Peace Like a River

For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. Isaiah 66:12

On Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, we grieved for Abigail. My heart broke. Bill's heart broke. We cried and we toyed with hope and then felt hopeless again.

On Wednesday, we went to the temple.

In the temple we do vicarious work for those who have already passed, and the veil is thin there. People have seen visions and felt the presence of loved ones long gone on. As we go through a ceremony of an ordinance for someone else who has left his or her body behind on earth, we also get to remember when we went through this ceremony for ourselves, and it's a beautiful reconnection with God. It's a time when we remember our promises to Him and His incredible promises to us. Bill had a family name, an ancestor whose ordinance work hadn't been done yet, and he brought a little piece of paper with that name to the temple to go through the ceremony on his behalf. I didn't bring a family name, but planned on getting one in the temple. On our way in, we met with a woman who asked me to take one of her ancestors' names for the ceremony.

This was our first time in the Payson temple. We moved up here in July, at the very beginning of my pregnancy and hadn't been able to get all our temple things together to go until now. I looked up at the beautiful building and took a deep breath. Temples have always been places where the Prince of Peace can reach me with His peace. We went inside, changed into white clothes, and met in the temple chapel where we waited with others who were about to perform the ordinance. We met Bill's parents there in that quiet, contemplative room. In the pews, there were book holders containing scriptures, and I picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon, opening it up randomly. It's one of my favorite ways to hear from God. I opened it to Moroni chapter 7 and read:

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men?
....and because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay, neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men." (verses 27 and 29)

I silently thanked God for these passages of scripture which spoke to my heart and told me it was not at all wrong for me to pray for a miracle.

If you have walked through a temple prior to its dedication to the Lord as His house, you have seen a Celestial Room. It usually has a high ceiling and chandelier, and is like the Holy of Holies of ancient temples, except that instead of there being one priest allowed inside with a rope tied to his leg, all who have come to covenant with God in the temple are admitted into it. The ceremony ended here and we sat on a couch and prayed and whispered reverently to each other. I was happy to see my parents-in-law there, and they spoke words of comfort to us. Abigail will be ours forever. She will not ever be truly gone. And she counts as one of our children. These true ideas had been difficult to get hold of. They kept slipping away from me as I was grieving before. But here, in this holiest place, I felt the truth and the comfort wash over me.

My soul experienced a vast transformation from the sorrow, anger, fear, and deep grief I had been feeling before. The grief was still there, but all fear and anxiety and anger disappeared. That night, I slept sweetly and awoke with words from the ceremony running through my mind. I repeated them in my mind over and over again, cherishing them and turning them into a prayer for Abigail. God's promises are sure. His love is real. His peace is unlike anything this world has to offer.

On the previous Monday, I had stopped by a store to pick up some clothes for Bill, and almost hit a whole flock of seagulls, Utah's state bird, sitting there on the asphalt.

Seagulls are the state bird of Utah for a very special reason. It hearkens back to the days of the Mormon pioneers who settled here and experienced the highs and lows of farm life right off the bat. A whole crop of wheat, still tender in the fields, was being devoured by a swarm of locusts. The pioneers went out with pans and bonnets and anything they had to beat back the swarm in a desperate attempt to save their fields from the devourers. And they prayed for a miracle. God sent an enormous migration of seagulls to devour the devourers and the pioneers were saved.

When I was a teenager, only fourteen years old, my mother made me a gorgeous pioneer dress with a full-circle skirt for dancing so I could be part of a pioneer play called Promised Valley. I didn't play a specific character, but I did get to sing and dance and act, and I will never forget taking off my bonnet and smashing at invisible "crickets" during the scene that reenacted this miracle. Seeing these seagulls at such a moment, when I was in the middle of my worst grief was a small miracle. And yet, I had so much trouble accepting it. It was as if they represented someone else's miracle, not mine. At that point, I was sure I would not be receiving a miracle. Who can argue with an ultrasound image like that? My baby was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. No amount of healthy eating or daily walking would change what was. Neural tube defects are not something that resolves by itself in the womb before birth. 
It was just a flock of seagulls.

But I took a picture and kept it in my heart.

Sunday, that permission from the Lord to pray for and hope for miracles soothed my soul, and I came to see the seagull as a symbol not just for their miracle, but for all miracles.

Right next to the women's dressing room in the Payson temple is a giant painting of a pioneer woman holding a little girl while looking down at the sunflowers that have fallen from the little girl's hands. The expression on her face held me captive as I passed it, and I stood for several moments just connecting with her in her sense of loss. I knew that she was grateful for the child in her arms but that, all the same, she was experiencing grief. I knew that look because I had been wearing it for the past several days.

Loss looks the same on everybody, I guess.

And yet, there was a quiet strength in her visage, and I drew strength from that, too. Not only did this pioneer woman survive through everything that had happened to her, but she was only just beginning to create the foundations of a beautiful culture in a new land. She had more to give, even though her heart had been broken. There was just so much of the tragic and hopeful mixed in this painting, that I couldn't get it out of my head. The next morning, I was still thinking about it, and talked to my husband about how it had made me feel. Then I started singing a hymn: Blessed, Honored Pioneer. I didn't even know I knew so many of the words to that song. It is rarely sung except on July 24th, for Pioneer Day in Utah. I decided to look up the painting so I could see it again, and was awestruck when I saw the title: Blessed Honored Pioneer.

I cannot reproduce the picture here, but if you'd like to see it you can either visit the Payson Temple yourself or see it on the artist's website. Because it was commissioned for the temple, it is not sold in prints anywhere, so these are the only places you can see it.

Blessed Honored Pioneer

As if this weren't enough communication from heaven, there was more as the day progressed. On my way to class, I began to feel the anxiety creeping in again, and I determined to hold on a little longer to the peaceful spirit from the temple. I turned on the narrator on my Gospel Library app and listened to Moroni chapter 7 read aloud to me while I drove. It was comforting to hear those words again, and in the context of the chapter. It was a letter from Moroni's father, Mormon, to him. My scripture app automatically went to chapter 8 when chapter 7 was finished (it's a long drive) and I was startled to realize that the very next chapter was about infants who die without baptism, or the baptism of infants.

Verse 8: Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them...

Little children are WHOLE!

For a mother with a baby that had just been diagnosed with a defect that left her without parts of her skull, brain, and face, these words could not have come with greater power. I was struck by the word "whole." It is comforting to know that my baby, whether she dies in the womb or lives a few hours or days, will be whole in Christ. When I meet her, on this side or the other side, I will see her that way, knowing she is whole eternally because of Christ.

I am thankful for the temple, for scriptures, the word of God, and the power of music and art in communicating to my heart. There is so much to be grateful for, though I still don't understand why this has happened and is happening. I know we are not alone. As my mother keeps reminding me, God loves me and God loves Abigail, and He has a beautiful plan. I just have to believe that there is beauty in this and that one day I will see it.