Going back to the blogging pen after a five month absence is like jumping in the pool really fast (versus one toe and limb at a time) to get the shock over with. It feels ever so unfamiliar at first ...
A new year has come, and it could not have come soon enough. A majority of 2011 will, for me, be remembered as a very long dark night of the soul. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12) This, along with other verses in the Bible about hope and desire, have lately left me chasing my own theological tail, running in circles and becoming spectacularly dizzy in the process. Did I survive a car accident where my car flipped two and a half times and landed upside down for a purpose? Was it just sheer irony that a neck injury surfaced a month later, along with debilitating non-stop migraines, right after finding out I was pregnant and could not take anything but Tylenol? Did I have an early ultrasound only to find out that I had been carrying twins but one had stopped developing? And three weeks later, being devastated to find out that our other baby no longer had a heartbeat ... what, in God's name, was the purpose and meaning in that? I've lost people close to me before and dealt with my own grief and others' grief. Miscarrying two babies has been in an entirely different universe of grief and loss, and there have been times I wondered not only if I'd ever find my way home, but if I even wanted to.
God knows I've been angry at Him. The anger has mostly passed, and now there is a gaping, cavernous hole in my heart. It's oh so childish, but now I can't talk to Him - which is better, yelling at God, or "ignoring" Him? Through the surgeries for cancer, the diagnosis of MS, and other health problems, I really have never asked or wondered, "Why me?" Apparently there was a profound shift when the other shoe dropped this time and it encompassed not just me, but the life inside me that was a part of my husband too. Just after seeing my husband's face light up at the picture of our baby on the monitor, I glimpsed the chagrined look on the ultrasound technician's face. I'm pretty sure shock/numbness was the first wave to hit after she told us she was so sorry but she didn't see a heartbeat. But it was not long at all before I was angry, and it was all directed at the One who had shaped and formed those babies. Why let me hope?? Why let me be pregnant at all and create and shape that desire??? When is it enough, enough heartbreak, enough physical pain???? Why was I such a fool to believe that surely God knew I had been through enough and wouldn't allow the additional pain of miscarriage? I'm pretty sure some form of that last question was the one I asked aloud to my husband. My husband, who was also grieving, mourning and dealing with his own emotions.
As odd as it may sound, none of this shook my faith. Nor did my faith stop me from biting, kicking and hitting the loving arms that were wrapped so tightly around me and have never, ever let go. I have wanted to scream at people for being marvelously insensitive, full of drama or just plain annoying, even though very few people knew what was going on and, despite the tone of this blog post, I do know that this life is not about me. I seriously contemplated breaking the radio whenever I heard Christmas music since, as it turns out, many Christmas songs are about a baby being born.
I know that God is still God and God is still good. There are days, and have been many since that fateful doctor's visit on December 1st, where I simply have not cared. I know that what is allowed in my life is allowed by God for my good and for His glory. While I don't doubt the truth of that and know better than to think I could possibly imagine how this situation will be used for my good or His glory, still ... I am finding it incredibly hard to feel anything but apathy. We are still grieving. It is a process, and does not proceed according to anyone's timetable. My mother had four miscarriages, and I have many friends and family members who have gone through miscarriage - your heart breaking for them does not in the remotest way prepare you for that maternal or paternal instinct that envelops you when you realize you are going to be a mother or father. We know that our babies are in the arms of Jesus, we know all the medical reasons that are true but sound horribly prosaic or condescending as you're going through it, but for my part at least, I can't even come up with the faintest guess as to why God let me become pregnant in the first place.
I desperately fear becoming a fatalistic narcissist, and all the more so after writing this particular blog. And maybe this is narcissistic because writing provides a cathartic release for me, but that is a chance that simply must be taken. A very long time ago I learned that I could plan and scheme and dream all the day long ... and that all those plans and schemes and dreams are subject to the will of the sovereign Creator of all things. If my desire is not for God and to bring Him glory, then almost certainly there will be a necessary rearrangement, readjustment or scrapping of my plans to align with His. David says this in Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." When to hope, what to hope for and desire, those are still very tricky questions for me. It is a terrifying prospect to hope for something anymore. Almost as terrifying as having no hope at all. I have also realized that within me lies a predisposition to assume that if I desire something, God probably has other plans. Which leads to an absurd game of trying to use reverse psychology of a sort on God - "if I don't really want to get married, then maybe I'll meet the right guy ... wait, don't think that last part ..." Truly absurd. God did wait until I had absolutely turned my back on marriage and had wholeheartedly embraced a life of singleness before informing me that He had other plans. Much, much, much more and better plans, and we will celebrate five years of marriage in June.
I must also remember the lampposts along the way during this dark night of the soul, and there have been many rays of light. Empathy from the unlikeliest of places, support and friendship from acquaintances, friends and family, random acts of kindness that brought an unexpected smile ... belonging to a church where it really is okay not to be okay (just not okay to stay there). And it must be said that while my husband has been an incredible support in dealing with cancer and MS, this shared experience of joy, followed by excruciating grief and loss, has united us in a way I never before knew was possible. I am not okay, I have not been okay for many long months now, but I am, by the grace and mercy of God and the patient understanding of my husband, getting better.
