My Experience of Loss

The Seasons of Life

Here we are in October already.  You know how in the summer you long for winter and vice versa?  Isn’t it that way in our lives sometimes?  We long for whatever season we are not in right now.  We think that once we get to the season we are longing for, we will step into the happiness that we are holding out for.  I can’t wait to finish high school and I’m finally an adult, I can’t wait until I get married, or I can’t wait until I’m a mother.  This past year and these passing seasons seem to follow in this pattern of wanting the next thing.  Yet there is something that the Lord is doing that leaves behind the traces of a life changed by the depth of grace that only God can give.

I didn’t even warn you that I was going to get real deep real quick.  Last year in August, at eight weeks pregnant, Jared and I found out the pregnancy was ectopic, meaning that the embryo caused damage to my fallopian tube and did not go to a place where it would survive.  The next day I underwent surgery in Budapest.  The damage was so severe that the doctor had to remove one of my fallopian tubes.  We had been at our first doctor’s appointment hoping to hear the baby’s heartbeat, but instead I spent two nights in the hospital while Jared crashed on a friend’s couch.  Recovering from my first surgery was tough.  Also, the fact that I was in another country where I don’t speak the language was humbling.  The reality of losing the baby hit in waves, and then the reality of there being no guarantee of another child hits pretty much every month.  My due date came and went, Mother’s Day, other people’s baby showers, and before I knew it a full year had passed since I lost my baby.  The different reminders were difficult at first.  People I know and love all around me were, and are having babies.  At first I did have to fake the joy that I really wanted to feel for them, but it became more real as time went on.  Close friends shared with me their own experiences of loss, which really helped me to not be so hard on myself for not being able to bounce back to my usual high spirits.

The desire for a child is great, but the deep desire for Jesus is so much greater.  The most important thing to me was that I became a mother, and what I struggled with often was that I am not labeled as such since my child is not with me.  I had to wrestle through this with God, and had to realize that the most important thing is how I view Him.  Do I take him at his word?  Do I walk in His promises?  This isn’t about fertility, it’s about my relationship with Jesus.  This is what all of our experiences in life come down to.  Jesus doesn’t value me based on my ability to conceive, be a dutiful wife, a hard-working daughter, or a loving sister.  He values me because he chose to love me in a perfect way that suffers long and is kind; that does not envy or parade itself and is not puffed up.  His love does not behave rudely, seek its own, is not provoked, and thinks no evil.  It’s a love that does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.  His love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  His love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).  If I can know more of God’s love through losing my baby, than what greater gift can there be in the wake of loss?  He lost a Child too.