Joy and Sorrow

Miscarriage. It is a scary word. It is a word directly connected to death and sadness and also the hope of new life.

It was a real life experience for me.  It has been a thought and a fear in my mind even before Eric and I conceived… what if?  Am I dismissed from having such a thing happen to me?

Early last month, we found out that I was pregnant, we were surprised that such a gift was becoming a part of our new little family so soon. In the less than two weeks that followed, there were a whirlwind of feelings, emotions, efforts to plan and the struggle to comprehend what our life was about to become. However, before we could even get our minds fully around baby, we lost her. She slipped through my hands before I even felt her there.

I wrote this little note to her in my “baby journal” that I had just started in order to process my own thoughts about her coming. The journal only had three entries in it- this one being the 4^th.

“It was so strange and so unknown, yet you, little blueberry, were apart of me and the one I love, your daddy, and now you’re gone. You will always hold a sacred space in my heart and in my mind, yet you no longer take up space in my body, you no longer need that home. The only one who can carry you to death has carried you and has given you life once again.”

There is a cycle that I am familiar with-- the cycle that life needs death and death needs life.

Death is only apart of the process of living. Death is a process of transformation.

In times past, life has challenged me to drink from the cup of joy and of sorrow, as one of my favorite authors (Henri Nouwen) states. That cup is life and the drink is beauty. The ability to hold two seemingly conflicting postures is the depth of beauty in which our life is written.

In the days and weeks since my miscarriage, I have been hearing ladies stories as I have shared my own. I have learned about myself, my body, the way I handle pain, both emotionally and physically, and the way that we keep things hidden.

I have learned that a miscarriage is not a curse or an end, for me it’s been a pathway to know, to hope, and to trust that death is needed for life.

Identity is not formed by my present day situation- I am not pregnant, I am not. My identity has been refined by those situations that ultimately point me back to me truest, deepest, unchanging identity- a beloved daughter of my heavenly Father.