To the Child I Will Never Hold

My sweet, sweet child,

You were the first. You were in my consciousness for just a few short days last year. Today is the day you were due to be born, but you left us before you even looked human. I never saw you. Your short life taught me so many lessons. When you left, you taught me about grief that comes in unpredictable waves. You taught me how to rejoice with people who had what I wanted. You taught me about the sustaining power of God. You taught me how to surrender my dearest dream and sweetest possession to the Wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day. It was that last lesson that brought us to name you Micah – “Who is like YHWH?” You are no longer with me, but you remind me every day that I am not like YHWH. My wisdom is not supreme. Everything about you made sense to me, but YHWH knew better. Better for you. Better for my idolatrous soul. You are with the One who loves you better than I ever could.

Today, there is tension in my mind. I wanted you. I want you still. I still mourn your loss and dream of what might have been. Today, there is another baby growing inside me – your little brother or sister. I love and want this baby just as much as I loved and wanted you. I revel in its growing life and dream of what will come. You cannot both be here. Your earthly lives are mutually exclusive. And yet, you are both part of me. You are both so near to my heart. Today, I wish I were meeting you and the sorrow spills over into tears. Today, I rejoice in the growing child in my womb and the joy spills over into tears. I wonder how I can feel both emotions so strongly. How can I feel sorrow for loss and joy for gain, when it seems that one emotion should cancel out the other? I think it is love that makes these tensions possible. Love is capable of wishing you were here and of embracing the new life that is growing in the womb you left behind. You are both my children. I love you both.

I am a mother because of you, Micah. I miss you. I so looked forward to meeting you and watching you grow up. Thank you for teaching me important lessons. Someday, I hope that we’ll meet one another in heaven.

All my love,

Mother

Weeping, Rejoicing, and Generosity

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

I cut my theological teeth on this verse. Buried in the middle of many beautiful, practical, challenging instructions for how to interact with others, these words have convicted me over and over again. The idea of the last half of the verse is generally well accepted, regardless of religious affiliation. That we ought to weep with those who weep, to side with the oppressed, to reach out in solidarity with those who suffer is undoubtedly an important message that is surging through our world. I’m thankful for it. I dream, like many do, of a world in which oppression ceases, in which kindness and generosity reign, and in which the downtrodden are raised up. I have wept with those who weep; yet, that is only half of the instruction.

I have done much of my own weeping since October 19, 2017 – the day we found out that we had lost our first baby. Many have wept with me, reaching out in solidarity. Some reach out because they have felt the same pain. Others reach out though they have not, yet they weep for my pain. When you lose a baby, there are many painful things. The sight of pregnant bellies is painful. Pregnancy announcements are painful – especially when the due date is within weeks of your own. Baby shower invitations hurt. And, there’s the rub. In the midst of my weeping, others are blessed with times of rejoicing. Their announcements are not flaunting – they are simply joyful. Their changing bodies are not flaunting – they are simply the signs of blessing. Baby showers are not flaunting – they are opportunities for rejoicing.

I am struck by the lack of a qualifier in Romans 12:15. The apostle Paul does not say that we have no responsibility to weep for another in the midst of our own rejoicing. Neither does he say that we have no responsibility to rejoice with another in the midst of our own weeping. He simply tells us to rejoice and to weep with others. That, I think, is where generosity comes in. To rejoice from a place of neutral emotion costs very little. To rejoice from a place of weeping costs much. To weep from a place of neutral emotion costs very little. To weep from a place of rejoicing costs much. Strong relationships are forged in the generosity of sacrifice. When God blesses one woman with a full womb and at the same time withholds or removes that blessing from another woman, He provides an amazing opportunity for some of the strongest bonds to form between them – if they will each provide a generous sacrifice to the other. It will cost them both dearly, but the rewards will be incalculable. If the rejoicing woman will generously reach through the awkwardness she feels in the presence of weeping to comfort and to weep with her friend (and I have a few friends whose names come to mind who have done just this for me – thank you), she pours out a sacrifice of love into the relationship. If the weeping woman will generously reach through the pain she feels in the presence of rejoicing to congratulate and provide support for her friend (I hope that my friends have felt me at least attempt to do this, however imperfectly), she also pours out a sacrifice of love into the relationship. The bonds between these two women strengthen with each woman’s sacrifice, and the beauty of that friendship shines Christ’s love and redemption to the corner of the world near them.

In my life, I have had more lessons in reaching out of my rejoicing to weep with others. In the last few months, I have had opportunity to learn more fully how to reach out of my weeping to rejoice with others. It costs. It hurts. And then, it heals. If you are weeping, you will be tempted to withhold your rejoicing from another because of the pain. Let me encourage you – resist that temptation. The pain doesn’t go away, but it is made beautiful by the bonds of love. It is lessened by those who reach out to share it with you as you share in their rejoicing. Rejoice and weep generously.

Learning Unexpected Lessons

Believe it or not, I didn’t grow up with career aspirations. I soaked in the perceived philosophies that floated in the conservative, Christian, homeschooling communities in which I was raised. I don’t know whether some of the adults I knew really felt condemning of career women, whether they were reacting to common cultural barbs thrown at stay-at-home moms, whether they felt superior in their choices to stay home and homeschool, or whether they were humbly discussing the reasons they’d made the choices they’d made. I wish I knew, but children don’t always pick up on those nuances. All I knew was that it was good for women to be homemakers, to be wives, to raise children. I longed for that life with all of the longing my young, limited perspective could muster.

The years ticked by. I turned eighteen, eager to learn the lessons of marriage and motherhood. “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” I dreamed. The years continued to tick by. Aside from a ridiculous fling with a scoundrel when I was twenty-one, there was no indication that I was going to be given the opportunity to “fulfill God’s purpose for wives and husbands.” I went to college. Four years went by. Still single at twenty-six, I applied to graduate programs. I started graduate school on my twenty-seventh birthday, amid protestations that it was time for me to find a husband and settle down. It wasn’t until the December after I turned twenty-nine that I met the man I would marry. I had stopped looking for him long before. He just… showed up.

As a young teenager, I had a picture in my mind of what a godly woman’s life would look like. There was a single path with specific, individual choices. When those choices were not the ones that were presented to me, it required a paradigm shift. I had mistakenly equated my desire for the path of marriage and motherhood with a desire for God. Over the course of many years, I learned to replace my [good] dream of learning the godly lessons that marriage would teach with the better one of learning the godly lessons that would make me like Christ, regardless of my relationship status. Ever so slowly, so painfully, God replaced my desire to serve Him by serving a husband and children with a desire to serve him for Himself. I didn’t sign up to learn graceful loneliness, joy in the midst of deafening silence, or peace in the cacophony of my solitary mind, but I learned anyway. I wanted, in the innocence of childhood, to serve God as a helpmeet. I learned, in the starts and stops of adult life, to serve God in any role.

When I did get married, the lessons of marriage were expected. While difficult, they are joyful because they are lessons I willingly, knowingly signed up for. I also think that the years God spent shifting my paradigm about singleness have contributed something valuable to the way I approach the lessons of marriage.

I didn’t forget the lessons of singlehood, but when we started trying to conceive a child, I foolishly thought I was signing up for the lessons of motherhood. I thought I was signing up for lessons about sacrificing for someone who is completely reliant on you. I thought I was signing up for lessons about setting a good example. I thought I was signing up for lessons about the unconditional love for a child. I thought I was signing up for cheerfully enduring the physical discomforts of pregnancy. Once again, God is teaching me lessons I didn’t sign up for. Once again, my paradigm is painfully shifting. Once again, I’m left only with trusting desperately that He knows what He’s doing. Yesterday marked two months since I said “goodbye” to my first baby. Instead of learning how to cope with a changing body, I’m learning how to be content with one that is stubbornly the same. Instead of dealing with the hormonally-induced emotions of pregnancy, I’m learning to be patient with the unpredictable returns of the heart-crushing sorrow of loss. Instead of learning how to share experiences with other pregnant women, I am learning how to genuinely congratulate them when I see the ultrasound pictures that look so much like the ones I should be seeing of my baby right now. These are not the lessons I thought I would be learning, but they are the lessons I needed to learn. I thought I had learned during the years of singleness how to wait for something that may never happen, but I realize now that I hadn’t learned the lesson as thoroughly as I thought. 

It’s painful when God replaces a good paradigm with a deeper one. It’s painful to sacrifice carefully, faithfully crafted dreams on the altar of total surrender. Just like God eventually allowed me to learn the lessons of marriage, He may eventually allow me to learn the lessons of motherhood. But, just like He asked me to sacrifice the dream of marriage for a time to learn the lessons of singleness, He’s asking me right now to sacrifice the dream of motherhood to learn the lessons of loss. These are not the lessons I signed up for, but they’re the lessons I’m learning. Sometimes, I’m kicking and screaming. Other times, I’m willing. Today, I’m vacillating between the two extremes. Thankfully, I know that He is faithful to “complete the work He began in me.”

Jesus, Teach Me How to Live Here

Saturday, October 7, 2017 was one of the best days of my life. A faint blue line changed me forever. The baby I had prayed for, the child I had longed for since I was just a child myself, was growing deep inside of me. I thanked God for this tiniest of little people. I reveled in that happiness for twelve days. Thursday, October 19, 2017 was the beginning of the hardest week of my life. The tiny person that I loved, that Jim and I had made together, that I wanted more than I knew was possible, had left life before I was even able to see its heart beat on an ultrasound screen.

This is my first experience with a loss of this magnitude. The pain I have felt since last Thursday is deeper and more gut-wrenching than I knew I could endure. My whole life has changed, but everything is the same. There are no pictures of my baby, no memories of its face, no echoes of its laugh. I am a mother with an empty womb and empty arms. That hurts like no other pain I know. I don’t know how to live here. I don’t know how to be a mommy to a baby I never held in my arms. I don’t know how to ride this grief. 

In The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom remembers the horror of their arrival at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Upon discovering fleas in their barracks, Corrie cries to her sister, “Betsie, how can we live in such a place!” Betsie’s response is a simple prayer, “Show us. Show us how.” I’m praying that prayer every day. “Show me. Show me how. Show me how to suffer well. Teach me how to live here.”

Horatio G. Spafford penned the words to the well-known hymn, It is Well with My Soul, after learning that his four daughters had been lost at sea. From his place of deep loss and sorrow, he wrote, “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’” I’m praying that, too, “Jesus, the sorrows are like sea billows. Teach me to say, ‘It is well with my soul.’”

Much of my summer was spent reading and reflecting on the role of humans as the imago dei – the Image of God. I spent much time seeking to image Him as I cared for my home, planned my classes, and loved my husband. My mother reminded me recently of God’s love for us, of His desire for His Children, and of His grief when we leave and despise Him. In this sadness, too, I can know my Creator more deeply. In a time when it is easy to ask where He is, to ask why He allowed my baby to die, I can look to His grief and see that He knows mine. His heart knows what it is to long for a child who has passed on.

Grief is so very weird. The waves wash over me at the most unexpected times. They catch me off guard, surprising me with their strength. Each moment, I’m asking for a fresh batch of strength to endure. Each moment, the fresh batch is there for the taking. Even in the midst of grief, there is hope. Hope that, because of Christ, I will meet my baby one day. Hope that, because He lives, I will learn to live here. Jesus, teach me how to live here.