Dear Grieving Mom
Maybe your grief is fresh and raw and you’re still reeling from the suffocating blow of a recent miscarriage. Or maybe you’ve long ago buried a secret grief but something within is probing you to lean in closer to the pain once again. Let me be as straightforward as possible with you: I can’t answer the cosmic “why” of your miscarriage, but I can validate and help you understand your pain and grief. I want to link my arm with yours in hope as we look together toward the day when Jesus makes all things new.
I discovered something in the early days after my first miscarriage, when grief came pounding with incredible force: If I didn’t dive deep, the waves of grief would absolutely pummel me. In surfing, this is called a “duck dive.” The apostle Paul calls it being “hidden with Christ.”1
I call it survival.
As I began to practice my own deep dive after losing our daughter, Scarlett Grace, to miscarriage, I discovered this was actually more than survival. It was an invitation: Would I find Jesus in the deep?
It’s normal to be filled with questions when experiencing personal trauma. What have I done to deserve this? Is this my fault? Why would God let this happen? Is he punishing me for something? What if God isn’t who I thought he was? How can I go on with life as I once knew it? Will I ever feel normal again? Is God—or his goodness—even real? What if my whole faith is a sham?
Because the grief of miscarriage often goes unspoken, these types of questions can eat away at the soul and confidence of a woman as she tries to shoulder the burden of them in secret. We’ll look at some of these hard questions together, but first I must tell you this: It might seem impossible, but you can do this. You can lose and grieve and hope. The power of grief can, and sometimes will, sweep us off our feet. But we can learn how to breathe under the deep. We may even learn to open our eyes there. We can grieve with hope. We may be brokenhearted or even crushed, but we will not be destroyed. We might even find that, in our weakness, we’re stronger than we think.
Scarlett can lead to grace—a grace I would need as two more miscarriages followed my first.
My husband, Ryan, and I have six children, only three of whom share our dinner table. Motherhood has been a brilliant teacher, exposing the paradox contained within the experience of my grief: Suffering and joy can coexist.
I still have moments of sadness over my babies lost to miscarriage, but now I also have wonder. It was in my darkest days as a mother that I found my brightest hope in Jesus. And yes, I understand how terribly cliché this can sound when you’re left stunned and broken by loss. But it’s true. True doesn’t mean easy, but I promise you: Love will lead you there, even through questions that seem insurmountable when your life is in shambles.
I remember the days of wanting to crawl into a cave, find a place to curl up there in the quiet, and never wake up. It wasn’t that I actually wanted to die, it’s just that I didn’t know how to live under the weight of my sadness and collapsed expectations. Out of nowhere, sorrow would hit me like a heat wave, pressing on my chest, leaving me desperate to peel off layers so I could find some relief. But even while experiencing intense loneliness, I also remember feeling the sweetness of God’s presence in some of those shadowy hours. Something told me his quietness wasn’t abandonment—it was companionship.
This isn’t to say I could always feel his presence, or that I didn’t long for something more tangible—a touch or a word (a billboard in flashing neon lights with a backdrop of double rainbows would have been nice). But even when I felt like I was groping in the dark, I somehow knew there was a God acquainted with pain who stayed with me in mine.
But maybe this hasn’t been your experience at all. Maybe you’ve picked up this book wondering how it might help your soul rest after what feels like endless grief or a faith that never quite recovered. Maybe God seems absent or quiet. Or maybe, in haste, you downloaded the first book you found online because those words—“no heartbeat”—have just been uttered in your direction and you’re looking for a lifeline. Maybe you’re wondering if you’ll ever feel close to God again or if your faith is even worth holding on to while you wait. Maybe you just want to know you’re not alone.
I wish I could tell you unequivocally that you will “feel” Jesus near when you need him most, but I cannot. Who am I to presume my experience will translate into yours? I will not. And this, friend, is the truth of grief: It’s wild. Grief does not follow a blueprint. It minds no flowchart. It doesn’t tick off boxes, it will not be contained in your favorite list app, and it most certainly won’t stay put on the calendar.
Grief is wild like the sea, but it doesn’t need to destroy us. We can’t conquer it, but we can navigate it, and we can find Jesus there too.
Dive in, friend. Come with me. Let’s go deep.
Grace Like Scarlett will not help you solve the problem of why your baby died. It won’t help you systematically piece together a theology to address all of the mysteries of faith. It’s certainly not a handbook with three magic steps to healing. And it will not make false promises about what the shape of your family will someday look like. But what I can promise you is this: As we dive in to the goodness of Jesus, he longs to do a profound work within you, and he will hold you as he guides you through the wild waves.
When pain and suffering inevitably find us, Jesus calls us into the deep.
Every sentence I’ve written in this book has been preceded and followed by a prayer for you—mother who has miscarried—and for our sisters who grieve from similar, yet distinct, forms of loss. (Please note that I won’t write specifically to the grief of stillbirth, infertility, abortion, molar pregnancy, neonatal loss, or the many other variations of pregnancy and infant loss, though I recognize there are many common threads to our grief, and I trust God to meet you right where you’re at as you read.)
Together we’ll explore the nature of grief and suffering, the human experience of community when it helps and when it hurts, the goodness of God and the promises we can hold to, and what it means to be reborn into our new selves, transformed by this experience of suffering and our revelation of hope. At the end of the book are meaty appendixes filled with practical resources for you, as well as a letter for grieving dads that my husband wrote. (We recognize there’s a lack of support for fathers who’ve experienced this unique grief; you can find more resources for him in appendix F.)
The book is written to be read as a whole, with each chapter building on the next, and I hope you will sense companionship as we explore life after miscarriage together. Please read at your own pace. You may find some sections harder to read than others because of where you are in your grief journey, or because certain ideas or theologies are holding you together in your grief. If that’s the case, then pause to process and digest before reading further or circle back around when you’re ready to continue going deeper.
My prayer is that you hear your own story and grief experience woven throughout mine and that you would discover Jesus in these pages, find yourself within his care, and perhaps even discover the gift that your experience of loss can give way to. This is our collective story of the grace to be found as we dare to extend our trembling souls into the arena of hope.
Make no mistake, this book will include Jesus. It has to. He changes everything. Even if you’re not sure what you think of God right now, I urge you to consider the possibility he offers.
May you grant yourself permission to feel, to wrestle, and to be fully awake to your suffering. May your soul be nurtured. May you take your time and breathe deeply. May you use your last bit of strength to dive below the surface when you see those wild waves approaching. Will you let your Scarlett—your own personal pain—be a gateway for God’s grace?
The thought of my suffering . . .
is bitter beyond words.
I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.
Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:
The faithful love of the LORD never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!” (Lam. 3:19–24)
When you look toward the goodness of God, dear heart, I promise you’ll see it. Let’s look there together.
May all God’s grace abound to you.
Love,
Adriel