Dark Days

I've been meaning to write this essay for some time and debating whether to write it at all. I write, not for sympathy or attention for myself, but because I have committed myself to sharing this journey so that others will feel they can do the same, if they haven't before. For I have been through dark days.

I shared awhile back in this post that we had been trying to have a Baby 3 for a year, and had a miscarriage along the way. Just a few weeks after that post, I was reading the Bible, for my Bible study of Genesis, which just so "happens" to include the story of three women, from three consecutive generations, struggling to conceive. The passage I was reading, while from Romans, refers to Abraham and Sarah, the first of those three women. God had promised Abraham and great nation's worth of descendants, yet at 90 years of age, Sarah had still not borne a child. Romans tells us that, "God calls into being things that were not."  (Romans 4:17)

As I read this, I felt God showing me that this was His promise to me, too. That as I had prayed to know whether He was saying, "yes," "no," or "wait," He was showing me. So I was renewed in hope.   Just days later, we learned we were pregnant! God had fulfilled His Word to me and I believed this new life would grow according to that promise.

Four weeks later, there were signs that things were not going according to plan and at my first appointment, in a difference from the normal practice at my clinic they gave me an early ultrasound so we could confirm a heartbeat. It was there, but the baby was small and the heartbeat weak. The NP tried to give me hope and we went forward. One week later we had a follow-up ultrasound that confirmed what I already knew: we had lost the baby. While my first miscarriage had not been very emotional, other than disappointment, this one hurt. I had seen the blip on the ultrasound -- the baby.  Our baby.  The baby that I knew when it left my body. The baby God had promised me. I held it together for the appointment, but as Erich and I sat in the car calling to tell our parents, I sobbed.

Why was this happening again? Why, when I believed God had promised me a baby, were we having to go through this again? Wasn't one miscarriage enough? We've been waiting so long! You promised me!

And that's the rub. The doctor listed off statistics about how normal this is, how the chances of a third miscarriage are unlikely, all of that. And Erich, with his pragmatic, logical approach found comfort in that. But for me, in some ways, my faith got in the way. Because, not only had I believed God promised me THAT baby, but I believe that 1) He could have kept that baby alive and growing and 2) God has a plan and purpose for every child that a family will have and that this miscarriage was not just the result of normal statistics.

I was okay for awhile and I tried to be okay. Then two very dear friends shared with me their pregnancies -- and both of them are due within days of my own due date. Seriously?!?! God, as if this wasn't painful enough, you add this?!?! (I'm super excited for both my friends and they both shared their news with me gently and privately, which I so appreciated.)

Their news however, had unexpected consequences for me. Because now, my pain became even more private. I didn't want to burden them with it or give them fear for their own pregnancies, or feel bad for being pregnant when I was not. Most of the people in my life that I would ask to walk with me were dealing with pain of their own, growing new life within or otherwise distant from me for awhile. So I became very, very lonely. I felt there was no one with whom I could talk, who saw it from the same perspective (emotional) as I did.

And that's what really sank me into the dark days. The feeling that God had once again messed with me and that I was walking alone. The people with whom I shared the news of miscarriage were saddened and they reached out to comfort and express condolences. Some of them even checked in periodically later and that means so much. But miscarriage and infertility (we've been trying for a year and a half, so I think that qualifies) really are invisible losses.

The monthly hope that this is the one. The monthly let-down that it didn't happen. The trying and trying and trying so that something that is supposed to be a beautiful expression of love and creation becomes a cog in the process, mechanical. And it affects husbands and wives differently, which is why it was so lonely for me. I'm the one who experiences the physical and hormonal changes, I'm the one who watches with fear and anxiety for signs of hope or despair as the time draws near. I'm the one who knew things weren't right and still held out hope, mixed with the reality of knowing.

It didn't help that the weeks during which I was feeling down, here in Minnesota we experienced day after day after day of rain. My boys and I were stuck inside. We were stir crazy. I had even less inclination to keep up the house, so we lived in a mess. We watched more t.v. than I care to admit and I ate a lot of ice cream. My Bible study was over for the summer, so I wasn't "forced" into Scripture where I could have focused on God, the problem-solver, instead of the problem.

These were days with a perfect storm of circumstances that pushed me deeper and deeper. I even stopped pretending things were great, the way we do, and answered "okay" in a less-than-cheerful tone when people asked how I was doing. Because I was tired of being fine. I was tired.

But you know what? Even dark days can be followed by sunshine. Just as the rain (sort of) stopped and we could get outside in the sunshine. And the Son began to shine through my clouds, too. Some of it was sheer discipline on my part, determining that I needed to love the family I have enough to help keep the floors clear and the toilet clean. It was time to stop indulging in self-pity. And that allowed me to see God, where He had always been; waiting for me and offering me hope and rest, if I would just give my pain to Him.

It still hurts and I still wonder why God led me to understand that verse from Romans the way I did (I'd even read it earlier in the year, with no such sense of personal promise). While I have down moments, God has brought me through those dark days.  I believe God is calling into being things that are not and He wants me to trust Him for that. It may be pregnancy, it may be adoption (which is a whole 'nother post), it may be both, because we firmly believe that our family is not yet complete and I am trusting God to call into being the family He is knitting together, the completed family that is not yet.