Tag: Ollie James

Spirit, Lead me…

On By katiemeffordLeave a comment

I was cooking dinner in the kitchen tonight and told Alexa to play some praise and worship music. Truth be told, I was in a bit of a funk and needed Jesus to snap me out of it.

A few songs in “Oceans” by Hillsong United came on. Of course, a familiar song, I hummed along as I stirred the ground beef in the skillet for tacos. Towards the end of the song, there are a few lines that are repeated several times…

…Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior…

Oceans by Hillsong United

I found myself singing those words and my eyes welling with tears. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this song and prayed that prayer and just today I realized that He has done just that over the last few years….He continues to do so.

The difference is that when I prayed that song in worship before, I prayed it thinking and hoping that the road would be easy. In my prayer I imagined being someone who spent time with God daily, never wrestled with doubt, never asked God “Where are You? Do You even hear me? Do You remember me?” and certainly never got angry with God for the hand she was dealt. I prayed that the Lord would lead me where my trust was without borders but preferred if that area was safely and squarely in the middle of my comfort zone and picture perfect plan for my life.

But the truth is this road has been anything but easy. Losing my son has been devastating. Grieving has been all-consuming. Infertility has been exhausting. The last two and a half years have taken my faith and rattled it to it’s core.

When we were in the hospital just after Ollie was born, a sweet friend and mentor told Andrew and I some of the best advice I’ve received in this whole journey. She said “It’s okay to be angry at God. He can handle it. Just don’t turn your back on Him. You can yell at him, scream at him, and shake your fist as Him but at the end of it all, when your screams turn into tears, collapse in His arms and rest.” I had no idea in that moment that all of those things would come to pass. I would be so angry with God I couldn’t see straight, I would yell at Him while parked in a dark cemetery at night, I would give Him the silent treatment and go weeks without uttering even the simplest prayer.

But through it all, the Lord has been so sweet and patient to answer that prayer even in the midst of heartbreak. He has taken me deeper than my feet would’ve ever wandered alone. I probably would’ve chickened out about the time those waves started tickling my knees but He drew me deeper. What other choice did I have when my son’s heart stopped beating than to follow Him still? What choice do I have but to continue following Him through the waves of grief and the storm of infertility? He alone is the one who has sustained me when all I’ve wanted to do was crawl in the grave right beside Ollie’s casket since the day of his funeral end every day after. He alone picks my head up when a wave of grief has me pinned to the floor. He alone heals my heart and restores my soul when month after month, the pregnancy test still reads negative.

And so, one of my favorite quotes still rings true…

“I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.”

Charles Spurgeon

Hallelujah, even here.

-Katie

Grieving when life moves forward…

On By katiemefford1 Comment

It’s been one month since we laid our baby boy’s earthly body to rest in a cemetery just a few minutes up the road from us. On one hand, life seems to have rushed forward after we left the grave that day, and on the other, I still feel frozen in time, standing at the foot of Ollie’s freshly dug grave.

My mother has told me several times throughout tough seasons of grief, whether mine or that of someone close to me, that one of the hardest parts of grief is that the world moves on when your world seems to have come to a screeching halt. I’m not sure I understood that until Ollie but now it’s crystal clear.

In the days and weeks since Ollie passed, life never once slowed down outside of us. Countless times I have become frustrated and upset that the world….that God…..didn’t seem to “give us a break”. The past year or so before we lost Ollie was a hard one. Layoffs, car repairs, a totaled car, more car repairs and so many more moments of “Really, God? Can’t we catch a break?”…and then we lost Ollie. Somewhere in all of that, I figured we’d catch a break now. We’d lost the thing we wanted most, our son, so now, nothing else would happen for a while. Funny enough, we came home from the hospital after having said our goodbyes to Ollie and walked into a fridge that had somehow been left cracked open and all our food inside of it had gone bad. I remember making a joke about how God had a cruel sense of humor as we threw a fridge full of food away and ordered a pizza. I regret those words now but in the moment, that’s how I felt….that I had done something to anger God and now He was sitting in a cloud somewhere zapping us with hit after hit in order to punish us.

It wasn’t until I verbalized these thoughts out loud to my therapist that I realized how wrong I was. I told her that I kept wondering “How stubborn was I being that God had to take my son away to get a point across?” She paused briefly and said something along the lines of “Katie… That doesn’t sound very much like the God we serve, does it? ” and she was right. It’s not supposed to be this way. God didn’t design this world and speak it into existence with pain, suffering and death in mind. Sin brought those things into our world and it pains him every single time one of His children is hurt by it. It hurt His heart when Ollie died. He has grieved with us and walked along side us in this journey.

This morning in church, I had a realization that has further driven that point home for me. We were singing a song I’ve heard several times, “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship. There’s a line towards the end of the song that says “Our God has robbed the grave”. Now, growing up in church, I’ve heard that phrase several times too in reference to our Jesus that rose on the third day and defied death. In that moment though, I was thinking of Ollie and realized….Jesus robbed Ollie’s grave too. He took away death’s final say in Ollie’s life and in mine.

Death says “You will never see Ollie again.” but GOD says “You will see your boy again, perfect, healed and whole.”

HALLELUJAH! Death does not have the last word here.

While it is so easy for me to cry and scream in frustration over all that has happened (and, trust me, I still do. Just last night I asked Andrew through sobs if God was mad at me because we just can’t seem to catch a break), I’m beginning to see that I can choose how to grieve. I can grieve as though death has won or I can grieve with HOPE that God has the final say, not death.

Some days, I grieve as though death has won and those days are hard, hopeless, gut wrenching days. But on the days I choose to remember the truth of my grief, that I have hope in Christ that I will see my Ollie again, I grieve with hope. And yes, grieving with hope is still painful. It still knocks me to my knees at time and there are still so many tears for the loss of what we thought Ollie’s story would be, there is also joy. Joy that his story doesn’t end here and that one day, Ollie will be in my arms again.

The tomb where soldiers watched in vain
Was borrowed for three days
His body there would not remain
Our God has robbed the grave
Our God has robbed the grave (yes He has, yes He has)

Your name, Your name
Is victory
All praise, will rise
To Christ our king

By Your spirit I will rise
From the ashes of defeat
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me

In Your name I come alive
To declare Your victory
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
By Your spirit I will rise

“Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship

Butterflies & Sunsets

On By katiemeffordLeave a comment

I knew that the day we went home without Ollie would be one of the hardest. We had 54 perfect hours with him but we had to go home. That Sunday, it all felt so final. The last time I’d hold him, the last time time I’d kiss him, the last time I’d see him on this side of heaven. Andrew read him a book, we told him how much we loved him and wished his story included more time on earth with us. I whispered to him that he had a special assignment up in heaven….once God said we were ready, Ollie needed to pick out his little brother or sister and send them down to us. We signed all of the discharge papers, arranged for the funeral home to come pick his body up, handed our sweet boy over to the nurses, loaded our stuff onto a cart and left the hospital with empty arms.

The next morning, we met my mom at the funeral home to arrange when the funeral would be, see his casket and get all of the details figured out. They brought his casket into the room so we could arrange all of the things we wanted in there just how we liked them. We lined his casket with a blue blanket we’d bought that said “mama” and “dada” on it. On top of that we laid his bunny lovey that we’d bought when we found out we were pregnant, his knit cradle & cover from the amazing Bridget’s Cradle ministry that they would place him inside of, a wedding photo of Andrew & I, letters to him from Andrew & I, and his first Bible Storybook that his Yaya had bought him.

All the little things we chose to put in Ollie’s casket

I asked the lady at the funeral home if Ollie was there. I knew they were going to pick him up either the night before or that day. She told me he was and my heart jumped. We continued with the rest of the meeting and at the very end, I asked if I could see him again. She was hesitant, knowing his little body changed rapidly as time went on…but that didn’t matter to me. He was there and I needed to hold him again. We agreed to let my mom go see him and see if she thought I’d be okay seeing him in his current state. A few minutes later, my mom walked back in the room with a bundle of blankets containing my sweet Ollie James. Immediately the tears started flowing. When we’d left the hospital the night before, I thought I’d never get to hold him in my arms again. I unwrapped him from the blanket and held him close. I wanted to hold him forever. I would’ve just camped out at the funeral home all week if they’d let me but more things had to be done. We said goodbye to our Ollie again and continued on with the planning…. picking out flowers to go on his casket and picking his lot at the cemetery.

Holding Ollie one last time at the funeral home

The hard part of that I didn’t see coming was knowing my baby was still in my town, alone, at a funeral home and I wasn’t holding him. His funeral was not until the end of the week and knowing that he was still here, not yet buried, but I wasn’t holding him was hands down the hardest part of the week. Every single time I thought about that, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I would be lying if I said I didn’t wonder in the middle of the night how hard it would be to break into a funeral home to hold him again.

His funeral was Friday morning. We kept it small and simple. A graveside service with just Andrew & I, our parents, my siblings, and Pastor Anthony and his wife in attendance. It was short and sweet and so perfect, just like Ollie’s life. The flowers on his casket were a perfect combination of whites and soft blues, with touches of rosemary from my Mom’s garden, just like my wedding bouquet had in it. We stayed as they put him in the ground and filled his grave with dirt. I’m pretty sure if they’d let me, I would’ve just gotten in the grave with him. It felt as if they were burying my heart, and in a way, they were.

Ollie’s casket & flowers

I go back to his grave almost daily. In the days and weeks since losing him, I’ve felt what I can only explain as a feeling of emptiness, like something was hollowed out from deep within me. But when I go to his grave, I feel him there. I know it’s just his earthly body but it’s as though my heart knows he’s near. He sends me little signs when I’m there too…butterflies and beautiful sunsets.

The Journey Begins: Part One

On By katiemefford3 Comments

Andrew & I knew from the start that we wanted a family. We were married in January of 2017 and decided to give ourselves a year or two of “just us” before we started trying. Long story short, life has been pretty hectic and unpredictable the last two years or so. We kept saying we’d start a family once things slow down.

One day in February of 2019, I woke up and just could not stop thinking about how bad I wanted to have a baby. I decided to bring it up to Andrew that night after work. I fully expected a him to mildly panic and talk some sense back into me. Life hadn’t exactly slowed down, after all. But surprisingly, he had been thinking about it that day too. Instead of talking each other off the edge, we realized that this was it. We were ready to take the jump into parenthood and decided we would start trying the following month.

Due to being diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) in college, I was expecting it to take at least 6 months, if not more, to get pregnant. We started trying in March and…nothing. I decided for the sake of my sanity to chill out a bit on the ovulation tracking ( I had three apps tracking my fertility, y’all….THREE.) and just have fun. I’d start back to tracking in a few months if we weren’t pregnant by then.

On Thursday May 2, I realized I should have probably started that week. I shrugged it off because PCOS can make your body all out of whack. I decided I’d take a pregnancy test Friday morning, just to get it off my mind, fully expecting a big fat negative.

I get up for work during the week around five and I’m usually out the door before Andrew’s alarm goes off at six. When I woke up that morning, I went to our master bathroom and took a test. I sat it on the counter and started getting ready for the day. I kept glancing down at the test as the results started to show and ever so slightly, a faint second line started to appear. Now, I wish I could say I sweetly crawled back into bed and woke Andrew to tell him the news. But I did what comes naturally to me: I panicked. I went into the bedroom, flipped on every single light and not so quietly woke Andrew asking him if he saw the second line. That memory still makes me smile. Grace may be my middle name but Andrew would tell you it’s ironic because gracefulness is not high on my list of qualities I possess.

Andrew, being new to this whole pregnancy test thing, said something along the lines of “I see a really, really faint line…but I still think it’s negative. We’ll try again next month.” Meanwhile, I knew that even a faint line is a positive and had to go sit at work all day knowing we had a baby on the way.

TO BE CONTINUED.