, lonely place to be.

Love hurts. Everyone has heard that expression. If we’ve lived very long we’ve experienced it in one way or another. Opening ourselves up to love is pretty much a guarantee that sooner or later we’ll get hurt.

I know someone right now that has, over the last year, discovered that love can hurt. As a result this person has closed themselves off. They’ve chosen self-preservation over love. And they’ve become untouchable as a result.

I take solace now that my baby was wanted through every moment, however brief those moments were, that it lived. I wanted it, my husband wanted it, all it’s brothers and sisters wanted it, it’s aunts and grandparents wanted it. For those all too brief number of days it lived in love.

I couldn’t have guarded my heart and I didn’t want to. I chose not to guard my heart the other time I was warned to do so either. To guard my heart would be to close myself off from those I love. Instead I chose and continue to choose to put my trust in my Lord and to love those he’s entrusted to me for every second of every moment He lets me have them.

I’ll always be glad I chose not to guard my heart. My baby lived in love and it died in love.