A Holy Sorrow, Part I

I have felt compelled to write here, though I am in a lot of ways a different person than I was the time I last typed out a blog post, or really any of the times I wrote out a blog post. But life has a way of doing that. Changing us I mean. I feel I am always changing and becoming someone different. And this isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it is just how it is.

Motherhood has radically changed me forever. It's made me more aware of my frailty, and it's given me more purpose and joy than I thought was possible. I won't fully go into that today, but I am also learning that to be human is to be acquainted with grief.

There was only a week that spanned between a positive pregnancy test (Luke, two pink lines!! I said) and the spotting that turned into bleeding and then the ultrasound tech saying, "There's no sign of a pregnancy".

We named our precious baby Shiloh. I don't know if this little one was a boy or girl, but I will rejoice to find out face-to-face when we meet in Heaven someday soon.

I've been a student of lament the last many months, a practicer of lament, a humbled and in pain person stumbling her way through lament. And even though God hasn't left me unequipped, meaning I have had the tools, and by God's kind grace I have had the faith, to practice lament when the reality of a miscarriage has visited in waves, it didn't lessen the pain. Perhaps the deepest of pains I have ever felt.

The waves of grief came as I saw the salted crackers I bought last minute at the store when I opened the cupboard days after the ultrasound tech's words. Coming across the 'stashed away pregnancy test before company came' in a random drawer under our bed brought the burning lump into the back of my throat. Feeling the absence of fatigue, and the absence of nausea after we lost the baby left a cavernous hole inside. Wondering what their face would have looked like, and longing to hold this child close in my arms. This is not how it's meant to be.

I've recently discovered Reddit, for better or for worse. And Luke sent me a Taylor Swift song that I have also seen a few times since on Reddit threads that sure seems to speak to this type of loss - I have no knowledge of Taylor Swift having a miscarriage herself, but the lyrics hit home when you are acquainted with this type of experience, this kind of pain.

But I've found that the difference between these well penned lyrics that will open the floodgates, and a prayer of lament, is the first one leaves you in ashes - the other propels you towards hope. It lifts your head to the Giver of hope.

Her song, albeit beautiful, doesn't build a bridge that brings a healing hope, like the words of the Psalms and Lamentations do. But I have no doubt I will weep when I hear these words for the rest of my life.

Bigger than the Whole Sky

No words appear before me in the aftermath

Salt streams out my eyes and into my ears

Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness

'Cause it's all over now, all out to sea

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

You were bigger than the whole sky

You were more than just a short time

And I've got a lot to pine about

I've got a lot to live without

I'm never gonna meet

What could've been, would've been

What should've been you

What could've been, would've been you

Did some bird flap its wings over in Asia?

Did some force take you because I didn't pray?

Every single thing to come has turned into ashes

Cause it's all over, it's not meant to be

So I'll say words I don't believe

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

You were bigger than the whole sky

You were more than just a short time

And I've got a lot to pine about

I've got a lot to live without

I'm never gonna meet

What could've been, would've been

What should've been you

It seems as though writing continues to draw me back, and it's good to be back.

This series is for our Shiloh, whom we began to grieve in January, and the second baby we lost just a month ago, whom we will name very soon.

Til part 2,

Allie