TW: grief and miscarriage.
I’ve been MIA so, here’s why I don’t share any of this for any other reason besides that writing is how I process. And I know that I’m not alone. even though it was for a few days that I was pregnant, I was pregnant.
two weeks ago, I had an early miscarriage due to an unknown UTI.
We found out on a Tuesday morning that I was pregnant. Like all of my pregnancies, I find out really early. Like by weeks 2-3. On Wednesday, I was freaking the hell out. Full on meltdown. This changed everything. Graduate school, writing goals for finishing manuscripts and looking for agents, my plans to lose the baby weight that I’d been carrying for three years. I cried a lot and told my husband that I didn’t want this. But I knew that we’d be okay and that I would grow into acceptance and peace. Thursday was that for us. We had a beautiful day off with our family, we’d started laughing about the ridiculousness of the situation, and started looking at how to fit three car seats into the back our of SUV. I fell asleep looking at stroller attachments and mini vans, excited and at peace.
Friday I woke up bleeding.
Guilt came. Did I ask for this? Did I cause this? Of course, we try to figure out and logic through why things happen or what we could have done to fix it or prevent it. It’s part of the grief cycle and we have to make space for it. But I knew that there wasn’t anything I could have done. I had miscarriage symptoms start at the same time as my UTI symptoms.
Grief has been manageable. But it comes like a whip and takes my breath away. It steals my joy. But I dreamed of this baby after we found out, though I was terrified and so afraid. I’m grieving a future that we began to plan and change around this potential life. We joked we might get to use the middle name Von finally if we were having a boy.
Then Friday.
I have been struggling in my relationship with Jesus for a while. Though I attended Bible college for 4 and a half years and I pursued becoming a missionary for 8 years, I was not prepared for the doubts and questions that followed when Trump became president and many believers backed and supported him. I was not prepared to struggle with my identity so viscerally and doubt the Bible’s validity and God’s heart and motives so harshly.
But. The last few weeks, even before the miscarriage, He’s been poking at me. Reminding me that he is near and that he sees me and loves me. I haven’t talked to him in ages. He knows I don’t trust him or the method of salvation entirely right now. Yet when he pokes at me, it’s with love and peace and joy. Truly, it feels like what the Spirit did and how God reached me when I was 14 years old and none of it made sense. I had pinpoints of joy and peace that made no sense for my circumstances. And that’s been happening again.
So I’m the midst of my doubt and my questions, in the midst of my hiatus from truly sitting with my Creator for over a year now, he waits, and he reminds me that he’s near.
So I’m here. Writing, grieving, processing, starting to pray again, asking for guidance and just acknowledging that I sense Hod sitting alongside me, though I don’t know what to do with him just yet. And that’s okay.
if you’ve been here with miscarriage, I see you. I grieve with you in all the ways that this hurt makes us grieve.
If you are doubting faith and the goodness of God and can’t talk to him for a while, I see you and am with you in that too. I’m a realistic optimist I like to say, and I think something is changing with followers of Jesus. Not sure what, but I pray that it’s real, and vulnerable, and painful, and honest. And that we’re better for it.
