Can this become good?

    Today is another anniversary. I wondered how I would handle it. The day has been better than I expected.

    Romans 8:28 is a challenging and hopeful verse. Knowing that God has a plan for good and that He is in control, while also knowing that bad things will happen is a tough thing to reconcile. There are many things in life that I would not have chosen if I had been given another option. Even if I fully knew God’s plan, I probably would still choose the easier, pain-free route if I could.

    Over the years I have had many opportunities to evaluate what I truly believe. I have had to decide if I am going to trust God even when I don’t like it, when I don’t understand, and when I don’t see the bigger picture. I am grateful that I am on the “other side” of many of those struggles and can see at least a glimpse of the good that has come out of those painful experiences.

    October 1, 2019 I went to my “8 week” ultrasound. The ultrasound tech seemed thoughtful and tense as she did the scan. In my experience that is rarely a good sign. She never said congratulations or asked questions about if we thought it was a boy or girl or if we were excited. She didn’t say anything was wrong, but I knew what she saw wasn’t what she expected. She let the doctor talk to us. The doctor told us that it looked like I wasn’t as far along as we thought (not surprising since my periods were irregular and that had happened before). She wanted us to come back in two weeks and hopefully we would see the heartbeat. I was not overly optimistic, but I tried to hold out some hope. I didn’t tell many people. Honestly, it was such a crazy time in our lives. My husband had been looking for full time work for over a year with no success. Our house was crazy packed. While having some major repairs done on our house we had moved about half of our house into storage. I think it expanded while in storage because when we brought everything back, there was barely room to breathe. It felt packed before, but now it was suffocating. I was trying to downsize, manage more repairs that needed to be done on our house, make sure our finances would last an undetermined amount of time, home school the kids, and now deal with the emotions of an uncertain pregnancy. October 22, 2019 was our second scan. The news wasn’t good.

    It has been a year since then, and the thing that I feel the most is gratefulness. That is not how I expected to feel. That day was so hard and the weeks following were some of the hardest I had faced in a while. I did not handle it well. I gave myself a few days to be sad and then I stuffed the rest of my emotions down. We found out about a week later that we were moving to another state. I didn’t feel like I had the emotional capacity to deal with the loss and my gigantic to do list at the same time. So I set my grief aside and pretended it did not exist. I convinced myself that I was fine and I had gotten over it quickly. Unfortunately, that was not true. Instead of healing, I was letting the pain leak out in other, more destructive, ways. Emotionally I was all over the place. One minute I would feel totally fine and the next minute I would be yelling about the most inconsequential thing. I would go from feeling peaceful to feeling depressed and overwhelmed. Losing the baby was one of many stressors that I was struggling to cope with. I felt like I was losing my mind.

    Now you may be wondering why I am grateful. That was certainly not a great experience. But as I look back I can see how God was preparing me for what was to come. I realized several months after that loss that I needed help. I was starting to realize I probably needed counseling and possibly medication. I didn’t know why I felt so out of sorts, but I knew that my current emotions were not sustainable. I told myself I was fine and I thought I was, but my emotions kept telling me otherwise.  I started going to a Grief Share class that helped me to see that my emotions had more to do with my grief than I had realized. I did not realize how many other people felt like I did when they experienced a loss. Just two weeks into the class (and two days after the last class I would be in be in for months due to Covid), I found out that the baby I was carrying right then was further along than the last one, and like the first, had no heartbeat. If I had not taken those first steps toward healing already I do not know if I would have been able to handle this greater loss. I don’t think I would have been able to feel peace holding my tiny baby in my hands as I examined his tiny fingers and toes. I think it would have crushed me.  

    Did I want to lose another baby? No! Did I want to lose two more babies? Certainly not! Did I want to lose two babies in five months? Never! But God in his infinite wisdom knew that was the best thing. As I sit here typing, my eyes are dry and my heart is full. God has used the losses of the last few years to take me on a journey of healing that I never expected, never knew I needed, and one that I never wanted. I sit here to say that I do not understand why loss has been such a big part of my story, but I am grateful that through it I know more of who God is. I trust His plan more, even though I know it will not always feel good.