The Trial and Gift of Time

Please note- 

This is the first post where I begin to share this private and personal experience publicly. 

This is also the first of many more posts where I will share the incredible journey our little family began 5 months ago and all the blessings that have and will continue to come from it- forever. 

Today: 

Friday, April 5th, 2013- He is 20 weeks and 3 days old. I am so happy to be his mother today, to have taken him grocery shopping with Syd and I, to ride on my bike, and to go together as a family to his 2nd kid birthday party later tonight at the beach. He lives not in my arms, but still in my tummy, yet he truly is in the best place he will be in this earth life and is daily giving Sydney the chance to be his big sister, me his mommy, and Scott his daddy. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, we have a son, a brother, and his name is Isaac.

Isaac's story: Post 1

The Trial and Gift of Time

Dedicated to our son

ISAAC ASHER WALTON

Written on, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 19 Weeks Gestation
-From my journal

When we first found out the prognosis of our son, Isaac, one of the things that worried me is that I still had a half a year of my pregnancy remaining. He could die anytime in that 6 months, or could live days or months after birth, and nothing more; But he would die- very, very young. Part of me wanted it all to be taken from me- the pregnancy, the delivery, even our son- before it got any harder, so that I didn’t have to endure the unknown future, and especially the inevitable. His dying sooner than later seemed more relieving than to await for all uncertainty, become attached and ultimately have him taken from us anyway. Like with my one and only miscarriage at 6 weeks, in June of 2012- the pain and sorrow from that miscarriage literally only lasted some short days. Part of me wished it could pass as “easy” as the miscarriage had, though any parent wanting for a child knows the words ‘miscarriage’ and ‘easy’ do not belong in the same sentence. But by the time we found out about our son, I was already twice as far along as I had been with the miscarriage. A hopeful sign it had been to us.

Being a high-risk pregnancy simply because of my former miscarriage, I’d already had the opportunity to see our baby boy Isaac on ultrasound a handful of times, a number that would only explode in the weeks to come. Because of the number of weeks pregnant and the number of times I’d gotten to “meet him” in ultrasound, I was that much more invested in this new baby, even more invested than I had been in Sydney by this point in my pregnancy with her. There was something there that made me want to hold on to this baby, as much as I wanted to let go before it got any “worse.” But the choice wasn’t up to me, whether I wanted to hold on or not. It was never a consideration for Scott and I to terminate this life, but rather let God and His laws of nature take control. Afterall, he is our son, and even greater than that, a literal child of God, as all of us are.

The more the time has passed, the more I’ve grown in character and in spirit, in faith and in love, in patience and in humility, and now my feelings are opposite of what I admittedly once had. Even then, when I wished the pregnancy would be taken from me, a pregnancy that Scott and I tried for 7 months to gain, I knew then that the want for some kind of relief, the want to make things easier, was not characteristic of a person full of patience, humility and selflessness. I did not want to be selfish in anyway. On top of that, I tried to put it into perspective as far as the life growing inside of me and what his full potential was, not on this earth life, but in the eternities. I needed to understand the importance of this soul growing within me, as well as the importance of being like our Savior before I could comfortably be willing to sacrifice anything, my body, my comfort, my emotions, my time, for this being that I was only beginning to get to know and to love- a sacrifice worth way more than I’d give up. In the end, I give up nothing, but only gain from it. To some extent, it has been a sacrifice, as any pregnancy is, but it’s been so much more. It’s been a great opportunity, experience and blessing, that will last us the rest of our lives.

Today, looking back on the last 7 weeks, which seem more like months since we’ve known, I can say that this devastating and heartbreaking experience has been well worth it, and will continue to be more than worth it. Not just for the things we are learning and the people we are becoming, but for the relationship we are gaining with our son, this amazing spirit who is too pure to stay on this earth. It really has been a sacrifice worth way more than we “are giving up.” We are coming out ahead of where we were before we even got pregnant.

I was once so scared of the long 6 months I may or may not have ahead of me in this disheartening pregnancy. But since then, we've learned that Isaac is expected to at least make it to term. Now, I am ever grateful for this “waiting” period, a period where we can see Isaac daily by ultrasound set up in our home, and I can feel him kicking and living inside of me. Right now, he is alive. He is living. And he is our son. I am honored to be the one to carry him, and personally escort him in his short journey of life here on earth. I am his mother, now.

As soon as I came to recognize that our son’s health problems and ultimate death were not the real trial, but that the real trial here was time, the time in which we have to endure each passing difficulty, I have been able to view each of these as but a wink of an eye in the grand scheme of things and have an eternal perspective. 

On the contrary, I've also begun to see this time as a gift, a blessing in which we treasure every moment that Isaac is here with us. 

Time is

Too slow for those who wait

Too swift for those who fear

Too long for those who grieve
Too short for those who rejoice
But for those who love
Time is eternity
-Henry Van Dyke

"Time IS eternity" means something very different than "time is eternal." Just think about it. Our time on this earth will end, but our love never will. We get to love Isaac for an eternity, an eternity which includes a future spent as a family with our son Isaac, in his perfect resurrected body, along with our other children and family, together with God in pure happiness and continual growth, after this life.

The only thing more important than the time we are given here on earth, is what we do with it.

Time is what our world rotates on and functions by. It provides us with order. If you think about it, time really is everything to us here on earth. It takes time to grow, to get to know someone, to get over break ups. It takes time to heal from injuries, to grieve our loved ones. It takes time to recover from a sickness. It takes time to suffer, and time to heal. It takes time to learn, to become wise. It takes time to work so that we can have the means to live.

It takes time to accomplish things, both good and bad. It takes time to accomplish anything, and it takes time to heal. In difficult times, we want the time to pass faster. In good times, we want time to slow down.

We all have a certain amount of time to live, some shorter than others. You might call it a blessing to get your time cut short, to get to return to our Father in Heaven sooner in life, and you could also call it a blessing to be able to stay on earth a little longer. We all have our different needs, and some of us need more time to accomplish the work that He would have us accomplish in our lives and in the live of those we come in contact with.

Thinking of time in this manner, and in relations to this experience we are currently growing from, I thought first about my worries and they were all, every one of them, related to time. 1. Is our son suffering, or will he suffer? For how long will he have to suffer?

2. I have [had] 6 months left of pregnancy. That is a long time. After that, how long will our son live for? How long will we have to wait to get pregnant again and how long will it take this time? What if there’s another miscarriage? Sydney will be 4 or 5 years older than our next child after Isaac, and we wanted our children to all be somewhat close in age.

3. Once Isaac is taken from us, we know we will see him again and that he is ours forever, but it seems like such a long time, a lifetime even, before we will be reunited with him again.

You see? If time were not a factor in any of the difficulties we go through, there would be no trials, for the suffering and the growth, are imbedded in time. Otherwise, all suffering, discomfort, sorrow, worry or struggle would be but a wink of an eye and we could not learn or grow from such insignificance. We are here to grow and become like our Father in Heaven and Savior Jesus Christ, and through Isaac, and this blessed experience, I am learning more about the mysteries of godliness than I ever have in my whole life combined. What I have known up to this point is all coming together to form a more complete whole, a more perfect vision that becomes clearer and clearer with the passing of this current time in our lives, and will continue to clarify as our future endures.

God knows no time. To Him, the past present and future are one eternal truth. When we die, we will see “time” or the lack thereof as He does. But time is necessary for us here on earth. God created it that way, in His all-knowing wisdom. We endure through time and prove ourselves in time.

Once I realized the significance of time in relation to our difficulties in this circumstance, and how much it was bearing down on me and the plans I had for my family, I could easily hand that specific and all-encompassing concern to the Lord and say- my time is in your hands. I know that if I’m living righteously, I’m living to fulfil His purposes and become more like my Savior, then however my time passes in this life, it will be for the best because He knows what’s best and He wants what's best for us. 

Courtesy of Google Images

I’m not worried anymore about Sydney being so much older than her next sibling. I’m not worried anymore about the next several months of pregnancy or even the outcome of the pregnancy or Isaac’s life. I’m not worried about how long it will be before we can get pregnant again. I have faith in all of these things, however they work out. If I look at the past, present and future as one eternal truth as God does, what I see is my family- Me, Scott, Sydney, Isaac, our future children and grandchildren, the family that came before us and those who will come after us- together. That vision will be reality, in the blink of an eye. In some sense, it already is reality. I don’t doubt that Isaac will act as a guardian angel for our family as we dwell here on earth, and I don’t doubt that our ancestors and our future children are already acting as our guardian angels here on earth. But there will come a time when we will literally be with them again, all together, all made possible by our Savior Jesus Christ, through His atonement and the great Plan of Salvation.

As for the time being, I still cry at times, it is only natural; But more than the tears that drip down my cheeks is the amount of gratitude that I have for being given this marvelous opportunity to carry this miracle with me during his short life here on earth,  for the trust Heavenly Father has given us to be his parents and love him and do what is best for him, and to trust us enough, and BLESS us enough to grow our faith and understanding of the Gospel and become more like Him, which is ultimately what will lead to our eternal salvation, when and where we will “soon” live with and grow with our son, even Isaac Asher Walton, together with the rest of our family. What a gift. It is only a matter of time, and what we do with it.