The Uninvited Friend

It knocks on your door. You look at your watch: is it really time again? Sure enough, the old friend is right. You invite the unwanted friend in and you sit.

Grief.

It has been four years since my losses. But the grief, he doesn’t leave.

Grief doesn’t make it easy on us, does he? This unwanted friend creeps in and makes it nearly impossible to really move forward for awhile. For the sake of my experience, I’ll relate this to miscarriage. But so much of this is true for anyone who has grieved another person, or any loss.

When the test turns positive, your mind kind of explodes. First, how am I going to tell my spouse? For me, it was never cute or fun because I can’t keep news to myself. By the time I was pregnant for the third time in a year, it was almost an after thought.

“Oh, I’m pregnant again.”

“Oh, okay.”

It’s not even offensive that he didn’t respond with excitement. I told him in tears- fearful tears.

Then you figure out your rough due date and there’s officially a heart around that date in the calendar in your mind. September 24th, 2013. My very first due date.

Then you might call your doctor to make an appointment. You wait, not so patiently, for the first chance to see that baby. You’ll wait and wait and wait for that flicker of a heartbeat or if you’re lucky, the sound of the thump-thump, thump-thump. You count down the days.

What’s fascinating is it doesn’t stop there. You start planning how you’ll announce. You think of how and when, who should know first and try to come up with excuses for your weird behavior over the next few months while no one knows.

If you’re like me, you might even calculate when you’ll be 20 weeks so you can start counting down to the time when you’ll find out if you’re bringing a son or daughter home. It’s another date that is etched into your brain.

Then, the first appointment comes. Or maybe your miscarriage started on it’s own, I’m not sure.

The doctor preps you for an ultrasound. She asks “do you hope for a boy or a girl?” A girl, I said. But he wants a boy.

She searches.

And searches.

There’s no movement on the screen. But you’re not sure what that means because it’s the first time you’ve ever had an ultrasound. Or maybe, if you’ve had a baby before, you already know it’s bad news.

I wasn’t that nervous, honestly. My story doesn’t include miscarriages. No one close to me had gone through it. I’d done everything right so far. I was healthy. I took vitamins. I was in a loving relationship, a stable home. Check, check, check. All the boxes checked and pointed to a baby.

But miscarriage doesn’t care about all of that. It sweeps in whenever it wants. The situation can be right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. Biology does what it wants.

I’m not finding a heartbeat. It might be too early for me to see it, go downstairs to radiology. Their machines are better. Come back after lunch and we will talk about the results.

Lunch, right. I’m supposed to go eat and somehow not think about whether my baby is still alive or not. I knew, in my heart, when they checked for the heartbeat that there was nothing but silence. You don’t have to be a radiologist to know that the absence of sound isn’t good.

Four ultrasounds later, and she was right.

“I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

She was so kind, she told me of her miscarriages. We talked about options but it’s all a blur. I chose whatever would be quickest and least painful for me. Surgery happened a few days later.

We came home from the hospital without our baby that day.

What should have been blue skies and flowers, was lifeless and gray.

And Grief came knocking for the first time.

I began my walk down the gray, lifeless, lonely road.

I didn’t know what to do with Grief. He was harsh, like a long winter. He came suddenly. He was unwelcome. He was persistent. I tried hard to push him away and make him leave but he didn’t. So eventually, I opened the door wide and felt every bit of pain he brought with him.

He was my new, unwanted, best friend. By my side at all times. On my brain at all times. He searched the depths of my soul to devour any ounce of joy I had left. He stole from me. But in a weird way, he stole what I needed to let go of.

Remember all of those dates etched into my brain?

Those ideas of how to announce my pregnancy?

The countdowns to finding out if it was a boy or a girl?

Now what? What do I do with dates that were supposed to be fun and exciting but now stand for a baby I’ll never know?

These are the Grief visits we expect. We expect to be sad on these days, to remember what should have been.

And that’s why grief is so hard, friends. That’s why it’s impossible to be free of grief. Because we have memories. They might be actual memories with actual people or they might be what I’ll call “future memories”. The memories we start getting excited for the moment the second line is pink on the pregnancy test. We start focusing on what’s coming soon. We get way ahead of ourselves and I don’t think it’s wrong. We are already in love with a tiny human so we want all of these fun experiences.

But there’s the unannounced visits. The moments that your breath is stolen and you are suddenly faced with a moment you didn’t anticipate.

It’s the pregnancy announcements. The moment you see a pregnant woman, huge belly showing. It’s when you are asked for the thousandth time: when will you have a baby? It’s when you take another negative pregnancy test. It’s when Mother’s Day creeps up on you and you are reminded for an entire day: you don’t have the baby you wanted. It’s when you hold a baby and the longing, the pain is suddenly very real and present in your arms.

When that tiny human is gone, we are left with heart filled calendars and memories that will never exist. And that’s just the first nine months.

You get to the due date and you think: maybe I’ll be free now. The dreaded date has come and gone, surely I am free now.

But you’re not. Because every, single year, many of those dates are still etched in your heart. Except now you have more dates to add, the day you lost the baby. The day your new mother heart broke for the first time. The day you said goodbye to a baby you didn’t get to love as much as you wanted to.

The years go on and you learn to handle it better. You know the dates are coming. You might even plan events or small ways to remember the baby that didn’t come home with you. But He is still there. He still knocks on your door- right on time. He doesn’t get lost on the way, you can expect him to be prompt.

Grief.

He’s unwanted. He’s unwelcome. But I think he’s necessary.

He forces me to feel. He forces me to remember. He forces me to love. He forces me to talk about those babies. He forces me to grow. He forces me to cling to Jesus. He forces me to look into the eyes of other grieving mothers and say me, too. We belong to an exclusive club that only it’s members understand. Grief forces me to wear that badge and say it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to hurt, it’s okay to invite this unwanted friend into your life.

September 24th, 2013 was an eerily peaceful day. I dreaded that day for months. I had come to terms with my loss and was in the wake of the second loss. I still remember what it felt like in my home. The way the sun trickled in on the hardwoods and I sat, looking at the flowers in the blue vase. I had a new necklace around my neck to carry my two babies close. My heart grew in a new way, when I finally realized this truth about our friend, Grief.

There can be both gray skies and colorful flowers.

He’s welcome now because my baby deserves to be grieved. I deserve to feel. This precious life who made me a mother, deserves to be remembered and cherished. Whether in sadness or in deep, soulful joy: grief is welcome here, only to serve his purposes. Joy lives here, too, now. Angie Smith calls it the sacred dance of grief and joy. That’s exactly what it is. It’s sacred, it’s a dance. One day, you suddenly find room in your heart for both Grief and Joy.

This is when Grief and Joy, two unlikely friends, begin their dance.

The Music of the Spirit

Miles is wrestling tonight. For whatever reason, he won’t rest his eyes and drift off like usual. He lays across my arms as normal, his eyes close briefly. Just as quickly as they close, they’re wide open again and I’m wondering when I’ll get to go enjoy the easter dessert I made.

But I rest. I settle in for a rough bedtime. It’s just part of having a baby. I know that someday I’ll long to rock him again, he’s already outgrowing my arms. So I rock and finally, I sing. I sing the song that always lulled Norah to sleep. Within moments, he sat up. I thought it was a bad sign. But he sweetly nuzzled into my chest as I sang.

I’m kind of picky about singing an accompanied song without it’s supporting music. I must observe the appropriate rests and dynamics. I can’t rush through even though there’s no movement behind the words.

But Miles doesn’t like the rests. With each rest, he perks up to look at me. He looks a little sad, as if to say “mama, keep singing.” It’s only for a moment, Miles. The words will come again. These moments where I stop singing? They are important to the structure of this song.

Keep singing.

But Miles, sweet boy, there’s a pause for a reason. I feel the sound in my own head, the movement. The notes that move us forward into the chorus. They are important. They are necessary. But he can’t hear the music I hear. He doesn’t see it the way I do, just yet. He wants me to sing more.

So I continue on but with every teeny, tiny break, he looks up to ask for more.

Isn’t this the exact request I have made of God a million times?

Keep singing. Keep speaking. I need the words. Please don’t stop pouring out. This is where I find my rest, my peace. This is where I feel your presence. Don’t stop, Father.

But maybe He looks at me and says: feel the movement behind my words. These rests are important. They give way to another part of me.

What do you mean? I don’t hear it.

You can’t hear it, you have to feel it.

The Spirit, he says. Search for the Spirit now.

The words are easy though. They are clear. When he speaks, it’s obvious. It might be through scripture, through prayer, or through a friend, but I know it’s him. It’s straight forward and to the point. It’s black and white.

But the Spirit. It’s abstract. The Spirit is fluid. It moves, it’s hard to catch. It’s gray. By the time I catch it, it has already moved me somewhere else. It’s almost like a quick wind that I can’t keep up with.

It’s the music behind the lyrics. The Spirit is the notes that move up or down. They grow loud, they pull soft. They linger. Sometimes only loud enough to hear a faint hum. The Spirit, like the music, stirs. It makes my mind wander. It leads me to think. It makes me decide. It calls for me to interpret.

But I want the words. What does the music mean?

Silence.

I begin to look for the Spirit. I cannot see it. So I sit, eyes closed, to feel it again. To feel the music. To feel the movement of God in the form of something Holy, something sacred. I wait for his Spirit to move within me.

The Spirit takes hold of my mind and my soul. In between words of God, it carries me! Oh the sweet relief of being carried when I’m weary, longing for God to pour out his truth. I find strength in the truth that God gives me. But in the Spirit, I find rest. I don’t have to lift my feet to walk. I don’t have to even lift my head when I cannot gather courage. I rest. It fills. It moves. It breathes.

And before I know it, God is singing his chorus to me again. I look up and I say thank you.

I quickly realize I am no longer thanking him only for his words again, for providing me the truth I need for the day. No, I’m not just thanking him for that.

Now I’m thanking him for his Spirit, for the music. It’s the support behind the words. When the words stop and the silence overwhelms, his Spirit still moves. I thank him now for carrying me in the in between, in the time when things seem dim or hopeless. I now realize it was never hopeless, but the Spirit was supporting me through it all. All I needed to do was stop searching for the obvious words and let the movement sweep over my soul.

And now I feel both. I get the ebb and flow of the music, the coming and going of words. I get to rest and find strength. In the stillness, there’s no more loneliness, but power. The power to simply be. The power to rest.

And If He Doesn’t, He Will.

Some days, we don’t want to put on our hope. We might put on our joy, our peace, our love. But our hope? It’s just too hard. When we hope, we open our hearts to options. Yes or no. He will or he won’t. Some days, I don’t want to face the fact that God can do what I’m asking him to do, but he might not.

We think of what he will do.

He will be found when we seek him with all our heart.

He will give us peace that we don’t understand.

He will supply all of our needs.

He will be with us until the end of time.

He will bind up the broken hearted.

He will give us rest.

He will fight for us.

He will give us a hope and a future.

He will.

These truths are profound. We get to cling to truth he spoke to us. He gave us these words as gifts. They are clear. They are meaningful. They are strong, true words. We write them all over our homes. We sing songs about them. We believe them. We recite them when we are weary.

He will. It’s empowering.

But what about he can?

Don’t we wish there were books in the bible written for our specific circumstance? Like if God wrote out what will or will not happen to that job you want, the spouse you pray for, the child you desire, the heart you pray will come back to the feet of Jesus, or the healing you need? It might be nice. But would we still need hope?

There’s a theory that hope is key to survival. Stories tells us that there are many who survived the atrocities of concentration camps based on hope. They had hope that they could walk out and taste freedom again. They had hope that they would see a day that they were no longer mistreated and abused. They had hope that life would enter and they’d smile again. They may have even hoped that their freedom would simply come at the gates of heaven, but still, they hoped. Their survival wasn’t in anything we can see. It was based on their hope.

On the hardest of days, hope is our survival. Just the mere idea that things could get better pushes us forward. The idea that the fight isn’t over allows us to keep fighting. The idea that joy could possibly come again pushes us to reach for it even more.

We don’t know if he will.

But we know that he can. That’s where we find our hope.

The what ifs creep in though. Realism. Pessimism. Preparing for the worst. Whatever you want to call it- we allow ourselves to believe that we have to ask “what if”. But, maybe we shouldn’t ask what if anymore.

A few years ago, I sat in a group of women and I asked for prayer. I still remember the exact words that came out of my mouth. I shared my big what if at the moment.

“If it’s bad news, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

And you know what? I didn’t need to know what I would do. I wish I could go back to that moment and just have hope. But I was hopeless. I wish I could have sat myself down and convinced myself that it wasn’t my job to know what I would do if I faced disappointment. Because ultimately, I wouldn’t need to do anything. God will do it. The key here is: we hope because he can. It’s lofty. It’s quite optimistic. It might feel out of character for such a fallen and broken world. But if we don’t hope, we miss out on the opportunity to experience the presence of God to fulfill us and give us rest while we wait.

While we wait for God to show us the outcome, we are given the chance to wrestle. We wrestle with hope. We go back and forth: we believe and we don’t believe. We have faith and then our faith dwindles. We hope but then we ask what if. But there’s a point where we have to look at our “what if’s” and say: he can. Period.

Our hope reaches further than the he can. Because we get to believe that if he doesn’t: he will.  Remember those “he will” statements? Those truths that the word of God pours out to us to sustain us. Those things never change. He will supply our needs. He will give us a hope and a future (even if it is a different one than you wanted). He will fight for us. He will not harm us. He will mend our broken heart. He will give us peace. Even when the answer to our circumstance is no: he will.

But of course, he can. And if not, he will.

If you don’t get the job you prayed for: he will still supply all of your needs.

If the baby you want doesn’t come: he will give you peace that transcends all understanding.

If your physical or mental ailment isn’t healed in your time on earth: he will sustain you.

“They do not fear bad news, they confidently trust in the Lord to care for them.” Psalm 112:7

We do not fear bad news because when it comes, the Lord cares for us.

I had so much fear that day, the day that I shared that I didn’t see a future if I received bad news. I didn’t have hope. I didn’t trust that the Lord would have my back even if the answer was no. I didn’t trust that there might possibly be something better for me beyond the “no”. There have been so many times that what I believe about who God is depended on what he would do, or not do, for me.

But he does not change. He is still the beginning and end. He is still our comfort. He is still our strength. He still loves us and lifts us up. He still fights for us. He still gives us a hope and a future. He still allows us to seek and find him. He will still be who he says he is and do every thing he told us he would do. He can move the mountain in front of you but he might not. If he doesn’t, we cling to what he will do.

We have to be willing to open our hearts up to the disappointment of “no”. We have to. Because in that “no” God sustains us. He shows us that he is the only thing we could ever need. He shows us that when he is the only thing we want, we can look into the face of bad news and be confident in his care.

One of Job’s friends told him: having hope will give you courage. This courage allows us to hope for what we want, but believe that if the answer is no, he will. That’s where we rest. We stop asking what if because God has the what ifs covered. He won’t tell you no and leave you to die to your despair. We still get to have hope that if he doesn’t do what we want, he can do more than we ask or imagine.  He can. And if he doesn’t, he will.