Full Circle
I spent much of that first day after the miscarriage thanking God for my life. I spent much of the second day weeping bitterly for the life that had been lost. I spent the next several months wondering if my faith would ever be strong enough to make sense of my conflicting feelings. How, in one breath, could I praise Jesus for my living son and daughter, my loving husband, my very being, and then, in the next breath, rage that they weren’t enough? That my life would not, could not, be complete without that baby in my arms?
After easily carrying two children to term, I was unprepared for the cramping I felt in the fourteenth week of my third pregnancy. I called a girlfriend. I called my doctor. I prayed. I ate a pan of brownies. I am a worrier, and prone to taking my fears on magic carpet rides to fantasy disasters. “Oh Lord,” I begged, “let me be imagining this.” Determined to be hopeful, I went to bed. Regular contractions woke me a few hours later. I shook my husband awake and convinced him to stay home with our sleeping kids while I drove myself to the hospital. “Let me go with you,” he pleaded. I refused, wanting to leave as soon as possible. “I’m fine,” I lied. “I can feel Jesus’ presence with me,” telling the truth.
I sang worship songs in the car, gliding along the dark and empty freeway, whimpering aloud when the pains came fast and hard. “You are my strength when I am weak. You are my treasure that I seek. You are my all in all.” I reached the hospital, checked myself into labor and delivery, and miscarried my baby in the bathroom. I had barely been there five minutes, and found it hard to believe what was happening. I started going into actual physical shock, though, as my bleeding continued. Nurses rushed around, paging doctors and plowing IV needles into my arms. The room began to spin and darken. “Jesus, help me hold on to you.” I thought of my two young children at home, what their life would be like without a mother. “I’m here,” I whispered to the nurse who asked if I was still with her, “I’m here.”
After an emergency D&C, I was released to recover at home. “She lost a lot of blood,” my husband was told when he came to get me, “she’s lucky she made it to the hospital at all.” We drove home quietly, solemnly aware of how close we had skated to the edge of tragedy. What if I’d pulled over to the side of the road when the contractions got bad? What if I’d waited too long at home? What if, what if?
But then, a thousand permutations of a new question tormented me. Why? Why did I lose that baby? After years of wavering, we’d finally decided to try for a third child. After getting pregnant immediately, I thought it was “meant to be,” that God was smiling on our plans. Why couldn’t I be happy with the family I was already blessed with? Why did this hurt so much? Why couldn’t I get over it? Why would no amount of prayer and even fasting lessen my pain, or my desire to be pregnant again? Why?
I grew exhausted from sadness, weary from trying to beat back my tears and dreams. Yes, I did still believe in God, a good God, but I no longer believed in myself, or my ability to be strong. I went on antidepressants for a few weeks, a lovely and necessary vacation from my overwhelming emotions. I enjoyed my children more, stopped picking fights with my husband. My grief, so oppressive and heavy, became like a smooth stone that one fingers in a pocket. Always there, shiny and solid, oddly comforting in its familiarity. I named the baby we lost Bennett, meaning “little pure one.” He knew only the Lord, and not his earthly family. I finally realized that, although I feel the loss of him, Bennett is not lost to us. He waits in Heaven with his Father.
I had thought that baby was the answer to my prayers. The fabric of my faith tore when he died. In the mending of it, I have come to understand that it is not what I pray that matters as much as the fact that I continue to do so. I have learned that Jesus is near, even when I struggle and flail and cry. I have learned that He is the treasure that I seek, that He is strong when I am very much not. That moment in the hospital, when I felt consciousness slipping from me, I had prayed He would help me hold on to Him. Instead, I now know, it was He that was holding on to me, and not the other way round.
by Kathryn LaPointe
For Bennett, miscarried on July 29, 2003 and for his little brother Barrett, born one year later on July 29, 2004.
