Free Flash by Rachel Anne Ridge

told me I was pregnant   —ten years after our youngest child had been born, fifteen and seventeen years after our daughters. Once the surprise (and let’s be honest, panic ) wore off, excitement set in. This was the child we had desired for so long, had hoped for, and had given up on ever having.
    It thrilled me that I would get to experience mommyhood all over again! I loved those years with little ones and could not believe we were going to be blessed with a fourth baby. And both my sister and sister-in-law were expecting babies within days of my due date! What were the chances of that happening? We surprised my mother with back-to-back Mother’s Day phone calls telling her our news. The whole family was elated.
    And then our excitement was cut short.
    “I’m so sorry,” the doctor said, tears filling her eyes in sympathy as she moved the ultrasound wand over my abdomen. Myheart pounded out of my chest as I clutched Tom’s hand in the small examination room. We scanned the dark screen, desperate to see any sign of movement, but there was nothing. Just a tiny, lifeless form that had been our baby.
    Just a few weeks before, in an effort to break up the monotony of a long, hot summer day, I was making a spontaneous run to the video store with Grayson when our vehicle was hit head-on by a distracted driver on a country road. We felt lucky to walk away from the wreck unscratched, and I immediately went to the doctor to make sure the baby’s heartbeat was still there. What a relief to hear it! But it didn’t last.
    “Abruption of the placenta,” they called it   —the result of trauma. In sudden shock and grief, the floor fell away from my feet, the room spinning around us.
    They give you twenty-four hours to absorb the news before inducing labor. They tell you to go home and rest, that it will all soon be over. They tell you it is “nature’s way” and that you’ll be able to have other babies, don’t worry. What they don’t tell you is how hard you’ll cry, or how alone you’ll feel, or that your heart will break in a million pieces while you wait. They don’t tell you that labor, when you know at the end of it you’ll have no baby to bring home, is horrific. They don’t tell you that when your milk comes in and there is no baby to nurse, you’ll sit in the shower and sob until you can’t sob anymore. They don’t tell you any of that.
    But then, nothing can prepare you for this kind of disappointment, this much heartache.
    Tom and I got to see our little boy in the delivery room. We named him Collin, and he was beautiful. So utterly perfect. There was a small funeral and a tiny casket under an awning in the rain . . . and so many questions. I wished God had left uswell enough alone. We’d been content with three wonderful, healthy children   —why on earth had He snatched Collin away so cruelly, only pretending to give us another precious gift?
    For months I could not stop the tears that would come, unbidden, as I washed dishes or folded clothes, or drove along on the country road where the cars had collided and my happy little world had ended. I couldn’t bear the holidays; the thought of seeing my sister and sister-in-law’s pregnant bellies was too much, so we stayed away. I felt a constant lump in my throat, and I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t think of the precious life   —the little fingers and toes and belly button   —that we would never know.
    I needed refuge. Comfort for the anguish that engulfed me.
    I clung to Psalm 34:18   —“The L ORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed”   —as well as Psalm 145:14   —“The L ORD upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down” ( NIV ). Jesus, please. Please be close to me. Most days I could not sense Him anywhere. But there was something that had occurred during the long night before I was scheduled for labor that gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope, a trace of refuge that