I always thought this would happen to someone else, but never to me. Even now, in the aftermath of my first miscarriage, there’s a surrealness to the whole thing. Surely, part of it is some built-in self-preservation, the abstraction of misfortune, the distancing of oneself from unsavory realities. Death, pain, loss–these things befall others. These “concepts” have little bearing or immediacy in our day-to-day lives. Until the scythe falls.

Compound on this the difficulty this particular trial brings. Miscarriage has been one of the most simultaneously confusing and devasting experiences of my life. As a Christian, I know that the life within me was an embodied, eternal soul. No matter how minute that little body, God knew this child. Yet, I didn’t have a chance to really know this child. I found out I was pregnant on a Monday morning and by that Thursday evening, I was already miscarrying. I had begun to build a scaffolding of hopes and dreams for the future of our family only to have it all come toppling down in the span of a few days. It was emotional whiplash. It felt like some half-forgotten dream. Like a story I had once told myself. At the worst times, it felt like a lie.

There’s a memoir I read years ago by Joan Didion called The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, Didion recounts the loss of her husband and how for a year after his passing, she couldn’t bear the thought of getting rid of his things, particularly his clothes, thinking he was going to return and need them. I’ve thought a lot about that book in the past couple weeks. Because even as I write this, I’m not convinced it’s over. There’s a part of me that still believes–despite the trip I made to the doctor and all the physical evidences of the miscarriage–that the baby has somehow held on to the tether of this world. The materialist would chalk it up to my hormonal changes, to the fact that I’m still experiencing some of the symptoms of pregnancy–the nausea and fatigue–as my body readjusts. But I think it’s more than that. I don’t think it’s merely physiological, some psychological trick of the mind, or even one of the five stages of grief. I think it’s an echo of eternity, a rippling back of something deeply true from the vast halls of forever. My child lives, truly lives, in the presence of the Lord. For the believer, it’s never over.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

-Psalm 139:13-14, NIV

In the wake of this tragedy, my husband and I sought counseling from one of our pastors as I struggled with the guilt of what had happened. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I knew all the right things, but I didn’t feel them. It must have been my fault. So I wracked my brain for any cause that might have contributed. Did I eat something I shouldn’t have or not eat something I should have? What about that day I had forgotten to take my vitamins? Had I exercised too vigorously that Monday? Or something else–was it some secret sin I hadn’t thought to repent of? Had I not been grateful enough for that positive test? Or not motherly enough with my children as of late? And, like a sort of Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, I fell further and further into the trappings of my own imagination.

What he said was this: I should view the miscarriage as a blessing. God had not only given me the blessing of a child, but had seen fit to call that child home. He reminded me that I have often complained of how I wouldn’t be able to have as large of a family as I could have had because I came to the right on the creation mandate so late. (I had my first child at 32. You can read more about that here.) Instead of despairing in a temporal loss (sorrow, yes; despair, no), I should rejoice that God is not only filling up the New Heaven and New Earth, but also giving me more children in a condensed timeframe. Now, you may think it a callous bit of counseling, that instead a pastor should placate you with reassuring tones while you sift through your grief like a lost child in the rubble of some natural disaster. But I needed this grounding in reality. I needed someone to metaphorically take hold of my hand and guide me through it, reminding me to look upward, not inward.

Though I’m still grieving the loss of my fourth baby, I am choosing to rejoice. Even in the midst of heartache and through tear-blurred vision, I am choosing life. I will not pretend this child was anything other than just that–a child. Nor will I act as if he or she was less than an “actual” baby. I will not let temporal mirages dictate eternal realities. I will remember the blessings of God have no expiration dates. Though death has parted us for a time, it has been swallowed up in victory through the blood of Christ.

In that vein, my husband thought it would be helpful for us to choose a name for our baby, to acknowledge and remember the life that was given to us, if only for a short time. We’ve chosen the name Lowen, a Cornish name that means “joyful”. And how could he or she not be joyful? Our child is experiencing the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Lord firsthand. One day, I will have the honor of meeting Lowen in the New Heaven and New Earth and oh what a reunion it will be!

I’ll leave you today with an excerpt from the autobiography of John G. Paton about his grandmother. May it be a reminder that, in Christ, there is no true loss. But only hope. Always hope.

“One thing else, beautiful in its pathos, I must record of that dear old lady. Her son, Walter, had gone forth from her, in prosecution of his calling, had corresponded with her from various counties in England, and then had suddenly disappeared; and no sign came to her, whether he was dead or alive. The mother-heart in her clung to the hope of his return; every night she prayed for that happy event, and before closing the door, threw it wide open, and peered into the darkness with a cry, “Come hame, my boy Walter, your mither wearies sair;” and every morning, at early break of day, for a period of more than twenty years, she toddled up from her cottage door, at Johnsfield, Lockerbie, to a little round hill, called the “Corbie Dykes,” and, gazing with tear-filled eyes towards the south for the form of her returning boy, prayed the Lord God to keep him safe and restore him to her yet again. Always, as I think upon that scene, my heart finds consolation in reflecting that if not here, then for certain there, such deathless longing love will be rewarded, and, rushing into long-delayed embrace, will exclaim, “Was lost and is found.”

–John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides by John G. Paton

Until next time, salutations & selah.