My 3rd Miscarriage

Our little butter bean.  We have been on a roller coaster of emotions for about 2 months.  2 negative tests and then a positive one. We began to share the news immediately and were thrilled to be adding number 4 to our clan.  I never love the first trimester of pregnancy, but the hopes of a sweet new baby make all that drama worth it.  My fears of miscarriage were present, but different from with Hannah.  Hannah’s pregnancy was perfect and my fear of loss was unnecessarily great.  My fears in this pregnancy while not absent were less and my faith in God’s plan was greater.  Mostly because when I look at my sweet Hannah’s face I am reminded that God’s plan is best.  I know that I wouldn’t have her if I didn’t go through the first two miscarriages. In the heartaches of life God strengthens us and teaches us.  These are a few of the reminders and revelations of God’s word that I have been given through this sweet life.

I do not understand God’s ways

We will never choose the ways God does.  We don’t choose cancer, miscarriage, death or any other thing that comes from the fall.  The Israelites would never have chosen to walk the long way around to get to the promised land.  His ways are truly higher than ours.  I have those questions; I have those things that I don’t understand.  I have had thoughts of why did I get pregnant, I would have rather not gotten pregnant than had another miscarriage and while we are on the subject, God why do you even allow miscarriage, can’t you just stop the pregnancy?!?!?  And that’s where I stop and say I don’t understand, I’ll never understand, it’s not my job to understand.  But what I do know and understand is that God’s word says that He works all things to the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.  I choose to believe his word over my finite mind.  And no matter what I ever go through, I can always look to Job who tells us “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” It is only by grace and through the prayers of the body of Christ that I write this. For in my natural self, I would be in a much different place.

Celebrate life

I have said this before in our miscarriages and I don’t care how many more I experience, I will always celebrate life with no regret.  C S Lewis says “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves).  I can’t say this is always easy especially when you don’t know the outcome yet.  I said with faith (wanting to give into fear) when I didn’t know if this baby would survive that I really wanted to celebrate life and beg God for a miracle until there was no hope.  During that process I felt weak and mostly that I was stumbling along in my faith (as we do and we need God’s grace). I got to see my baby’s heartbeat twice, so little and helpless and I’m so thankful God let me love this sweet baby for a short time.  I’m thankful for those who celebrated with us and were joyful with us.  I will always by the grace of God celebrate life.

His word is living and active

Hebrews 4:12 The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edge sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 

This is where I was in my pregnancy with Hannah. 

http://crouch23.blogspot.com/2016/10/carrying-rainbow-babies-with-hope.html

I didn’t really know how to ask God for my baby(with Hannah).  I was stifled and hindered by fear.  Not that I didn’t pray for her, but not as much as I prayed for this baby.  I begged and begged God to save this baby.  As soon as I found out last Tuesday that I wasn’t measuring as far along.  I prayed in faith by the outline of Philippians 4 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”  I took my worries to him and I’ll tell you I did not feel peace during the prayers.  I didn’t feel peace as the reality of another loss was hitting me.  I wanted to control and did all I could to try to find out what might be wrong.  I googled more than I care to admit and struggled to turn to God.  I didn’t feel this as I was living out the beginning of the verse of surrendering my concerns and desires unto his hands.  I prayed my desire and I begged for the life of my child.  But as we all know God’s word does not return void and today God’s peace has been in my heart, possibly greater than it ever has before.  The peace that passes all understanding and human explanation has guarded me.  Where we should have been broken God’s peace upheld us. We prayed and prayed with passion and desire that God would save our baby but as David got up and praised God after his baby died, so we choose to do so. His word is perfect and true.  I want to say too, I have no 4 step plan to make this happen, this is the work of the Holy Spirit and God through His living and active word.  

We share our grief with our children

This has been a hard one for me.  As soon as I knew that it was possible the baby might not make it, my heart just hurt to have to tell John and Abby and I struggled to know what to do.(tell them, ignore it, don't tell them etc.)  Tonight as I was eating my 2^nd Reese Pumpkin, John wanted to know why I was eating a 2^nd treat, so I told him that I had been in the hospital today.  And he asked “to get the baby out?” (he still remembers me going to get Hannah out at the hospital)  In that moment, I just felt I needed to tell him the truth.  “Yes buddy, we had to get the baby out, but the baby is in heaven with Jesus.”  He looked really sad and said “we wanted to keep the baby, didn’t we?”  I said yes, buddy we did, but the baby is with Jesus in heaven and God is still a good, good Father.  

How to be in this world but not of it, isn’t always easy

It’s not always cut and dry on how we are to be human yet be filled with the spirit.  God has given us emotions and made us human: to feel, to be in relationship, to love and to grieve.  As Ecclesiastes 3 tells us, there truly is a season for everything.  I long for heaven where the season of sorrow will be gone, but while we are still here, we will always face those things that grieve us and weigh heavy on our hearts.  We will have those things that I talked of before that we will never fully understand. We may be able to look back and see the redemption, but sometimes we just don’t get it.  One of my prayers as I walked through this, mostly as I felt I was failing since I was trying to control and not trusting as I should, was “God how do I glorify you through this?”  Sometimes, it is very hard to know where our human flesh and our spirit collide in a way that is perfectly pleasing to our father.  And of course, we are all sinful and will always fail and fall, but we learn to be human in our grief and sadness knowing that God is right there with us comforting us and present in our darkness and hard times when we can’t even function.  We make a choice to trust him and communicate with him through the whole thing.  I haven’t figured it out and probably never will, but I will say that walking through this has shown me the power of his peace and how sometimes it comes after the struggle.  It’s supernatural without a 10 step plan.  It comes through surrender and trials.  I wasn’t there with the first miscarriage, and especially not with the 2^nd, but today God has done something new in my heart.  There will most likely be grief to come over my sweet baby, but I pray I grieve in the peace of God knowing “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” Psalm 34:17-20.  But for today, I enjoy and rest in his supernatural peace.