Jason Bedell Online

I came home from a long day at work. It was good, but tiring. You guys know what I'm talking about. I had to drag myself up the stairs to our apartment door. I wanted to just relax, eat dinner and get into some comfortable.

While walking up the steps I heard some music. It was coming form our apartment. My wife isn't one for loud music. I open the door and it's some song I had never heard, but I didn't pay it any mind. Kissed my wife, sat down to dinner already prepared. If I had truly paid attention, I would have gotten it (all the hints). The dinner was hot dogs, mac & cheese, and it was by candle light. The songs in the background were love songs, but more a family kind of love song. My wife said she had a present for me... AND IT WAS IN THE BEDROOM.

Now fellas, if your wife says she has a present for you in the bedroom- you don't pass go, you do not collect two hundred dollars, you head straight to the bedroom (just something to tuck away for later guys). So I walk in, and she informs me there are two of them, one under the pillow and one after. I open up the first one and it's a bib that says "future skater" on it...

I started crying, she started crying, we were a big hot mess. Then she hands me gift number two and it says, "If you think I'm cute, you should see my daddy." Priceless.

I was so excited to be a dad. I wanted to have a kid so bad and we were thanking God all along the way. We were going to all the OBYN visits, getting things checked out and then came the visit no one expected. We were getting an ultrasound and the tech doing the procedure was extremely quiet. We were worried. Afterwords, they walked us into a room, but a different room than all the other visits. Not a good sign.

Our doctor came in to let us in on some hard realities. Our baby wasn't growing properly and the ultrasound could barely find a heartbeat.

Silence.

What do you do? What is there to say? What are we supposed to think? The doctor scheduled another visit 5 days from then to recheck and see. So we did the only thing we knew. We prayed. We had every person we know and don't know on God's green earth praying. "Our baby was going to make it" we would say after hours of prayer. "God is going to give us a beautiful miracle" we would say to one another.

The day arrived. We packed into the car and headed to the doctor's office. Like the movie, "Groundhog Day" I felt like everything was the same. We got into the room, the tech put the gel on her stomach, put the sensor to her belly. She searched, and searched. She tried some more. Tried everything.

Nothing.

No heart beat. Our baby was gone. Still connected to my beautiful wife, but so far away from us all in the same moment. Words cannot express the feeling. In that moment I boiled in my mind against God. I didn't understand. "God I love You. I follow You. I serve YOUR church! I honor my wife! Why this! Why now! WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY! What have I done that you would allow this to happen to us? I know we live in a fallen world, but God- it's me?! Your servant?! Don't you protect us? Don't you love our baby?"

Now I know all the "right things to say" and things to understand about a fallen world, bad things still happen to good people, yadda yadda. Save it. No one was going to convince me otherwise in that moment. I knew the Bible way and I didn't care. I was pissed off. I was angry. I wanted to talk to God about it. I wasn't mad at Him, but I really wanted some freakin' answers (only I am positive I didn't use the word freakin').

I drove Carrie the the hospital the next day. She had the DNC. She was drugged and hurting. We went home and cried for days. And we didn't really know hardly anyone. We felt alone. It was a horrible place to be. I said things to my wife about God that I later had to apologize for; to Him and to her.

God used our friends, family and the people of Forefront to bridge the gap from pain to hope. I will never forget it as long as I live. I owe the world to you. God brought healing through your calls, emails, meals, prayers, and love. It was amazing. It's something that brings tears to my eyes as I type this.

But God wasn't done with Carrie and I yet. More was to come. A little good, a little not-so-good, and a little in between...