The pain of loss

When I was twelve years old, my parents pulled my brother and myself into the living room. They asked what we would think about them having a baby. Travis and I both died laughing. How absurd!! I was 12, Travis was 16 and my dad had already had his over-the-hill 40th birthday. After several moments of laughter, mom started crying. They weren't kidding. I started crying for fear of no longer being the baby of the family (judge me) and mom says she could see college funds slipping out of my brother's eyes. We soon adjusted and were overjoyed with having a baby. (And my parents adjusted to my grandfather calling them "Abraham and Sarah".) Unfortunately, 11 weeks into the pregnancy, an ultrasound revealed that the once-heard as seen heartbeat was no longer there. My first exposure to miscarriage.

Since that time, I unfortunately have had many friends and family experience the incredible pain of losing a child. Many of them a loss in first trimester, a few in the awful second and third trimester, and a few after delivering and loving the child. Loss. Pain. Unexplainable. 

When Lee and I decided to tell that we were pregnant so early (I seriously know just a few days after conception that I'm definitely pregnant.), we knew there was the risk of losing the baby. This week, an ultrasound revealed that the baby hadn't grown at all in 8 days and still had no heartbeat. The look on the face of the woman doing the ultrasound said it all and we prayed she would say nothing more. Then she uttered, "I'm so sorry". We said no words and prayed that the doctor would say that maybe we had a slow growing baby and everything would be fine. He didn't. He said that the report from the ultrasound said it was a miscarriage that hadn't happened yet and he believed it was imminent and that the baby had even gotten a tiny bit smaller. We shook hands, accepted condolences and he offered the statistics that 1 in 5 women miscarry. 

As we drove home in silence (except for to say that neither of us wanted Starbucks. A bad sign.) I began to think about the people in our lives that have had big losses: my mom's miscarriage, my grandmother's ectopic pregnancy/miscarriage/hysterectomy, my mother-in-law's 5 miscarriages, Lee's grandmother's loss of delivered twins, my childhood friend's loss of a baby 18 weeks in, and my friend's loss of her sweet Julia 16 years after delivery. I didn't feel more deeply mourned, but comforted that it seems as though, at least in my life, only 1 in 5 HASN'T miscarried. So many of the miscarriages went on to carry many healthy babies or go on to adoption. Either way, they went on. Melissa, who lost her sweet Julia 9 months ago, has demonstrated that looking for joy through pain is a daily task that eventually gets easier. 

Hebrews 12:1-2a says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses... Let us run the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith." The Lord has reminded me that many have come before me with the loss of a child and unfortunately, many will come after me. And that's another part of the "parent club". Not only sharing sleepless nights, diapers, tantrums, hilarious stories, and hugs, but the pain and loss of a child. 

The evening after we got home from the doctor, Colossians 3:15 echoed continually in my head, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body, you were called to peace. And be thankful." I had mentioned to Lee last week that I found the fact that "And be thankful." was its own sentence seemed to be Paul using a parent voice to emphasize when we don't feel peaceful, to remind us to be thankful. Be thankful for the lessons learned, the friends that have loved, the distractions of laughter along the way, for the endless joy found in a bag of Cheetos, and for the peace and reassurance that only The Lord can give us. Be thankful. And I am.