The start of a new year is usually one that marks new beginnings, even if it's only a sense thereof. It may be only a new year, a new gust of winter weather, or the boxing up of all the Christmas ornaments and renewing your home to its less "season" specific tone. Sometimes the new year marks new beginnings that are more monumental. But sometimes the new year starts off with grief. Sometimes it starts with a heavy heart.
The third day of 2013 was the day, through medical intervention, that I became "un-pregnant" after waiting a week for my body to figure out that the life inside me was no longer living. Miscarriage closed out 2012. Surgery greeted 2013. December 27, 2012. January 3, 2013. July 30, 2013. All significant days. July 30th was the day that a baby was due. God knew that baby's life was to be brief from the beginning though. He always knows the story before He tells it to us. Those experiences changed me and they also changed me and Josh. They didn't just teach me lessons, although I do believe I learned some life lessons through all of that. I think experiences like that can shape us and change us in our souls, rather than just teach our brains something. It has to be more than a lesson learned, doesn't it? Knowledge puffs up. It's about another way to be conformed to Christ-likeness. It's about another layer of my face being put on (for those of you who like a Lewis reference. It's one that Josh uses often). I don't like to look at stuff and say, "Well this was just meant to teach a lesson." A lesson can be learned in a classroom. A lesson is possible without a relationship.
God was real to me in a different sense during that week of waiting for my body to "pass" the baby. God was real in a different sense when I realized newly and freshly how little control I have, even over my own body. God was real because he was near and good as He always is. But during that time I was watching Him prove Himself faithful to me in an experience that was not familiar to me. Miscarriages are deemed common until they happen to you for the first time. Then, in your world, they are not common. Tragedies, heartbreaks, and losses themselves are common and have been going on since the Fall of Man.
The experience of losing a child very early in a pregnancy was one that brought new light to some of my relationships as well. I cannot say enough kind words about my husband. He cried with me. He He waited with me. He prayed with me. We also learned in a new way that our friends are nothing short of awesome. This is a a blessing I do not take for granted. You know who you are. You were there for us. I also had friends who had walked this road before me and understood how it all lingers. I got emails or texts 5 months later checking up on me. They understood that sometimes time can make a loss like this worse before it gets better.
We also learned that some people can be astonishingly insensitive during a time like this, yet they will likely not know they were insensitive. Isn't that what being insensitive is? You aren't sensitive enough to realize yourself. It's not intentional. Maybe it is? But either way, it must be forgiven, though the forgiveness will not be asked for. I don't know that I can get some of the impressions out of my heart. I learned some ugly things about humans in January. I learned some ugly things about myself and how I respond to ugliness in others.
I read a great article about how to deal with a person who has just suffered a loss or is going through a season of suffering. The gist was "comfort in, dump out." This means use comfort words and empathetic words when you talk to a person in this season. Don't dump your problems or the trifles of your life on them at this time. Don't talk about yourself at this time. Comfort in to the person hurting, but dump out to someone in a less formidable season. And in due time, seasons will change. One day you may be in their position and they will be in yours. You can be the one comforted and you will be glad when they dump out on someone else and not on you. This taught me a lot. I made it a new goal in life not to ever be that person who dumps in, rather than comforts in.
When I reflect back on the early days of this year, I have some memories I'd like to forget, some memories that are tender and dear, and memories that energize me. A bright side was that we got several days of renewal in mid-January. We still talk about how that time was worth every penny. Then, as the spring season approached, we untangled some spiritual matters, and worked through some practical ones as well. The year pressed on. It wasn't until July that I started to see pictures of newborn babes run through my FB newsfeed and it stung a little. Up until then, I really didn't know if I even had the desire to have another baby. I felt a little shell-shocked, if you will. I just felt cozy and safe with my two sweet children and didn't want to go through the risk of another pregnancy. Let's face it: being pregnant is one of the most vulnerable places to put yourself, in my opinion. I'm not much of a do-it-yourself crafty type, but when it comes to my uterus, it can be disconcerting to feel so distanced from what's going on in there. And if you are the hands-on, do it yourself type, just try it when it comes to constructing a human. Good luck with that. I do feel so helpless some days. Can't I participate more in this process?
But at some point during the summer, I would see those newborn photos and a twinge of sadness would come. It started to seem real that July was coming: the month my own baby would have been due.
Just days before that July 30th due date I started feeling a little off. Falling asleep at 9 p.m. Things like that. Nothing dramatic. Then C walked past me and touched my arm to get my attention about something. As soon as he did he said, "Mommy you are WARM!" Yes, I was. I felt like a furnace. And I knew.
Later that day it was confirmed that another baby was on the way. I have never been so squarely caught between two emotions. I was supposed to be nothing but excited and blissfully overwhelmed, right? But instead I felt mostly caution. I felt unable to commit to a response. This was fear, but it was also reticence. God is a God who disciplines, but very lovingly. I can't even remember how many words of reassurance he gave whether through a word of scripture or through small circumstantial ways. Any time my mind would wander into a fearful zone, I felt as though I were betraying the living God. How dare a child of God walk in fear! It's not that I felt he was telling me the future. It's not that I thought He was letting me know, "hey the outcome you want is the one you'll get!" It's that I knew he was saying He was God no matter what and because of that, His goodness was enough, regardless of the outcome. He was requiring my faith. So I slowly began to choose thankfulness rather than keep myself in a state of "neither here nor there" emotionally. I am given today alone. I started reminding myself that in the present moment, none of my fears were being realized. Thankfulness was due. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to the life in your womb?
We know now that this baby is a boy. I continue to grasp Scripture and take thoughts captive, casting down vain imaginations. I continue to see God in the day to day where I sometimes wasn't even looking. I watch as my children pray and see prayers answered. I am humbled to be part of this story.
Your story is probably a whole different one, with its own nuances and its own testament to the Glory we await. We could compare whose stories are more traumatic, more exciting, more relentless, more uplifting. We could do all that and diminish the work of God in our own story. But we won't.
What is that to me? I must follow Him.
I know this was a long blog post. If you made it this far, you have great stamina and should be commended! I just wanted to bless the Lord out loud. I have a whole host of journeys with God during my single life. Back then, I even journaled about them. And now that I'm married the journeys just seem even more fine-tuned. Some of the journey has been quiet. Josh and I can say to each other about parts of our journey, "This journey is just between us and God. This is in the depths." and that has been actually very good in a way. And some journeys have been such that we blog about it. And the story of these babies was one of those. I'm thankful for the thorns, the flowers, the dirt, the gravel, the daylight, and all the thirst that continues to be quenched along the way as we have walked with the Lord as a married couple.
From Him, to Him, and through Him are all things. . .
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