It was late. The children slept while Ryan watched a movie and I retreated to the warmth of our bedroom.
My grief was still a few weeks fresh, and although my days were regaining a semblance of normalcy, nightfall tended to bring my sorrow along with it. Predictable like a liturgy, my grief would rise as the sun would set.
Many nights, like this one, I would curl up in bed journaling, reading, or sipping tea and listening to music that held me in its melody. Darkness can make the world feel small, and sometimes small feels safe and good. This night was like that.
Salt-heavy tears burned tracks down my cheeks as I thought of what we had lost. More than anything, I was sad. I missed our baby. I wanted her back.
Let the little children come to me, I felt Jesus whisper.1
At one time Jesus spoke of the little ones gathered around him for a blessing, but that night he spoke right into my spirit about Scarlett, and about all the little ones lost to the heartbroken mothers and fathers who joined me in the fellowship of suffering.
Let them come to me, he said again.
Our baby was already gone, but I knew what he meant. Would I be willing to let go? Would I release this child to Jesus, knowing she was already safe in his arms anyway? I don’t believe God took our child, but I will never doubt he received her the moment her tiny heart stopped beating.
He said it to me on that lonely night, and he continues to this day: Let the children come to me. Let them come.
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 19:14 ESV)
Releasing my babies to Jesus does not mean denying they belong to our family. Letting go doesn’t bypass my grief or “bring closure” or help me move on. (We don’t move on from the loss of our children, as if we’ve changed jobs or given up a fashion trend.)
But there comes a time when we begin to move forward. And to move forward, we have to let go of what we don’t have. We have to give these little ones to Jesus.
No one can tell you what this will look like or mean to you. No one can assign you a time frame. No one can prescribe your path forward.
My babies are not coming back. Neither are yours. And I hate that. Their lives mean something; our babies matter. Life always matters. Our loss is bitter and our grief is warranted. But we cannot hold on to them. At least not how we once imagined.
Making peace with our loss doesn’t mean we stop aching. It doesn’t mean we forget. It doesn’t mean we “get over it” or that our tears will be dried up. Making peace with our loss means we trust Jesus enough to carry us and nurture us as we attend to the vulnerable, gritty, sacred work of growing through our grief into the rest of our lives. Making peace with our loss means we release our babies to the hope of heaven, knowing God will sustain us in our lack. He will teach us how to live all over again.
I will strengthen you and help you.
I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
(Isa. 41:10)
As I’ve practiced this letting go over the years and through my miscarriages (because letting go is not a one-time event), I’ve often thought of Jochebed, Moses’s mother.2 How did it feel to let her son go? She knew she couldn’t keep him. What happened to her mother’s heart as she realized she couldn’t control his destiny—whether he would live or die? How did it feel to see him taken to Pharaoh’s palace, knowing his every need would be attended to—the whole kingdom at his fingertips!—while also knowing he should have been in her home? Like Ryan, did she say “But I wanted us to look after him”? Did her arms feel empty? Did she grieve the future they would never have together? Did her life turn upside down as she was forced to let go?
You and I can know our babies are safe in the presence of Jesus, that their every need is met, that they’ll want for nothing. We can be reassured they’re “in a better place” (as well-meaning friends like to remind us), but it doesn’t erase the pain of letting them go. Still, we must. We simply cannot hang on.
Letting go hurts and it heals; God’s made provision for both.
And as we let go of what we cannot keep, we begin to realize we can’t keep the old version of ourselves, either. The paradox, then, is that by loosening our grip and letting go of what can’t be kept, our hands become open to receive something new.
Becoming You. Again.
Grief changes a person. You and I are not the same women we were before losing babies. Although our identity in Christ has not changed, how we give expression to our lives may have. The essence of who we are is still intact, but the way we absorb what we see around us is now filtered through eyes that have seen the underside of sorrow. Grief expands the soul and exposes our need, but it also expands our heart to receive love and be changed by it. This becoming can make us more whole if we are open to receive (and be changed by) God’s astonishing love.
“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4 ESV). We are not blessed because we are mourning what was lost; we are blessed because we’ve experienced his comfort in the midst of it—that’s the blessing. Suddenly the brokenness has been transformed into the blessing. He doesn’t simply want to rescue us; he wants to remake us. How stunning!
“You are the light of the world,” Jesus goes on to say to all the people he’s just blessed (the mourners, the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted, and others).3 Don’t miss this, friend. Blessing for the world comes through you too. You who mourn are among those he will use to light up the whole earth. The very fact that you’ve received his comfort means you have something to give—your need and your bounty tied together into one. It’s so upside-down! It’s so amazing!
One of my favorite children’s authors, Sally Lloyd-Jones, writes about those whom God uses to light the world with his light and love:
Who would make good helpers, do you think? Clever ones? Rich ones? Strong, important ones? Some people might think so, but I’m sure by now you don’t need me to tell you they’d be wrong. Because the people God uses don’t have to know a lot of things, or have a lot of things—they just have to need him a lot.4
Are you beginning to see it yet? God can, and longs to, use you just as you are—brokenness and all.
The Gift of Vision
When I visited his farm in North Carolina for the first time, my friend Ken led me up a ridge to show me a gazebo his son Jonathan had built. Jonathan had named it the “prayerzebo,” and for years it’s been a place of prayer and communion and song writing. On our way back, Ken paused. “See out that direction?” He pointed. “You can see the mountains through there during the winter.” That’s all he said, but I heard more.
We often think of winter as the season when things are hard to see. Winter is when the blizzards come; it’s when the fog rolls in. We shiver and shudder, staring at the calendar, willing the page to turn. But in the desolate season of barren trees you can see farther ahead, and on through, than you can when life is in full bloom. Losing someone you love can feel like winter. A blizzard might hit, sure, but when it passes and you regain your ability to see, there’s a certain grace to see farther, even in the middle of all that emptiness.
There will come a time when you realize the blizzard is over. The fog has lifted. The questions you must ask yourself then are: What can I see now through the trees? What does the winter want to teach me? Can I discern farther?
Grief can be a wonderful clarifier. In the aftermath of losing Oliver, it was as if God drew things into sharp focus for Ryan and me. Our life felt short, and we wanted our days to count. Unimportant things melted away. The voices (real or imagined) of those who might discourage us from pursuing different dreams seemed to hold less power. The fears that had potential to hold us back came under the scrutiny of our desire to live our one precious life well, and this was good. We made some of the best decisions of our lives during this time. This post-blizzard winter clarity was a gift.
And Then Comes Spring
I can’t tell you how long your winter will last, but I can tell you it won’t be forever. The liminal space of grief isn’t infinite. When the ground is frozen over and the trees seem at a standstill, there’s much work going on under the surface. Those roots are digging deep to find the nourishment they need. And when they do—when the roots have gone deep enough to have found their source—they will provide the grid for growth come springtime.
You’ll be amazed at how the buds and branches and leaves push through when the sun reappears, cradling the earth in her warmth and calling new life to come. You’ll begin to recognize the transformation, which was hard to see from the inside, and you’ll marvel at how God worked a miracle while you were barely looking.
All things new. This continues to be his redemption story—the resurrection, the reconciliation of all things. Light bursting through the darkness. It’s the kingdom of God at hand—always new, always coming alive, always growing into something that looks like Jesus.
It’s such good news—the kind of good news that allows us to have hope while still in the middle of grieving.
What Can I Give from the Middle?
Sometimes the most beautiful stories are the ones told from the middle, the ones without happy endings. It can be romantic to see a rescuer save the distressed in order to live happily ever after, but what if that’s not enough? What if, in addition to the happily ever afters, we also need to hear and see demonstrations of God’s faithfulness in our lives right from the middle of our stories—stories of resilience from within hardship, stories of hope while we’re still in the dark?
In Hebrews 11, we see story after story of those we would consider “heroes of faith” who never saw their happy endings come to fruition or God’s promises fulfilled. Consider Sarah (Sarai), the jealous woman who drove Hagar out of their home when contempt over Hagar’s pregnancy thrust the relationship into chaos. (We looked at their story in chapter 4.) Thousands of years later, you and I have seen Sarah’s unfolding story as her people (the nation of Israel) multiplied to fill the earth. But could Sarah see the nation that would come from her ninety-year-old barren womb when she stood there in the middle? Could she see how the whole earth would be blessed?
What about you, friend? Are you still in the “middle chapters” now? You may think you have nothing to offer until the chaos is resolved: I don’t yet know my redemption story. Or you might size up your experiences and determine they’re pretty unremarkable: How could my life make a difference in someone else’s?
Whatever your assessment of your story, you won’t know how it can help and heal others until you pour it out. I’m not just talking about the literal story of your miscarriage here; I’m talking about your life. Your messy, ordinary, extraordinary, beautiful life.
I was so tempted to put off writing this book until I was sure I could package it all up with a happy ending and wouldn’t have to write to the trenches from the trenches, but I continued to sense God’s nudge to link arms and do this with you, not as your leader but as your companion. Two days after saying yes to God’s prompting to begin writing this book (while I was in Tuscany), I had my second miscarriage, and then a year later I had my third. These stories and words have been like mining gold from the rubble through two miscarriages, an arduous pregnancy that left me unable to walk for months, and the hazy, sleepless (wonderful) newborn days of our sixth child. The truth is, I’m still on this grief journey too. I’ve been healed and I’m still healing. Even this book is a miracle—a testament to God’s faithfulness while we’re still in the middle.
But what if my story can’t heal anyone? And what if yours can’t either?
The enemy of our souls works tirelessly to sow doubt and insecurity into our minds. But here’s the good news: Our stories can’t heal others, but Jesus can and does as we offer them. Transformation and healing are his work, not ours, but he uses surrendered lives and authentic stories as a vehicle to communicate his revolutionary love. He’s done it since the beginning of time, and he’ll keep on doing it until the whole of our collective volumes looks like his redemption story.
I love Eugene Peterson’s interpretation of Jesus’s words and intent as he addresses the crowds during the Sermon on the Mount: “Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16 MSG).
This has proven true over and over again in my own life: The more I’m willing to give voice to the work of God within me, the more others open up and give voice to the work of God in their lives. Story begets story. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. Declarations of hope beget hope. Offerings of love beget love. And as that happens, our stories—bathed in the sacrifice of Jesus—do the actual work of overcoming the darkness.5 This is amazing, powerful, ordinary-sacred stuff.
Our Stories Change the World
A friend once asked me if it’s helped to share my stories so frankly with friends, family, and readers who are often complete strangers. She wondered if it’s hard to open myself up, knowing it gives invitation for others to share about their own heartache and pain and knowing they might need comforting too.
And here’s my answer to her question: I believe part of the way we heal is by helping to heal others. When I am open about my pain, I invite God (and others) into those hard spaces to look at pain too—my own, but also theirs. When I am free with my life and faith in the way I give myself to others, I also free myself to receive. You have to release your grip to give, but you also have to release it to receive. Open hands are hands that can’t hoard love and truth and comfort; they are positioned to both give and receive. And openness of heart and hands requires vulnerability—this, I strongly believe.
Have you chosen to open your life to others around you who are hurting? Have you asked God to open your eyes to see those you may have overlooked before you knew grief?
From the middle, we have the power to choose our response. Jerry Sittser puts it this way:
Choice is therefore the key. We can run from the darkness, or we can enter into it and face the pain of loss. We can indulge ourselves in self-pity, or we can empathize with others and embrace their pain as our own. We can run away from sorrow and drown it in addictions, or we can learn to live with sorrow. We can nurse wounds of having been cheated in life, or we can be grateful and joyful, even though there seems to be little reason for it. We can return evil for evil, or we can overcome evil with good. It is this power to choose that adds dignity to our humanity and gives us the ability to transcend our circumstances, thus releasing us from living as mere victims.6
What if we’re stronger than we think?
What if the middle is a gift too?
What if how we go from here can give meaning to our grief?
What if we lived our own redemption story right here, right now, calling “Kingdom, come!” even while our hearts are still broken? What if we found joy intermixed with our grief?
What if we became known not just by our shared pain but by our shared hope?
What if we lived our lives as they are, not as they were? And what if we dared to live into them as they will be one day—on earth as it is in heaven?
She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future. (Prov. 31:25)
Journal Prompt: Write a letter to your baby, telling her all the things you wish she knew about you, your family, and the dreams you had for your future. Choose one or two of these prompts to write about: Tell him how you feel about him. Tell her how (or if) your dreams are changing now that she is gone. Will you give yourself permission to dream again? If so, tell him about it. How do you hope your grief and suffering can be transformed into a gift? How is this loss changing you already? How do you feel about your future?