Held

It was two months ago yesterday that we learned that Eliana would be born still. Two months ago today, just three minutes before Mother’s Day, we held her.

I first began hearing the song Held long before I understood it firsthand. In fact, throughout my pregnancy with Eliana, it came on the radio so many times when I was in the car. I always listened intently, and would get tears in my eyes imagining what it would be like to lose a child. Even when I sat in the waiting room before that last ultrasound, the words came into my mind.

After losing Eliana, almost every time I play the radio while driving, I hear at least some part of this song. Today, I stopped to listen to it when it came on just as I pulled into a store parking lot.

Held
Performed by Natalie Grant Lyrics by Christa Wells

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling
Who told us we'd be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We're asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it's unfair

[Chorus]
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

[Chorus]
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

[Bridge]
If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior

[Chorus]
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held
We'd be held
This is what it means to be held.....


Two months ago we were in the hospital waiting to deliver Eliana, waiting to see her face for the first time, waiting to count her fingers and toes, to compare her tiny features to us and her brothers. Two months ago, we held her. But not in the way we had wished: crying and kicking, alert and surprised by new sensations...alive. She was beautiful and perfectly formed, but so tiny, so still, so silent.

God didn’t promise to spare us from nightmares, but He did promise to carry us through them.

Today, all I want is to hold my baby girl, but instead, I am the one being held.

Psalm 68:19-20 (New Living Translation)
Praise the Lord; praise God our savior! For each day he carries us in his arms.
Our God is a God who saves! The Sovereign Lord rescues us from death.