The rest of the story

Confession: I told you I miscarried a tiny baby last January. I didn’t tell you the rest of the story. Of necessity, this post contains personal details I would not normally share publicly. There are not many; I have been as discreet as I could. But I ask, especially if you are male, that you read respectfully.

The Rest of the Story

The problem with backing up to the beginning of the story is that it’s hard to know when to stop backing. You pass through months and years of events-that-led-to, and land not only in the hospital where you were born, but somewhere just before the book of Genesis, when all these things were developing in the heart of God. So I can’t tell all the rest of the story.

The piece I am going to tell you now started the month before my miscarriage, in December of 2014, when we said yes to a dream opportunity. A newborn foster girl was coming into care. Her older siblings had all been removed from the home, one was being adopted right now, and there was no kin. Would we be willing to take her?

YES!!

She wasn’t even born yet, due at Christmastime, and we started counting the days. We set up the crib, bought newborn diapers, washed the tiny outfits we’d carefully stored after Kelly outgrew them. We called her Baby Hope until the exciting time we’d learn her birth name.

hope-9627
My friend Shaunda gave gifts in joyful anticipation.

The days ticked by. Her due date came and went.

We began to worry, and checked in only to find there had been a terrible miscommunication: she wasn’t coming to us newborn. She had gone home from the hospital with Mom, and if something went wrong (as it had with all of Mom’s babies to date) she would come to us.

We never heard of her again.

It was hard packing away the diapers and the outfits, taking down the crib. We had wrapped tiny girl shoes in Christmas paper and given them to our children to tell them a new sister was arriving. Now we had to tell them there wouldn’t be a sister.

shoes-9475

When I discovered I was pregnant late in January, I had one of those aha moments so frequent in my walk with God, when I try too hard to make sense of pain. So that’s why Baby Hope didn’t come… This is God’s plan for us instead. Ryan and I broke out the chocolate and the sparkling grape juice, elated by this gift. I was expecting!

Two days after our joyful discovery, I began to bleed. I remember staring at that bright, that impossibly bright crimson and thinking nothing but NO.

No.

No.

This happens to everyone else. Oh, help me Jesus, please not me. Please not this child.

We went to the doctor to confirm. Was there any way this could be nothing but a fluke test and a normal cycle? and she said I’m sorry. With three positive pregnancy tests and this amount of bleeding, I think you’re losing a baby.

January was a killer. This is the loss that still cuts my heart sometimes, the irreplaceable I cannot forget. We called him Baby Jesse, the name we’d picked for Kelly if she had been a boy.

But the losses weren’t over. In early March I went to the doctor with a painful UTI. She said, Are you pregnant?

I don’t think so, I said. I had the miscarriage five or six weeks ago and nothing since.

I made it to the pharmacy before my phone rang. It was a very kind nurse. Honey, after you left the office we ran a pregnancy test on your specimen, and it was a faint positive. Please don’t worry, you’re very early on and the medicine we prescribed is safe for pregnancy. Just wait a week and take another test to make sure …Are you still there?

I was still there. Just crying again.

Within a few days it became clear that the baby, if she had been there, was leaving my body. I didn’t even know for sure that she had been. Could the infection have skewed the test results? In the research I did, some said yes and some said no.

I said to Ryan Could we just call her Baby Faith? We were getting good at picking names and genders. This one was a hat tip to our uncertainty, and to the weightier doubt I felt growing within me. We named her for what I wanted to hang onto, and for what I felt slipping through my fingers.

from-jean-3302
My sister drew this for me.

*

The months after that were dark. Some days I was furious at God, but always I was leery of him. Though he can do no wrong, I felt betrayed by him, lured into hopes that dissolved before my eyes. I stopped telling him what I felt and what I wanted, for fear he’d use it against me. I knew He was Good in some cosmic sense, like a chess player sacrificing a pawn to save a bishop, loftily and unfeelingly, for the undoubted benefit of all. But he was not who I’d always thought him to be. He wasn’t being Kind.

Prayer was difficult. Over this time I prayed the Lord’s Prayer every day for a month, as I told you, because I had no words of my own. It served as a daily reminder of holy presence and purposes, inscrutable and unexplainable. He did not tell me what he was doing. He did not spare me from pain. He didn’t spare his Son, who prayed Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done and stretched out his arms on the rough wood.

poem-3307
This is a gift from my friend Becca.

But the King is in the business of saving all his players. (I did not say sparing, but saving.) Perhaps the sacrifice is their saving. I think he is especially kind to his pawns, the ones who can take only one step at a time and who don’t understand the game at all.

*

I am still not far enough beyond those months to look back and say what healed me. I don’t know if I am healed yet. Sometimes I still cry hard over Jesse. There are life experiences you cannot think your way out of—you have to live through by waking up each morning and fixing the breakfast.

I thought God was shutting the door to a new child, and I’d have to learn a lesson or pass a test or arrive at a perfect state of surrender before he would grant me this gift. But on a Sunday morning in April, while I was still shockingly human (greatly flawed, much confused, sometimes peaceful and sometimes not), I found myself looking at the darkest, clearest, most beautiful twin blue lines I’d ever seen. I felt numb with apprehension. I don’t have to keep this one. And I began waiting for the bleeding to start.

But it didn’t.

And it still didn’t.

And the next week it didn’t too.

Three and a half weeks afterward, Ryan got a call from Children & Youth Services, and on its heels I got another from our caseworker. Both were asking the same thing. There’s a set of four siblings coming into care today. Who can you take? The 19-month-old twin girls?

Angel Boy was still with us, but due for a successful return to his birth parents within the week.

YES!!

So it happened that on Mother’s Day 2015, we publicly announced a healthy pregnancy, spent our last day fostering Angel Boy, and took our toddler twins to church for the first time.

twins-3226

This is one way that God restored me, by packing my hands and heart so full that I had to live my healing instead of thinking it through. I found redemption in changing diapers again, and in the precious fluttering of tiny feet. I felt that God had given me three babies to love for the three I grieved—my twin foster girls, and my baby not yet born, though I had no assurance that I would be permitted to keep any of them. To love without keeping is not an easy thing, but Love in his mercy stretched my heart each day, as if there were no tomorrow.

And then, several weeks after taking the twins, we met up with their birth parents for a family team meeting. It went well—everyone was kind and civil, plans were discussed. At one point Twin A toddled off toward the exit and her mom used her full name.

L——– Hope! she warned.

Hope? I said. Is that her middle name?

Yes. We had their first names picked out long before their birth, but their middle names we picked at random just after delivery. That one’s Hope, and that one’s Faith.

You’ll never guess what I did when I got home.

Yep. I cried.

God had seen us after all…

*

The problem with ending a story, any story, is that you’re not at the end yet.

In search of it you pass in forethought through months and years of events-that-might-come, and land not only in a quiet grass plot where you will lay your body down, but somewhere beyond the book of Revelation, when the things you have given to the heart of God are returned whole, precious, with interest. We are still living without a guarantee of anything but his presence. But I have come to believe (you might say I have faith and hope) that this process plays a significant part in God’s economy—for human love and loss to bring many children against his chest: miscarried, fostered, birthed, beloved. There are bits of my heart walking around Meadville and heaven, and at last I am willing. If I am a pawn, I am in the hand of a Master.

But the ending of the story has not yet been lived.

Subscribe
Notify of
30 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Norma
8 years ago

Oh, Shari, thanks for sharing. I am deeply moved…towards worship, towards walking forward. Yes, He is the God who sees. Hugs.

Renata
8 years ago

Thank you for sharing Shari. Your words have touched me. I too have lived through the darkness of loss & then infertility. We are just RIGHT NOW awaiting information on a couple of precious kiddos ( one is a baby !!! Squeal) who are meant to be permanently placed with our family through foster care. Of course it is foster care, though, so you never know what will fully happen. Thank you for reminding me that the Lord has a plan & that He knows all the whys & hows even when I falter. God bless you for sharing your heart!
Renata 🙂

8 years ago

To love without keeping is not an easy thing…. how true!! This brought tears to my eyes.

theresa
8 years ago

This hits home. Hard. I lost a baby at 9 weeks last December and then another baby at 20 weeks this September. I can so identify with your feelings. Our story too is still being written and at this point there is no happy fairytale ending…

8 years ago

Oh Shari. This brings back memories. Memories of a story hidden back in the corners of my own soul. Memories that were, one day, sharp with pain and hurt; memories that are now softened by time and the further writing of my own story.

Thank you for sharing. May God bless you as you trust Him and go on into the story He is writing. We have this moment….. and then the next… and then the next……..

Suzi
8 years ago

I so understand the pain, the grief, the darkness…after several miscarriages I was told there would be no more healthy little ones to love. I don’t talk about it much… So fitting for you to share your story this month — 3 of my babies left us in October. It’s been so hard for me…but He sends me ‘little ones’ to love in ways I never thought he would – right now they are ages 7-14 in grades 2-8! All 17 of them to teach! It’s not always easy to balance wife, mom, teacher and more all at once but I enjoy these moments while I wait for the next.

Joanna Yoder
8 years ago

Your story…it makes me want to fall at His feet, and worship. “Oh, Joy, that seekest me through pain…!”

Kim
8 years ago

Your writing always touches my heart…but this time the tears won’t stop.

The way you are so honest and describe your feelings during the dark times… I can relate so well.

To cling to Faith and Hope when you know God is good, but you wonder if He forgot you.

Blessings to you. Thanks for sharing.

Maribeth
8 years ago

Wow. That chess analogy hits me in so many ways right now.. “If I am a pawn, I am in the hand of a Master.” Thank you for sharing your hard story.

Kim
8 years ago

I am deeply touched. I feel so blessed to have you in my life. May you find healing as you need it, hourly, daily, moment by moment. Thank you for this post.

Lisa
8 years ago

Thanks for sharing! I cry over this as I struggle through fear, anxiety, attempts to control the fate of my foster kids. It is so hard, so painful to let go. I know in my head that God’s love is enough for me and them no matter what happens. But my heart still wails. O God, help my unbelief!

8 years ago

This is a touching story. Yes, our mother-hearts never forget the little ones we have lost.

Shaunda
8 years ago

This story always makes me cry.

I love you and your babies.

John Coblentz
8 years ago

Weeping… your dad.

mom coblentz
8 years ago

Sobering… and achingly beautiful. And all wrapped up in pink and blue. Someday, maybe, we’ll better understand the parts of the story that still don’t make sense. I admire you, dear daughter. You are brave and strong, even if you don’t think so.
And I love that you are giving a home to the twins, who are adorable, even from the back.

Carla
8 years ago

Your testimony calls me to deeper trust in Him who holds all things together. I love you!

Chastin
8 years ago

Wow! This hit me, and it hit me hard. I might currently be bawling my eyes out 🙂 Thank you, thank you so much for this. I can relate to the heart ache to the wondering what he or she would look like, what color eyes, what color hair, but I know where they are and that comforts me. Although there are still days of tears, God is good! As one of my wonderful sisters said “too precious for this earth” and how true is that?!! What better place to be than in their Fathers arms. You’re wonderful and amazing! Continuing to pray for you guys. Love you!!

8 years ago

…crying too….

8 years ago

Thanks so much for opening up your heart and sharing the back story. Like many here, I could relate in so many ways. I’m so grateful to a God who gives hope and faith to even us weak pawns. And so glad that He sees the whole game.

So thankful that you have allowed God to fill your heart with His grace (and his dear little ones) and not clamped them shut in bitterness.
Blessings,
Gina

8 years ago

“We are still living without a guarantee of anything but his presence.”

Yes.

8 years ago

How interesting that the last few days I was thinking about you a lot again–looking at the card that was never sent and going, “I think I need to wrap this up and send it. Better late than never because we don’t forget–I think she’ll still be glad to get it.” And you (of course) have not. Oh my sweet friend… I believe the odds of our babies playing together in heaven is great, and I too have a Jessie–a Jessie Jo in fact–waiting there in heaven for us, along with many other babies. But Jessie Jo was who tore our hearts the hardest, and who God used to do a very big thing… and years later we have two more precious kiddos by adoption and that super special surprise miracle kiddo that fills my heart daily with the most amazing joy and love, on top of the two precious miracles God gave us before that who lived in spite of the odds. You are never far from my thoughts these days, and I am still here for you.

Rach Eicher
8 years ago

I’ve been having a good morning catching up on my favorite blogger… Welcome Back!

Thank you for telling us more of your story. The story is hard because of all the hurts and losses. “There are life experiences you cannot think your way out of—you have to live through by waking up each morning and fixing the breakfast.” (That’s right!)

The story is also good because “If I am a pawn, I am in the hand of a Master.” I stumble my way toward believing, in my deepest heart, that He is good and that He’s got me. You testified to His Redemption and Goodness and my heart feels softened a little again.

Bless you as you care and feed many alll the time 🙂

LaDonna Nice
8 years ago

This blessed me so much. Recently, our family went through an intensely, difficult struggle. I went through so much of the same emotions you expressed here. I think I doubted not so much if God was good, but if he was good for me, or at least if He was available for us. But He was with us, and looking back a year later I see that. Thank you for being vulnerable enough to share this with us, so that we can be reminded of His goodness and presence in our lives. May God bless you good.

8 years ago

So real. I get this.

8 years ago

I relate to this so much. Thank you, Shari.

8 years ago

I’m so sorry for your losses. Yet, this is achingly beautiful–the way God turns pain into places of worship.

30
0
Join the conversation to share your comments.x
Scroll to Top