Fountains in the Way

I always thought that the moments after and during a near death medical experience would feel extremely not normal.

Mine felt normal, almost mundane.

With Millie’s birth, I was experiencing this moment for the second time. It was familiar and I felt steady, or forced myself to feel that way. In the middle of severe hemorrhaging, I worked hard to stay awake, to keep a hold of reality, to hold it all together. I wanted to stay “okay.” I asked questions as I was laid back and doctors and nurses swarmed in and hovered around me. I made a joke as they put the nasal cannula of oxygen on and listened as they listed off the medications and blood products that they were pumping into my body, yet the blood kept coming. I gritted my teeth as they completed procedure after procedure on me and my body began to go into shock. I knew the feeling, and believed that I just needed to wait until my body realized it wasn’t going to die, than I could be warm again, I could hold my newborn baby, tell Luke I was okay and be believable, then I could see Eben again. If I could just hold reality together, I could move on.

But two weeks later, I still could not move on. Deep inside, in my bones and my nervous system, I knew that I had come close to the brink. My sister calls it the veil between heaven and earth, which I had passed by, but I didn’t go through and my mind and emotions refused to acknowledge it. I tried to ignore it, but my body and nervous system were forcing me to face it. I had wanted to think that I could prevent trauma by staying awake and present. I had thought that I could prevent a blood transfusion, even if I couldn’t prevent a hemorrhage. I was proved wrong faster than I thought possible. I thought I could negate the trauma of this second experience by holding as tightly as I could to reality and staying awake. How stupid really. Because I can’t, I couldn’t. My body knew that it had passed too close to the veil again to move on without a thought. I didn’t want to acknowledge it because I cannot control it. The trauma told me that I was less than others for getting so close to death. Or perhaps I was just jealous that they didn’t have to face death like that. I had to sit in my body and acknowledge that yes, once again, I had passed by.

I sat in the fear and discomfort, realizing that unlike my stepdad, who had passed through the veil 8 months earlier, I passed by, but didn’t go through.

The body remembers. And for weeks after birth, I felt that feeling (and even now still off and on). The feeling that I needed to prevent death, that it was imminent and I had to stop it at every turn, for me, for my loved ones, that death was only a step, a heartbeat away.

How frightening.

But we can’t control or prevent death.

So that part of me had to die, along with so many dreams.

Five little hearts seated around a kitchen table might never come to be.

Random texts from my stepdad about his adventures with my mom in the snow and sun.

A world where steps I took during pregnancy would keep me from needing another blood transfusion.

A birth, calm, empowering, unmedicated, quiet, peaceful, at home, and safe.

Meeting my baby and being able to hold my baby for more than a few minutes before the alarms started to sound.

Lake days, ski trips, beach trips with ever growing families.

Seeing Steve get to meet his second granddaughter.

We can’t control death and every dream doesn’t get to come true.

I can’t prevent death. And sometimes it seems to stand so close.

But I can surrender to the fact that death is.

And trust wholly in the resurrection.

Which means that none of these dead dreams are the end of the story.

It means that the heartbreak of passing dreams, broken families, and people passing through the veil isn’t the final word.

The final Word?

Jesus.

Who stopped me from entering the veil. Who let Steve pass through. Who came back through the veil to show us what lies on the other side, praise the Lord!

He is the first and the last word. He decides when my last day is, just like he decided my first day, when I entered the world in the same process that is breaking me. He has in a book written the lives of all my loved ones, and when we reunite, we will get to sing praises together on the other side.

My body still recovers, but it is working towards peace. I unclench my hands living in a true reality, both stark in its truth, but no longer as frightening. I smile back at Millie. I dance with Eben to his song requests. I look at Luke with appreciation. There’s a new page written in my story. I might not be thankful for dead dreams yet, but I am thankful for a clearer view of His love, a clearer view of hope, of what matters. Jesus.