It’s the topic that I come back to every time I think of the hardships I’ve faced in life. Miscarriage.
1 in 4 women suffer from miscarriage in their lifetime. Some women, like me, are unlucky enough to suffer more than once. I miscarried my very first pregnancy at 7 weeks, and it is not a stretch at all to say that I was traumatized. Coming from a line of fertile women, I thought it could never happen to me. I felt like I’d failed as a woman and as a wife.
Praise God, I wasn’t so heartbroken that I wasn’t willing to try again. I pushed the grief down and made myself look ahead. We got pregnant again and we were blessed with a baby boy: Joey.
Healthy. Thriving. Ours.
I felt redeemed.
He grew. He entered toddlerhood and we decided we wanted to give him a sibling. We prayerfully considered until both of us felt that it was time. I became pregnant pretty quickly and I was excited. I felt a flicker of fear that the past would repeat itself, but I refused to acknowledge it. We bravely announced our pregnancy at 6 weeks. Part of me felt that if we announced it, it couldn’t be taken from us.
Then one morning I went to the bathroom and saw blood. My heart started pounding. I knew. Co workers and friends rallied around me with encouraging words, but they were empty to me. Grief broke me as I drove myself to the hospital to have it confirmed. And I mean BROKE ME. I wailed at God.
WHY?
AGAIN?
What had I done wrong?
The enemy attacked me mercilessly, but thankfully, there was a small voice in me that told me to reach out. I knew that my Pastor and his wife had suffered loss too. I could feel myself spiraling into darkness, and I knew they could help.
The hospital let me go home. I texted my Pastor. He counselled me, and then I spoke to his wife. She shared her heart with me and she let me say all the things I needed to say out loud to process what was happening. She allowed me to be sad, to be angry (and I was SO ANGRY), to be honest about how this was crushing me.
My conversation with her was healing. She prayed over me and I felt the comforting hand of Jesus on me.
God saw me, and he met me in a dream about a week later. In the dream I was floating in a big black ocean. It was night, and it was quiet. I had a baby girl in my arms, and amazingly, I felt no fear. A whisper came to me, giving me her name: Gloria. When I woke up I knew God had shown me my daughter.
And a year later, she was born!
I thought that I was done grieving my losses; that my trust in God was strong again. Then Heather MacFadyen, host of Don’t Mom Alone, asked in one of her podcasts “What keeps you up at night?”
She invited moms to record their answers and send them in. I thought about it and realized that I did have something: the fear that one of my children was going to die in their sleep. I was a slave to this fear every night. I’d lay down to sleep, but then anxiety would come over me and I’d have to go and make sure they were still breathing.
I would do this several times before falling asleep. Then when I woke in the night for whatever reason-bathroom trip or bad dream-I’d check them both again. I just couldn’t trust that they were okay if I didn’t check.
I recorded my answer to Heather’s question.
Heather sent me a response and BOOM–Holy Spirit gut check. Big time. Heather very sweetly said that she could hear in my voice a sense of ownership as I spoke about my babies, and that this was something I was going to need to address in prayer and let go of. (Ouch) She also said to me that I needed to get to a place where, if God did choose to take one of them from me, it could be well with my soul. (Ouch again) She speculated that when I suffered my miscarriages, I allowed a seed of mistrust to grow in my heart that I never weeded out.
She said these things so sweetly, with Godly concern in her voice. And she was right.
I realized I needed to do some deep digging that I had chosen not to do while I was in the thick of my pain. I needed to let myself think about the losses I’d suffered and how they’ve affected what I feel about God. I know in my heart that God is good. I hold his goodness in my hands every day as I nurse my new daughter and kiss my sweet son. But I was still hung up on mistrust.
So I prayed. I read verses. I listened to beautiful songs. I read books. I listened to podcasts. I began allowing healing into a part of my heart that I thought I didn’t have to tend to anymore.
I’m so glad I did.
Motherhood is a sisterhood. And as sad as this corner of our sisterhood is, I feel peace knowing that I am not alone. That others cry and have faced the same grief I’ve faced. That others have found hope and life again.
We cannot compare grief. All babies matter and they are all dear to God. Those lost to us will never know pain, or sadness, or sickness, or fear. They have eternal joy and peace. In the vastness of Heaven, they are in His presence and they will always be safe.
They will always know love.
RELATED:
Yeah, Postpartum Anxiety is a Thing
How to Support Someone In Your Life That Has Had a Miscarriage
To the Mama Who Needs to Let Go
Jessica Hanke has been married to her husband Joe for six years. She’s a stay at home mother to their two small children, Joey and Gloria.
