Different faces of and different approaches to grief...

Day 11: My little bit of happy for today - www.mollypiper.com and my Sarah dragging the poor kitten around.

I've been reading some different blogs of other mother's who've lost their children later in pregnancy. I am finding that in general they don't bring me much comfort.

It is interesting how different people respond to grief.

Some people get angry at God. While I know that this is a perfectly normal and acceptable response it is not one that I am comfortable with.

I know most people reading this are thinking to themselves, "just you wait... your grief is still fresh, the anger will come."

I don't think it will. Not anger at God anyway. I made peace with God over this whole fertility and pregnancy loss thing a long time ago.

9 pregnancies. 3 live births. Months and years between conceptions. 8 years between warm, wriggling, squirming babies. How many will I have to wait this time? It's the uncertainty I struggle with. Will there be another baby to love and to hold? Or was Caleb my last?

Not to mention my baby brother who died and was born at 16.5 weeks. The day I saw him, the day we buried him, changed me forever. In a positive way. In so many ways God used him to shape me into who I am today. And losing him softened this blow.

Maybe it's my personality. Maybe it's because I've been in this place before. But I just can not get angry with God. I barely remember a time in my life that I wasn't aware that a positive pregnancy test did not automatically mean you would bring a baby home from the hospital.

I'm not even angry that my baby died. God has only made me 1 promise - eternal life through Jesus. Anything good that happens to me between here and there is grace, pure and simple. God created us for HIS glory, not our own.

At some point early in our journey, I believe it was while we were still in the hospital but maybe it was in the first few days at home, my sweet husband told me that he wished he could take Caleb's place.

To me that would be far more tragic than losing all of my children at once.