Friday, March 19, 2021

Praise in the Middle

Hello, friends! I know I've been absent for a while -- even though I've never been a particularly faithful blogger, five months of silence is rare for me. But to be honest, I've been avoiding this space for a while. It's been another painful season of grief, and I've been struggling too much mentally and emotionally to be present here. But there has been joy and beauty and creativity in the midst of the pain (as there always is), and I want to share that, too. So I'll divide my thoughts on the past five months into two posts -- this one, sharing the grief, and another post (or two, or three) sharing the bits of loveliness I've clung to along the way. 

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Over the past few years, I've noticed that the Holy Spirit will periodically show me a word -- suddenly, I start to notice that word everywhere in the Bible, and it deepens my study and appreciation of the Bible as I trace the threads of His grace woven throughout Scripture. After about a year, another word will come to my attention. Just after we'd lost Baby L in February 2020, the Holy Spirit led me to a new word: Wait.

It was not the word I wanted. After four miscarriages in fourteen months, the last thing I wanted to hear was "wait!" Hadn't I endured loss after loss, and wasn't it high time for my trek through the valley of the shadow of death to come to an end? "Wait," of course, is not strictly about time -- as I'm still learning, waiting on the Lord is more about a posture of submission and trust than about ticking days off a calendar. But it was still hard to accept. The Spirit kept showing me that word, though, and I couldn't ignore it. I made a bookmark, leaving the back blank so I'd have plenty of room to record all of the verses I found. I didn't even consult a concordance; I wanted to discover them on my own, one by one. In the past year, I've finished a whole column of Scripture references on my bookmark, and started a second column. As I suspected, God has plenty to say about waiting.




In the months following our fifth miscarriage, I struggled with grief for the past and uncertainty for the future. So many questions, and so few answers -- testing proved a dead end, and I still couldn't find answers to hormonal issue that I'd been asking doctors about for year. I was convinced that if I could just get pregnant again, it would be different this time -- perhaps our last loss had been due to my contracting pneumonia at 9 weeks, and that wasn't likely to happen twice. 

My heart ached for my lost loves and longed for a rainbow baby to bring this stormy season to a close. No baby could replace the little ones I'd lost, but there is a joy unique to carrying and birthing a child that would at least soothe the pain of the past. I didn't want my last memories of pregnancy and birth to be clouded by grief and trauma. Months passed, and so did the painful milestones. Baby J's 1st heaven birthday. Baby T's 6th heaven birthday. Baby N's and Baby L's due dates. By November, my long-standing hormone issues had not improved, and we concluded it was time to stop trying until we had pursued more medical answers. That very day, I found out that I was pregnant for the tenth time. But the surprising discovery brought little joy, because nothing about this pregnancy was "right." Within a few days my faint test line had faded altogether, and Baby A was gone -- due exactly a year to the day after baby N. I knitted a sixth tiny stocking for our Christmas tree and hated every minute of it. The last one, I thought. I can't do this again.



By January, I got the news that surgery was available -- but I'd found out a few days before that I was pregnant yet again, even though we'd stopped trying. Usually a positive pregnancy test brings me so much joy, but I knew it was probably only a matter of time before I lost this baby, too. The circumstances were almost identical to our loss in November, which had been so bizarre that I never would have thought it could happen twice. Repeated blood draws showed my hormone levels were climbing much too slowly. At six weeks I saw our baby's heartbeat flickering on the ultrasound screen. By seven weeks, the ultrasound was silent. My little one's heart only beat 500,000 times, give or take. The average human life has 3,000,000,000 heartbeats. It was now mid-February, almost a year to the day since we'd lost Baby L. I felt like I was reliving the trauma I'd experienced a year before, losing two babies within 3 months of each other. Except now I had two more babies to grieve. My oldest son observed that more of our family is dead than alive; if my heart could have broken any more, it would have. I have another stocking to knit before Christmas. 




Seven babies lost. Six unexplained miscarriages in twenty-six months. I'm left here, wondering what happened. My pregnancy with Scout seemed to be my healthiest so far -- yet 17 months later, I lost Baby J at 14-15 weeks and haven't been able to maintain a pregnancy since. Each loss was unique enough that there was reason to hope the next pregnancy would succeed, especially in the absence of any negative diagnosis. It was hard to imagine how my health could have deteriorated so much in the 13 months between Scout's birth and my next pregnancy, especially when I felt healthy and energetic. 

I feel like I've lost the past two years of my life in an endless cycle of grief and loss; I look at my children and can't comprehend how they've grown so much. It's not that I don't have "enough" children -- all four of my living children are undeserved blessings! I've never put a number on how many children I "wanted," content to leave that detail to the Lord. We weren't trying when Baby J came along, and he seemed like such a gift. He would have been 22 months younger than Scout, my favorite age gap so far. I was delighted to welcome a fifth child to our family! Now I can't look at family pictures from the few months I was pregnant with him without pain, because it reminds me of how happy I was then. He would have turned two this May.

There are so many "would-have-been's;" even when the intensity of grief fades, every day of my earthly life will be spent without the babies I still love so dearly. When I started my search for the word "wait" last year, little did I realize that a year later I'd still be waiting, but with even greater grief.  I wasn't naïve enough to assume I could walk through life without any grief, or even without a miscarriage or two -- but I never thought I'd be here


Praise in the Middle

There's a theme I've noticed in Scripture, when God's people are in desperate circumstances. I call it "praise in the middle." We can read these familiar accounts from the comfort of an armchair, confident of the outcome because we've read the stories before. But what about the people living the stories? They had no guarantee of how their story would end, and yet they still offered up praise in faith. Think of Jonah, who prays from the belly of a fish -- sure, he's been rescued from drowning, but he is still INSIDE A FISH. Hardly the best of circumstances. Yet he prays:

"When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to You,
into Your holy temple.
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to You;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
Jonah 2:7-9

Only after this prayer is he returned safely to dry land.

Think of Daniel, about to die because the court magicians failed to divine the king's dream. Daniel asks God for help, and he receives a vision of the dream and its interpretation. Before he goes to Nebuchadnezzar, he praises God:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
to Whom belong wisdom and might.
He changes times and seasons;
He removes kings and sets up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding;
He reveals deep and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
and the light dwells with Him.
To you, O God of my fathers,
I give thanks and praise,
for You have given me wisdom and might,
and have now made known to me what we asked of You,
for You have made known to us the king's matter.”
Daniel 2:20-23

Technically, Daniel can't be "certain" the vision he received is accurate until the king confirms it -- but he doesn't wait for confirmation to humbly give the glory to God. 


Surrendering my story to the Lord has been an agonizing struggle over the past two years -- of course, it's not as if I had control over it in the first place. But I had an idea of how it should "go," and reality has not matched up with that idea. My first thought when we lost baby T seven years ago was "the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." But with every succeeding loss, it becomes harder to say those words. My broken heart has so many questions. Why not just infertility rather than recurrent pregnancy loss -- why give us babies just to take them away? Most women never have a miscarriage -- why have I had seven? Will we ever have another living child? Every day is a battle of faith. Sometimes I feel ready for that battle, but mostly I feel weary. Because I fought the same battle yesterday, and the day before that.

And yet --

God is faithful, His love is steadfast. He holds onto me when I have no strength to hold onto Him. He sympathizes with my weakness, He comforts me in my affliction. He does all things well. 

This is my praise in the middle. 


I've shared other thoughts and Scriptures when I've posted about our other losses, so I'll put them here:


I recently came across Praise You in This Storm by Casting Crowns, and it expressed so much of what I've been feeling that I thought I'd share it here:



I was sure by now
God, You would have reached down
And wiped our tears away
Stepped in and saved the day
But once again, I say, "Amen" and it's still rainin.'

Well, as the thunder rolls
I barely hear Your whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
And as Your mercy falls
I'll raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away

And I'll praise You in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who You are
No matter where I am
And every tear I've cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when
I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
And raised me up again
But my strength is almost gone
How can I carry on
If I can't find You?

I lift my eyes unto the hills
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
The Maker of Heaven and Earth
I lift my eyes unto the hills
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
The Maker of Heaven and Earth

And I'll praise You in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who You are
No matter where I am
Every tear I've cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm
And though my heart is torn 
I'll praise You in this storm 



4 comments:

  1. Dear Shannon,

    I am so sorry that you have gone through so many losses. My heart breaks for you as I read this post! It is so hard not knowing why you miscarry and wondering if you will ever have another successful pregnancy. Please know that you are and continue to be in my prayers.

    The song you shared is one that comforted me as well. As we returned from the hospital the night of my last miscarriage "Praise You in this Storm" was on the radio. It touched my heart and helped me to refocus on God's presence in the storm of sorrow.

    May Jesus continue to comfort you and strengthen you in this difficult season!

    Love in Jesus,
    Sarah

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    Replies
    1. Dear Sarah,

      I so appreciate your prayers -- and I pray for you, too, dear sister in Christ! It's so lovely to think that the Lord used "Praise You in This Storm" to comfort both of us at different times. I find I need a lot of refocusing just now!

      Love,
      Shannon

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  2. Shannon,
    It is so good to read your words in this space again, be they of joy or sorrow. I am sorry for your losses, and pray that the Lord strengthens and comforts you during this season.
    -Catherine

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    Replies
    1. Catherine,

      Thank you -- I can't tell you how much I appreciate your kind words, or your prayers.

      Blessings,
      Shannon

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