God, how could you?

"God, how could you let this happen?"  The greatest damage done by my first miscarriage was the spiritual battles that ensued in the following months.  Yes, months.  I am committed to being honest here and although I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, I was truly a wreck emotionally and spiritually for a good long time.  Much longer than I let on to anyone other than my husband - and even he I'm sure didn't realize the extent of my struggle most of the time.  I have a hard time opening up about anything too personal/emotional anyway, and this was deep.  Deeper I think than anything else I've ever had to deal with.


I have been wonderfully rooted and brought up in a Christian home with a strong church family.  God has been a big, personal part of my life forever.  I loved my church and youth group growing up, went to Bible college for a year after high school, attended a small Christian college after that, did some missions, worked summers at the Bible camp I grew up going to, been involved in churches and Bible studies and small groups my whole life.  Everything in life is centered on Christ, on God.  My natural response in hard situations is prayer and looking for God's hand or leading.  So don't think that I was looking for someone to blame and suddenly God entered the picture.  I'm no perfect Christian by any means, but I want to make clear what a huge deal this was for me.


My initial response to this personal tragedy of losing a baby was the trite (if I can say that) and Christianese answer of "God is in control.  Looking at the big picture I know that this isn't the end of the world and God's will is for the good of those who love Him, etc."  I must have still been in shock - which I absolutely was, who expects this? - because when the real emotions set in, I felt no hint of God's love or grace and nor did I want anything to do with any of it.  I felt betrayed, robbed, ignored, abandoned.  I could understand that bad things happen because we live in a fallen world.  People make choices and there are consequences.  Even nature is not how it was intended to be.  But inside my womb?  What could possibly touch this tiny life inside me and take it away?  I had done my research; I knew the pregnancy do's and don'ts.  My doctor ensured me it was not my fault, not to blame myself because there probably wasn't anything I could have done or not done to cause it.  

So I tried to be the good Christian and think God is in control and all that, but then it came down to "Then how could you let this happen?  Only you could touch this tiny life inside of me and let it die.  I don't see any good in this, I don't feel your love, all I feel is pain and betrayal and emptiness and devastation."  Ugh, how this weighed on me.  Deep in my heart I knew that I was wrong, that God is love and truth and that he never wants to hurt us and that I needed him.  But that was a very tiny portion of my broken heart that was otherwise filled with all these other feelings.  So the battle continued on for quite awhile.  I say battle because I know on one side Satan was using my vulnerability (and crazy fluctuating hormones) to feed me lies and fan the flame of anger and pain and confusion.  On the other side God kept gently pushing that little grain of the truth of who he is into my days and nights.


Hopelessness is a good word to describe my next month or more.  I wanted to start trying to get pregnant again.  I didn't want to risk the same disappointment and I honestly didn't want this untrustworthy God to be any part of it.  I knew that wasn't possible - I knew that someday somehow I was going to have to reconcile all of this and I couldn't go on living life ignoring God.  I knew that wasn't life at all, but I could not get passed the unfading feelings of betrayal and indifference.  I unfortunately confided my situation to a friend, via facebook, who (with good intentions I'm sure) pretty much just preached at me about how trusting God doesn't always mean we get what we want, and how God cannot bless what I do not surrender to Him, and how I can't push God away, he wants to comfort me, etc.  Well that was pretty much the opposite of what I needed.  In fact that is what I already knew that I should be feeling and believing but couldn't.  I felt like I wanted to have kids, but that God was ultimately in control of that blessing and I couldn't trust it to him so I was never going to get to have a family, which made me even more angry at God and just put me in this unending circle of hopelessness that I saw no way out of.


Time went by and I went on with life, although miserable on the inside.  Eventually my strong feelings (and probably my hormone levels) started to subside.  That little, but indestructible, piece of my heart kept pushing forward, encouraging me to at least take some steps in God's direction.  Last summer I had read a book, "The Shack," which dealt with loss and relationship with God.  I thought reading that and Job might be a good place to start.  Job lost everything - I don't know how he did it.  The whole time reading it I was thinking "I am not this guy, I can't even relate to his strength and faith..."  But the guy in the book was different.  He was a messed up wreck like me and that gave me some hope. 


In this book the guy has lost a daughter and physically meets God at this shack and converses with him.  In one conversation God is talking to him about how he works things out for good.  The guy asks how can God possibly justify the means of a lost life for whatever the end.  God's response was that he is not justifying it, he is redeeming it.  I read it over and over.  Redeeming it.  For some reason that cut through and spoke to my heart.  Can I allow God to redeem this?  Redeeming means it counts for something.  My baby will not be gone and forgotten and unnoticed, it will live on in the redemption of this heart-breaking situation.  So then I started wondering about how God could redeem it.  The possibility of adoption entered my mind.  We have yet to see about all that.


About that same time someone on facebook posted a link to an article or something written by another lady who had a miscarriage where she spoke of a similar struggle that I was having.  I wish I would have saved it, but what stuck with me was her realization that "we have a weeping God."  He hurts when we hurt.  He hates seeing us in pain.  That visual, along with the book's characterization of the loving God, marks the turning point in my spiritual battle.  That truth connected with all the other truth I had hidden in my heart and I knew that I could trust him.  He is good.  He does care.  He will take care of me and redeem my loss.


We did get pregnant again, and again we lost our baby.  That was almost a month ago and I have purposefully given myself this time to wait and write about my personal struggle.  I will not believe those lies again and I am truly in a much better place now that I was a month after my last miscarriage.  I'm stronger and sharing and hopeful.  I know God will redeem this whole situation, maybe even through this blog speaking to another hurting woman.  Maybe some other way that I have no idea about now.  

I love music and I feel God speaking through it so often.  Sara Groves is a favorite artist of mine...

from this one place I can't see very far
in this one moment I'm square in the dark
these are the things I will trust in my heart
you can see something else
something else

 

I'm still very emotional, I cry easily if I talk about it and I'm okay with that.  I'm not over it.  I don't think you ever really get over losing a child, especially two.  Even if I go on to have other kids, I will always have these other two as well.  Pro-life and pro-choice supporters may argue about when life really starts, but I know those two tiny babies were my children and lives that I will see in heaven some day.

If you find yourself in my situation, you don't have to feel alone.  I've been there and I'm sure many others have as well.  Talk to someone if you can or talk to me.  I promise not to preach at you or judge you.  Everyone else, pray with me for the hurting mothers in the world who need hope and God's redeeming power.