Held Fast

It has been two years since my second miscarriage. I doubt that I will ever watch the season turn from summer to fall without remembering those days in the hospital.

I have gone back and forth over what to talk about. Whether to talk about it. Sometimes I think I talk about miscarriage too much. Sometimes I want to talk about it more. I have thought about that baby boy every single day of the past two years. I very rarely cry about it anymore. I am fiercely aware that I am one of the “lucky” ones. With my two beautiful, healthy daughters. My baby’s first birthday is just a week away.

And yet I think of that life that almost was.

After that miscarriage a friend shared with me her own experiences and told me that God had used it in unbelievable ways. I was annoyed by this “Christian” response, not wanting to believe that God could ever use my grief.

Two years later I am still witnessing the unfolding of His power. I don’t believe that my miscarriages were part of God’s perfect plan for my life. But I believe we live in a broken world and this is a taste of that brokenness. And I know God has been with me each day and that He has mourned with me and sustained our family. And, yes, He has used these times in unbelievable ways.

There are a lot of stories I could tell and I’m pretty sure I’ll be hearing more of them when I get to Heaven one day. For today, I want to share these words from Psalm 139. I read the Psalms a lot in the fall of 2016 and several were very meaningful but God brought 139 to my attention in a particularly powerful way. Here is just a part of this beautiful poem:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

This grief is a part of my story. But so too is the grace and glory of God.