I woke up at three o’clock this morning with Willie Nelson in my head singing
“You Were Always On My Mind”
(you can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDGiSoLIG8I.)
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I’m sorry I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
And maybe I didn’t hold you
All those lonely, lonely times
I guess I never told you
I’m so happy that you’re mine
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied
I’ll keep you satisfied
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Willie is singing of a woman that he loves.
I am thinking of the child that I never held.
We are the parents of two amazing sons who are now in their forties.
Which is amazing since I don’t feel that much older myself!
In between their births there was a child that never was – according to those who believe in abortion.
They say a child isn’t really a child until it is born.
But I for me – I was a mother at the moment of conception.
I talked to my baby within me and waited impatiently to meet my child face to face,
to count the fingers
and the toes
to smell that “new baby smell.”
I wore maternity clothes at the first swelling of that “baby bump.”
That is how it was for my first pregnancy and for my second and for my third.
The first birth was a baby boy who looked so much like his Daddy I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it.
And then much to my amazement the third birth was another baby boy who looked exactly like the first. It is difficult to tell who is who in their first year baby pictures.
The middle pregnancy was different.
I had just begun to wear maternity clothes and sharing the news that we were expecting.
And then one day things were just not right and so there was a visit to the OBGYN
where I was examined and then told to come out when I had dressed.
I went out into the hallway
and the doctor met me there and told me that there was no heartbeat,
that my body would “spontaneously abort.”
He assured me that it would be no problem
and that I should go on about my normal routine.
So I went back to the office wearing my maternity clothes.
With only a few close friends who knew what was happening it was a long lonely week.
What do you say to a woman who is obviously pregnant but knows it is not to be?
When I awoke that morning the cramping started and my husband went off to work.
He dropped our oldest son off at the babysitters.
Remember the doctor said it was no big deal.
But it turns out that it was a very big deal.
When it was over I crawled into a hot bath to relax my aching body and soothe my hurting spirit.
I then proceeded to hemorrhage.
My parents came and after an argument with the doctors office
called an ambulance to take me to the hospital.
I was in shock from the loss of blood and had to have a blood transfusion.
After a few days I returned home with empty arms.
A year later my arms were filled with my second son who also looked just like his Daddy!
We have many memories of those growing up years and now they are men with families of their own and we have grandchildren and great-grandchildren!
But I have never forgotten the child I have yet to meet.
One Sunday our pastor preached from the Book of Job.
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.
This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.
He had seven sons and three daughters,
and he owned seven thousand sheep,
three thousand camels,
five hundred yoke of oxen
and five hundred donkeys,
and had a large number of servants. Job 1:1-3
Job suffered a calamity.
He lost everything, sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, servants, and his children.
But . . .
The Lord blessed the later part of Job’s life more than the first.
He had fourteen thousand sheep,
six thousand camels,
a thousand yoke of oxen
and a thousand donkeys.
And he also had seven sons and three daughters. Job 42:12-13
When God restored Job
He gave back twice the camels,
twice the oxen,
and twice the donkeys.
Job received double of everything but his children
because he never really lost his children.
I was in tears at the end of that sermon
because it reminded me that I hadn’t really “lost” my child.
I just hadn’t met him or her yet.
The older I get the more this child is “always on my mind.”
When we were expecting a visit from our granddaughter and great-granddaughter last summer I was in a state of great anticipation.
And the closer it got to their arrival date the more excited I got.
The closer I get to my “going home” date the more excited I am about meeting my middle child.
You are always on my mind
You are always on my mind
I didn’t get to tell you
How much you meant to me
I didn’t get to kiss you
Or hug you or bounce you on my knee
But you are always on my mind . . .
downacountryroadblog 
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I am very sorry for your loss. My wife and I suffered the same loss forty-one years ago. There was nothing that the doctor had anticipated that my wife would lose our child, in a trip to the bathroom (you know what I mean). The memory of such a special person, whom Hillary said has no constitutional rights, doesn’t go away. You can imagine why she used those words. (I’m sorry for rambling). Reading your story was difficult for me… I was a guest speaker at a church about four years ago. As I was meeting with the church leaders prior to the time that I would be speaking, I received a thought (guess who gave it to me), which I turned into a question. I asked those men if anyone in the congregation had recently lost a child; they acknowledged that there was such a woman who would be present. Prior to my stepping to the pulpit, a man very discretely pointed to that special woman; she was seated to my right, as I looked into the sanctuary, about one third of the way down that aisle; she had dark hair. I felt great compassion and pain for the woman.. Before I began speaking my message to the church, I mentioned that the words would be for a special person, without identifying the person. I sang, without music, “His eye is on the sparrow.:” it was difficult. In my message, I spoke about astronauts, and that, regardless of the distance that they may fly away from our earth, even if their flight may never end, God’s Presence would always be with them; He would never leave them… I trust that you will always know that your child is in the Presence of God, and will never be elsewhere. Btw, Dr. Louis Pasteur developed the law of biogenesis. He stated that life comes from existing life; I believe his belief. … Btw, thank you very much for following my blog. I am not a pastor.
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