He Said No

First of all, I just want to say thank you so, so much for your kind words and your prayers throughout the past week. Those words don’t even seem adequate – I am beyond grateful, I feel truly loved by so many people…and I really, really need that right now.

When I initially wrote about the miscarriage I wasn’t even sure whether or not I would publish it. I am a writer, not in any professional capacity but just by nature, and whenever I feel something deeply, be it sorrow or pain or joy or whatever, I feel almost a need to write it out. It is, for me, a kind of therapy. I know not everybody is like that but there is a release for me in expressing those thoughts. However, given the extremely personal nature of the emotions I am going through, I hesitated as to whether I should open myself up like that to such a large audience.

But here’s the other thing about me.

I am very independent. I do not like to need anything from anyone. I don’t easily share the things I feel the most deeply and I think if I hadn’t expressed myself this way there would’ve been a strong temptation for me to stuff my grief, to put on a happy face and just pretend like I wasn’t hurting inside.

Since I have posted this there have been so, so many people who have told me they are here for me, be it through a hug, a card, a meal, flowers, a conversation. And many – I would even venture to say most – are people who I probably never would have told otherwise. Not because I did not trust them but because I wouldn’t have known how to bring it up in casual conversation. “How are you? Oh, I’m fine except for the fact that my baby is dead.”

As much as I desire to be real with people, there is a heaviness that comes every time I recite the story. This blog has been a place for me to allow people who love me to know what is going on without me having to choke it out over and over and over and for that I am so grateful.

The past week has been rough. I will not go into to many details at this time, but I will say that when I initially heard that the baby did not have a heartbeat, I chose not to have any procedures done. If things were going to come out, I wanted it to happen naturally.

From talking with others who have been through this same experience I knew that would probably make it more difficult both physically and emotionally, and I knew that there was a chance that even if I waited, I might end up having to have a D&C later on, but I didn’t want to unless it was absolutely necessary. My doctor did not pressure me either way, but she, too, felt it would be best for me to wait, if I thought I could handle it emotionally.

On Sunday morning we went to church. I cried my way through most of the worship and the “meet and greet” time. It hurt in a good way to be there, among friends who could “love on me” as one put it.

The sermon our pastor preached was from Mark chapter 9, and it was about a miracle of healing that Jesus performed on a demon possessed boy. You can read the passage here, but basically, the father of the boy at first expresses doubt as to whether or not Jesus could heal him.

And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.  And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” {emphasis mine}

The point of the message was that when faced with seemingly insurmountable trials, we often tout God’s sovereignty and our acceptance of whatever comes from His hand – and those are good things, as pastor said, “We rest our head on God’s sovereignty.” But we too often approach God like this man, saying, “If you can…help me”

The question is never if He can…it is if He is willing.

Listen – that is hard.

It is hard to believe in a God who is powerful enough to keep you from suffering…but doesn’t.

Now, you need to understand, that at this point, we had been told that our baby was dead, but it was still tucked away inside of me. That afternoon, after we put the girls down for their naps, Dave sat with me on our bed and said that he thought we needed to express to the Lord our belief that he could still heal our baby. Not that he would…but that he could.

So that night before we went to bed we prayed.

We prayed that when I went in for the follow up appointment I had scheduled in two weeks, the doctor would find a heartbeat. We prayed that God would breathe life and healing back into that tiny form that still lay protected inside my womb. We prayed that God would allow us to birth a healthy, perfectly formed baby, that He would give us a miracle child and that we would be able to shout to the world, “Look what our God did!” We prayed that we could, like Hannah, offer our “Samuel” for service to the Lord.

And at the end, I prayed that if God chose not to give us our request – if He chose to say no -- then would He please let it happen quickly. That He would not allow us to live for days wondering what the outcome would be, but that He would show us His answer soon.

That was Sunday night.

On Monday night, there was blood.

This week I delivered, not a healthy, perfectly formed baby, but a tiny, barely formed, lifeless one.

He said, “No.”

I hesitate to write this out…because I know there are people reading this who do not have a strong faith – if any at all – in my God. To those people – and maybe even to some Christians – faith like this seems foolish.

I get that.

I know that some of you reading this probably look at what we are going through, and like the people David speaks of in Psalm 42, you are wondering, “Where is your God?”

I am not going to pretend like I have all the answers, but I know this: He loves me. How do I know? Tim Keller puts it this way:

“If we again ask the question, ‘Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?’ and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself. Albert Camus understood this when he wrote:

‘[Christ] the God-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege, and lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death’”

This afternoon I took a Ziploc baggie filled with what was left of my child to the doctor’s office. It was as close to a funeral as we were going to get, and after I left I wanted some time to just be still, to grieve, so I drove to a nearby park. As I parked the car, a song came on the radio, one I had never heard and I sobbed as I listened to the lyrics because it felt as though they had been written just for me:

Sometimes all we have to hold on to
is what we know is true of who You are.
So when the heartache hits like a hurricane,
That could never change who You are.
And we trust in who You are,

Even if the healing doesn't come
And life falls apart
And dreams are still undone.
You are God, You are good,
Forever faithful One,
Even if the healing doesn't come.

*************

You are God and we will bless You
Even if the healing doesn't come

The healing didn’t come and it hurts.

I am tired.

I am sad.

I am broken and I am needy.

I am staring my humanity in the face.

But not without faith.

“Though He slay me,
yet I will trust Him.”
Job 13:15

When It’s Not What You Expected

So…I don’t even really know how to begin this. This is not a post I ever hoped to write.

About a month and a half ago, Dave and I found out that we were expecting our third child. We hadn’t exactly been trying, but we hadn’t really been actively preventing so we weren’t surprised -- and we were thrilled. By our calculations, the baby would probably be due mid to end of March, right around the time of Dave’s birthday.

We had a trip planned to visit Dave’s family in New York the beginning of August. My parents were going to be with us as well and we decided to announce the big news to both our families then.  One night we ordered a pizza and had a message written out in pepperoni: Baby #3. It was a perfect, fun way to celebrate, our joy multiplied by the reactions of our loved ones.

Despite our anticipation, I had a sense of uneasiness. Something felt different, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I wasn’t even a little bit sick, and that worried me. But I really never had terrible morning sickness with either of the girls so I just told myself that I must have gotten lucky this time. And I had felt anxious and worried to a certain degree with both Lily and Sophia but everything had been perfectly fine, so I shoved aside my misgivings.

We had our first appointment the Tuesday after we returned from New York and we asked our family to keep things quiet until then. I wanted to hear the heartbeat to reassure me before we announced it to the world.

Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity.

The memory of that ultrasound will forever be etched in my mind. I saw the baby on the screen looking so sweet and small, it’s arms and legs barely popping out from it’s tiny body, and I felt my heart surge with love. The tech took measurements and we chatted about the difficulties of raising a two year old.

Then I saw those vertical lines pop up on the screen, the ones that are supposed to show the heartbeat, only they weren’t moving. They were only there for a second and then they vanished. I held my breath waiting to see if my suspicions would be confirmed but she just started talking about how the baby was 9 weeks 2 days developed and my due date would be March 17. Then she asked if I wanted some pictures. There was no indication from her that anything was wrong so I thought I must have misunderstood what I had seen.

I didn’t.

I headed to the room down the hall to see the doctor and that’s where all the fears I had pushed to the side were finally confirmed.

“You look like you’re about 9 weeks along but…”

But.

I knew there shouldn’t be a but.

“…but the baby doesn’t have a heartbeat.”

I have often wondered at the depth of pain I saw in the people I knew who had suffered an early miscarriage. It’s not that I doubted it’s legitimacy, it’s just that I did not totally understand. It didn’t seem like it would be “as bad” as losing a child whom you had seen and known and loved. And it’s not the same, I’m sure, but the moment the doctor uttered those words, I understood.

It is a loss you feel, not for the child you knew, but for the child you will never know. For the hugs you’ll never give and the kisses you won’t receive. For the personality you will never get to see develop and the color of their eyes and softness of their skin and the shape of their nose that you will never get to see or touch or feel.

As Dave said, “It’s like there is a part of our family that will always feel a little bit incomplete.”

I sat in the chair and listened as the doctor told me that it wasn’t my fault and I thought, “How does she know?” And even though I know that’s not a path I should allow my mind to travel, it’s hard not to wonder. What happened?

It is no coincidence that at the very moment I received that awful news, I also received a text message from my friend Ellen. Ellen, who has herself suffered through the loss of a child. Ellen, who was one of only two friends who I had shared our secret with. She wanted me to know she was praying for my appointment.

I swallowed tears and tried desperately to hold it together while the doctor explained my options and sent me to have my blood drawn. I walked through the waiting room filled with happy expectant mothers, trying not to look at their swollen bellies and hoping they wouldn’t notice my puffy red eyes.

And then I collapsed in the front seat of our mini van and let the tears come. Dave had left work the moment I called him and when he arrived we stood in the middle of the parking lot and held each other. I watched his shoulders shake with grief when I handed him the first and last pictures we will ever have of our baby and then we went home where my mom waited with our girls.

I cried more than I have ever cried in my entire life, until I felt certain that there wasn’t a drop of liquid left in my body.

And now here we are, two days later, and I am learning something about grief. It is not something that you can just have a good cry about and then it’s over.

I am learning that you can have good moments where you feel fine and then seemingly out of nowhere the reality will hit you, like when you walk past the maternity section in Target, or you hear someone else announce their pregnancy.

I am learning that it is a process, just like everyone says, and that there is still a long road toward healing ahead of me.

And I’m also learning that it is true that you can have joy in the midst of sorrow. I think it was John Piper that I heard say once that, “Despair is not suffering it is the absence of hope in suffering.”

I am so grateful for our families and the tremendous comfort they have been to us, but more than anything else, the truth of God’s Word has comforted me over and over and over again these past few days. God has brought verses and passages of Scripture to my mind continually that remind me that we are not those who must “grieve like people who have no hope.”

I think the passage I have read more than any other is Psalm 139. That famous passage that is often rejoiced over at a child’s birth has brought me tremendous comfort in my child’s death.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

His eyes saw my baby’s unformed substance.  He had every day of it’s short life written in His book. He knows my baby, and He knows me. He loves me. He gave His Son for me and because I know the depth of His love and His mercy and His forgiveness, I know that He has a good purpose for even this.

And I have hope – a sure and settled confidence – that I will someday see my baby and know everything that I do not know right now.

Christy Nockels, in a song she wrote about a child she miscarried, put it this way,

“So baby, let sweet Jesus hold you
till Mom and Dad can hold you.
You’ll just have heaven before we do.”

There is no better place for our baby than where it is, right now, safe in the arms of Jesus, and I as I walk through the months ahead and work through the grief and the sadness and the fears that I know I will battle, that truth will comfort me.

God loves me. He is my hope.

"When my heart is overwhelmed;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."
Psalm 61:2