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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.”
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.
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