A Lesson in Responding to Comforters while Journeying through Grief

I (Gabe) think I’m still amazed at how our friends and family surrounded us with words of encouragement and tangible actions of compassion throughout this whole grieving process. As I think of Christ’s call to his disciples to “weep with those who weep,” there have been many who have entered into our brokenness with us. “Thank you” seems like a shallow phrase to describe the genuine gratitude that we have towards our loved ones as you sought to be agents of God’s comfort.

There was one thing that surprised me about my role within the grieving process though, which led to a lesson I’m learning about following Christ in the midst of grief. Those who are grieving have a unique stewardship of gracious response toward those who long to bring comfort. That may sound strange…it even hits me after typing it as being almost ungrateful for the compassion of others – which is far from my intention, but when emotions are rolling in the freshness of pain, we need to remember that we are called to respond with grace to all who reach out in imperfect compassion.

I recall taking classes on counseling in Seminary on how to enter into the pain of others with genuine compassion, empathic presence and timely scriptures of hope, but I never really thought of the unique stewardship the griever has towards those who comfort him/her. This griever/comforter relationship must be understood as dynamic rather than one-way; we can’t expect everyone to be an “expert” comforter.

At moments of intense grief, there are times silence and solitude are what your soul longs for, and you just want to be left alone. Whereas at other times you long to feel the embrace of community. There are times a word of remembrance concerning God’s goodness speaks words of life to your soul, whereas at other times it just comes across as preachy. There are times when you need to hear that God has a plan of deliverance for his broken creation, but other times all you want to hear are the words “I love you and I don’t understand the pain you’re going through.” There are times when others share their similar stories, and it comforts your heart. Whereas other times you just want people to notice the uniqueness of your story, and in our selfishness don’t want to talk about others’ experiences.

The difficult thing – in the midst of grief – is not to expect those who long to comfort us to be omniscient…to be God – as though they could know the exact thing we long to hear in that moment. Brokenness is often accompanied with its crew of emotional chaos, confusion, and mystery, and we can’t expect others’ words of comfort to always line up with our sentiments at that moment.

This is where the stewardship of gracious response really resonates. As we seek to follow Christ in the midst of grief, we pray for the Holy Spirit to empower us to see the heart of those who long to comfort us, although – in our sinful brokenness as imperfect grievers – we perceive it as shallow, cheap, or cliché. We allow Christ to be the mediator by which all words of comfort pass through. We see, hear, and accept imperfect compassion through the perfect shed blood of Jesus. 

I love what C.S. Lewis says as the closing words of his book The Problem of Pain, “Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency.” There have been many who follow Christ that have exuded this stouthearted grace while grieving, and to them I watch in awe. For those of us who continue to experience loss, wade in brokenness and have seasons of chaos, may we follow Christ in how we respond in grace toward those who seek to imperfectly comfort us, showing the world how to grieve as gospel-shaped people.

Baby Judah

We got pictures in the mail the other day that the grief specialist took at the hospital of Judah, which I was looking forward to seeing, but at the same time, it was hard to look through them.  The waves of grief washed over us again, and some of the pictures were just really hard to look at.

At the same time it was amazing to be reminded again of how perfectly formed he was.  His little toes and toenails, his fingers, his little shoulders and even his eyebrows that were beginning to grow in... at 21 weeks, he was perfect!  Of course the pictures don't really capture him like I remember, but those memories of how it felt to hold him, touch his fingers, hold his little hand and the feeling of kissing his forehead will be forever imprinted in my mind.

Judah was 12 ounces and 11 1/4 inches long, so I think he would've been tall!  As I've mentioned before, we saw that he had Gabe's chin and face shape and my nose.... he would've been just as handsome as his daddy.  The tears flow even now just knowing we'll never get to see what he would've looked like as he was growing up...

It's good to have these pictures though and just the hope of seeing him in heaven someday.

They gave Judah a few little things to hold in the pictures, which I could've done without, but I think they were trying to help us make a connection with those items they put in his box that we brought home... it's amazing to see his little hands and fingers though!

 We love his little feet!

It is hard to see him like this, but I can't help but think his little face and arms are so adorable...

Again, another prop they gave him... the bear was so small, which just shows how tiny Judah was!

 We love our little Judah!

Love,

The Coyles

Good Grief

No one wants to go through grief.  It's painful.  It's draining.  It comes unexpectedly, and it can linger longer than you want it to.

Yet, going through the grieving process is good.  It's healing.  It's comforting.  It's expected, and can allow you to move past the deepest hurt even though the memories never fade.

Over the past three weeks since we lost Judah, we've felt the depths of pain and sadness as well as the greatest comfort and hope.  At times I thought I should break down, I've been strong and it has surprised me to almost feel emotionless...  But there have been times where the smallest thought can produce the most tears, and the hurt is fresh all over again.

And I've come to realize that grief can't be controlled.  There are those times when you just can't cry anymore and emotionally you're exhausted with being sad.  For me, being around people has allowed for that welcome break.  Even when people have expressed sympathy with tears in their eyes, I find that those are the times I feel strong.  I so appreciate their words of comfort, yet those aren't the times I grieve.

The hardest time for me is when I'm alone or at night when trying to fall asleep... I begin to process through everything that happened and I grieve over our loss.  The other night, I began thinking of how I was looking forward to taking Judah for walks this summer.  I had visions of walking down to Westport, which is a cute area of town with shops and restaurants about a 15 minute walk from our apartment, and spending time hanging out with him.  Of course I began weeping, not only over the loss of Judah, but the loss of those future plans with him.

You can't throw a blanket of grief over a situation.  As a friend recently said, you have to grieve through every small aspect...  As those memories, hopes or thoughts come, it's important to take each one and allow yourself to work through it.

While we don't like to go through life's tragedies, it's so important to allow ourselves to grieve.  I love the example Jesus set of grieving in John 11.  One of his best friends, Lazarus, dies and we see how Jesus responds in John 11:35....  Jesus wept.

For those of us who know the rest of that story, we know that Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead!  An incredible story of Jesus' power, yet we wonder why Jesus wept if He knew He was going to do this great miracle.  And I think it is because Jesus wanted to set an example for grief.  We need to morn loss.  It's part of the healing process.

We've been greatly encouraged by 1 Thessalonians 4 where it explains that "we don't grieve like those who have no hope."  We know that because we have accepted God's free gift of salvation, we are going to heaven when we die and we'll be able to see Judah again!

Because our ultimate hope is in heaven, we can have hope here on earth.

We grieve the loss of Judah.  It's really hard at times and honestly, sometimes life is just hellish.  But we are comforted knowing that God is with us in our weakness and grief.  He's been there... He's felt great loss and has gone through the grieving process.

We can't always avoid heartache in this life, but we can rest in our hope for the future, trust in a loving God who comforts us and allow ourselves to experience the good of grieving.

Thanks to all of you who've grieved with us and who continue to pray for the healing of our hearts.

Love,
The Coyles

December 9th- 23rd: One of the toughest times of our lives

After the ultrasound on Thursday December 8th we went out to celebrate that we finally knew what we were having and talked over dinner about what life would be like with little Judah.  Gabe talked about the camping trips and teaching him to play soccer... I talked about the cute baby boy clothes and just couldn't wait to hold him.

The next day, I had started having some cause for concern (to avoid being too graphic on this blog) but was relieved when it went away by the afternoon.  The same thing happened that Saturday.  I was a little more concerned and by Sunday, I was experiencing some issues and started having consistent cramps Sunday evening.  By Monday morning we were really concerned and when we called the emergency hotline, we were told to go to the Labor and Delivery unit of our hospital. 

At the hospital they did some tests with my blood and even did a cervical exam, in which everything seemed fine.  They gave me Motrin to stop the cramping, which worked and I was relieved to have the intense pain stopped. There was the thought maybe it was just a urinary tract infection and that antibiotics should take care of it.  The doctors decided to do an ultrasound just to check everything, and Judah looked super healthy! Which was great news.  They then did an ultrasound of my cervix and found that my cervix was opening and I was 2 cm dilated.  I was checked into the hospital and the neonatal specialists who were looking at the ultrasound said they would be up to talk with us once they had discussed the options.

At this point Gabe and I were pretty worried about what was going on since basically I had started to go into labor.  We waited for what seemed like forever for the doctors to come talk to us.  They finally came in and told us we had 3 options.  They could either: 1) Stop giving me anything to stop the cramping and let nature takes its course... which meant going into labor and delivering Judah, which he wouldn't survive since I was 19 weeks.  2) Induce labor, in which we would lose Judah.  3) Attempt to do a cervical cerclage which is a surgery where they go in and tie up my cervix to keep the baby inside.  They could do the surgery only if I didn't have an infection and even then, there was only a 50/50 chance of it working.

We were shocked.  Basically it seemed that there was just a fragment of hope that Judah would survive and, after the doctors left, we fell apart.  We knew that we wanted to fight for Judah and so in our mind, the only option was to do the surgery.  They decided to monitor me overnight to make sure I didn't have any infections that showed up, because if I did, they wouldn't be able to do the surgery as it would put both my life and Judah's life in danger.  

It was a really hard night as we wondered if the surgery was even a possibility.  In the morning they ran tests, but there were unconclusive results as to if there was an infection.  We held our breath as we waited for over an hour to hear what the final results were.  If I had an infection, we would have to induce labor and would lose Judah. We knew God could work in this situation and allow us the opportunity to at least try the surgery.  Finally, the doctors came in and said the surgery was on!  We were so excited to know there was at least had a chance to save Judah's life!

I was awake during the surgery since they just numbed the lower half of my body. The entire time I was praying that God would keep me as calm as possible.  The song that came to my mind was one by Ginny Owens called If You Want Me To.  Here are the words that kept going around in my mind:

The pathway is broken
The signs are unclear
And I don't know the reason why You brought me here
But just because You love me the way that You do
I'm gonna walk through the valley
If You want me to

Cause I'm not who I was
When I took my first step
And I'm clinging to the promise You're not through with me yet
so if all of these trials bring me closer to you
Then I will walk through the fire
If You want me to

It may not be the way I would have chosen
When you lead me through a world that's not my home
But You never said it would be easy
You only said I'd never go alone

So When the whole world turns against me
And I'm all by myself
And I can't hear You answer my cries for help
I'll remember the suffering Your love put You through
And I will go through the valley If You want me to 

I was comforted knowing that God was allowing all of this to happen for a reason and if that's what He was bringing into our lives... all we could do would be to submit to His plan knowing He is so loving and good. The surgery went amazingly well as they were able to sew things up and create a strong stitch to hold Judah.  We were so excited to hear the news!

Over the next week of being in the hospital, we were so encouraged by all of the messages, texts, phone calls and visits.  It was also great to have my parents come in for a few days!  There's nothing like having family around during times like this.  We knew that so many people were in prayer for Judah and we knew that God could do far more than we could ever ask or even imagine (Ephesians 3:20)!  The nurses and doctors were amazing during our stay and, with St. Luke's on the plaza being one of the best high risk pregnancy hospitals in the area, we knew we were in the best hands. 

I was told that once home, I would be on 5 months of bedrest, which seemed like a small price to pay in order to have our baby arrive safe and sound.  I was sent home Monday, December 19th and felt great.. until the middle of the night.  I began cramping again and so Gabe and I rushed back to the hospital at about 4 in the morning.  They again gave me the Motrin which stopped the cramping and said that everything with the cerclage still looked good.  They gave me even stricter guidelines for my bedrest which meant laying flat on either side and I could only get up to go to the bathroom.  They also gave me the high dosage of Motrin to take at home.  The only problem with that was that the Motrin has a side effect of decreasing the amniotic fluid, so it couldn't be used long term or it would greatly affect the baby.

So, I was home for a few days on bedrest and only taking the Motrin when it was absolutely necessary.  It seemed that the cramping was minor and I even had an entire day without any issues.  We were just preparing ourselves for a long journey of Gabe pretty much taking care of everything around the house and me.  It was going to be a long road, but we just wanted to keep Judah in the womb as long as possible!  

And I have to stop here and brag on my husband.  Gabe was incredible throughout this entire process.  He was constantly by my side in the hospital making sure I was comfortable and had everything I needed.  He slept on a recliner that whole week in the hospital and when we went home, he continued to amaze me with his servant's heart.  Each morning, he would make me breakfast and would pack a lunch that I could keep in a cooler beside the bed so I wouldn't have to get up to get it while he was gone at work. He did dishes, laundry, grocery shopping and never complained.  (Our church family was great as well as they showed tangibly how much they cared by providing meals so Gabe wouldn't have to cook.)  It was hard for me to feel so completely helpless, but I was so thankful for the love and care I felt.

In the middle of the night, on Friday the 23rd, I started cramping again consistently and after taking the Motrin and giving it some time to start kick in, I realized it wasn't working.  We went to the hospital again around 2am and after the medicine they gave me finally started working, the cramps were gone.  We waited until the doctor got in that morning and then did an ultrasound to see what was going on.  We saw that Judah was doing great.. he had a great heartbeat and was moving around.  The only problem is that there was hardly any amniotic fluid and we knew that wasn't good.  The nurse said she was going to talk to the doctor who would be in to discuss the ultrasound.  Here's the picture from that ultrasound.

While we waited we found out that the rest of my time on bedrest would have to be in the hospital so they could keep a close eye on me and Judah.  I felt good knowing that we wouldn't have to keep running back and forth to the hospital every time something happened, but I also knew it meant I was even more high risk than I thought.

Around 3pm I started having cramping again and by 3:15, I was in labor.  It was the hardest thing hearing the nurse say I was in labor and she was going to call the doctor in.  I knew that there was nothing we could do to stop Judah from coming and my only prayer is that there would be a miracle once he was delivered. It was a physically and emotionally painful delivery knowing that it was too early and that, what should be a happy time of getting to meet your baby, could result in such a great loss.

Judah was born around 3:45 and when I saw the back of his head I asked the doctor if they could save him.  They said they were sorry and that he was already gone.  That was the most devastating moment Gabe and I had been through.  We just wept with each other and couldn't believe our precious baby was gone. 

The nurse wrapped up Judah in a blanket and gave him to us to hold.  It was so amazing to see how perfectly made he was even at 20 weeks!  We noticed that he had Gabe's chin and my nose!  We just couldn't stop crying over him and saying how precious he was... our emotions were all over the place from complete awe of this creation to grieving over his death.  We were told that Judah could stay with us as long as we wanted and, although I would be physically okay to leave the hospital the next day, we could stay an additional day if we needed that time with Judah.

We just held him and grieved all Friday evening and he was with us in the room all friday night.  Their grief specialist came in and took pictures of him and did his handprints and footprints.  We have a box that they gave us that we could put everything in to remember him by.  It's so special to have those things to hold onto!  Judah was 11 1/4 inches long and 12 ounces.  

We hadn't even thought through what was next, but we had to decide on what to do with his body.  We called a funeral home that the pastor of Family Care from our church recommended and decided they would pick Judah up the next day at the hospital.  Although I didn't like the thought at first, we decided to cremate him so we could always have him with us and just keep the ashes in our keepsake box.

That Saturday morning, Christmas Eve, was so hard.  It was one of the most difficult things to say our final goodbyes and to leave him in the hospital room wrapped up in his blanket.  Gabe and I spent Christmas eve and Christmas day together just taking time on our own to grieve this incredible loss of our first baby.

It's been difficult the past few weeks, but God has given us great peace throughout the entire process. We are continuing to heal and can't say thank you enough to those who've been praying for us.  It's been amazing to see the body of Christ at work where friends and family, and even people we don't know from all over the country, have come around us to support us during this time.  

We love you all and, in our grief, are hopeful to see what God has in store for the future....

Love, 

The Coyles

Amazing Creation- Our Growing Baby

We loved heading to the doctor's to hear of the progress of our growing little one.  It seemed right off the bat we were getting alot of ultrasounds since we couldn't always hear the heartbeat.  We didn't mind since each time we got to take home a set of pictures.

I know it can be hard to make out what you're looking at in an ultrasound, but here are a few of the pictures anyway, along with a few of the growing baby bump!

This was taken the day after we found out... we went with some friends to the Irish Fest and loved carrying this precious secret since we waited to tell people.

8 Weeks... although our baby was the size of pea, we got so excited to see that there was an actual baby that was starting to grow!

Right before my nearly 11 week appointment... I could've sworn there was a baby bump there.  :)

Baby Coyle was laying back just chillin in the womb at the 11 week appointment... we even got a wave!

Thanksgiving was a great time to get together with family. My sister was 9 weeks ahead of me in her 2nd pregnancy and we loved being pregnant at the same time.  I'm so glad we got to capture this time together (I was about 18 weeks).  We were so excited for the cousins to meet!

We couldn't wait for the next appointment where we could find out if we were having a boy or girl.  Since we had already picked out names, we were anxious to finally start calling our baby by name.  It took about 10 minutes into the ultrasound before our, apparently modest, baby decided to show us what he or she was, so we had alot of random shots of how well they were growing while we waited for the baby to move.

Hand

 Face and an arm

 Leg

 Profile

We finally got to see we were having a boy!  Yep.. there it is!

We both were leaning more towards having a boy first, so we were beyond excited!  We had thought about a few different names, but when we thought of Judah, we immediately knew that's what we wanted to name him.  Judah means "May God be Praised."  From the very beginning, we knew that Judah was ultimately in God's hands.  

I don't know if this is an every soon-to-be-mom thing, but I remember within the first week of finding out we were pregnant I started thinking through those questions of "what if I miscarry?", or "what if something happens to our baby?" I thought through how hard that would be and wondered how I would respond.  Gabe and I talked through it and we just came to the conclusion that our baby was an amazing creation by our great God, and that whatever God allowed to happen throughout the pregnancy was in His perfect plan.  Our desire was that, like Judah's name reflected, that God would be praised no matter what. 

I think having those conversations really helped prepare us for what was ahead.... even though we had no idea what was going to happen.  It's still hard to wrap my head around everything the past three weeks.  Going through the ultrasound pictures today reminded me of how intricately made Judah was and how completely precious it was to have this amazing life inside of me.  I still question why, but also know that I may never know... and I have to be okay with that and trust fully that God is good and loving.  The Creator of the Universe, who created Judah, has a perfect plan, and that brings great peace and healing in this loss.  Our continued prayer in this whole situation is that God is praised.

Love, 

The Coyles

Judah's Story

Since we only just started this blog, I want to go back and walk through our journey with our first precious baby, Judah.  I not only want to document everything as a way to remember, but I think it will help us as we continue to go through the grieving process.  It may take a few posts to get through his story, but I thought a good place to start would be the video Gabe and I made to announce our excitement of having a baby... so, here it is!




We loved him from the moment we knew we were pregnant... who knew you could love someone you never met so much?  We couldn't wait to meet him or her!

Love,
The Coyles