"When you give and when you take away, even then still Your Name is faithful "

My blog post heading, is a part of one of my now favorite songs by Steven Curtis Chapman !

I have been contemplating whether or not to share with everyone the days after we found out we lost Amber, and when we had her in the hospital.... After we sang the song " Faithful  " by Chapman today in church, and my eyes filled with tears as I recounted the day we had with Amber, I knew God was wanting me to share.

So we found out on a Friday that we no longer had a baby on earth, and that gave us the whole weekend to process it. After the ultrasound, we went and picked up the kids at my parents and they asked how it went, etc. we told them we lost Amber and they prayed for us. I remember getting pizza for dinner that night, and going to bed with a heavy heart.

 Sunday came, and we knew we wanted to be in our church so we got ready to go and we had only told a couple people that we had lost Amber and those people came up to us on Sunday and said " Why are you here "? And both James and my response  was " What better place to be than with Gods people" ?
 The kids weren't being that good in the service, so James stayed in the sanctuary while I took the younger two in the cry room ( it has a window so you could still watch the service, which is nice ) and some friends were in there and I told them about Amber. They said I was handling it so well.  I really hate crying in front of people, so I think that it just appeared I was doing well on the outside, and the inside was all broken up 😔
When it came time for communion, James went up and got communion, and came back to sit down, and I could see him and asked my friend " Is he crying " ? And she said he was trying to hold back the tears. I wanted to go be with him, so I went in and we just held each other and cried.
We came home and saw there was two dozen pink roses on James' windshield of his truck. And a card that said " Jesus has got your little girl " and made reference to the verse in Matthew where it talks about Jesus telling His disciples to let the children come to him. There was no signature though but from the handwriting, I knew it was from my brother Isaac ( we have had differences and he had chose not to talk to me for about a year ) and looked and James and said " I just can't believe it !!

Monday came and I made an appointment with the doctor in town who delivered these kinds of babies. James and I went in that afternoon, and I wrote down about 30 questions about the procedure to ask the doctor, and I remember filling out all this paperwork since I had not been to see her before. I was still in a fog and wondered why they would ask someone in my condition all these questions. I filled them out and we got taken back to a room.
The doctor came and did a physical and let me know that she wanted to get Amber out asap so I wasn't in any danger, and we could start as early as that night. James said that it would be best to wait until the next morning, which was a Tuesday.
She then proceeded to tell me that we likely would never know why Amber died, but that it did not have anything to do with James or I since we had had three healthy kids before and it wasn't anything that I did either. We went home and James asked me if I wanted to bury her and I said I wanted to just leave her at the hospital, then he said he needed to work out in the garage for a little bit. While he was outside, some of our friends, the VanderBekenes brought us a meal which was really nice. I went out to get James and I saw he had made a little bed for sweet Amber go lay in after we had her 😭 what a sweet husband.
I wanted to call Isaac and thank him for the flowers so I got on the phone, called and left a message and told him how much it meant to me that he gave me flowers and started to cry at the end and said I loved him and hung up.  About 15 minutes later, we see a truck pull up and Isaac comes up to the door.
James opens it and Isaac and I didn't even say anything. We just hugged and sobbed as we said that we loved each other, and I kept saying I had never stopped loving him and he kept apologizing and said he just felt sick when he heard that we lost Amber. I told him that if was the only good I see, for God giving Amber death, to bring life back into our relationship, it was worth it for God to call Amber home so soon. He stayed for little bit and he said that we would be at hospital for us in the morning. I remember going to bed with a smile on my face and thanking the Lord for the good he brought about amidst the sorrow 😊
Well I thought I would get to the hospital part, but it looks like I'll save it for next time !