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On my blog’s pages over to the right, you will see one called Ajani’s story. It tells you about our little boy, Ajani Josiah Cross. He died as he was being born in April this year. You might like to read a bit about him, if you do, go look at the page.
Ajani means, ‘he who wins the battle’.
the cremation is done,
the memorial meals are done,
so now we’re off for a week.
I’ll be back on the blog after we get back, till then, thanks so much for all the calls, emails, letters, cards, flowers and prayers.
back soon!
This is a short piece I have written to grace the order of service for the cremation tommorrow. I think it sums up a lot of what I feel about Ajani.
Oh bonny, bonny lad.
How I wish I could have known you more.
How I wish I could have held you more,
Loved you more.
Made you laugh, and dried your tears,
Seen you grow and change over the years.
But you are gone, gone from here.
How I weep, how I mourn for you my precious child.
Your skin so cold, your limbs so still.
Oh I ache with the pain. My tears flow like rivers.
My bonny little boy, you’re gone from me.
But is that it? Is that the end?
Is this pain, this dull ache, all there is now?
No.
You have life still, though not in your body.
Not with breath, not with blood.
Life eternal, life supreme.
Somewhere beyond the bird song,
Beyond the horizon, beyond the material, beyond the natural,
Beyond pain, sickness, suffering, and beyond death.
You stand, feet apart, sword in hand.
My warrior baby. My bonny boy.
You fought. You won. You were great fun.
We miss you so.
I’m sorry but my email was down for a few days at the start of the week, as a result some of you may have asked for details of the practical arrangements surrounding Ajani’s death, and I wont know.
So I’m posting them here, you can email me for further details if you wish.
Tues 1st May - Ajani will be cremated. This is going to be a small, low key affair.
Saturday 6th May - We will be celebrating Ajani’s life (that he had here, and the one which he has now) with friends in Grimsby. This will be a kind of open party, where there will be opportunity to reflect on Ajani, all that he has meant to us, and continues to mean, and to talk to each other and God, to express how we feel.
Friday 11th May - We will be holding a similar event to the above in South Wales. Again, a time to talk, share, pray and hopefully be happy together around some food and drink.
One of the most precious things about this situation has been the way we’ve all gone through this as a family (friends around the world), and we want to acknowledge that by getting together as a big family. We so much appreciate the love we’ve been shown.
After all that stuff, we will then be having a break for a few days.
Drop me a line if you want to have further details of times and places etc. You’d be welcome to anything.
My dear friends,
it is with heavy heart, and great sadness that I have to tell you that Ajani was born yesterday (Friday) just before 7pm. He never knew life outside of the womb.
We rejoice that he now knows life everlasting.
The extent of Ajani’s difficulties were considerable. He overcame much just in order to stay the course.
We miss him dreadfully, more than words can say, and now we are in mourning for our beautiful little boy. I’ll write more about it here in due course. For those of you who want practical details when we have them, please email me.
Much love, and deepest, most sincere thanks for all the prayer and kindness you have given us.
Simon and Kel.
Hi everyone,
this is just to say that following an extended ‘no show’ by Ajani, we will
be going to hospital 8.30am tommorrow (thurs) to have labour induced.
Thanks for all your prayers and please keep them going for a little longer.
We’ll let you know the outcome.
With love,
Simon
Ajani is two weeks overdue today.
On thursday, if he hasnt made an appearance, we will go to the hospital to have him induced.
For anyone who doesnt know about Ajani, he is my son, currently unborn. He has been diagnosed with anencephalie, which in his case means that he has no skull covering his brain. This is a condition deemed ‘incompatible with life outside the womb’.
As long as we’ve known him, we’ve loved him.
Our love has always been tinged with sadness, fearing that the day would come when we’d have to say goodbye to him. Praying constantly that God would work a miracle and heal him.
Now we are counting down, with heavy hearts, to thursday. The day the doctors say it is likely our boy will die.
We dont know what God will do. We trust him, and we know that Ajani is safe with him. But we want to know our little boy. We dont want to say goodbye to him.
If you are inclined to pray, then please pray for Ajani. If you believe in a God who heals, then please pray that God would heal Ajani.
We really didnt want to get to this point, waiting to be induced. The doctors said we wouldnt get here, they said he would arrive ealry. He didnt. They are amazed.
We want them to be more amazed.
Ajani means: “He who wins the struggle”. Read more about our little Ajani here, and see a video of him wriggling here.
Ajani is now officially one week overdue - and that despite the fact that the doctors said he would be early! we had to decide last week if we wanted to induce him, which would probably bring an earlier end to the gestation than leaving things to nature.
He is a strong little guy, and shows no sign of wanting to come out! Too busy enjoying himself…
In the end, (it was a difficult decision) we chose to opt for an induction date of the 19th of April. That should be long enough to mean that things take their natural course. The thing of it is, that the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes. Not to mention the discomfort for Kelly.
So that’s where we are, praying that we wont still be waiting come the 19th…
Peace,
Simon
Well I can scarce beleive it, but Ajani’s due date has rolled around, despite dire mutterings from various people about the likelihood of an early delivery. So here we are, it’s the second of April, and Ajani is showing NO signs of wanting to come out, in fact he has been celebrating his (supposed to be) birthday by doing the most incredible non stop gymnastics, with scarcely a moment going by (honest) without him sticking out some kind of limb or two.
In fact Kel was so aware of the movements last night, they even invaded her dreams, apparently she dreamed she was giving birth to a superhero…. obviously. As an aside, I personally think this may have as much to do with the movements she was feeling, as it has to do with the incredible smallville marathon that she has sat through this last week.
At least she has used her maternity leave to some effect!!
So on a more serious note, we’re still waiting for labour pains to start happening, last midwife visit, they said he had flipped into a breach or transverse position again, but the amount of movements he’s been doing, he could be doing cartwheels for all we can tell.
Thanks for your prayers and thoughts, I’ll let you know how things move along.
Hi everyone,
This is a quick update, particularly for those of you we don’t see so regularly!
The last email we sent out, about a month ago, said that I had so much fluid in my womb that the medical people thought I was likely to go into labour at any time - and was not going to make my due date. However, 4 weeks later we are all still going…
According to the last scan the fluid had not built up anymore and so - because the baby is larger - there is actually proportionally less fluid. I am feeling surprisingly comfortable and the midwives are amazed I have not gone into labour yet. They now think I could make my due date as it is only in a weeks time (officially 2nd April)!
We continue to ask God to heal our precious little Ajani even at this late time. The past few months have been so precious, where God has walked so closely with us, taught us so much and given us so much revelation. I feel I have learnt what it means to be able to approach the throne of God boldly and ask for him to rescue our little boy and share my heart’s desires with our Amazing God and Daddy.
We have learnt so much about faith and prayer and the reality of what these mean in our lives - and about how prayer isn’t a magic spell reliant on how much we can personally will something to happen, but simply about knowing who God is, what He is capable of and then asking Him with all our hearts.
We thank you all for your continued prayers, we have experienced how amazing it has been to part of the larger family of God all over the world as people from so many different countries, backgrounds, and fellowships, have stood with us through this, it has been so precious. We feel very peaceful as the end of the pregnancy is in sight with whatever that brings and feel confident that God is in control and very present through the whole time to come.
Please continue to pray whatever you feel you can, as a family we have benefited so much from your support. Our one particular request is that you pray that the one day we could avoid for the birth of Ajani is the 4th April (its our 9th wedding anniversary!)
Love and peace,
Kelly, Simon, Jyothi, Anya and Ajani.
PS: Ajani is our unborn little boy, we have been told he will not survive delivery, as he has anencephaly. If you dont know Ajani’s story - read it on the Undercurrent Comics blog
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