Remembering Grace

Remembering Grace

Five years ago today, I had reached 25 weeks of pregnancy with our second child – a baby sister for Benjamin, then 19 months old. The pregnancy was progressing well so, when I hadn’t felt much movement for 24 hours, I wasn’t panicked as I phoned the doctor to a “quick” check that all was well, just before Christmas. It wasn’t. The doctor found no heartbeat, and, an hour later, at the hospital, a scan confirmed that our baby had died. Three days later, in the early hours of the 27^th December, Grace Tennant was stillborn, weighing little over 1lb. As she was born post-24 weeks, she has a birth certificate, a ‘real’ place in history – a small but important thing to us, when we had to register her birth at the town hall a few days later.

To sum up the ensuing days, weeks and months that followed that week is impossible – sadness, anger, despair, questions, mixed with gratitude for the deep love and support of family and friends, which held us together and got us through the early days. Now, as months have turned to years, I can see and reflect on the slow, gentle sense of God drawing me onwards to a more stable place of hope, peace and security, from one where the world had very much come crashing down. Slow, but tangible and real. The “Footprints” poem has become a cliché to many (though do Google it if you’ve never read it!), but is a good reflection of the way that walking this path has felt at times.

I like to commemorate Grace on her birthday in writing - usually a cathartic working through of feelings, for a close and personal audience. This year it feels like the right time to be a bit more public…not sure why…perhaps there is someone walking a similar path (or a very different one, with different griefs and disappointments, even more painful and far-reaching than mine), who will read it and feel afresh that there can be hope and healing for them too, even if it still seems far off.

The first piece is a poem I wrote a year ago. The second is a reflection I wrote this year, as the anniversary began to loom.  It means so much that others commemorate her with me. And endless thanks to those who have walked and continue to walk this path with me. I couldn’t have got this far without you all.

Christmas Baby

A Christmas baby –
not the kind we’d assume would arrive,
full of warmth, life, cuddles, joy,
but stillness; silence.
The cot, painfully empty.
Exiting the delivery suite
with no special delivery.
Empty, hurting, reeling,
wondering how this could ever be redeemed.

Another Christmas baby,
two thousand years before.
Saviour,
God-made-babe,
reaching through time to hold
hurting hearts and hands,
cradling my babe
in his scarred palms,
encircling my pain
in his outstretched arms,
replacing the death of hopes for the future,
with a different future.

My Christmas baby
has meaning
through the other Christmas baby.
My Christmas baby
lives
through the other Christmas baby,
and all he would become,
all he did,
on a cross,
far removed from the joy of his birth.

Remembering my Christmas baby,
but differently now,
knowing that the other Christmas baby,
who became
the perfect, Easter sacrifice,
feels my pain,
heals my pain,
loves me through the darkest valleys of remembrance
and draws me through,
stronger in his strength,
softer through his touch
in my heartbreak.

Christmas baby,
Sinless saviour,
Perfect sacrifice,
when the time comes
and forgetting gives way to remembering –
memories stir,
tears flow,
pain stabs –
remind me of the healing, joy and hope,
shown so powerfully
to all men,
when you became
that Christmas baby,
who holds my Christmas baby
and all she left behind,
in your perfect, healing,
outstretched
hands.

G. Tennant
6th December 2013
Remembering Grace Tennant, 4 years on.

 Reflection

As the season of goodwill and sparkly Christmas decorations comes rapidly upon us, so too does Grace’s ‘birthday’. Each year, in the run-up to both, it feels like two incongruous opposites are in play. Surviving the annual remembrance of her silent birth, demands a little quiet, some withdrawal and a degree of reflection. In other seasons, this could easily be. But, as increasing lists of chores and presents mount, social occasions, friends and family demand greater-than-average efforts at warmth and jollity and church events are, rightly, upbeat and celebratory, it can be hard – so hard – to face Christmas and the memory of our tiny girl, side by side, clamouring equally for our allegiance.

Yet this year, there is a small shift. This year, I can reflect and be even slightly – very, very slightly and tentatively - ‘glad’ Grace ‘happened.’ Not glad for the cuddles I never had and the first words never spoken; not glad for the school dresses and tights I will now never buy (particularly as she would have started school this year – another anniversary silently marked in my mind alone), but glad for the legacy she has left behind.  Experiencing such pain has left me better equipped to stand with others in their pain – to empathise, reach out, reach in. Not to understand it fully – no one can ever claim that of another’s pain – but to notice. To hold and encourage. To pray. To help them remember and point them back again to a God who didn’t cause their pain (we live in a fallen world where pain happens), but who holds them in their pain, can heal their wounds and draw them through it, stronger on the other side.

So, this year, I am grateful for Grace. Her name reflects all of God’s, which helped – and still helps – us through the painful path we walked – and still walk. I will still sit and reflect, late into the night of her birth. I will probably still shed some tears of sadness at the memory of the brokenness of that cold, December night. But I will do so, knowing, more than ever, that God held me as I held her and that He still does, as I hold her memory – and trust with a conviction that increases year on year, that good will – has already – come from this and that He works all things together for good.

G Tennant, 7th Nov 2014

Remembering Grace Tennant, 5 years on

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8 v 28