God In Our Midst Part 3: Grief

*I want to acknowledge that as many people are under the sun today, there are that many different ways to describe grief and loss, and in particular the loss of a child through miscarriage or other means. I do not assume to be able to relate to what others' grief feels like because it is impossible for me to know. I just know my own...and this is it.

They say that in the initial stages of grief, you feel like one large bruise. 

I would like to clarify something...

 

It's like an amputation.

The physical, mental, and emotional aspects of undergoing a miscarriage are similar to what I imagine losing a major limb would be like. It is physically painful, emotionally traumatic, and mentally exhausting. I know the two pictures are hard to equate since I am sitting before you with all of my limbs intact and looking rather normal, but I assure you that my loss (though unseen) is just as great as losing a major body part.


The psychological and spiritual pain associated with losing a child in your womb, however, go much deeper than the severing of a limb could ever go. There was a God-breathed spirit and body growing and forming inside of me that is no longer there. The only thing that I can equate this to is what God Himself must have felt when His Son, a crucial part of the Trinity, was ripped apart from Him on the Cross. And it's not just a quick ripping apart, it is a pain-staking death. Soon after we received news that our baby had died, we realized that my body did not recognize this loss of life, and for an entire week was doing all that it could do to keep this child alive. In other words, my mind knew that the child was no longer there, but my body believed something else. This is psychologically traumatic...as was every single ultrasound (there were 4) that confirmed what I already knew, but that caused my spirit to continually hope for a miracle.

Compounding the grief was that I delivered our dead child in the guest house only hours after my sister delivered her healthy baby back in the US. Both of my sisters (whom I'm very close to ) have actually recently delivered babies, losses that compound mine as I project my mind into the future and see a void in the relationships where my child would have been. The intermingled joy and grief have been a blessing but also a deep, deep wound.

So, here I am, grieving deeply. Ever since hearing the news, I have been looking for some kind of “closure”, or some way to put our life back to what it was before October 10. At first I thought this would come when the miscarriage was finally over, then I thought it would be whenever we could get medical clearance to come home, then I thought it would get better once we got home and got settled. The truth is, it’s not better because there won’t be “closure”, at least not in the way I am looking for it right now. Things will never go back to how they used to be. This is the new normal, a new season, and I have to allow time to pass in order for the pain of the loss to subside.

But how do you do that when there is no escaping the pain and everywhere you turn reminds you of a new loss, a new level of grief? I came home to plan my child's memorial, and then attended my good friend and teammate's baby shower the next day. It was one of the most difficult and painful things I have ever done. I can't walk out of my house without even the kids from the deaf school nearby motioning to me to ask, "Where is your baby?" (FYI: which they do in this funny gesture that resembles a baby sucking at the breast...) Everyone who comes to the house or we greet on the road gets an expository from my 4-yr old about her sister who died and is in heaven  now. There is no escaping the pain..

And thus, my exhausted, weary self just wants to go home. But, again, where is home? Back with my sisters who have brand new babies that will remind me of the one that I don't have? Back to the same city where my said teammate will be delivering her new baby soon, reminding me of what I won't be doing any time soon? Back to a support group where there are wounds (and blessings) surrounding people who have unexpectedly reached out to us in our time of grief and people who I expected to but haven't? Do I stay here- where I am surrounded by babies as soon as I step out of my house (albeit, sick, malnourished babies whose mamas will be grieving alongside me...but in a completely different way that I don't understand and that I have yet to be invited into...)? Maybe I should just wait, let the pain and numbness subside, and just go back to the US when we planned our original HMA...but then there is the gut-wrenching pain of carrying out summer plans (which included swim lessons, ballet lessons, blueberry picking, the beach, and long winding walks with family)... without the baby I planned to be carrying around with me? And, then there is the WHAT IF I get pregnant again sometime in the next year but have already used my HMA time, and so then have to deliver a baby overseas, away from family and friends and my sister who was supposed to be my doula?

The pain is real, y'all.  

Everyone looks at me like I have been bruised, but I look at myself like I have just had a leg cut off and am trying to figure out how to walk without one.

Lord Jesus, is this the way? Is this what you had in mind for my second year in Uganda...another year of loss upon loss upon loss upon loss? Whom have I in heaven besides you, and on earth who understands the pain more than you do? Why did you allow me to hope and dream and plan, if you were just going to dash that plan on the rocks and say, "I am enough"? Because right now, that is all that I can say...You Are Enough. You are my transgressor, and You are my healer. There is no way around YOU. Pressing in to you hurts, but I have no other way. This cave is dark and there are a million places for my foot to slip or for me to wander off and get lost. It's filled with fog, and thus I don't know my way. I feel your hand leading me through the muck and the mire. Some days I don't feel like holding it, but there is no other way. I must learn to walk again, and there is no other way but with You.