Check it out!

It's been sooo long since I've posted but I have some pretty exciting news. I am now the blog moderator for The Haven Network's blog. It is a big honor for me to be able to minister to the families at The Haven Network like they have ministered to us. I'm never very confident in myself but I'm hoping that my short little posts will allow some discussion and healing for these families.

The blog can be found at:

http://www.thehavennetwork.org/blog/

I would love to hear from you if you have any other ideas for topics!!

I LOVE Haven Network

We've talked about Haven Network a lot on here (the perinatal hospice that helped us out so much and the one that we donated to for Virginia's 1st birthday) and we'd like to brag on them a little bit more here. We are so thankful that they don't just leave the family after the loss of their baby but continue to walk alongside of them in their journey.

Today I received a package from them with a very encouraging note. I also got this beautiful necklace that I will treasure forever.

July 13

I woke up this morning and knew that today was a special day for some reason. I started to think back to a year ago and went up to look at our "rainbow baby's" journal and sure enough it was a year ago today that we saw our little miracle for the first time. We were 5 weeks and 3 days at this appointment and we were so excited. I had to stop reading the journal because it was soo heartbreaking to read about our hope of this baby being born healthy.

It was very hard to lose Virginia but I think the loss of this baby was even harder because we didn't think that it would happen again to us.

We continue to pray so hard that God would bless us with a healthy baby. We have been around so many babies lately and Josiah will say Josiah's baby? so then he will pray that we will be able to have a baby. It breaks my heart so much because we know that he would be such a great big brother.

Happy Daddy's Day

We celebrated Father's Day today with Tim. I always try to make something for Father's Day with Josiah but I had no idea what to do so I posted on Facebook. One of my friends suggested that I get the letters D, A and Y and take pictures of Josiah holding the letters to spell out DADDY. I thought it was a fabulous idea (my sister and her friend did it too). I knew that I wanted a couple of pictures to remember Virginia with so I was able to get a couple of those in there too. I don't think I can ever make such a wonderful present again (at least until Josiah can make stuff by himself). Tim is such a wonderful dad to all of our kids and we are so thankful for him!

Josiah and Virginia

I feel bad that I haven't updated this blog in a while. We have been so busy as we have been adjusting to Tim working again after 4 months of being out of work. We have been so blessed during those 4 months--we never thought we would make it through but God has been so merciful to us and has blessed us with wonderful family, friends and church families as well. Our work schedules are so messed up but we are trying to spend as much time together as a family when we can and hope that some day it will return to a little bit more normal.

This month has been a difficult month with Virgina's 1st birthday starting off the month. I was dreading her birthday but that actually was the best day out of the whole experience because we had an AMAZING doctor and the delivery was the best gift that she could give me.

A couple of days later we had a scare with my dad being diagnosed with diabetes. It was actually a year to the date that Virginia was buried--and he went in for a physical and his blood sugar was HIGH and he had to go the ER. We are so thankful for the miracle that he had the physical and did not suffer any adverse side effects from the high blood sugar. Now he is doing super well with it and we are so thankful. We love him soo much and are so thankful for him!

A week after Virginia's birthday we received horrible news about a young girl from our church being killed in a car accident. Words cannot express the sadness that we have felt for this family. Our lives have been forever touched by the loss of this little girl and we will continue to celebrate each day with the ones that we have around us and realize that we can't take anything for granted.

This month we also celebrated Gloriana and Belladia's 1st birthdays. This was a little hard for us as we knew that Virginia should be here at the same age as them, but we are so thankful that they are here and that they are doing ok. We would appreciate your prayers for them as they have a couple of hurdles to overcome.

We were also able to celebrate this month the legacy that both of our parents have had as they both celebrated their 40th wedding anniversaries. We are so thankful for all of them and we seek to love each other for the rest of our lives.

I wanted to end this post with one of the sweetest things that Josiah has done this month. I was talking on the phone with my sister and Josiah made this cake out of paper plates and a can of soup and started singing Happy Birthday Geenya. It left me speechless and means so much to me that he loves his sister soo much!

(sorry it's crooked--it's not like that it my album and I can't fix it)

Happy 1st Birthday Virginia!

Tim, Josiah and I want to wish Virginia a Happy 1st Birthday! Your life has brought so much meaning to our lives. We are so thankful that the LORD has blessed us with you, even though you are not here with you us now you are forever in our hearts.

We will continue each day to talk about you and find ways to use your life to minister to other people. Virginia, you were such a fighter and we will continue to fight to ensure that people around us realize that your life was precious. We believe that your life had meaning the moment you were conceived and that whether you lasted only a day after conception or if you were 100 years old that God created you for a reason. We know that there are many people who don't even want to say your name or talk about you anymore and this breaks our heart. We love you so much and will never stop talking about you. We will always explain to people that even if you survived with a illness that we would have loved you and that it was not for the best that you died. Mommy hates to hear people say that. We are thankful that you were spared the suffering of your diagnosis but this world is full of suffering and no one is immune to it. We know too that God could have healed you completely as well.

We look forward to celebrating your life today and are so thankful that God provided us Dr. N. and allowed us to deliver you naturally. That was the most amazing experience for mommy and I am so thankful that you blessed my life with that experience. I can't even begin to explain how awesome that was. We rejoice that we were able to hold you and talk to you. We are so thankful too that Uncle Jeff was able to baptize you--what an awesome experience that was for us. We are so thankful too that we were able to get pictures of you being held by your great-grandma, Ida Virginia. We were also so blessed too that Grandpa Boss, Grandma Bulthuis and Grandpa and Grandma Krooswyk were also able to come out to the hospital with us and celebrate your life.

In our letter to you that we read at your funeral last year we knew that you were playing in heaven with other little babies including Matthew, Jeremiah, Brianna, Grace and Joshua--this year too we are saddened that Uncle Mart has joined you and your second cousin Kellan. We are celebrating your life today and look forward to the day that we can hold you in our arms forever.

Love,
Daddy, Mommy and Josiah

From Daddy May 1, 2010

Tim wrote this journal entry a year ago today and I read it and thought that it needed to be posted here:

I just keep telling myself there is a reason why God is putting us through all of this. So far, though, it seems a mystery. The last couple of weeks have certainly been a roller coaster. After riding an emotional high after the passing of our little angel and the lows associated with that news, we continued that ride into the hospital to deliver and the roller coaster was more or less shut down as we were sent home with the baby still inside Laura.

The past week has been very interesting as we changed our plans many times on how we would proceed next. I am so happy that we were able to come in to contact with Dr. N. and we will have another opportunity to give birth to our angel baby. I think it will bring us so much closure if we get to see our child, hold our child and love on our child. I will be taking another week off of work and the hope is that this leg of our journey will end over the course of that week. It will be extremely saddening for us to have to deal with the finality of everything but it will be instrumental in us finally beginning the healing process. Whatever that might be. Thanks be to God for blessing us with a Christian network of friends and family who continue to pray for us and encourage us. It was so hard last weekend feeling as though we had been defeated. SO many people praying and lifting us up and we felt like we let them down too. But we are confident that God's hand is in this and what happens next is His will. Though it is often difficult to accept that things are outside of our control, we are surrendering our will for His and praying that He will see us through even if it isn't always the way WE had planned it.

I never expected any of this to happen us but then I guess nobody does. We are not alone in this struggle--though it is terribly tragic, many others have experienced similar circumstances and continue to join with us in grieving but also in helping to move forward, helping us not to forget but also not to dwell. The best thing we can do is rejoice in the fact that our little angel is pefect and living an eternal life in Heavenly Glory.