Miscarriage

My husband and I have not been able to conceive for about 7 years, and you cannot imagine my joy when I discovered last Wednesday that I was pregnant. It was such a relief to know that everything in my body was working correctly, and it was fun, calling my doctor to cancel my appointment for my fertility tests. Telling my family was also awesome because they knew how long we had been waiting.

Without going into too many details, we found out yesterday that I am having a miscarriage. When the signs first appeared, and especially after my trip to the emergency room on Tuesday, my first reaction was anger at God. How could He do this to me? How could He seem to answer my prayer for a baby and then jerk it away? Why was He toying with me? How dare He? I know those seem like horrible questions that no God-fearing woman should ask, but pretending that I didn’t ask them would be dishonest on my part. (Also, I figure that those questions are mild compared to some of David’s Psalms…)

As I sat there in the hospital bed, angry at God, I thought about a couple at my church who had trouble conceiving and went through a few miscarriages and tubal pregnancies about 20 years ago. I was just a child then, but I remembered how sad they were. I thought about how happy they must have been when they got pregnant, and then how crushed they must have felt when they lost their baby—multiple times. I realized that they probably had the same questions for God 20 years ago that I was asking on Tuesday.

Then, I thought about what would have happened if they had conceived. They would probably not have adopted their two sons, who might not ever have heard about Christ or had the opportunity to grow up in a home with loving, stable parents. In a sense, God chose those two little boys. He rescued them from their situation and put them in an environment where they could be nurtured and learn more about Him. How special are those two boys to God and how special is this couple to Him as well! And I’m sure that at the time when they were enduring the loss of their unborn children, they would never have known that God was preparing them to adopt their two sons.

hey also would not have known that 20 years later, their story would comfort me and help keep my own faith in God strong.

I know it’s so easy for us to ask why bad things happen and to blame God for allowing them, but one thing I’ve discovered through this is how many messages God sends us to comfort us during times like this. The nurse in the hospital had a few miscarriages, and she offered me words of comfort that only a woman who had gone through what I was going through would know to say. My mother lost a son three months into her third pregnancy. Did she know then that she would be able to use that situation to comfort her own daughter? Once we left the hospital, we ran into a friend we hadn’t seen in years along with her daughter. When this friend heard what had happened, she told us her story of her own miscarriages. What comfort to see someone who had a miscarriage still be able to have children. Another friend of mine went through a miscarriage just a few months ago, and she has been so helpful. And that night, we turned on the sitcom, Scrubs, just as a doctor and a nurse were arguing about the existence of God and whether or not things happened for a reason. At that moment, the CAT-scan tech discovered a tumor in a girl who had been stabbed, and made the comment that they would never have found the tumor if she had not been stabbed.

God does not promise that when we believe and follow Him that our lives will be perfect and trouble-free, but he does promise that He will not give us anything we can’t handle. I firmly believe that these instances are God’s messengers and messages to me, telling me that He is still there and that He loves me, and that though He cannot take away all bad things, He can engineer a few little “coincidences” to offer me comfort.

So if you have stumbled on this blog, and you, too, are going through a miscarriage (or something equally as horrible) and you’re wondering about what it all means and if God exists, and why He would allow this to happen, I understand exactly how you feel. I’m there with you right now, waiting for my own miscarriage to take its final course. And I can confidently say that yes, God exists, and yes He loves us, and yes, all things happen for a reason. Signs of His existence and His comfort are there, and I encourage you to look for them. Maybe I’m going through this in order to help you.

This is my favorite praise song, and I think it would be appropriate to show the lyrics (out of order) here.

Blessed be Your name in the land that is plentiful,
Where the streams of abundance flow, blessed be Your name.
Blessed be Your name when I’m found in the desert place,
Though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name when the sun’s shining down on me,
When the world’s all as it should be, blessed be Your name.
Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering,
Though there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name.

Every blessing You pour out I’ll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say:
Blessed be the name of the Lord! Blessed be Your name!
Blessed be the name of the Lord! Blessed be Your glorious name!

You give and take away. You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say: Lord, blessed be your name!