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.

Carrying rainbow babies with hope

For my pregnant friends who have had a previous miscarriage

I walked that road, or should I say I stumbled upon that road. I wish I would have been a great faith giant, facing my fears with great strength and courage, but that would have only meant that I was strong in my own strength.

I wrote these words to a friend (who knows the pain of miscarriage) in the early weeks of my pregnancy with Hannah.

"Thinking of you and praying for you lots these days.  I think of you and just feel like you know exactly what I'm going through.  You know the heartache, the pain, the fear, the fear of pain, the fear of another loss, the fear of hoping and enjoying and celebrating a pregnancy.  I'm facing so many emotions and really feel alot like I'm just waiting for more confirmation that really won't come until that baby comes.  I'm trying, but it's really hard to have faith in the midst of uncertainty.  I've realized that I fear disappointment.  I fear enjoying my pregnancy or talking to my baby because it might not be alive.  I try to just believe and have faith that the baby is ok, until it's not, but it's just really hard.  Sometimes "I just don't know how to "ask" God for this pregnancy"  I don't want to talk to Him about it....I'm somewhat afraid to ask, because I'm afraid that our wills will not line up.

Yet the familiar verses from Philipians answer my question "Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again rejoice.  Let your gentleness be evident to all. the Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."  So how do I pray for this pregnancy?  And I was reminded that this is how we are to do it, we take ALL of our fear to him, not some of it, we pray and we petition with thanksgiving for the children God has given, even the ones in heaven.  We choose to trust him and we request what we want, more babies.  And we get the peace of God in return.  We don't get any guarantee that we will have more babies, we get no guarantees that things will go our way, but we do have the guarantee of God's peace.

I'm not there yet, I still have alot of fear and just not wanting to face another loss, but I'm encouraged that we have hope of overcoming fear.  There is hope that we will come out of this journey with more strength, compassion and trust.  And there is hope of freedom to trust God, holding nothing back.

Another verse that I'm holding onto through all of this is Ps 112: 7-8 'He will have no fear of bad news; His heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.  His heart is secure, He will have no fear in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.'"

Let the words of God encourage you today.  Stay strong in the Lord, hold tight to him know that "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."   Hebrews 11:1

I love each of you and am praying for you.

Waiting on Hannah

Just breathe.  Or be still and know that I am God.  Things I’m not so good at doing.   I want a plan, I want to have everything together and I want to map it out so that I will have all my bases covered.  I don’t like survival mode, yet that is the place that I find myself most often.  Abby was almost 3 weeks early, so the fact that I’m still pregnant is a little surprising to me.  I knew and even told myself that just because she was early, didn’t mean that Hannah would be too, but in my heart, I believed she would be early. 

Expectations can get you into a lot of trouble.  Or at least put you in the way of temptation.  When you expect something or even make plans to do something, and it doesn’t happen, temptation is at your door.  The temptation could be to be angry or fearful.  Once given to anger or fear we may try to control our situation, blame God, question God or be given to depression.  Fear is directly connected to our trust in God so as we fear, we remove our trust in God and put it in ourselves. 

This last 2 weeks has been so hard to trust Him.  Like I mentioned, I thought that since Abby was early, Hannah would be too.  So every day, has been a struggle accepting that today was not the day either.  Mike and I had it planned just right in a way that would be perfect for our family.  Hannah would come during Mike’s break and he would be here to help me when she was born.  And now, we are at the point where his break is almost over and Hannah still is not here.  One of the funniest things is that I’m only 39 weeks pregnant, so my due date is still a week away, yet I have been wanting her to come for 2 weeks now.  My expectations of what I thought would happen have shaped my whole outlook to the point where I even dismissed what was really normal. 

So today marks 39 weeks of pregnancy with Hannah.  And I have to step back and ask the Lord for forgiveness for not trusting, being ungrateful and giving way to fear.  I haven’t trusted His plan.  I have in a sense been ungrateful for my sweet girl.  (Beggars can’t be choosers right?) And the fears from earlier in the pregnancy have returned.  After having two miscarriages back to back, you would think I would have “gotten it” by now.  How quickly we turn from realizing all the blessings God has in store.  How quickly we, like the Israelites, turn back to our idols of sin (whatever they may be).  

So when I step back and take a different perspective, I see that Mike and I have gotten some much needed quality time together and our marriage has been strengthened.  (Those of you who have been through the newborn stage, know that quality time is not likely with a newborn).  I see that we have been able to slow down a bit, relax and spend time with our two children.  And I know God has many other reasons why this sweet baby has not entered the world yet, some of which I may never know. 

I’ve never really been good at waiting and this is no different.  I still want my baby to come NOW, but I stop and remember that my job is to “be still and know that He is God.”  I surrender, and will have to surrender with the next Braxton Hicks contraction and several times after.  But I choose to trust Him, surrender my fear and my desire to control.  He is the God of the universe.  He knows what He is doing and He is worthy of my trust, my praise and my thanks.

Pregnancy after miscarriage

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  Hebrews 11:1

Hearing that sweet heartbeat was so comforting, such a relief….for about an hour.  Then the fears came back, even stronger.  Maybe they just felt stronger because I didn’t expect them to come back so soon.  Maybe it was because I didn’t get any confirmation that everything really was okay until the next appointment which was over a month away.  The thing is that I would really be okay if we had another miscarriage.  I know that God’s grace would be so strong just as it has in the other situations and just like His grace is when we go through hard times.  What I realized in the midst of this strong fear was that my biggest fear is the unknown.  I want to know for sure that God won’t allow another miscarriage and that my baby will live OR I want to know for sure that my baby will not live and exactly when that will happen.   I desire to control and know rather than trust in God as an all-knowing, all-wise, perfect Savior.   

Although it is hard and I struggle to trust and fight, it is in and through the struggle that my faith grows.  In the midst of the struggle it feels as though I’m falling on my face every time fear knocks at my door.  And there are those moments when I do fail and I have to fight to get back up.  However it is in the struggle that we grow.  Our faith grows and we are able to look back and see how God used these situations to help us to grow. But in the middle of the struggle, it seems so hard, so dark, so hopeless.  I have to hold on God’s promises and have faith.  Faith doesn’t come easy and as Hebrews says, “it is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I want to be sure of what I hope for (my baby living) and certain of what I do not see (his/her heartbeat).  I’m holding on to this promise and even as I hold onto it, there is still the temptation to fear that what I am holding onto won’t come to pass and also to fear the pain that comes from believing in something so strongly just to lose it. And I’m not denying the possibility.  But what I am holding on beyond my sweet baby, is that God is a God that works ALL things for good for those who love Him.  I have to choose to believe in the midst of the unknown that no matter what happens, God is still on His throne, He IS the blessed controller of ALL things and he wastes nothing.  Whatever he allows in my life is for a greater purpose than I see.  I don’t have to like it, but I have to trust Him.  And the thing is, I’m worried about something that hasn’t even happened.  I’m considering a loss that hasn’t come.  I’m wasting my energy on worry rather than celebrating the life that is growing inside of me and the lives that I have to care for now.  My worries distract me from my daily responsibilities, making me useless.  

I recently read in a book where the author used the story of Moses to show how his parents must have been tempted to fear his safety.  She used the illustration of putting your fears in the basket and trusting them into God’s hands.  Today I put my sweet baby in the basket as a symbol of putting him/her in God’s hands.  I will have to fight not to try to take him/her out of the basket and try to control.  I will long for each appointment to hear that heartbeat, but in the meantime I choose to hold onto Christ, His promises, His love, and His care.  I will continue to have faith, being sure of what I hope for and certain of what I do not see.   This kind of faith doesn’t come easy and I will continue to struggle, but I do know I WILL be able to look back and see the work God did in my heart.  He is faithful ALWAYS!

My Fifth Pregnancy

Not many people know about our second miscarriage.  It’s not that we didn’t want people to know.  It’s just that, well I’m not even sure.  I guess I didn’t want my status update to be: “we lost another baby.”  The second miscarriage was what’s called a blighted ovum, which means the baby never developed.   The second one felt more like a loss of a pregnancy rather than a loss of a baby, but nonetheless, a loss.  I was at a much better place in the first loss, trusting God that He knew he what he was doing, even if I didn't understand. However I did ask questions, like why did I get pregnant in the first place? Why just not get pregnant?  But with the second miscarriage, I was pretty upset that it was happening again....didn't want do feel pregnant if I wasn't really pregnant and didn't want to walk this road AGAIN....I was full of fear at the beginning of the pregnancy when we didn't know if it was a miscarriage or not. During those weeks of uncertainty, I didn't know what/how to pray. But the only comfort came from reading God's word. I didn't know what to say to God, but God had comforting words for me from His word. I think after the first miscarriage, I really felt I handled it well....I was trusting in God's sovereignty and even though I was sad, I was ok. But the second one I was humbled even more because I didn't handle it well. I was mad, fearful and hurt. I wanted my babies to be here, I knew that everything would be okay, but in those moments of uncertainty, I was not ok and I was not happy with my circumstances.(This was in February 2015).

Present day June 2015, we are so excited to be 10 weeks pregnant.  We have an appointment tomorrow and it has been quite a journey to overcome fear.  Pregnancy after miscarriage is much different than my first two pregnancies.  My first two pregnancies were not filled with temptation to fear or visualization about appointments.  In some ways I wish that I could go back and not experience that heartache, change the past and have my sweet baby Daniel and Hope.  But first off, I couldn’t have both of those babies, and I couldn’t be pregnant right now, but the most important reason is: God didn’t allow it to happen that way, and He has a reason.  I may never fully realize why, and that’s ok. 

Sometimes I wish that “zap theology” worked.  That I could pray a prayer that would remove my fear and automatic peace would follow.  But God designed it where we are involved and uses these situations to draw us to Himself.  We are to work to overcome our sin (don’t be confused, I’m not saying work for our salvation).  But when it comes to fear, there is action to be taken.  I have had to work so hard to not fear the loss of this baby.  I have been on a roller coaster of one minute feeling everything is ok, to the next where I’m imagining my husband with cancer and finding out that the reason we have had miscarriage is because he is passing cancer to them.  There have been good days, bad days, hard day and just pure exhaustion.  Yet in the midst of it all, I know that God is calling me to trust in Him.  Reminding me that no matter what He is with me.  He knows what is going to happen and He is and will be with me through it all.  He has been faithful to give me scriptures, books and friends to help me as I walk through the first weeks of this pregnancy.  At about 7 weeks I had a turning point when I read something that talked about God not giving us grace for imagined situations. That worry is a sin and that we need to confess it, not look for grace. (not that God doesn't help us, but it's through confession and forgiveness not grace). I realized that I was just expecting my baby to die instead of living my life, taking care of my children and trusting that my baby was ok, until I learned otherwise.  Since then, the temptation to worry has been present, but I could always look back to that moment when I chose to trust that my baby was ok.  I’m nervous about tomorrow, but I choose to trust.  I don’t want to walk through another loss.  I want my baby to be ok.  But even if he/she is not, I trust the Lord.  He is good.  He is faithful. He is my God and my Savior.