I am pregnant. I am very pregnant. 39 weeks and 4 days pregnant to be exact. Our little one could come any day now.
It's been quite some time since I've written, hasn't it? And now I'm showing up with a blog post that isn't even original. Well, I wrote it. But I originally wrote this to share with a group I was involved in at church. But I think I'm ready to share it with you now. Hope it speaks to someone out there. So here it is:
The past year has been the hardest and the most amazing time of my life. And that is because God is a God of restoration.
The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And he did. Last December, I found out that I was pregnant, only to lose our sweet little one that same week.
When we lost our child, I felt like I lost just about everything. I hid inside of the pain. I lashed out at my husband because he didn’t seem to be feeling the pain the same way I was. I stopped returning phone calls. And worship? What was once a time of freedom seemed like a time of torture. Did I really even believe what I was singing? Was I ever going to feel like I could sing without having to try to choke back tears? I didn’t feel like I could talk to anybody about my loss. It was just too hard. It hurt too much to talk about it. And then I had to deal with compassion, and I’ve never been very good at receiving that. So please don’t be hurt if this is your first time learning about this. It doesn’t mean that I don’t count you as a close friend. It’s just not an easy thing to bring up in a conversation. “Hey! How are you?” “Well, my life seems to be imploding right now. How are you?”
The loss affected everything. My friendships were suffering. My marriage was suffering. My job was suffering. My faith was suffering.
I still believed that God was sovereign, but I was searching for answers. Why? Why did I lose my child when his or her little life was just beginning? Why did anyone who wanted a child lose them, while so many people were having children they didn’t even want? Why didn’t I feel like I could talk to any of my friends about it? Why wasn’t my husband grieving the same way I was? How did this fit in God’s plan? Was I supposed to learn some big lesson?
And today, I still don’t have the answers. And that’s ok. In that dark time, I was able –by the grace of God- to hold on to what I knew was true. God is sovereign. God has a plan. God is good.
I still hurt. A lot. I’m still fighting tears as I write this. But God is healing my hurt, little by little.
On Easter Sunday, after a morning of celebrating resurrection and how life defeated death, we found out that we were expecting a little one again. A few weeks later I was looking back through my journal, reflecting. I was flipping through December, and saw an entry I wrote in the midst of the miscarriage. I froze up, got chills, and broke down all at once. We lost our first child on December 17th, 2011. And the new little one is due to arrive on December 17th, 2012.
What does it all mean? Does it mean that every loss we experience will be filled within a year? No. But it is an amazing reminder to me of God’s faithfulness, His love for me, and His love for my children.
So please, when you’re hurting, when you searching for answers, remember: God loves deeply. God hurts when we hurt. God brings life out of what Satan kills. God restores, redeems, and renews.
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