“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away…”
That was all I could choke out on Tuesday morning. I knew there was more to the verse, but I just couldn’t…or wouldn’t…say it.
Monday had gone by like a dream. After two miscarriages in the past year and months of infertility, I was finally pregnant. When I knew for sure that morning, my heart raced a little. Then I laughed with joy—and then I prayed: “Lord, protect this little life.”
All day I was walking on air. We got the news mid-morning that we had a new niece. I was delighted! With a heart so filled with happiness, it felt right that others should rejoice, too. We took a meal over and held the baby that evening. So precious! Ten perfect little digits that curled around my finger, and cheeks puffy after the trauma of birth. The smell of vernix on her skin reminded me of the miracle I would experience in a few short months.
But that night everything turned upside down.
The pain of miscarriage is confusing. I tried to sort it out on Tuesday morning when I had a few quiet hours to myself. There’s the obvious pain of loss. No matter how brief the life, God has designed mothers to bond deeply with their children. I sat alone and wept for the loss of my child.
There’s the pain of not knowing. I’ll never know in this life whether my baby was a boy or a girl…blue-eyed or brown. So many sweet, intricate details are lost to me. In our family, a favorite baby shower activity is to guess the gender, date and time of birth, weight, and length of each baby. Why? Because we love details! Each baby is a miracle, and each detail, down to the ounce, is spectacularly interesting. I wept because I cannot know.
There’s the pain of loneliness and misunderstanding. “Oh, it was so early on…you’ll get over it soon.” Outside of personal experience, most people cannot comprehend the feelings that accompany miscarriage. I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide from the world while I wept with the pain of loneliness.
There’s the pain of comparison and envy. The joy of having a new niece was dampened by the envy I felt toward my sister-in-law. I want my baby! It’s not fair! I wept because someone else had what I so desperately wanted.
There’s the pain of guilt. I have two beautiful, healthy children who keep me active and alert from sun-up to sun-down. (My youngest just stuck his heel in a pile of ketchup at lunch.) With hands so full, why do my arms feel empty? Feeling ungrateful, I wept with the pain of guilt.
There’s the pain of fear. Fear whispers, “Maybe you did something wrong. Maybe it’s a problem you’ll never discover. Maybe you’ll never be pregnant again. Maybe you’ll just keep losing babies. Maybe you’ll sink into depression and never climb out. Maybe…” I wept because I was afraid.
And finally, there’s the pain of anger. I had prayed, hadn’t I? I had begged God for this baby. I had asked Him to protect the little life inside me. Well? Hadn’t I already learned enough spiritual lessons from my previous miscarriages? I knew that suffering makes us more like Christ, but I was finished. I could have shouted out loud, “I don’t want to be more like Jesus—I just want my baby!” This is why I closed my lips after the first half of that verse: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” The end. I acknowledged God’s presence and power, but I wasn’t going to bless Him for it. Instead, I cried hot, angry tears and retreated further into myself.
Healing comes slowly, and repentance is a choice. The days have progressed despite my pain. I continue to cry, mascara clotting my lashes and salty spots drying on my lenses. I continue to wonder, Why, God? And it still hurts a little to hold that new baby, remembering I will not experience the same joy in a few months. But repentance (thinking differently) is a choice.
Today I chose to pray from Ephesians 1. God has blessed me in Christ. I am identified with Jesus. I share in His inheritance. Christ is the ruler over all authorities. All power has been given to Him. After a while, words started pouring out with more and more clarity. I asked for hope and peace—and joy. Not because I felt like it, but because it was right.
Finally, I knew I had to say it. Something told me the feeling would never come until I first made the choice. I felt like the little child whose parent asks, “Do you want to help me with the dishes?” The sullen reply is, “No, but I will.” Just like that, I picked up a “dish” and chose to obey:
“…blessed be the Name of the Lord. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!”
And with obedience came a flood of peace.
Shannon Popkin says
Such a beautiful post, Carol! Beautiful to Christ, and beautiful to those of us who have the privilege of peering in on your heart. I’m so sorry for your pain and loss, but so thankful for the sweet surrender I see in you. May the name of the Lord continue to be blessed through your life, family, and your writing.
Justin Gehrke says
Carol-
My name is Justin and I have been a friend of Jared’s since I was a kid. His birthday is two days before mine month and year, and we would often get together at his house to celebrate by spending those days together. We were good friends once upon a time. But we moved on from grade school and high school basketball, and over time, stopped talking. That is why you may have never heard of me. I friend requested Jared about a month ago and since then, I was amazed to see the beautiful family that God has blessed him with, that I have never met. That said, reading your blog above, I am filled with compassion and grief for your and Jared’s loss.
As a husband who’s wife miscarried our first child after a full first trimester, I know the weight of the grief from the loss. I cried for weeks after we lost our baby, and moths later whenever I thought of her. I say “the weight of the loss” because it felt physically heavy to me. I carried it in my chest and on my shoulders and in my neck. I seemed to have lost something, someone that I had never met. How could I feel so grieved about a child I had never met. They say “A woman becomes a mother when she finds out she is pregnant, and a man become a father when he see’s his baby for the first time”. I never agreed with this. I felt like a Dad the day I found out she was pregnant. I used to lay my head on Ruth’s belly and sing to our baby every night without fail for almost three months. I regularly dreamed vivid dreams of a little baby girl with wavy blonde hair wearing a light blue dress and white shoes, that held my hand and called me Daddy. I had lost close family members in my past, but I had never felt heartache like that before.
I too had to come to terms with my anger, only logically at first, from the knowledge that a vessel can not look at it’s maker and say, “What have you wrought?’ To question God’s Will and God’s plan in my life was foolishness, but it was all that my mind could comprehend. “Why”. That was all I thought about. It was truly in Gods hands alone for He is the author and creator of life. He gave us the baby and then He took it away. God does not tease us or play with our emotions, so what happened? God is good RIGHT?! And the answers came to me as I prayed. God is good. And He is a good Father in heaven. He has borne all our sorrows and shares in our grief. Even when he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, he met the sisters on the road and they said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”, and this was true. And though our Lord knew this and had stayed away, and was then going to the grave to raise the dead man, Jesus wept. He grieved the loss the sister felt, and he grieved that Death had dominion over life. Jesus went to the cross to take the power and the sting out of death. To take back the keys to death and hell, so that there would one day be no more tears. He raised Lazarus from the dead to show the world that He had the power to raise men from the dead, and That for the Glory of God. And then He died for our sins on the cross so that He could raise all men from the dead on the last day, this too for the Glory of God. And He did this the Bible says, out of “Great Love”.
Every hardship God allows us to go through, gives us an opportunity to fulfill the full duty of man and Glorify the Lord. We have through these times, the choice to say those words, “God is Good!”. Not just because we can’t accept good from God and not evil, but because it’s the truth. God is Good. His love endures forever. Yes, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. As it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord”.
But our truest opportunity to Glorify God, I believe, is when we are at our darkest moments, and yet, we remember our creator and with our mouth proclaim, God is good! And the joy of the Lord shall be our strength. He is with us always, but only He knows why He does what He does, i.e, rules the universe by the word of His power.
By the end of it all, I had to ask myself: Am I here on this earth for my pleasure and my comfort, happiness and glory? Or am I sold out for the Lord, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. Am I here for the Glory of God or for myself?
When God does things that I not only don’t approve of but I actively resent, is that because I have a rightful, reasonable expectation that God will not let me get hurt, or because I have I fallen back into the original sin, that is, to want to take control of my life from God, and be God of my own life. To by like God… By the end of the thought process of trying to understand God’s will through extreme hardship, the same thought process that Job went through for so many chapters until The Lord showed up to ask him a couple questions, I had to cup my hand over my mouth in awe of God and accept His will in my life. Then the thought came to me where I had never heard anyone say it before:
“It is Good that God is God, and men are men, and that God is above men, and rules over them”.
I no longer wanted to rule my life. I didn’t want to take the power of God for myself and run my own life. It was better that God is above me and is ordering all things by the word of His power, even if I didn’t ever understand the Why. And that was good enough for me. And that moment, I had peace knowing that someone much more powerful and loving and wise was directing my life. I could give that child back to God and not feel slighted that I had felt pain at the Will of God. I could live my life looking for God to be glorified instead of looking for my own happiness. And in sacrificing my happiness, God blessed me with contentment. And that is far better. I am content that God be Glorified by by life. That God receive all the credit for the good that happens in my life, and the He still be recognized as good through my hardship. Yes, I am content with the Will of God in my life.
This is the work that The Lord did in my heart when we lost a child. I forget from time to time, but He always reminds me how Good He is. I tell my wife, “God has a great track record of taking care of us. He has never failed us before, He will not start now”.
I hope you find some comfort from this letter.:)
J.G
Jennifer says
I am sorry to hear that it happened again Carol. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. My parents had Amy, then two stillbirths and two miscarriages before they had triplets. My mom always said that if those babies had lived, we would not have been born. It helped my parents’ marriage grow stronger as a result. My mom said she knew she had something special with Dad when he rented a wheelchair for her when she was 6/7 months pregnant with us just so she could get out of the house. My heart weeps for you and I will continue to pray for you and your family.
Tonia Baker says
I will be praying for you.
I do understand, all of those feelings, now at 42, with many precious lives God has given us the privilege of having a part in, never our own to hold or to know the details as you said. Miscarriages, infertility treatments (never a reason know for the infertility), 19 yrs. and oh so many tears. This is not said to put in more fear, but to tell you I am praying for you with an understanding heart!
My sister has a 2 yr. old (after 20 yrs. of infertility and at age 43 ) And one of my best friends has a 7 yr. old (after twelve years of infertility and at age 43).
So for the fear of never holding another little one of your own, there is hope.
The pain of the lives you have lost and will never know in this world is so very real, and your time of mourning is understood, But PLEASE do not mourn as those who have no Hope! This is what also brings you out of the state of depression, that and the hope of a future! A future full of God’s plan to give You Hope and Joy and Peace. A future for Good and Not evil. Jeremiah 29:11
I pray that through my pain God has used me to encourage you!
I am praying and my Heart goes out to you! ?
Imie III says
Carol, thank you for your openness and vulnerability in sharing. Our hearts break with yours and we join you in prayer for peace and healing in this time.
I was just reading the story of Gideon in Judges 6 the other day. Having been confronted by the Angel of the Lord Gideon seems to respond in anger, fear, and doubt to the path set before him. My rough paraphrase —
“If God’s with us,” questioned Gideon, “why are these terrible things happening? Where is all the greatness and goodness of God I always heard sung about? ‘Blessed be your name?’…whatever. God abandoned us. Anyways, Lord, I’m too weak, I’m too immature, I just can’t bear the load you’ve asked me to shoulder.”
But the LORD simply replied, “Move forward, Gideon. Do you not see? I am not just sending you down this path alone, I am walking the path with you.”
At the end of the exchange, in Judges 6:24, we read this: “So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it Yahweh Shalom [that is “The LORD is Peace].
As you grapple with the pain, in all its various forms, I pray that Yahweh Shalom would continue to reveal Himself to you in new and deeper ways and that you would know Him as your peace like never before.
We know the story of Gideon, how he went on to be used by the Lord to deliver the nation of Israel from the darkness of sin which had enshrouded them and the peoples who oppressed them as a result. None of us know the story the Lord will write in your family’s life, but I believe He desires to use you just as mightily in His work of delivering His people of His tribes out of captivity and back into the glorious light of His presence.
Blessed be His Name!
Katy Pryor says
So sorry Carol. We miscarried a baby about 3 years ago, then faced unexpected infertility. 2 Corinthians 1, the first part of the chapter meant a lot to me during that time. Thank you for sharing your heart and the example of running to God even in hardship. Praying for you!
Bonnie says
My heart (and eyes) are still weeping with you. Thank you for sharing this painful, yet beautiful journey of love and hope. (I need to add water-proof mascara to my makeup bag.)