The Promise of a Jellybean
By Lydia Holmes
@lydiajholmes
Content warning: this essay references infant loss.
There’s a new challenge going around on social media, you may have seen it. A parent sets two jellybeans in front of their child, and the child looks at said jellybeans expectantly. (Oh to be a kid again and experience excitement over not one, but TWO jellybeans?!). The parent then tells the child they have to leave the room for a minute, and instructs them to wait to eat the candy until they return.
Each child responds in different ways. You have the sweet little girl who licks her lips and enters what seems to be a staring contest with the candy, but she shows restraint and doesn’t indulge. There’s the rambunctious boy who takes the teeniest bite and quickly returns the candy to its rightful place, hoping his mother does not notice his blunder when she returns. Or the child who holds the jelly beans in his hands, watching the food coloring sweat into his skin, having an intense internal conversation with his conscience.
What I notice most, though, has less to do with the children’s responses, and more to do with the parent’s. Allow me to explain. The mother or father, after presenting their children with something they know they want, always comes back and allows the child to eat the candy. To partake in the gift which they had extended to them. I have yet to see a video where the parent reenters the room and snatches the sugared snack away, or immediately swipes the treat from the table into the trash.
Nine months ago, I was given a little jelly bean of my own. Nine months ago, on one of our daily walks, my husband and I talked about the future of our family. With a few years of marriage under our belts, we had built what we hoped was a solid foundation. We had stable jobs, a beautiful home. Everything we had asked the Lord to provide He had—so we decided to ask for something else.
I thought I heard my Father respond and say, “Here is something you want, something you have been praying for.” He went on to explain the rules, “You have to wait nine months to meet your bean; he has to grow from a bean, to an avocado, to a watermelon, you see. You will have to endure repeated trips to the bathroom, you will lose ten pounds from the constant morning sickness, your main food groups will be Saltines and Sprite, but don’t worry you will gain it all back and then some. You will feel kicks to your ribs and the odd sensation of hiccups happening inside your womb. You will wait and wait and wait. And then, one day, you won’t have to wait any longer.”
After my Father explains the game, I nod my head and raise my hand without a moment's hesitation, “Yes, pick me! I will play this game!”
Like a little child listening to his parents footsteps tread closer and closer, practically able to taste the combination of sugar and yellow #5, you are filled with overwhelming joy at the prospect of getting to hold your baby boy, the one you have been waiting for, the one you were promised.
But then something unexpected happens. You look down at the table and the jellybeans have disappeared, or is it the heartbeat that is missing? You cannot see your Father anywhere; He seems to be very far away. The only people you see are nurses and doctors, and by the grim set of their mouths and the tears that pool around their eyes, they don’t appear to be playing any kind of game.
You desperately ask, “What happened?!” “Where did he go?!” The silence is deafening and no one gives you the answer you want. No one knows what happened. Everything was normal. Until it wasn’t.
In a moment, that which I had been waiting for, that which I had assumed was mine—was gone, taken, snatched. My baby was born without a heartbeat. My baby was born dead. I did not get to take my baby home from the hospital. Instead, I had to say goodbye to him in the same room I delivered him in. I had to lay his limp body in the arms of a nurse whose name I will never forget. I had to walk out of the hospital, my arms aching from the weight of nothing, wailing as only a mother could, feeling anything but.
Did the people sitting in the waiting room know I was a mother? Did I?
If I am a mother, why did I have to ride home in the front passenger seat of the car, averting my eyes from the empty infant car seat in the back? If I am a mother, why did I have to drag my feet over the threshold of the front door, weights seemingly on my ankles, and silently pray my husband remembered to shut the nursery door? If I am a mother, why did I fall to the couch with empty arms and full breasts, coming to the realization I would not be nursing my infant here?
Instead, this couch became the place I opened my phone and watched a viral jellybean challenge. This became the place I felt an odd sense of relatability to the children longing, expecting, and waiting for their parents to tell them it was okay to eat the jelly beans.
On the floor of my childhood bedroom, having woken up to leaking boobs, with no baby to soothe, I cried out to my Father, “I am mad that you allowed this to happen.”
And like a loving mother comforting a tantrum-laden toddler, He listened to my wails.
He heard my anger. He was not deterred by my frustration, or frightened away on the day I repeatedly slammed the broom on the kitchen floor after a broken bag of watermelon rinds sent me over the edge and caused me to silently scream, “Really God?! I lost my baby AND there’s sticky watermelon juice all over my luxury vinyl?!” Fear not friends, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and to those who, as my dear friend eloquently put it, “beat the shit out of brooms.”
It has been twelve weeks since my precious Owen was born without a heartbeat. There are so many questions I ask myself, and too often the response is, “I don’t know.” But here are some things I do know. I know now my pregnancy and the birth of my stillborn baby was not a game. I am not part of a TikTok challenge waiting to go viral. My Father was not playing with me. I know this is life in a fallen world. Even in that knowledge, it is okay for me to question why God allowed this to happen while not questioning his goodness.
I know that even though He felt, and sometimes still feels, far away from me, my Father was right beside me, weeping with me as the midwife laid my perfect baby on my chest, only hearing one heartbeat where there should have been two. I know God was near in the presence of my dear friend turned family turned doula, who, having previously experienced the loss of her own baby, was the perfect companion to me as I grieved mine. The Lord was present in my husband who picked each and every one of those watermelon rinds off the floor, swept them into the garbage can, and lovingly rubbed my back as he reminded me I wasn’t alone.
I now share a commonality with God I never thought possible: we both lost our sons. I also know that just like I will meet His Son one day, I will also be reunited with mine. I now wait for eternity like a child waiting for his parents to come back into the room, expectant and excited. I thought I had to wait nine months for a promise to be fulfilled, turns out I have to wait a lot longer.
Yet the promise of life, life everlasting, is still true, and so much sweeter than the promise of a jellybean.
Guest essay written by Lydia Holmes. Lydia is a pastor’s wife, a mom to an angel baby, and currently making a home in Minneapolis, MN. She is one of those annoying people that likes to clean (and has unashamedly watched multiple YouTube videos on how to fold a fitted sheet). Her husband can testify that she always stops to smell the lilacs, the peonies, and the roses. She strives to show others beautiful things so that they can more readily see the beauty that already exists inside of them.
My First Memories with Mom and Dad is a book written by Natalie Anderson, Lydia’s sister, from the perspective of a baby in his mother's womb. This story is meant to bring hope and encouragement to anyone who has ever experienced the heartbreaking loss of a child, specifically those who have experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth.
Photo by Ruth Gyllenhammer.