Dear friend,
I had my appointment at the infertility clinic today.
That feels strange to say. I have three living children, all of whom were conceived without “trying”. What is this path I'm on? I have never been down this road before. I've heard about it in direct messages on Instagram, prayed over it in the lives of others, done my best to empathize with the loss and long wait of women other than myself. But it was my name signed on the paperwork, and I am the one sitting in the blue room with a box of Kleenexes at my elbow.
My wait has been nothing compared to so many of you. My miscarriages pale in comparison to the ten a friend experienced and the stillbirth of another. But we don't compare grief, do we? We feel it in our own way. And we can't determine when grief will rise in our throats and our hearts; when it will crush us or simply pass us by. It swells like a wave, crests in tears, then whisks away like foam on a beach; the lace edge of loss.
In the midst of feeling (and not feeling) the weight of losing our second baby this year I've sought solace in quiet places. I have felt entitled to peace, to rest, to a break. I've been sad and angry and desperate. Desperate for an end to the pain. But that end has not come. If anything, our life has been burdened with more and harder. From Maple's near-death to Lymes' disease last week to a frightening, violating experience my children faced last Thursday, my heart is worn down and weary. This is painful.
A few years ago my family watched as my uncle passed away from pancreatic cancer. I saw my aunt continue to faithfully seek Jesus in the face of excruciating, sudden loss. In honor of his life, I wrote They Say Grief is Love. Here is the last stanza:
to grieve with hope
a love with nowhere to go
must meet the Love that will not let us go,
and there, so slowly,
the grieving heart
finds final home.
The third line is a nod to the famous hymn O Love, That Wilt Not Let Me Go. As I was meditating on this poem, I looked up the lyrics to this old hymn (my favorite version is by
Indelible Grace). The third stanza stopped me:
O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
How can joy seek you through pain? Isn't joy the absence of pain? Isn't joy what you feel when pain ends? Not according to Scripture:
- “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” Romans 12:2
- “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” James 1:2
- “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” John 16:22
We have sorrow now, but Christ brings joy – not in spite of the sorrow, or after the sorrow, but THROUGH the sorrow. We rejoice in hope WHILE we are patient in tribulation, not after it's all over. We count it all joy IN the trial, not when it's done.
I do not rejoice that my children were endangered last week. I do not rejoice that our truck repairs cost an astronomical amount, that our dog nearly died and that my baby actually did. God is not asking the impossible, improbable, or outright offensive of us.
God is asking us to “trace the rainbow through the rain”: to look for His hand in the midst of the storm. Oh, what a struggle this is! I want to focus on the pain; the way it throbs beneath the movements of my day. And – I have made time for mourning. But when I lift my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my Help (Psalm 121), I see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13) and know He has not left me in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23).