My daughter had just completed her bead necklace/leash for her stuffed puppy. I watched as she picked up the ends and got up from the table to bring it over to me to tie. With a sweet smile, she began to carry it over to me, clearly proud of what she had made.
My heart stopped the moment I heard the clatter of a dozen or more beads scattering on the floor. She had lost her grip and the string had slipped from her fingers. Her little face instantly crumpled into sobs and it broke my heart. Even though I knew I could help her fix it, the disappointment and discouragement she felt bled into my being because of my love for her.
I knew that she didn’t understand that it would all be better in just a few minutes. And I felt her momentary sadness deeply within myself.
And then the thought came to me …
That must be how God feels about my miscarriages too.
Since my molar pregnancy over a year ago, I have had two very short pregnancies and subsequent miscarriages. And since those most recent miscarriages, I have struggled to feel that God cares about the children He allowed to be taken from me. That he cares about the pain it has caused me.
But as I watched my daughter, in tears over something far more trivial than a lost life, my heart was moved for her. And I realized that God must surely be moved by my pain as well.
The Tears of Jesus
Immediately after this realization came the memory of the story in the Bible of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead in John 11. When Jesus came to Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, Lazarus had been dead for several days and the sisters were in a sea of grief.
Jesus, seeing Mary weeping, was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (vs. 33b).
Jesus knew He would be “fixing” the situation shortly. He knew their grief right now would be gone in a moment. And yet, He still wept with them. Before performing a miracle, He took the time to feel the reality of the pain they had endured for those unbearably difficult days until He came to them.
You see, He had a purpose in delaying his arrival at Lazarus’ house. Lazarus had to die so that Jesus could prove that He was God in flesh by raising him from the dead. But that didn’t mean Jesus didn’t care about the pain He was allowing Martha and Mary to go through for four very long, grief-filled days.
For the many women who experience miscarriage, it is easy to give into the temptingly convincing lie that God doesn’t care about what you are going through. That He took your child from you without regard for the searing pain of loss He has inflicted upon you. That He did it to punish you. That He doesn’t think you are good enough to have a child or another child.
LIES!
They are easy to believe, but so untrue. God cares. He loves. He feels your pain too. Sure, He is big enough to have stopped it, to change the situation if He wants to. But He has greater plans in mind than we are capable of comprehending much of the time.
As much as you imagine it happening, you know that you most likely will not see your miscarried child’s heart start to beat again on a repeat ultrasound. Yes, Jesus performed those kinds of healing miracles every day while he walked this earth for a short season. But He did not do it to make this world a better place; He did it to show us a glimpse of the perfect world He promises to us in eternity if we follow Him.
One day, there will be no more tears, for God – who Himself has shed tears – will wipe them all away. Forever (Revelation 21:4).
The Hope of Jesus
A few weeks after the bead necklace incident with my daughter, I was reading the verse of the day on my Bible app which was Romans 5:3-5:
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
As I read and reread and reread these verses, I was rather confused. How can someone guarantee that having hope in something will never put you to shame? As the mother of a miscarried child, I’m sure you can relate to me when I say that every time I lose a pregnancy, I feel embarrassed for having believed I was going to have a healthy child.
After losing a pregnancy, I always look back almost with shame on my memories of begging my husband to get me a certain food “for the baby.” Those moments when I would talk with my husband or mom about our future with another child in our family as though it were a done deal. Only to find out it was never going to happen with that pregnancy. That there either was no baby (as with the molar pregnancy) or the baby probably had little to no chance of long-term survival in the womb for reasons we will never know.
So the idea of hoping in a pregnancy is repugnant to me. Whenever my husband gently scolds me for being so pessimistic about the outcome of any future pregnancies and tells me I should have hope, all I can say is, “How can I?” And all I can think is how many times I have been put to shame by that hope in the past.
So how is it possible that hoping in something can come with the promise of no disappointment? We all know that every situation, every person we hope in has the potential to disappoint, to fail, to fall apart.
Except one thing.
I went into my Bible to read the verses preceding that bold statement in Romans 5 and here’s what they said:
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (vs. 1-2).
Hope of the glory of God. That phrase sounds stuffy and religious on the surface. As a selfish human being, I can’t help but wonder as I read it, “What’s in it for me?” As a follower of Jesus, of course, I know that God’s glory is ultimately what I seek. But still, that hurting heart yearns to know how God’s glory will help the situation.
But then I remembered ” … hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (vs. 5).
God’s glory is where we feel the full force of the love He wants to pour into our hearts. Our hope is in God. Our hope is in being a part of the grand purpose He has to bring Himself glory and show us everlasting, unconditional, perfect, selfless love. The deepest desire of every human heart.
That kind of hope will never disappoint. Guaranteed.
God does not promise to protect us from loss and pain in this life. And that’s a hard thing to accept from a loving God. I understand that. But He wants to use all of this mess to create the most beautiful, perfect, pain-free life in His glory, in His love.
The Fatherly Love of God
You know, as a parent, sometimes it completely breaks my heart when I have to tell my daughter she can’t have something and she cries. Sometimes I wish I could give it to her. Sometimes I do end up giving it to her. Sometimes, I just hold her and comfort her through the moment because I know, in the grand scheme of parenting, what is truly best for her.
It might sound like an impossible task in the midst of tragedy, but God asks that we trust Him as our loving, all-knowing Father. Trust is an interesting thing. It involves being vulnerable and giving our heart and safety to someone who does not explain all the details … or sometimes anything at all.
It can be hard to do at times, but the reward of trusting an all-knowing Father who loves His adopted children enough to sacrifice His “biological” son for them is priceless. His peace is worth making the leap to trust. Trust that no matter how much pain or difficulty we experience in this life, His purpose will lead us to something far more beautiful, satisfying and whole than we ever could have imagined to be possible.
God cares about your miscarriage. God cares about your pain. He wants that pain to draw you to Him in hope. Hope that God’s glory will ultimately bring complete healing for those that do the one simple thing He asks: Believe.
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