Monday, April 29, 2019

CRC Blog Analysis on PERFECTLY HUMAN: NINE MONTHS WITH CERIAN by Sarah C Williams



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CRC Blog Analysis on Perfectly Human: Nine Months with Cerian by Sarah C Williams
“The Fairy Tale of a Person Called Cerian”
"Cerian is not a strong religious principle or a rule that compels me to make hard and fast ethical decisions. She is a beautiful person who is teaching me to love the vulnerable, treasure the unlovely, and face fear with dignity and hope."
Page 80

         Once upon a time there lives the Williams Family: father Paul, mother Sarah and sisters Hannah and Emilie.  The family of four lives in a village near Oxford, England where they attend the local church.  They feel happy, content, and complete.
       King Jesus decided that the family was not yet complete so King Jesus caused Paul and Sarah to conceive a spiritual human being. The Williams family was ecstatic to learn of their new child and their new baby sibling and could not wait until nine months later when they would finally get to hold this beautiful creature.  
       King Jesus had different plans for this human baby.  He only wanted the Williams family to have this baby for nine months only, while in the womb.  And then He would take the baby to be with Him in Heaven for all of eternity.
      
      Paul, Sarah, Hannah, and Emilie were unaware of King Jesus’s plan and instead had their own plan.  They wanted the baby to be born and stay with them on earth for as long as possible. 
On May 13, Sarah and her mother, Jennifer Rees Larcombe, went to the Women’s Center at the John Radcliffe Hospital (Below) in Oxford for the baby’s twenty-week ultrasound.   At first all seemed well and happy.  Sarah could see the baby’s perfectly shaped foot and toes and instantly felt a loving connection when she saw her face.  


       But minutes later the doctors tell Sarah and Jennifer that the baby will not live and would in fact die from thanatophoric dysplasia. Thanatophoric dysplasia, Greek for “death bearing,” is a severe skeletal disorder (types of below) characterized by extremely short limbs, folds of extra skin on the arms and legs, narrow chest, short ribs, underdeveloped lungs, and an enlarged head with a large forehead and prominent, wide-spaced eyes. Infants with thanatophoric dysplasia are usually stillborn or die shortly after birth from respiratory failure.

     Sarah is devastated but receives encouragement when her mother Jennifer tells her about a memory and spiritual lesson she experiences while she prays for her unborn grandbaby.  Grandmother Jennifer remembers when as a little girl she played in the mountain stream behind the family home in Scotland.  The stream not only consisted of water but granite boulders containing soft and fragile layers of amethyst.  One cannot decipher the amethyst from the granite until the amethyst is placed in a pebble polisher – only then will the true jewel shine through.  
Maybe this baby is like an amethyst.  Perhaps the beauty is not easy to see at first but inside there will be something unexpected and intensely beautiful but also fragile. The beauty may need to be carefully honed before it is apparent to others.”
Page 15
     Sarah takes her mother’s words to heart and then has her own memory of when she was a child of nine and her father giving her an amethyst necklace.  The amethyst of the necklace came from the same stream behind her mother’s family home. Sarah finds the treasured necklace and keeps it by her bed to remind her just how special and valuable her baby is.
      
     Sarah and Paul visit the doctor again for another sonogram of their baby.  They are overwhelmed with the beautiful human being. Despite having thanatophoric dysplasia, the baby has a beautiful healthy heart, is not in pain, has no fractures or broken bones, and she is a girl! 
       “She isn’t dead.  She’s alive now.  She can hear my heart.  She can hear Paul’s voice and her sisters’ laugher.  She can experience different foods as I eat them and most of all she can know the presence of the Holy Spirit while she is in the womb.”
Page 24
       Sarah had to tell herself she would not see her daughter experience anything outside the womb.  Sarah also had to tell herself that she had nine months to get to know her daughter and to love her completely; but in order for her to do so, she had to release her own expectations and accept God’s expectations for her daughter.   

     Paul struggles to find a stronger connection to his baby girl.  That connection comes when King Jesus sends him a dream about his baby daughter:  she is four years old with long hair and running across an open field toward the mountains.  She is happy and is free.  Paul now feels connected to her and it only seems fitting that he is the one to christen her Cerian, which means “loved” in Welsh.
       And we began to celebrate her presence.  Hannah and Emilia started to address her directly.  Hannah would snuggle close and put her arms around my tummy and talk to Cerian when she thought no one else was looking.  Emilia bellowed at her sister whenever and wherever she could.  We proposed a toast to Cerian at the end-of-term meal. Emilia drew pictures for the baby and Hannah even wrote a song.  Paul put his arms around me and the baby at night.  
Page 48
       At 28-weeks the midwife visits the Williams family home and does another sonogram and all hear Cerian’s heartbeat, which Emilia describes as like a horse running loud, free and very much alive.  Emilia, with great excitement, races upstairs to get her tape recorder and records her baby sister Cerian’s heartbeat.
      
      Between August 24th and August 25th, Sarah visits Pembury Hospital for a checkup only to be told she will deliver Cerian within 24 to 48 hours.  It is time for Hannah and Emilie to say goodbye to Cerian. Both girls press their heads against their mother’s womb and cry goodbyes to Cerian.  
       At 5 a.m. Sarah is awakened by Cerian kicking and the kicking continues and increases in intensity well into the mid afternoon when Sarah has an image come to her.
       I saw the Rider at full gallop on a great black stallion.  There was sound, movement, and power in the sight.  The hooves were pounding on the earth, sending mud flying in the wake of the creatures.  The mane streamed and the hair of the Rider was full of sweat.  I saw the Rider as Jesus coming toward me with incredible urgency.  He was coming for Cerian. The Rider was both Warrior and Lover, frantic for His loved one; coming to rescue her.  I knew without doubt there was something in Cerian that ran with similar spirit to meet Him.  I remembered Emilia’s comment when she had heard the heartbeat, “She sounds like a horse running.”
Page 101

     By 11 p.m. Cerian continues to kick like a horse, the contractions like painful lightning to Sarah’s body. At  1:00 a.m. Sarah asks to hear Cerian’s heartbeat:  there is no galloping, no kicking, only silence.  Cerian has just died – and is free from her body and now in the arms of King Jesus in Heaven where she lives for eternity. 
       His presence was urgent and immediate like the Rider on the stallion and I knew with certainty that God had come in His love to take a tiny deformed baby home to be with Him.  There would be no painful bone crushing for Cerian, only the peaceful wonder of God’s enfolding presence.
Page 109
       Finally Sarah expels Cerian’s body.  Every member of the Williams family cradles Cerian’s body.  Grandmother Jennifer prepares her body for burial by bathing her; and dressing her with the embroidered cream silk dress from Paul, the bonnet from nanny Emma, and booties from Hannah.  Grandmother then wraps her body in a shawl, places the body in a Moses basket, and covers her body with a quilt embroidered with her initials.     
     
     And the peace that passseth all understanding continues to embrace the entire Williams Family until they finally have their reunion with Cerian in Heaven someday.  Until then, they live happily ever after.          https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/parenting/perfectly-human