PinWheels From Heaven

Yesterday we had home teachers (members of our church who are assigned to watch over our family and teach a monthly message)  come to visit our family.  As they were trying to teach us a little message they asked a question and then turned to my 6 year old daughter and said "Okay, let's start with the youngest."  To which she replied, "Well, that is Hope, but, she is in Heaven."   It was so cute!!!

It touched my heart to have her totally validate Hope's little life and recognize her place in our family.  My 6 year old takes great delight that she is NOT the youngest child, that she has two siblings below her even if they are in Heaven.  :)

I am in shock, disbelief, angry, and extremely heartbroken for Angel Liam's Mommy, Becky.  I am so very sorry Becky that your sweet little rainbow baby, Evelynn, became an angel this week.  I was so excited for you this week that you would finally be able to meet your sweet daughter, I'm glad you got a couple of days with her, but, this is so unfair and cruel to have her taken from you so soon.  I will never understand why Mommy of Angels who have already endured the death of one baby have to go through it again--life at times is so unfair.   Dear God, help us all to see the sun behind these dark clouds.

Becky, on the day of your daughters birth and her angel day I was taking sunrise pinwheel pictures for 2 other angel babies, I know these angel babies, Hope & Jonathan, would gladly share these sunrise pictures with Evelynn.

Today it is 10 days to Hope Abigail's 1st Angel Birthday.  In honor and remembrance of the 10 precious weeks I carried her, I am wearing a yellow shirt each day through May 7th.  I'd almost rather be wearing black because that is how I really feel like a big stormy rain cloud, but, maybe my yellow shirts will help me find a small peace and joy that I don't feel right now.

May 2011

2012

Remember this Countdown Chart I posted about a couple of months ago?


This Chart is counting down the days until our family leaves on our vacation, well, this is what it looks like this week:

I can't believe there are only 2 weeks left until we leave for Arches National Park!!!  I'm excited to be able to get away for a while.  The only problem with this chart is that it has also been a big reminder of  Hope's Angel Birthday too, because we leave the week of her angel birthday.


I'm not excited for that day, I don't want to remember another angel babies 1st birthday, I want to be celebrating her 5 month birthday instead.  This week is the last "happy pregnancy" memories I have of Hope.  Next week I get to relive one of the worst weeks of my life as every day was either a day filled with hope that everything was going to be okay or despair that everything was falling apart, back and forth every other day until my miscarriage of Hope.  Here's a couple of other posts I wrote right after I miscarried Hope:  SILENT GRIEF, I MISS. 

It's going to be a long 2 weeks I hope I can survive all the emotional hurricanes next week.

Because of my vacation coming up, any pinwheel picture requests I receive now, I will place on my waiting list, but, I probably won't be able to get to them until after May 20th.

I have to share this picture I took as I was doing pinwheel pictures this morning.  The sunrise this morning was AMAZING!!  Tesha this sunrise was for you--a personal message of love from Heavenly Father and your little angel Jonathon. <3  Happy 3 month Angel Birthday Jonathon!

15 days until Hope's 1st Angel Birthday.  I'm going crazy already remembering the awful things that happened the week of my miscarriage.  I'm really critical of myself right now.  Every little thing I do wrong I end up hating myself and telling myself what a terrible mother I am and that I can't do anything right.  And then it all comes back to the fact that I feel so awful because I didn't keep my babies safe while they were inside me, even though there is nothing I could have done to prevent their deaths.  Hope's miscarriage eats at me even more than Janessa's because she was my rainbow baby, she was my hope to make up for  not keeping Janessa safe.  To have lost Hope almost a year after Janessa was a big blow to my self esteem and self confidence and now everytime I get closer to those yearly anniversary dates it is hard to feel like I'm good at anything anymore.  It was my job to keep my babies safe and to feel like I failed twice at that is almost unbearable.

Days like today I'm not functioning in real life very well.  I was trying to read a chapter of the story Sarah Plain and Tall to one of my daughters and as Anna is describing how she felt when her baby brother was born and then her mother died I just burst out bawling.  I'm sure my daughter thinks I've lost it.  I just feel so emotional right now that everything is causing me to burst out in tears.  I'm trying to hide all these feelings and just let it be a silent grief instead, but, there is a hole in my dam and the water keeps leaking through.

15 days until all those awful memories of my miscarriage come bursting through the deep, dark, memory file I tried to shove them into.  15 days that were the last I had with my little baby Hope.  I think I will wear something yellow or something with a heart or ladybug on it in rememberance of those last 15 days, every day until May 7th because those are the symbols that remind me of Hope Abigail.

15 days until the anniversary of when my life fell apart again. I feel like yelling and screaming and throwing a temper tantrum again.  I don't want these days to go by, I don't want her birthday to get any closer, I want to curl up in a ball, hug her little bear and just cry and cry and cry.

I finally moved the pinwheels out of my flower bed and into their own pinwheel garden.  It has been a lot of experimenting to see what worked best and I'm still not sure if I'm completely happy with the final outcome, but, I guess I'll leave it like this for a while and then make changes if I need to. 

In the center of the pinwheels is a Wishing Well that eventually will have forget-me-not flowers planted inside it.  I chose the Wishing Well because it symbolizes the following to me:

My daughter was asked to be a speaker at her seminary building dedication today.  She started going to seminary 4 years ago in a makeshift tent, then a portable, and now they finally have a permanent seminary building.  She did an AWESOME job on her talk.  I know she was asked to speak partly because she needed to go through the experience, and I think because God had a message for me today at that seminary dedication that I wouldn't have gone to if she hadn't been speaking.  I went there happy to support my daughter and to hear her talk, but, I walked away with my spiritual bucket filled to the rim.  I was not expecting that at all this morning.

One of the seminary teachers quoted the story from the bible where Jesus is to feed the large crowd of people and all He has is 5 loaves and 2 fishes.

Matthew 15:36

Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. 

And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

 And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes.

 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.

 And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

He emphasized that the first thing Jesus does is GIVE THANKS for what he does have.  He said we can spend our lives thinking about what we don't have or we can look at what we do have and give thanks for that.  He also quoted Paul and the things he learned  after the many trials that he went through.  One of the things he learned was to be content with what he had.

Philippians 4:11, 13

 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be ^acontent.  I can do all things through ^aChrist which ^bstrengtheneth me.

I'm participating with the Grieving Mommies Link Up today being hosted by Tesha at Tesha's Treasures.  This is a way to connect with other grieving Mommies.

My name is Shauna and my life dramatically changed March 9, 2010, when my 6th daughter, Janessa, was born sleeping (stillborn).  I was and am devasted by the loss of my precious angel.  I felt so lost and confused because I didn't know anyone who had had a stillborn baby.  No one knew how to treat me or act around me because I was the only one in the neighborhood who this had happened to.  It seemed unreal--I thought babies don't die now-a-days this isn't pioneer days this is the 21st century!! At first I couldn't accept what had happened.  I felt completely alone and like I had acquired some awful contagious disease that people didn't want to catch so they didn't speak to me or avoided me.  I endured those tramatic feelings for 6 months until I found a SHARE Grief Class.  At that class I met other women who had gone through similar experiences and I can not even begin to express how that helped me not feel so alone.  I finally felt like I belonged somewhere--even if it was in a group I didn't want to be a part of. 

Right before Janessa's 1st Angel birthday I was introduced to the world of blogging by an online friend, Christy, who had loss her precious angel, Declan, 6 months after I loss Janessa.  I was amazed to find other women online who again could relate to my grief.  Also, at this time, I made another online friend, Tiffany, (Names on the Sidewalk), who wrote Janessa's name in chalk and sent the picture to me.  It was such a wonderful experience to see Janessa's name written by someone else--it validated her life to me and that was a most precious gift.  As I made different requests to other women who reached out to others and wrote angel baby names it filled me with joy and peace and I knew that this is what I wanted to do.  I wanted to remember and honor Janessa by writing other angel babies names on pinwheel pictures--thus began PinWheels from Heaven.  I love being able to help other mommy of angels find a moment of peace on their hard grief journey by writing their baby's name.  What I wasn't expecting was the complete peace and joy that I gained each time I did a pinwheel picture.

Around this same time in March of 2011 that I began my blog, I found out that I was pregnant with our rainbow baby, Hope Abigail.  I was thrilled and scared all at the same time.  I dreamed about holding little Hope in my arms at Christmas time when she was suppose to be born and the healing and peace she would bring into our family.  Unfortunately, Heavenly Father had other plans for us.  At 10 weeks, over mother's day weekend, I miscarried Hope Abigail.  I was and am still devasted losing my precious rainbow baby.  I have learned that it doesn't matter how many weeks you are along (4-8-10-18-26-36, etc.)  carry your precious baby, a bond of love is formed and every loss rips a hole in your heart.  I am still trying to put my broken heart and the pieces to my broken life back together again.

Somedays I am able to move forward on this hard journey with grief as my traveling companion and I do okay.   Other days grief is a solid brick wall that stops my journey completely.  I guess some of the biggest comforts are knowing that I am not alone, my Heavenly Father cares and is there to help me, and I have found great comfort in meeting (even if it is only online) other mommy of angels and know that they understand what this is like also.