Friday, January 18, 2019

Grief. And the Joy we can find in it.

Grief. Grief is defined as 'deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.' Some synonyms for grief are sorrow, misery, sadness, anguish, pain, heartache, heartbreak, regret. I have experienced many moments of grief in my life in many forms. I remember when I was 10 years old and my pawpaw died. I remember sitting around the dining room table at my grandma’s house and my dad, my aunt and uncles all talking about the memories, laughing through the tears. I remember being in the 4th grade and learning that our dog had died. I remember having my heart broken by a boy---another form of grief. I remember my grandma dying when I was an adult. Most recently though, this monster called Grief has taken on a whole new meaning in my life.
If you read my last blog, you learned that we suffered a miscarriage in July of 2018. I was 6 weeks and to say we were devastated would be an understatement. We both dealt with our grief in our own ways. And I don’t think it was necessarily the healthiest way for either of us, but we survived. We learned and we got through.
The months following we really learned to communicate with each other, we learned to laugh at the small things, to enjoy each other and the blessings we already had. We learned to trust God in a way that we hadn’t before. We learned to love each other all over again.
In November, we found out we were pregnant again. We were shocked. I was terrified. Miscarriage changes you. It changes the way you think, the way you view everything. I had never had a “healthy” pregnancy, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like. So, everything I felt something that was “off” I panicked. All day, every day. Yet, at the same time we were excited. We waited until we were 8 weeks to tell our family (which we thought was better the 6 weeks we waited the first time). We were making plans, talking about him with our family, we were excited. The day after Christmas, a Wednesday, we went to our first sonogram appointment and it was horrible! The dr. didn’t tell us anything---he found out my age and my previous pregnancy history and that was it. We felt in that moment that he wrote me off, wrote us off. He told me that I would miscarry by the end of the week and to schedule a follow-up appointment by weeks end to make sure “everything turned out okay.” I was completely devastated. This was the baby God had promised us! Why would he allow this to happen? Why would He give him to us just to take him away? We left that appointment and Josh put me in my place. He reminded me of the promises of God and we decided in that moment that we were not giving up on our baby! We were going to fight for him because he could not fight for himself! So that is exactly what we did! We alerted our closest friends and family, we notified the prayer team at our church and we fought. Was it hard? It was very hard for me. My spirit was telling me one thing, but my head was telling me another. I’d been through this before and I told myself then that I would never go through this again…yet, here we were.
New Year’s Eve---Monday morning---I started cramping…I knew…I’ve felt this before, I’ve been through this before. We had friends over, we were celebrating the end of 2018 and I was in so much pain—I was losing my second baby in less than 6 months. Grief became so real to me, again, in that moment. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I carry a healthy baby? What did I do wrong? What did I eat that I shouldn’t have? What did I drink that I shouldn’t have? I should have exercised, etc.
We had a sonogram taken the following Wednesday and discovered that we had indeed lost the baby. I was 9 weeks.  I knew it. In my heart, I knew it. This time, our grief was different. We grieved together. We talked about it, we felt. We cried, we laughed, we got angry, we got sad, but we did it all together.  We felt it TOGETHER.  We named him Noah Isaac, meaning, "Peaceful Promise of God's Laughter."  He was ours and we loved him so.  It has almost been 3 weeks…so we are still grieving. We are still processing through loss. We still feel it—the sadness, the anger, the jealousy. Every time we see a baby, every time we see a pregnancy announcement, gender reveal, etc on social media, we grieve all over again. This kind of grief is unexplainable.
Yes, we are grieving and no we don’t understand BUT let me tell you this. We STILL know what God has promised. We STILL believe that He will give us our promised baby. We CHOOSE joy and SPEAK life over those babies we see, those parents who are expecting. We HOLD fast to the promised of the Lord and we know that His Word is truth. We will not stop planning, we will not stop believing, we will not stop preparing. And when we come to the day where we will hold that precious baby in our arms, we will not take him for granted, we will tell him of the miracle that he is and he will know how loved and thankful we are for him.
Miscarriages ensured I lost a certain innocence about pregnancy that I carried before. They also ensured I wouldn’t take cover under false promises or assume that life will turn out as expected. I am not entitled to happy endings, nor am I ungrateful for them when they come. If anything, suffering has made me appreciate joy more… but I will not demand it more. I can’t. I know too much.
I am seeing the faithfulness of God in the midst of the storm—while in the eye of it surrounded by eerie silence yet thankful to realize I’m still alive, I have also seen it while being tossed in the fray of it, gulping and gasping for a lifeline, wondering if a rescue boat will come before I drown. I’ve also seen it while safely back on shore, recovering under a blanket and wrapped in the comfort of love and sustaining grace. Here he is---God faithful within all. (It’s who He is. He can’t NOT be.)
I’ve also seen the faithfulness of God well AFTER the storm when the clouds are well and truly parted and the seas have grown still. I know the sun will rise in the east again tomorrow and the buds will eventually push their way through the barren winters. I know that LOVE ALWAYS FINDS ITS DESTINATION. I also know that new life comes after death---it’s the order of the world (made in light of heaven) and we can always hope for it and call it into being.
I understand how little I understand and I see Jesus anyway, through it all. He is the source of life as I know it and my hope rests securely in knowing he never stops creating, never stops reproducing life, never stops loving us into becoming more of ourselves.
Miscarriages are a real thing and they happen in 1 out of every 4 pregnancies and 20% of those women will have a recurrent pregnancy. This means that, more than likely, someone you work with, go to church with, someone in your family has experience a pregnancy loss. I’m tired of not being able to talk about it. My first miscarriage, I felt ashamed, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone because no one understood. I felt like I should keep it a secret. With my second, it was different, because we had so many people praying, more people knew, therefore more people were praying for us, asked us questions, and showed their support. Through this miscarriage, I learned of the many women in my circle who had experienced a pregnancy loss of some kind. In some ways, this made it ‘easier’ for us to grieve, ‘easier’ for us to walk through.
So, if anything, this blog is not written for you to feel sorry for us. It is written to let you know that, if you have had pregnancy loss, you are not alone and it is not your fault. There isn’t anything you could have done differently. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Talk about it, share your story. I promise, it will help and I promise that time does heal. It never goes away, you always remember…I still have things to go through, but I am healing. And you will too.

Still Dreaming~

Drea