Choose Life

Though I have some very strong political opinions, for the most part I choose not to speak about them on this blog. There are a lot of gray areas in the political arena and I recognize that not all of the positions I take are inherently biblical.

But there is one issue that absolutely does not qualify, and that is abortion. I don't care how you market it, I don't care what kind of terms you use to soften the reality. It's wrong.

And as I sit here, my hands are shaking and my heart is beating fast because of an article I just read that absolutely sickened me.

A doctor on trial for murder after it was revealed that some late term abortion babies had been delivered alive and killed afterwards. I can't even bring myself to type out the horrific things that happened but you can read about it here.

To quote the author: "Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb...is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable."

This has always been an issue that is close to my heart, but particularly after what I have experienced the last few months. For those that are not familiar with my story, let me tell you. I have had two miscarriages in nine months. Both babies died at 9 weeks. At that stage of development nobody would have even thought twice about giving me an abortion had I asked for one.

When the baby was 6 weeks, we heard the hearbeat. When it was 8 weeks we had an ultrasound and we saw the heart beating inside of it's tiny chest.

In the very early hours yesterday morning, my body was laboring to deliver that sweet, tiny 9 weeks developed baby, this time with no heart beating inside. We held it, my husband and I. It had the tiniest legs and the tiniest arms and little eyes. As fruitless as I knew it was, my heart yearned to protect it. It was so tiny and so helpless and all I wanted to do was make it all better. There is absolutely no question in my mind that it was a human being, in its earliest stage of development.

The demarcation is absolutely undeniable. At 8 weeks, a heartbeat -- alive. At 9 weeks, no heartbeat -- dead. I don't care if the baby's heart stops beating on its own or if someone causes it to stop beating. The difference is still the same. Heartbeat - alive. No heartbeat - dead. I believe that life begins at conception because that's what the Bible teaches, but even if I didn't, the physical evidence of life in a developing baby is undeniable, at a very early stage.

A friend of mine put it better than I could when he said,

"It's funny to me that bacteria found on the planet Mars is considered evidence of life or even life itself, yet a beating heart inside of a pregnant mother doesn't count."

{image source}

Perhaps it is because the image of my baby is still fresh in my mind. Perhaps it is because I felt my mother's heart breaking at the knowledge that there was nothing I could do to make my baby whole again.

All I know is, I did not have the power to give that baby life and I should not have the power to take it. We have got to stop with this ridiculous notion of choice over what happens with our bodies when it comes at the expense of the life in someone else's. When I think of the many women who have been deceived into making such a decision, I do not condemn them -- but for the grace of God, there go I. There is redemption and forgiveness for every wrong decision any of us has ever made at the cross of Christ. And I do not believe that those who are pro-choice are evil baby haters.

But I do believe that there are a lot of good people that have believed a lie and the best way to stop a lie is with the truth.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak.Not to act is to act.We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I cannot do anything to give life back to my unborn child, but I can fight for the lives of others.

I will not be silent.

Winter

For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me,
And what I dreaded has happened…
Job 3:25

It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this morning. I had hoped to be making an announcement of a different kind today.

Yesterday afternoon, in the office of my doctor, we learned that the baby I had been carrying since January no longer had a heartbeat.

Tomorrow, March 17, was my original due date with our first miscarriage. In the time that it normally takes to create one healthy baby, we have lost two.

This pregnancy began very positively – because of my “history” they were monitoring me very closely with ultrasounds and hormone checks. I had high progesterone and HCG and the levels of HCG were doubling, as with a normal pregnancy.

I had ultrasounds at 4, 6, and 8 weeks, all of which showed normal growth and development.

On the 6th and 8th week we saw the tiny vibration in the baby’s chest indicating a strong and healthy heartbeat, and at the very end of the 8th week, we watched as the baby wiggled on the screen in front of us.

I will tell you, I had been trying, out of fear, to disconnect myself from this baby. I did not want to attach myself only to lose it, but when I saw the evidence of life screaming out at me from the screen of an ultrasound like that, it was virtually impossible to keep my heart from loving it. That was my baby, small, unformed, and very much alive.

I was also very sick this time. Since last time, I had virtually no morning sickness, it was a reassurance {although not necessarily a fun one} that the life inside of me was growing. I spent most of January and February incapacitated because of nausea and exhaustion.

Then, magically, I woke up one morning at 10 weeks and the sickness was gone.

It wasn’t right, and I knew it. It seemed too early, but I tried not to jump to conclusions. I was almost at the end of the first trimester and lots of women start feeling better then. Several times I almost picked up the phone to call my doctor and ask for a heartbeat check. I knew they wouldn’t mind, but I stopped myself because I felt I shouldn’t be worrying. But as the day of my 12 week appointment drew nearer, my uneasiness increased. We found out yesterday that the baby stopped growing somewhere in the middle of the 9th week.

Did I really know what was going to happen or did I just make an educated guess based on previous experience? I don’t know.

But I do believe that the Lord has been gently preparing my heart for the outcome.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading in the Psalms, specifically Psalms 60-75. Over and over again, the psalmist cries out to God and over and over again, he comes back to a place of rejoicing in God’s greatness. In the Psalms, there is the raw expression of real human emotions and there is the steady reminder of God’s unfailing love and faithfulness.

There is sorrow – but with hope.

One morning, as I read Psalm 66 these verses jumped off the page:

For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

Psalm 66:10-12

I don’t think it is any secret that this has been a difficult year for us – not just with the miscarriages, although those seem to be the bookends on some very trying times. When I read that, I couldn’t help identify with the Psalmist.

I feel as though we are being tested and tried. We have been bearing up under the weight of crushing burdens. We have been – are going through – fire and water. When I read the last part of the verse, I felt my soul crying out, “Where is the place of abundance?”

Honestly, I don’t know. And that’s hard.

We are very much in a season of winter in our lives, and this miscarriage feels like a late March snowstorm. Spring was there, so close we could almost taste it. And then came the snow.

We have questions and not a lot of answers. I am discouraged and afraid when I think about the future…is our family complete at only 4? Will I never snuggle another newborn? Was this just a fluke, “bad luck”, as the doctor put it…or is something wrong? And if something is wrong, what is it? Why two completely normal, uncomplicated pregnancies and then two failed ones?

I want so very badly to be able to do something to fix this. I want to make it better. I want control. I don’t have it – I won’t have it. I never did.

One thing I do have – my Jesus. Healer of the brokenhearted, lover of my soul. The darkest times in my life have been the ones where He shines the brightest.

Yet another Psalm I read on Tuesday brings me great encouragement.

Oh, God, who is like you?
You who have made me see many troubles and calamities
will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again.
You will increase my greatness
and comfort me again...
My lips will shout for joy,
when I sing praises to you;
my soul also, which you have redeemed.
Psalm 71: 20-21, 23

Even in the midst of the greatest sadness, there is praise in my heart for my soul has been redeemed.

One last thing – a song, which perfectly echoes my heart right now

Worn, but not forgotten. It’s winter…but spring will come. If not here, then someday in my eternal home.

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

One thing people told me last time through this was that they felt badly {particularly if this is something they had never experienced} because they didn’t know what to say. So let me just tell you, friends, you do not need to have an answer for me. It is enough to just say, “I’m sorry”. It has been my experience, that sometimes, grief just needs a friend. Not words or solutions but just someone to be there to acknowledge the hurt. Any expression of support, whether it’s a text, an email, flowers, a meal, or just an, “I’m so sorry,” brings comfort. Sometimes a hug can do more than an eloquent speech ever could.

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.

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