Though You Slay Me

Crying in front of people doesn’t come easy for me. I was told once, as a child, that I looked like a duck when I cried, and that was that – I have tried to hold back the tears ever since. But there are just certain times when ‘logic’ is thrown out the window. Times when the pain is too heavy to hold in. When the tears are too quick to wipe away before someone sees.

Unfortunately, I have had some practice crying over the past few weeks. Alas, I haven’t mastered *not* looking like a duck…

I guess it isn’t *popular* to discuss the awful parts of life, but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. After almost five years of prayers and hope and tears, we found out on April 21st we were finally pregnant…And then, at 8 weeks, we miscarried. There was nothing that could have prevented it. No womb has been prayed over more – before or after pregnancy. We have had faith out the wazoo for years (and still do). The truth is: CRAPPY THINGS HAPPEN. That’s why this is the fallen world we live in, and why we anxiously await Heaven and its unimaginable perfection. {If you want the full, detailed story, visit our YouTube channel here.}

So far, we are still searching for meaning in all of this. Eerily, this feels all too similar to our failed adoption last summer, and we were only just beginning to ‘heal’ from that heartbreak. Thus, I can tell you that what I have learned is that biology has little to do with matters of the heart. Losing our own biological child, and the one we grew to love in our hearts from afar has dealt the same pain.

We need your prayers as we heal and begin to move forward. We know we are called to be parents, and have faith that God’s plan for our family is infinitely greater and more incredible than we could ever imagine.

As we have grieved these past weeks, we’ve heard and read so many things contrary to our beliefs:

• From A Christian Publication: Miscarriage is punishment for something you have done.
• From A Christian Book About Marriage: When facing miscarriage and infertility, you have to realize when is the time to give up on your dream of having children.
• From A *Trusted* Christian Leader: This pregnancy would have continued smoothly if only you had had enough faith.

Seriously. As we have searched for answers in the midst of this tragedy, these are all things we have read or heard…All of them claim to be ‘Christian’ points-of-view, but not a single one of them is Scripturally-sound. There is not one woman in the Bible who remains barren for life. There is also no guarantee of a stress-free life of ease in the Christian journey. Why would there be? Aren’t we meant to long for Christ’s return and our Eternal Home in Heaven?

As I dwell on upsetting, make-me-cry-like-a-duck life events, I recall Paul, Sarah & Abraham, Hannah, Jesus, Job. No *happiness-only* lives there. In James 1:1-13, we learn that trials in life mold us into mature Christians, as we learn to submit wholly to Jesus, and trust in Him completely. This doesn’t make sense to us, of course – myself included, but as the prophet Isaiah tells us:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:8-9)

God’s ways are certainly not our ways, and far far above and beyond anything we could fathom or comprehend, but speaking to the loss of a child-in-utero being a punishment, have you ever heard of Job? Most faithful man on the entire planet in his day? He lost his whole family and all of his belongings, and the Bible is clear when it relates that it wasn’t the result of sin.

But the real ‘lesson’, I suppose, is not in the causation so much as in the response:

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” (Job 13:15)

And so that is how we are trying to respond to this trial. It’s all we can do. Trust and wait on Him. Though we are heartbroken, yet will we stand in our faith.