Learning to trust God again. by Karen Foster
“Lord, why did You let me get pregnant? You knew my baby would die within me. What can I learn from this miscarriage that I haven’t learned from the others?”
Grief overwhelmed me knowing I would never hold this baby, but the tears wouldn’t come. I remained oddly detached while my body cramped and bled. It took several days before I passed the tiny fetus.
Rather than pray for God’s peace as I had in previous miscarriages, I questioned His justice and raised my fist in anger. “How dare You treat me this way!”
It didn’t matter that I already had two young children; my heart was set on having another child. This was my third miscarriage in two years, and I was furious.
Heavy heart
“I trusted You to give me the desires of my heart,” I complained to God a few weeks later. “Well, I’m not going through this again.” I shoved my maternity clothes into a box destined for the local crisis pregnancy center.
Heavyhearted, I also sorted through baby clothes and blinked back tears. “I won’t need these.” I hastily added the tiny garments to the box along with my maternal hopes. Closing the box did not bring closure to my heart.
Painful memory
A tiny stuffed bear on my dresser caught my eye. It had arrived in a floral basket during a previous hope-filled pregnancy that ended at twelve weeks.
Caressing the bear, I remembered how distraught I had been during my second miscarriage, a year earlier. With the first signs of blood, I had raced to my physician. When he couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat, he sent me for an ultrasound.
“Is there any heartbeat?” I asked the female technician as she searched my womb for signs of life. Although she had been silent and businesslike, my question must have triggered her emotions. The light from the ultrasound screen allowed me to see her misty eyes.
“It’s OK,” I swallowed. “I’m prepared.”
The woman slowly shook her head, “I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”
Questioning God
In that moment, I felt as though my own heartbeat had stopped. Tears coursed down my cheeks as I dressed and went to the doctor’s waiting room. My sense of loss was aggravated by the presence of pregnant women whose round bellies promised new life. My belly was a flat, senseless grave. “God, why can’t I have a baby?”
I thought of my two friends who were in their third trimester. “Did I do something wrong? Are You testing me?”
Frayed emotions
By the time I scheduled surgery to remove the baby and returned home, my emotions were frayed. Denial, guilt, grief, and anger vied for my attention. My husband held me close, but I couldn't be consoled.
Late that night, I rose from my bed and went into the living room. My Christian faith was the core of my life, and I needed to talk with God.
Words of comfort
My eyes were swollen from crying, but as I read my Bible, 2 Corinthians 1:3, 4 soothed me: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
Then I mentally wrote all my questions and concerns about having another baby and prayerfully gave them to God. “Father God, the Bible tells us to cast all our anxiety on You because you care for us [1 Peter 5:7]. I trust You to get me through this miscarriage and eventually give me a baby or Your peace.”
Emotionally drained, I slept, knowing God understood my pain.
Faltering faith
But my peace was short-lived. Within a few months, I stopped trusting God. I’d see an infant or a pregnant woman, and my longing would resurface like a fresh wound. When my two friends gave birth to healthy babies, my unresolved envy turned into bitterness. One day I would wallow in self-pity that God found me unworthy. The next day, I was determined to have my own way.
By the time I got pregnant, I was skeptical. I told no one, other than my husband. So when that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at eight weeks, it felt like a cruel joke.
The bear in my hand symbolized those three futile attempts. I thrust the bear in a bottom drawer and stumbled into a spiritual vortex. I needed God’s strength, but this time, I would have no part of Him.
Though her experiences do not exactly mirror mine, her words so beautfully describe my pain and spiritual condition. In her article she goes on to talk of how she finally made her way back into a relationship with God. Sadly I have not reached that ability yet. I still feel betrayed and as though I can't trust in the only One that I ever thought I could place complete trust in. Regardless of what others say and how they try to encourage me by telling me that God did not do "this", I can't believe it. He is the giver and taker of life. If He wanted this soul so badly why not take it before I knew it was there?! What was the purpose of this torture?
Anther lady wrote: Later that night, I left the hospital with empty arms. I felt as though I had been robbed.
Once I was back home, well-meaning friends and family told me to be glad the baby hadn’t lived because it probably would have been deformed. Others said, “Don’t feel bad; you can always have another one.” I felt they thought my husband and I could get over this experience quickly and be happy again. But rather than being comforted, I was overcome with an intense feeling of loss. For months I felt anger, guilt, and depression, yet everyone seemed to tell me I had no reason to grieve.
Society seems to allow parents whose newborn infants die after a month or two to mourn. Parents of stillborns (a child sufficiently developed to survive outside the uterus but for some reason has died before birth) are allowed even less. Those who have miscarriages (a spontaneous termination of a pregnancy before the fetus is sufficiently developed) are often dismissed as not needing to mourn at all.
My arms ached to hold my baby. I often thought I heard an infant crying in the distance. I felt vulnerable and afraid that I might lose another child. During my four-month pregnancy, I had planned our baby’s future. When the baby died, that future died.
Many parents are surprised by the emotions they feel after a miscarriage. They often feel shock and disbelief. Life seems unreal for a time. They express depression, anger (directed at themselves, their mates, a doctor, God, or even life in general), guilt, irritability, lack of interest in normal activities, sadness. Many experience irregularities in sleeping or eating. Some feel anger or sadness in the presence of babies or pregnant women.
“Many people avoid you or say things that make you feel worse,” Janet, a young woman struggling to begin her family, said. “They try to be helpful and tell you how long to wait before you try again. All I wanted was someone to hug me and sympathize. I just wanted someone to be there and care.”
Brenda, the mother of two preschoolers, lost two babies. “After each miscarriage,” she recalls, “I was in the hospital for several hours. They put me in a room right across the hall from the nursery. Watching the nurses bring the healthy, beautiful babies to their mothers was torture. I wanted to die.”
“I had six miscarriages in a row,” Janet said. “To me it was still a baby, even if it was only an inch long. It hurts to lose a baby. Every time this happened, my doctor acted like it was nothing terribly important and simply said to get pregnant again. He told me that he had a patient who had lost thirteen babies. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn’t.”
“There is really no answer to the question why,” says Dr. Steven G. Nance, a Payson, Utah, obstetrician. “There are certain specific medical problems we know of that cause miscarriages and stillbirths. In many cases, especially in the first few months, we attribute the fault to some kind of chromosomal abnormality in the fetus. Those that occur later in the pregnancy when the baby appears normal are often attributed to some maternal factor, such as uterine abnormalities. But in the vast majority of cases, there is no obvious reason.”
Whatever the cause, the end result is the same. Many children who were eagerly expected never survive.
Knowing that many parents will face a miscarriage or a stillbirth sometime during their childbearing years doesn’t make it any easier to experience. Generally, the grieving process moves slowly from shock and numbness, through searching and yearning, to disorientation and depression, and finally to acceptance and an ability to enjoy life without feeling guilty.
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