The Language of Miscarriage

A week ago Thursday, Colin and I sat in the sonogram room of my OBGYN's office, watching as a small, black void surrounding a minuscule white dot appeared on a screen.  The pregnancy sac and fetal pole, our doctor told us.

By my calculations, I was supposed to be eight weeks pregnant, but the baby was only measuring at 6.  Not definitely a bad thing, the doctor told us, but not good.  I was bleeding, too, and terrified.

This Thursday, we sat in that same room and watched as the doctor again performed a sonogram.  There was the cervix, and the uterus.  But that black void and white dot were gone.  By that point, we'd known for a week that our baby had left us.  But it was still so strange to look at that place where it had been visible only a week ago, and to see nothing.

I've thought a lot lately about the language of miscarriage.  "I had a miscarriage," or "I miscarried," women say.  Or sometimes "We had a miscarriage," or "We lost the baby."  That had been my language, too, for our previous two losses.  Though I did not believe that I had done something to cause the miscarriage, the language I used made me the subject.  I lost the baby.  I had a miscarriage.

But this time is different.  This, my third pregnancy and third loss, my experience was different.  The baby was in me for longer.  8 weeks, this time, rather than 5 or 6.  I had a month of knowing I was pregnant, a month of experiencing the symptoms, the pains, the emotions.  A whole month where we thought everything was fine.  And then, last Thursday night, the baby left my body.

I won't be too graphic, but I will say this: I knew that the baby had left me.  I knew it physically.  And in that moment, my understanding of our language of miscarriage changed.  I didn't lose the baby.  The baby left me.  The baby left us.

The medical community has yet another term for this: "spontaneous abortion."  Though our society is very single-minded when the word abortion is used, it does work to explain what happened.  The word "abort" is defined as "to fail, cease, or stop at an early stage."  "Spontaneous," too, is an appropriate descriptor: "without effort or premeditation." It happened out of nowhere.  Unplanned, the baby simply ceased to grow, and left.

That understanding of the miscarriage helps explain my own feeling that I've been abandoned.  I was abandoned, in a sense.  For whatever reason, the baby left my body.  We probably will never know the answer, and knowing the answer won't stop my feeling of abandonment, anyway.

It hurts to be abandoned by someone I'd promised to love and protect.  It hurts to be left.  But it hurts a lot less than thinking I am the reason why the baby left.  It hurts less to say that the baby left, rather than saying that I lost it.

I didn't lose the baby.  The baby left my body.   But it will never, ever, leave my heart.

So, what do you do?

It's a question you hear a lot.  When you meet someone new and strike up a conversation, it's bound to be asked at some point.

"So, what do you do?"

It's a question that has become increasingly more interesting (and difficult) to answer.  For a while, it was simply "I'm a student."  Then, it became "I'm a student and a children's minister."  Then I was simply a children's minister.  And all of those answers were fine.  A little out of the ordinary, but nothing that didn't at least lead to further conversation.

Then I left my church.  I wasn't in school, I didn't have a job, and I didn't have an answer to the question everyone asked.  "Well, I was a children's minister."  "I'm searching right now."  These are all correct and acceptable answers.  But it is so disheartening to give them!

Things have continued to change in my life, and among those changes is my answer to that question.  "I'm a chaplain at a children's hospital, I work at a mall museum store, and I am trying to start my own sewing business."

Might be a bit of an overload.

But the answer that I want to give to that question is much simpler.  What do I do?  I do what I love.  It has taken years to come to a place where I can say that I do truly love what all do, all that I do.  I feel fulfilled in my work, and am excited for it to continue.

When you ask someone what they do, typically the question you're asking is "What is your job?" or "How do you spend your time?"  But wouldn't it be interesting if the question we were asking was "How do you feel about what you do?"  And if we were to answer that question and share a bit more of ourselves than the work we do to make money.

I do what fulfills me.
I do what I need to get by.
I do what I want to.
I do what I enjoy.
I do what I have to, but someday I will do what I want to.

I work with amazing people.  I help incredible children (who often in turn help me).  I knit.  I sew.  I create.  I do what I love.

What do you do?

When I grow up...

When I was a child, I imagined (quite naively), that there would be a point at which I would be officially "all grown up."  It was the point where people would no longer ask me what I wanted to be when I "grew up," but instead simply asked who I was, and what I did.

Silly me.

It took years of trial and error to realize that this imagining was not quite true.  I watched my dad continue to use the phrase "when I grow up" to talk about what he wanted to do with his life, and realized that, perhaps there is a bit of Peter Pan in each of us.  In our own eyes, we are never fully grown up.

What do you want to be when you grow up?  

That answer changed for me at several important moments in my life.  When I was seven, I would have told you I wanted to be a violinist.  At thirteen, I might have said I was going to be a writer.  In college, reality setting in, I would have said I wanted to write, but would be a librarian to pay the bills.

At twenty-one, as I sat in my mom's car with tears welling up in my eyes, I told her that I wanted to go to seminary.  I told her that I wanted to go into ministry.

It was a sharp change from the future I'd imagined for myself since high school.  For one, it meant a further four more years of school.  For another, it did not (I thought) involve the arts.

I attended divinity school and became convinced even further that ministry was what I would do "when I grew up."  I even imagined that, upon graduation, I would achieve that place of being "all grown up."  I forgot that real-life sometimes (often) gets in the way of our hopes and dreams…or at least sets them aside and reminds you that reality is important, too.

After graduating, I didn't get a job.  In fact, I couldn't even find a job outside of ministry.  I went from taking 12 hours of graduate classes and working as a part-time children's minister, to sitting at home in my pajamas at one in the afternoon, watching Law and Order: SVU.  I hadn't arrived at the magical "all grown up" place.  I was far from it.

That was where I was about a month ago.  I've filled my time a little better since then (sewing, knitting, watching Project Runway…), but still find myself wondering and worrying.  What am I doing with my life?  Was I wrong to go into ministry?  Was I wrong to spend so much time (and money) on a Master's degree that is currently getting little use?

It is a difficult place to be in, and I won't pretend that I am the only person who has ever been there.  I had spent time, money, energy, prayer…so much on an education that would enable me to become a minister.  But I sat at home doing very little - I was not ordained, not employed, and not sure of where my life was going.

In this in-between time, I've been thinking about why I decided to go into ministry in the first place.  Maybe, I thought, I'd simply moved on to the next thing.  From ministry to…who knows what.  But I didn't think I was that fickle of a person.  So I considered the reasons.

• I went into ministry because someone had been kind enough to love me when I needed love most, and because I wanted to share that love with others in need.  

• I went into ministry because I craved knowledge and learning.  I wanted to learn, and to teach something meaningful that would impact myself and others in our daily lives.  

• I went into ministry because I loved God, because I believed deeply in the power of Christ's love, and because I wanted to learn how others' lives were touched by that love.  

These are reasons I still hold close to my heart.  No matter what I end up doing "when I grow up," I want to do these things.  To share love with others in need.  To learn and teach meaningful and impactful things.  To hear the stories of others who had been touched by God's love.  

Over the past month, I've been learning how to be a chaplain at a children's hospital.  It isn't a role I was completely excited to take on, though I was willing to try it out for a period.  But as I've learned about what it means to be a chaplain, and the importance of that role in the life of a hospital, I've realized that all of my reasons for going into ministry - pastoral ministry - could be said of someone wishing to go into chaplaincy.  

There are so many paths before me right now that I am often overwhelmed.  But looking at the list above, I know that if I stay true to those life goals then I will be fulfilled, satisfied, and joyful, no matter which path I choose.  

Living Toward…Part One

Yesterday, an important anniversary nearly passed by unnoticed by me.  It was July 21, 2014, seven years to the day from the release of the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

Now, it may seem silly that a grown woman wistfully remember dressing up in robes with a lion hat perched on her head, real-live radishes hooked on her earrings, and a cork necklace around her neck, waiting impatiently for a brick of a book to be released, and I will not blame you if you laugh at that idea.  But, for that young woman, that day - July 21, 2007 - was one she had dreamed of and lived toward for many, many years.

It is that idea of living toward that intrigues me today.  When I think back to that young woman, waiting with her friends in her costume for a book to be released, I realize how happy she was to be living toward the moment that book would be placed in her hands.  So much excitement had led up to this moment: hours spent discussing and debating what had happened in prior books, and what could possibly happen in this one; even more hours reading and rereading each page of each book, reliving the stories as if for the first time.  All of those hours, days, years, had been spent living toward the release of this seventh and final book, when all would be revealed and the story would be concluded.

When she received that book, was the excitement over?  No…but she began living toward something new…the next chapter, and the next, then the end of the book, then the conversations that would come.  Some new thing to live toward appeared, and she followed along the path toward those new things.  And other things, not related to Harry Potter, certainly followed.  College graduation, acceptance into graduate school, attending graduate school, marriage…the list goes on.

In our lives, we are accustomed to living toward things.  Our next birthday, the conclusion of a school project, prom, graduation, marriage.  One thing follows when another is concluded, and we are rarely left with nothing to look forward to.  

It is the living toward that is exciting, isn't it?  When I looking forward to the final Harry Potter book, those moments of living toward were (dare I say it?) more exciting than the actual living of it.  It was more thrilling to imagine what might be in the book, than to read what was in the book.  But the danger of it is that we might become too enthralled in the imagining that when that thing we have been living toward arrives and passes…we do not know what to do next.  

My senior year of high school, I spent weeks on a major project for my literature class.  It was a project and presentation I had looked forward to doing since my sophomore year.  My every thought was about this project - what work needed to be completed, what work had been completed and if it needed to be edited, how I would present it, what I would wear when I presented it.  My whole existence became centered around living toward this project.  When the presentation concluded, suddenly I had nothing.  I had forgotten about prom, forgotten about graduation and college…I had forgotten that I needed to live toward something else next.  

So what happens when that thing we have been living toward disappears?  If the seventh Harry Potter book had been canceled, never to be released, what would I (and so many others) have done with all the anticipation that had been building?  If the project I had prepared for suddenly had been canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, what would I have done with all of that preparation?  

I've recently been struggling with this problem.  Following marriage and graduation from divinity school, I have been living toward having a family.  It has become my all-focused goal.  After all, it is what we are supposed to do, right?  Graduate, find a job, get married, start a family.  But when miscarriage followed miscarriage, and the expected ease of having a child proved unrealistic, I found myself with nothing to live toward.  

Saying "nothing" is perhaps an overstatement.  I have everyday goals and happinesses.  I certainly live toward each evening when my husband came home, toward ordination into Christian ministry, toward many other things….but that central thing that I was living toward had seemingly vanished.  How do you move forward when the rug has been completely swept from underneath you?  How do you keep standing, keep living?  How do you seek out that next truly meaningful thing to live toward?  

It has been, and continues to be, a complete life adjustment.  There are only so many days one can set aside to crying in bed and waiting for life to cooperate with your expectations.  And so, lately I have been seeking out new things to live toward.  They've been small, but have managed to fill that space in my life.  Cataloguing our entire 500+ book library.  Learning how to fix and sew on a 1920s-era treadle sewing machine.  Rediscovering the utter joy of reading for pleasure.  Finding a job.

I'm not entirely sure what I am living toward these days.  Perhaps it is finding those simple life pleasures that make you smile.  Or perhaps it is seeking out something new to live toward.  Living toward something to live toward.  

The little writer

I've always loved writing stories.

When I was in middle school, I could not resist the call to write.  I would write when I was supposed to be listening to my teachers, when I was supposed to be practicing my violin, when I was supposed to be sleeping.  Stories of princesses who rescued princes, of girls who struggled with emotions they couldn't understand, of magical forests and the fantastic creatures who lived there.  The stories bubbled from my mind, flowing out of me onto the paper.

It became clear to me by high school that I was going to be a writer.  I'd graduated from short stories to novellas, and finally to novels.  The characters came to life in my mind and demanded their story be written.  It wasn't that I wanted to be a writer so much as I needed to be one.  I could not imagine going a day without writing.

Practicality often gets in the way of dreams.  In high school, I took a writing class offered at the library, and learned the average salary of a freelance writer.  I was determined to make it work, though.  I was sixteen when I submitted my first query letters to publishers I'd found in a book at the library. When the rejection letters started coming in, I treasured them because it meant I had tried.  One form letter I will always remember - handwritten at the bottom of the page were the words "I'm sorry."

I was determined to be a writer, no matter how little I made, no matter how many rejection letters I received.  But after four years of studying creative writing in college, I was burnt out.  I had written short stories and papers and poems and creative nonfiction essays.  My brain had melted.  The creative juices had run dry.  I picked up my pen and found no characters waiting to be written.

When I went to divinity school, I accepted that I would not become a writer.  I'd acknowledged my call to ministry, and was okay with the fact that I wouldn't spend my days writing stories.  I gave up on one dream to pursue a new one.  I stopped feeling the urge to write.  I stopped hearing characters begging for their stories to be told.  Though I missed them, I felt good about the new path I was on.

But now a strange thing has happened.  It has been four years to the day since I graduated from college, and I've started to feel that urge again.  Though I'm not a freelance writer, like my twelve-year-old self dreamed, I am still a writer.  The genre of my writing has changed - it now includes blog posts, sermons, and "theological reflection papers" - but the joy that comes with writing has not disappeared.

I wish I could go to my twelve-year-old self and tell her not to give up.  Even when it seems like the dream you've had since childhood is dead, don't give up.  Keep seeking the dream, keep listening for signs.  I would tell her that she would someday be a writer, just as she'd always dreamed.