From Wit’s End

Well, we had another all-company meeting today at 11am, and the result is in: My factory is closing.

Rachel and I have been mentally preparing ourselves for this possibility in the past month, so we were ready for this. Though it’s jarring, it’s definitely a relief, too.

We have a number of things to do and decisions to make, so I would ask your prayers about the following:

• Pray for that God would put us where he wants us as a family, and puts me where he wants to employ me.
• Pray about whether we should sell or rent our house. We want to make a data-based decision and be good stewards of what the Lord has provided for us.
• Pray that we would have peace through the holidays while contemplating an uncertain immediate future.
• Pray that we would be stable as a family until and immediately after Nora is born.
• Pray for all the other employees and families affected by this. [On my way home for lunch, I passed by a manufacturing coach comforting a crying female associate.]

I think its going to be hard for everyone to care very much now that everyone knows that its going to end in about a year. There will be the opportunity to go up to Newport News and take up the work there, but I know there are many like me who are not willing or able to do that.

That’s about it for now. Thanks for listening and being here for us.

We heard the results of the genetic test on our second child from the doctor today. He is a boy, and he passed away because his genes had the flaw known as Trisomy 18. If you are familiar with Down’s Syndrome, that is Trisomy 21. Trisomy 18 (a.k.a. Edwards Syndrome) is an unsustainable genetic anomaly: most of the babies die in the womb, and the rest of them survive a short time after they’re born, but not usually very long. My mom told me this afternoon that she once attended a child with this anomaly when she was a nurse back in the day, and it involved a lot of machines and some miserable decisions made by the parents in the end.

So God was most merciful in taking little Noël when he did. I’m still looking forward to meeting him.

We found out at a regular checkup appointment this afternoon that our second child no longer has a heartbeat. We are numb, frustrated, and sad. The doctor told us that we probably won’t ever know how or why. Apparently, the child passed away a day or two after Christmas, and never made it into the new year.

Last week, we got into a new routine with Jack at bedtime. He gets his milk while we change him into his pajamas, and then he goes into his crib and his dad reads aloud until he falls asleep. The Lord saw to it that we happened to read the following passage from George MacDonald’s Adela Cathcart. Jack’s dad didn’t read this without weeping, but it expresses the solid Hope that we have in the midst of our mourning.

“…the broad-browed [preacher] began with something like this:”

“It is not the high summer alone that is God’s. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man’s winters are His — the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness — even ‘the winter of our discontent.’”

“Winter,” he went on, “does not belong to death, although the outside of it looks like death. Beneath the snow, the grass is growing. Below the frost, the roots are warm and alive. Winter is only a spring too weak and feeble for us to see that it is living. The cold does for all things what the gardener has sometimes to do for valuable trees: he must half kill them before they will bear any fruit. Winter is in truth the small beginnings of the spring.”

“The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need: My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak, and foolish; you must become a child-my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.

But one may say to me: ‘You are talking in a dream. The Son of God is a child no longer. He is the King of Heaven.’ True, my friends. But He who is the Unchangeable, could never become anything that He was not always, for that would be to change. He is as much a child now as ever he was. When he became a child, it was only to show us by itself, that we might understand it better, what he was always in his deepest nature. And when he was a child, he was not less the King of Heaven; for it is in virtue of his childhood, of his sonship, that he is Lord of Heaven and of Earth-’for of such’-namely, of children-’is the kingdom of heaven.’ And, therefore, when we think of the baby now, it is still of the Son of man, of the King of men, that we think. And all the feelings that the thought of that babe can wake in us, are as true now as they were on that first Christmas day, when Mary covered from the cold his little naked feet, ere long to be washed with the tears of repentant women, and nailed by the hands of thoughtless men, who knew not what they did, to the cross of fainting, and desolation, and death.”

“So, my friends, let us be children this Christmas. Of course, when I say to anyone, ‘You must be like a child,’ I mean a good child. A naughty child is not a child as long as his naughtiness lasts. He is not what God meant when He said, ‘I will make a child Think of the best child you know-the one who has filled you with most admiration. It is his child-likeness that has so delighted you. It is because he is so true to the child-nature that you admire him. Jesus is like that child. You must be like that child. But you cannot help knowing some faults in him-some things that are like ill-grown men and women. Jesus is not like him, there. Think of the best child you can imagine; nay, think of a better than you can imagine-of the one that God thinks of when he invents a child in the depth of his fatherhood: such child-like men and women must you one day become; and what day better to begin, than this blessed Christmas Morn? Let such a child be born in your hearts this day. Take the child Jesus to your bosoms, into your very souls, and let him grow there till he is one with your every thought, and purpose, and hope. As a good child born in a family will make the family good; so Jesus, born into the world, will make the world good at last. And this perfect child, born in your hearts, will make your hearts good; and that is God’s best gift to you.

“Then be happy this Christmas Day; for to you a child is born. Childless women, this infant is yours-wives or maidens. Fathers and mothers, he is your first-born, and he will save his brethren. Eat and drink, and be merry and kind, for the love of God is the source of all joy and all good things, and this love is present in the child Jesus.

I know now today, that sadness can be like a wound: the only way to keep it clean while it is healing is with tears. Without tears, a sadness can become infected and unhealthy. So we will be nursing this wound for the near future. And I suppose every Christmas from now on will have a certain amount of sadness for us, as this one will leave its scar. But it will be countered by the hope that we have that Jesus will take good care of our second child until we meet again in the next world, where it will always be Christmas and never winter.

Rachel was feeling tired this evening, so we ordered pizza for dinner tonight. I kept it in the oven for a little while to let Rachel finish pumping some milk to save to feed Jack. She was bummed out this evening, because she convinced herself that Jack isn’t getting enough nourishment, he isn’t growing fast enough and that this makes her a bad mother. We resolved to call the doctor for his opinion the next day, but this didn’t keep her from worrying herself out. We took a walk after dinner, with me holding the dog leashes, Nik pushed Jack’s stroller, and she lagged behind the whole time. When we got back, Rachel went to the back room to feed Jack, and Nick and I each had a bowl of ice cream.

I heard Jack crying back there, but he sometimes does this before he settles down to feed, so I didn’t think anything of it, until I realized that the crying had been going on longer than usual. I went to the back of the house and found Rachel crying too. “What did I do wrong??” she said. I took Jack from her to give her a few minutes to calm down, and I asked her where the bottle of milk she pumped was. It was already in the freezer, apparently. She tried to get the bottle warmer to work but couldn’t. She took Jack back, who was still fussing pretty bad, and tried to get him to feed again. I found the instructions for the bottle warmer on the maker’s website, and got it working. I finished my half-melted ice cream, and then took the bottle out of the warmer. It was too hot! I stuck it in the fridge for a few minutes, got its temperature down a bit, and took it to the back of the house. Jack had slowly calmed down and was feeding tolerably well. Rachel thought the bottle was still a bit too warm, so it was put aside. I suggested that Rachel call a friend, L., who has a few kids, for her perspective and for a friendly ear, and she eventually agreed. Jack took to the bottle pretty well, too, so he was doing better. I called up L., and she asked if she should come over. “She can come over if she wants to,” Rachel answered. “For her, that’s a “yes”,” I said to L., passing on the message. L. said that she would be over in about ten minutes.

By this time, it was almost 9pm, and Rachel suggested I check up on Nik, who I had almost forgotten about while trying to help Jack and Rachel. When I came into the den, I found Nik crying. All the crying had frayed his nerves, I guess, and he was feeling a little homesick, too [Nik is Rachel's 8-year-old brother and is staying with us for the week for VBS at our church]. I hugged him, asked him to forgive me for forgetting about him, and suggested that I read him a book. We sat down to Shel Silverstein’s book “The Giving Tree”, and about halfway through the story, he had stopped sobbing, and by the end of the story, he was smiling again. Rachel’s friend L. got there about that time, and Nik and I left them in the living room to talk, and went into the den to read “Runaway Bunny”, which Nik hadn’t heard of but liked very much. He also enjoyed a couple of silly Homestar Runner toons, too.

After about 40 minutes, L. went home, Rachel was feeling better, and Nik was ready for bed. We battened down the hatches for the night, and Rachel thanked me for being there for everybody.

All I can say is, tomorrow should be better.