The Courage Awards – In the Midst of It

“Are you crying?” my husband asks from his perch on the couch, his eyes still firmly fixed on the Superbowl.

Yes – yes I am.

And you can’t blame me. Reading Sarah’s blog, In the Midst of It, is an emotional, beautiful, inspiring experience.

Sarah is a gift. With an incredible talent for writing, a constantly growing soul, and a sweet, kind heart, Sarah touches all of us who read about her life, her marriage and her family’s heart-wrenching experiences with her infant daughter’s health struggles.

Last summer, we all held our breath while their precious daughter Addison underwent open heart surgery. We cried, we prayed and then we rejoiced when little Addison came home, her heart repaired and her family reunited.

Sarah hasn’t met her trials without anger, tears and pain. She has hurt deeply and shared honestly as she tried to cope with her daughter’s diagnosis. And she has shown us that despite it all, we can still come, broken and weeping, back to our Lord.

None of us wants heart-ache. We don’t want to become trained by suffering. We plead with God to give us perfect babies, healthy children and to protect our families from hurting too much.

But life hands out pain indiscriminately. It is part of our fate on earth. Some of us will receive more pain than others. And when we receive our hand, we have a choice. We can collapse in bitterness and never forgive the Lord for allowing it. Or we can cry and scream at God, but still return to Him for the love and comfort that will carry us through.

It is hard to do, but Sarah shows us the way…

Interview with Sarah from In the Midst of It:

Janice: Thank you so much Sarah for joining us today. You are part of quite a famous blogging family – you are royalty in our little corner of the blogosphere. You all seem to blog – your mom, your aunt, your sister and even your grandmother! Who started blogging first? Why did you want to start blogging?

Sarah: Janice, thank you so much for asking me to be a part of this! I started blogging in secret, hidden even from my husband, although he’s the one who encouraged me to start writing again. I don’t think a blog is quite what he had in mind! I got a writing degree in college but hadn’t used it much beyond writing really creative grocery lists. So I asked a friend what the whole blogging thing was about and jumped in. About the same time my mom decided the same thing—I had been encouraging her to read a friend’s blog—but she didn’t keep hers a secret. So then my aunt and grandma, who also love to write, created their own blogs, too. About a month after I began, my husband discovered my blog, and while I received much teasing in the beginning, now it seems entirely normal that the whole family blogs. Well, mostly normal.

Janice: How has blogging impacted your life? Has it helped you in your journey with your daughter Addison?

Sarah: What started out as a way to practice writing evolved into making friendships, keeping in better touch with family far away, and eventually finding other women whose children have special needs of some sort. I thought blogging would be a fun, temporary little project, but on August 3rd, Addison’s heart surgery, when thousands of people came to my site to offer support and encouragement, I realized that blogging can be a tangible way for Christians to reach out to the body of Christ, worldwide. It has been cathartic as I write about Addison, and even just motherhood in general, because it helps me sort out my thoughts. I am encouraged, inspired, supported, and challenged when I read what others write, and many times when I’m tempted to feel alone—I have no friends in “real life” with special needs children—I remember that I am not.

Janice: When you first found out that Addison’s was sick, you wrote about your intense pain and even your anger towards God. Can you share with us a bit about this time in your life and what helped you move through these stages of grief?

Sarah: Everything about Addison has been a surprise. I had a normal pregnancy until the last ultrasound, at 38 weeks, when she measured only the size of a 31-34 week old. So I had an emergency induction, and she was born weighing just over 4 1/2 pounds, full-term. She didn’t have any health problems but was kept in the NICU, and there she had some chromosome testing and her heart murmur was found. Over the next week we were told she’d need open heart surgery and possibly had a syndrome that would have a catastrophic effect on her health. But then the gene test came back normal, and we thought she was in the clear for any syndromes. It was only at the urging of my pediatrician that we visited a geneticist (Often heart defects are linked to syndromes,) and were told that she most likely has a different, much more rare syndrome. I have never been as shocked in my life. My husband says it’s like drowning in ice water. There aren’t words adequate to describe how we felt that morning in June.

It took me a while to move from being numb to devastated to angry. I was angry at God for allowing it to happen—not to me, but to her—and being angry with the Lord was a time of intense loneliness. I’d start to pray and then remember, “Oh, I’m mad at You.” After a few weeks I was able to let it go and move on, and since then I’d experienced probably every other emotion, from joy to devastation, but not anger. I’ve heard that grief can take up to a few years to process completely, and there may be very difficult times ahead of us since her syndrome doesn’t seem to be manifesting yet and we could be in for heartache all over again. We’re also watching for a kidney problem to flare up, but for right now we’re able to enjoy her and our family and the gift of health.

Janice: What words of encouragement can you offer someone who is lost in their anger and bitterness and may not be able to “forgive” God for allowing their suffering?

Sarah: Hang on. Don’t let anybody make you feel guilty for what you’re feeling. And don’t let anybody tell you that God will never give you more than you can bear, or that you’re strong and can handle it, because neither of those are Scriptural or true. God will sometimes allow us more than we, on our own, can bear. (That verse is referring to temptation, not to burdens.) We are not always strong enough to handle bitter disappointment—I wanted to die after her diagnosis, when I had to lay down my dreams for my daughter and the disappointment was absolutely crushing—but He is bigger than the worst thing that can happen to us. I still can’t explain the theology of suffering or tests or the like, but I do know that my loneliness when I pulled away from Him was worse than the grief I felt after Addie’s diagnosis. So hang on, and don’t give up. He loves you enough to fight with you, if you’ll let Him. He is bigger than your anger, and He can handle you being angry with Him. It won’t last forever.

Janice: On your blog, you mention your love for Elisabeth Elliot’s writings. What is the most important thing you have learned from reading her work?

Sarah: When Elisabeth got word that her husband, Jim, had been speared by the Auca Indians, she immediately thought, “Do the next thing.” It was an old saying she’d read years before, and to her that meant to keep putting one foot in front of the other: do the next load of laundry or make the next meal or pay the next bill. She is not a woman given to much emotional drama, which I admire greatly, and she always says that while emotions are a gift from God, we don’t have to be slaves to them. So in those early days after Addie’s diagnosis when I didn’t want to go to a friend’s baby shower or answer the phone or even get out of bed, I just adopted that mantra and did the next thing. Eventually the “next thing” turns into time, which may not heal all wounds, but it helps make them less painful to bear. Wallowing in my own pain wasn’t getting me anywhere. If anything, it just robbed me of wonderful moments with my husband and children, and I didn’t want to let grief steal that from me.

Janice: Thank you again Sarah for visiting with us today. Your words have really inspired me! And thank you for your wonderful blog. You have a gift – thanks for sharing it!

Sarah: Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of this. While practicing my writing, and making new friends, and even having a place to store my memories for my children are all great reasons to keep blogging, it’s the inspiration and encouragement I receive from others who write their own posts or leave me comments that make this worthwhile. I hope that others can read my thoughts—from exploding diapers to the story of our family’s healing—and know that they aren’t alone. What I hope to leave, more than anything, is the imprint of a life changed by God, in hopes that will encourage others to find that same thing.