Tag Archives: dealing with miscarriage

What To Do When She is Pregnant, and You Are Not

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I hesitate to write this post because, full disclosure, I have people in my life who are pregnant right now, and I didn’t want them to feel like I was singling them out or directing this post towards them in any way.  But, coincidentally, I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends who are in the trenches of pregnancy loss and infertility who are met with this dilemma (without even knowing my own situation), and the conversations that I’ve had with them have been so helpful, eye-opening, and uplifting that I feel like I want to share.

PreggoFriends

Because it’s not normal to hear that a new, precious life is coming into this world and respond to it with grief.  And we, as the women of pregnancy loss, get that.  We want to be happy.  We want to feel nothing but joy and excitement for what is coming.  But sometimes that is difficult because it means that time is moving on, and it’s a reminder that our precious babies are not here with us.  And we wonder if we will ever get to experience this same joy.

So, here are some things that I’ve learned from conversations with others as well as through my own journey.

  1. It’s okay to not be okay.  I feel like there is this desire to just get over it and “act normal” for those people we love and care about.  But being honest with yourself and with your friends and family is paramount to your health and the health of your relationships
  2. It’s okay to have boundaries.  You do not have to go to that baby shower.  You do not have to inundate yourself with social media pictures and updates of belly shots. You already know at least some of your limitations, and communicating that to people who love you will help in the long run
  3. It’s okay to challenge yourself.  But even if you don’t go to that baby shower, I challenge you to still get them a gift or send them a card.  I would invite you to pray for them, or even ask them for specific prayers about their pregnancy.  Don’t just lock yourself away from everything, because there is a baby coming, and that is something to be excited about.
  4. It’s okay to seek help.  I see a therapist.  I have since about 10 months after my first daughter died.  I found a therapist that specializes in pregnancy and infant loss, having experienced it herself, but that may not always be available in your area.  Try at least one session.  Or at the very, very least find a good, supportive forum.  There are private Facebook groups and groups on several sites where women go for support.  They have been helpful to me on advice as well.

Dear pregnant friends, please be patient with us.  We are not going to go about this perfectly.  We may mess up and say the wrong thing or have a response to something that you weren’t expecting.  Know that we love you and we love this sweet new little one coming into the world.  We are just terrified of our own grief at times, at the unexpectedness of it all.  I’ve had reactions to milestones in other people’s pregnancies that I had no idea would affect me so much.

I am pretty lucky to have very aware friends and family who have supported me over the last four years of our pregnancy loss journey.  But I know that this isn’t true for a lot of women in my life, and I wanted to reach out and let them know that they are not alone.

 

The Journey of Worth

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Having a miscarriage evokes a lot of feelings.  Grief.  Loss.  Pain, both emotional and physical.  Frustration.  Confusion.  There are a lot of lessons I’ve learned as well, and I’m so grateful and encouraged by all the connections I’ve made on this path.

I feel like God prepared me a lot for this season in my life. especially in the past seven years, I have been on a journey of realizing my own worth.  Realizing the truth that seems to get lost somewhere in our living life.

It stems from the statement that I’ve said and others have said to me, “God has a plan for you beyond your imagination.”  It’s a statement of encouragement, a hope that someday, as I’m holding my own child in my arms, I will look back on this time in my life with gratitude, knowing that my faith led me to motherhood.  That I didn’t give up because God had that plan for me.

This statement means something else to me, too.  I believe it’s a challenge for my faith.  God does have an amazing plan for me, but that plan may not include having children of my own, and if that’s the case, would I still follow that plan or would I deny Christ?

Now, I fully intend on continuing to build our family.  I want to have children of my own.  I want to know my daughters or sons on this earth.  I want to encourage them on their own paths to having a relationship with God.  I want to experience the happiness and heartache of motherhood.  Most definitely.

But I also know that my relationship with God is more important than my chance to be a mother, not that the two are isolated from each other.  I can be a mother and have a relationship with God, but if it came down to choosing between the two, then I want to choose Him.  I want to honor God in every stage of my life and every step of my journey, not just when good things happen.  I want to depend on Him when things aren’t going my way and when they are.  I want to find my worth in Him.

All throughout our life, we are measured and compared.  We are judged by how we look, what we accomplish, how we behave, and what we manage to collect (whether material or relationships).  Somehow it is translated that these things used to judge us are the same things that give us worth.  It happens in our communities and even in our church families.  We may put a “godly spin” on it, but it still comes out the same.  We have to earn our worth by being involved, by knowing the right words, by acting the right way.

But we don’t earn our worth.  We don’t add to it or subtract from it.  We are given our worth at the moment our soul is formed.  God gives us that worth, and its value is so great that he sacrificed His only son so that we may have the opportunity to be in a relationship with Him.

That’s why I continue to speak my story, the story that God has placed on my heart.  Once I realized how much I was worth to Him, how much He longs to be in a relationship with me – a careless, prideful, perfectionist sinner, my life changed.  And I knew that I had to tell others.  Others who think that they are worthless or that feel like they don’t fit into the Christian community.  Others who have walked the halls of the church building, barely putting one foot in front of the other from the pain in their lives.  There is a hope in Christ that can heal, that can bring joy to your despair.

I don’t always live with the knowledge of my worth.  I get scared, and I let fear lead me instead of God.  I cling a little too closely (okay, a lot too closely) to the comforts of my boxed-in life, knowing that God never meant for me to live in such isolation.  I don’t always run to God when I’m seeking answers or peace.  I have dark days filled with the grief of loss and the longing for my daughter.  I’m a flawed human being, which makes me that much more in awe of God’s view of my soul and His desire to be in my life.

It’s why I take each day as it comes.  It’s why I have hope for my future.  It’s the same story for you.  We can live without fear but know that God wants to do amazing things with our lives so we can live it in an abundance of joy, strength, and peace.  It doesn’t matter where you come from or what you’ve done.  It doesn’t matter what labels you have received or what choices you have made.  It doesn’t matter your failures or your successes.  God loves you, and He longs to be in a relationship with you, to walk with you in your journey through this life.  And that’s all that truly matters, and to me, it’s definitely worth it.

Scars

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When I was three, I was in a car accident.  My dad, mom, baby brother and I were headed either to or from home during the holidays.  My parents told me that a semi truck knocked our car off the road, and it slid down an embankment, turned upside down and spun to a stop.  I still remember waking up to see the seat belts hanging from the ceiling, and a few moments between then and the hospital.  I had been cut over my left eye and received stitches.  I was the only one hurt in the accident, and they could only figure that it was caused by a plastic tape dispenser.

Over the years, people have asked me about that scar.  I have never minded telling the story because it’s such a cool story. God protected us that night.  I never really asked why I was the one with the scar because I’ve always felt lucky to have received it.  This scar means I get to tell the story.

I think we all deal with the question why bad things happen, especially within the Christian faith.  We think that if we live the right way, come from the right family, pray the right prayers, go to the right church, and be involved with the right things, that nothing bad will happen to us.  It’s not something we think consciously, but when something difficult does come our way, we start to search for answers as to what we may have done that caused this awful thing to happen or what we may do to prevent it happening again in the future.

But perhaps one reason we are given our struggles is so that we can tell our story.

In both of my miscarriages, I prayed that God would produce a miracle, that the sonograms would be wrong and the baby might live.  Surely, that kind of miracle could be used to glorify God.  But if we don’t go through the grief, how can we understand those that do?  After my first miscarriage, I understood a whole new world of women who have been silently grieving for decades.  Being open about my grief and loss allowed others to do the same which strengthened me with hope.  Why aren’t we sharing those stories more often?  Why do we think that having it all together is going to reach those who are falling apart?

We need to fall apart.  We need to have lives that aren’t all together.  We have been editing our lives for so long, and it’s pretty scary to live life unedited.  But see, when we edit our life, we are editing God as well.  God isn’t some pretty cross hanging on the wall of an immaculate home.  He’s a lot bigger and more unpredictable than that.  Sometimes I think we forget that our job here on earth is to point to God.  Not in some put together, simple wave in His direction, but in a desperate clinging to His side.

And you will be judged.  By other Christians, by people of the world.  Remember that Christ was judged with how he handled the Sabbath or who he hung out with.  But if we tell our story, share our struggle, really live in the communities God has given us, then I truly believe that God will take care of the rest.   God is going to use your words to reach that person who forgot that they still have value and worth, no matter what they have done or what they are going through.  Because no matter what society says about how we look or what we accomplish, that doesn’t dictate our worth.  Only God does, and He has given us great value.

That’s why I share my story.  This life is hard.  There are so many things on this earth that can wound us, physically and spiritually.  But God’s love can heal those wounds.  And the scars that remain are a reminder that we lived through it and overcame it.  It’s a reminder to share that story with others whose wounds are open, others searching for the healing balm to their pain.  Share the beautiful mess, the imperfect path, and the healing strength of a God that walks with us.