Controlling the Pain

When we found out the baby was no longer alive, I pleaded with God to let me know if he was a boy or a girl. I desperately wanted to name him, and, I suppose, "claim" him as my own. I wanted to make him as real as possible to me.

The night after our appointment, I dreamed that he was born, healthy and alive, and he was a boy. It was so clear, I couldn't ignore it, especially after I had asked the Lord to reveal this to me.
We named him after his father, Romeo, and after the patron saint of expecting mothers, Gerard.

***

I recently started seeing a counselor because I have put my poor husband through enough. I need someone else to vent to. And I need some strategies to cope with my grief, my fear, my stress, and my anxiety.

I told her that I need positive feedback when I'm doing a project or learning something new. Or even criticism. Both help me know what to do next. If I'm doing it wrong, at least I can change it. Or if I'm doing it right, then I know I'm on the right track. Proceed as usual.

But with God's plan, I often feel I don't get the feedback I need to know what to do next. And that is the part that is so devastating and frustrating. All I want is to do His Will. And I mean that wholeheartedly. I know, intellectually, that His Will is the only thing with which I'll be happy. And I thought I was doing it, until Romeo Gerard died. Until my heart was broken.

My counselor suggested that perhaps my need for feedback was a way for me to control the pain. And I do need to control it. For the sake of my daughter, and for the sake of my husband. But probably most of all for the sake of my sanity. Because, right now, I feel a little nuts.

I wake up thinking about what I would do if A (my two year old) were to die. Or, that if I ever get pregnant again, that baby will surely die as well. I have flashbacks of RG's birthday: the blood, the feeling of him being born, the smell of apricot bathroom soap,  the sight of his body. They are like dreams, but I'm awake. And I can't make them leave my mind.

***
I think of how God answered some of my prayers about RG, and how he said "no" to others. I think of how I prayed that if it was God's will that my baby was really dead, that he would grant me the grace to handle it. And how, he did not answer my trusting prayers that He could do all things, including miraculously let my baby really be alive. Lord, I know that I do not understand your ways. I know my heart and mind are feeble. But I do not understand your plan. Have mercy on me.