The crib is empty but the manger isn’t

When you go through a loss many people ask if they can do anything.  When people ask this I often am thinking in my head, “If only you can bring back my baby”.  There just is nothing to actually do to make it better.  The greatest gift is always the people who just “show up”.  They remember you a week later and text you a special verse.  They sit with you and ask questions about your loss or how you are doing.  They reach deep into the bottom of their purse to find you a Kleenex and you realize there are tears in their eyes too.  One of my favorite cards over these last weeks was from a dear friend here.  One of the things she said was, “I don’t know what to say…the whole thing sucks beyond belief”.  Yep, that about sums it up.  A pastor even told me he was a little ticked about it all.  It gave me permission to go through those feelings too and to move past them.  You can’t fight a rip current…you have to swim through it…let it take you down stream before it releases you.  Grief is like a rip current.  It grabs you when you least expect it and takes all control away.

One thing people say when you go through loss is “God is in control” or “At least you know your baby is with the Lord”.  I know all these things are true and I know people are just grasping for ways to soothe my soul.  But frankly, they don’t help when you’re in the middle of the rip current.  The best of things to do is to just be present…jump in and float down stream with me.  All the truth’s from the God’s word are received much better after you have sat with me on the floor and grieved a little.

Bill and I have grown a lot in our ability to love each other through these times.  We just know what the other needs.  Bill has learned that I need to verbalize my frustrations about the Lord but that after a bit, he can remind me of the things I already know.  It was a powerful thought to think about Christ on that cross…..or in the manger for that matter.  God gave up HIS ONLY SON.  He sent him away from the glory of heaven to be born of a woman.  After being pregnant, you just feel for poor Mary riding on that donkey as she Is about to give birth.

Jesus, GODS ONLY SON, spent his first night in a feeding trough.   God, the Father knew he was sending HIS ONLY SON TO DIE and still he did it.

God knows grief.

A million moments, come running through my head in a fresh way thinking about Jesus growing up on this earth so far from his Father.  And then there’s his death.  God knows what it’s like to lose a child…but he offered him willingly.

For the redemption of mankind, God watched his ONLY SON be accused, betrayed, rejected, beaten and die on a cross.

God knows loss.

He didn’t stop it…he watched as the sin of the world lay on Christ’s shoulders and God the Father turned his back ON HIS ONE AND ONLY.

God knows what it’s like to lose a child.

We don’t know if he was separated from Christ for a moment or for the full three days but we do know it had to be agony.

God knows grief, sadness, loss and his only Son knows it too.

This same God lives within me.  He sees the empty crib in the special room in our home.  He sees the empty void in our hearts and yet he “shows up” and reminds me…the crib is empty but the manger isn’t.

On Miscarriage

Miscarriage is a sort of silent pain.  Many women go through it and never speak of it.  But it is the loss of a child.  That sort of loss just stays with you forever.  It needs to be talked about in order to find healing.  But when I went through my loss I often felt like it was a subject that there was little information about.  I would search to find other women’s stories only to be left empty and wondering how mine compared.  This is not for the squeamish but this is my story.

My first loss was pretty devastating.  We didn’t want to admit it was happening but in the end the reality hit us like a brick.  I had a complete miscarriage in our home and it was graphic, emotional and one of the hardest things my husband and I have ever been through.

I thought the pain was over at 11 pm and I took a sleeping aid and went to bed.  At 2 am I woke to the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.  I didn’t know at the time that I was in a sort of labor.  I recently talked with a lady who had nine miscarriages (I know, right?).  She said the ones at twelve weeks were always physically the hardest.

I was twelve weeks pregnant when I delivered our child in our bathroom on June 8th, 2013.    My husband ran to get a jar and we cringed as we put our baby in it.  We couldn’t look but we saw enough.  Through the tears we took the shell of our child to the ER to confirm that I didn’t need a D&C.  As I lay there, exhausted, I asked Bill to put a towel over the jar so we didn’t have to keep looking at it.

The doctor came in and confirmed it was a healthy fetus but for some reason my body could not carry it.  There were no answers, no reasons, and no explanations.  I wanted to know why and there was just nothing to explain it.

For years I had put my identity in the hopeful role of being a wife and mother.  We dreamed of home schooling and raising children in the Lord.  We kept waiting for life to turn out the way we had hoped.

But the grief set in hard as we went home.  I’ve never experienced grief like that.  I couldn’t function.  I felt alone in a community I was relatively new to.  We didn’t really have a church group we felt close with or friends our age.  Everything sent me into tears.  Worst of all was the sight of pregnant mothers or tiny babies.  I remember watching the water go down the sink while doing the dishes and just being stuck there, like I was losing time.  The water reminded me of the toilet that dreadful night.  I don’t know how long I stood there but I had many moments like that.  Death is always graphic.  If you are there when someone passes, you know the intensity and loss of any grief.  They are memories etched in our minds forever.

We experienced the loss of a child but also the loss of the future ideal we had in our hearts for a family.  This was not the happy ending I was searching for.  For the rest of my life when people speak of the grief over losing a loved one I will always be near tears thinking of my unborn children alive in the arms of Christ but far away from my own.

We wanted a child and the life of a family so badly.  I felt hopeless.  I couldn’t speak of it without tears.  But the Lord would use my pain to bring me to a place of new identity in him.  My role was to be a daughter of the King and to know his love for me in much deeper ways.