The Greater Thirst

I have struggled in the past few weeks with how much I should write on here. On the one hand, I do not want to overwhelm everyone with thoughts about grief and death and sorrow.

On the other hand, I’ve been told by many that they are thankful for what I’ve written so far because it has helped them understand a little about the deep sorrow felt by those who have miscarried.

So I hope to choose my words carefully in order that they might be helpful and not just vain expressions of emotion.

In terms of grief…I am doing better – I guess? I don’t really know how to explain that. I am still sad, but it is not all-consuming. There are “valley moments” where I am hit again with the reality of what happened. Sometimes I feel like I have moved past it only to have it resurface again unexpectedly.

The thing is...I am finding that some of the things that I normally take great pleasure in have lost a little bit of their allure.

It’s not that I don’t still enjoy reading good books, or decorating my home or watching a movie or drinking a Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s just…there is an emptiness – an ache – at the bottom of it all that just will not go away.

And I am beginning to realize something – the ache has always been there.

It didn’t originate with the miscarriage. No, the loss of my baby did not create the ache, it just revealed it.

God created us with senses – eyes to see beauty and color and art, ears to hear music and tongues that can taste chocolate. He wanted us to experience those things and turn back to Him, the Creator and Giver of all good things.

But instead we take those things and we worship them instead. We use them as the source of our ultimate pleasure, rather than God. We mask the hunger inside, the yearning to know our Creator with THINGS, and let me tell you – when life is going your way, it’s pretty easy to be satisfied with lesser things.

But somehow, suffering tears back the shiny façade to reveal the emptiness that lies within.

It exposes the ache.

I’ve been reading a book by Angie Smith, a woman who was told at her 20 week ultrasound that her baby had injuries that made it “incompatible with life.” She was encouraged to have an abortion but instead chose to carry and deliver her baby to term. In the book she describes a moment during her pregnancy, where she and her family visited Disney World and while there she realized that, “I wanted to get away, to escape and go somewhere magical, to get caught up in the idea that everything was just right.”

She goes on to say,

“The happiest place on Earth is not on this Earth.

This life was never meant to fill us or satisfy our need for goodness.

It wasn’t designed to give us an answer but rather to let the question penetrate our lives daily….

I wanted so badly to be able to escape from all the sadness, and I learned a lesson about this world that I will never forget.

We won’t have it here, friends.

I am sure you have had your fair share of hurt as well, and I wonder, where do you run? It may not be Disney World, but it might be to a bad habit, or to something that fills you up temporarily. It is hard to discover that the cheap imitation of satisfaction we have grown accustomed to is woefully unrepresentative of what awaits us.

In some ways I wish I could go back to the place where the cotton candy and parades distracted me. In other ways I am relieved to be on this side of life, where I have come to terms (as much as I can) with the fact that in this life, on this Earth, I am going to hunger.”

I don’t think God has allowed suffering in my life because He does not love me. I think He has allowed it because He loves me too much to let me be satisfied with lesser things.

In my despair, I have turned to the Lord and do you know what I have found?

He is enough.

The end of this song, which I have heard a million times before now, puts it perfectly:

What if my greatest disappointments
or the aching of this life
is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy.

We have a greater thirst, and Jesus offers us the Living Water.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
John 4:13-14

Drink, and be satisfied.