grace in miscarriage, part two

[Disclaimer: This post is fairly long (for me) and personal. Maybe to the point of overshare. Like the first post, my goal here is not to describe the general experience of miscarriage, but rather to bring it one more small step into the light. By sharing my story I hope to make it easier for a few other women to share theirs… Even better if it is helpful for women who haven’t yet had miscarriages, but statistically may eventually do so. If this doesn’t sound like your thing, I’m not even a little offended if you head back to whatever you were doing before.]

It’s been a couple months now since my miscarriage and, while it was important to talk about it as it happened, I’ve learned a lot since then. Here’s some of that…

Grief can be slow.

I was basically numb for a couple of weeks. There was kind of a background sense of sadness, but mostly there was a sense that I had this weird dream that I was pregnant, but then I woke up. (My dream life is pretty active and vivid, so this is basically life as usual.)

There are lots of people who want to share their stories.

People can be totally awesome at wholehearted compassion, given the opportunity.

I had this really terrifying realization the day after I shared the first post… I shared it Friday night, then Saturday I remembered I was singing on Sunday morning. Now, I love every second I get to help lead worship. But also, when I do, my mother-in-law watches my kids for the morning and brings them to the second service. So I’m there at both services without kids to chase (in this case, hide behind.) Usually, this is awesome. But this particular week, I was pretty anxious about the vulnerable, exposed feeling I anticipated. And, as one person pointed out, going public with a miscarriage could very well mean processing my pain with a lot of well-meaning but casual acquaintances… daunting for an introvert.

But do you know what? My church family is awesome. Kind and compassionate, not awkward or overwhelming. I hadn’t shared it looking for support (which is funny, because that seems like an obvious outcome now), but support is very much what I found. As for processing with casual acquaintances, it turns out a lot of people I know (but not well) wanted to share their experiences in a really positive way. The general sense was, “here’s what I experienced, it’s hard, and it is going to be OK. You’re not alone.” 

Also? I found out (again) that worship is a really good antidote to self-consciousness. It turns out that when I’m focusing on the greatness of God, I kind of lose track of how vulnerable I’m supposed to be feeling.

Grief is worth looking for.

So here it gets messy. Brené Brown says in Gifts of Imperfection, “We cannot selectiely numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” For a couple of weeks, I wasn’t feeling sad, but I also wasn’t feeling… anything. I started to panic that I was doing it wrong, what ever “it” was. So I went to see my therapist. We figured out a couple reasons why I was fighting the sad so hard.

First, it was easier to believe it wasn’t really a baby. When I was  a teenager, I had a man in spiritual authority explain logically why babies- born and unborn- go to Hell if they die before receiving Christ. I have no recollection of why we were discussing this and I’ve long since come to believe otherwise, based on scripture and what I know of God’s character, but the words were still there, ricocheting around my brain. (Don’t get mad at him, that’s so not the point. He was a good man trying to handle the Word accurately.) 

Then also, I had this thought (apparently a common one) that the reason I lost this baby was because I couldn’t take one more right now. I had this story in my head that one more kid would push me over the edge into psychosis and I’d end up on national news after destroying my family in some horrible way. That being the case, this loss was God’s gracious way of sparing my whole family (baby included) from some crazy trauma. It follows then that I should be thankful, not sad.

Sometimes I need someone to help me figure out what lies are circulating around in my head and point them out for what they are. I have an excellent, Jesus-loving therapist that can help me with that. (Ok, since the point of this is authenticity, I actually have two. But that’s a whole ‘nother thing.) I left her office crying. She apologized for that, but as far as I was concerned, it was a win. Once we found the lies (“it’s not a baby, because if it were, it would be in Hell” and “I would go crazy and destroy my family”) and corrected them (it is a baby and she’s not in Hell and I’d have been a darn good mama to her), I was free to grieve. 

Sometimes grief looks like obscene laziness.

But… sometimes depression looks like obscene laziness, too.

Hope really does make a difference.

The loss gives me the ability to fully “weep with those who weep.” Sharing it gives me the opportunity.

The prospect of another pregnancy is utterly terrifying.