I Believe in Miracles

"Everything's going to be okay."

"Don't worry, it'll all work out."

"It'll get better, just be patient."

"Just trust in God and it'll all be okay."

I hear these phrases all the time.  They are what you say when something terrible has happened.  They're what automatically comes out of your mouth when you don't know what to say.  They are meant to comfort, to support.  Maybe you believe them; maybe you don't.  Until I worked at as a hospital chaplain, these were the phrases that fell from my mouth when things went wrong for friends.  "It'll be okay," I said.  "It'll all work out."  And I think I believed those words.  After all, there were very few times that I'd seen things not work out for my friends.  Why wouldn't I trust that things would work out this time? 

After a few weeks as a chaplain, my thoughts on this changed.  Suddenly, I stopped saying "It'll be okay," to the patients and their families.  I stopped promising that "Everything will work out."  Because I didn't know.  I couldn't make a promise like that.  Telling these things to families was not comforting them or supporting them.  It was lying.  It was ignoring the problem.  It was ignoring the reality of the world we live in, which is that things do not always work out.  People get hurt and do not recover.  Children get sick and do not get better.  Families break apart.  Pregnancies end in loss.  Sometimes, things do not get better.

I didn't really believe in miracles before I became a chaplain.  I subscribed to the "every tree/puppy/baby is a miracle" belief.  I read about "miracles" in the news and thought "Well, that's pretty amazing...but is it a miracle?"  It didn't seem like the miracles of the Bible. 

My thoughts on miracles have changed, too.  I've met parents of a child born at 24 weeks who was happy and healthy.  I've met babies who weren't supposed to last a week, but who have gotten stronger and stronger as the months have passed.  I've met parents who haven't lost hope after months of living in the hospital with their child.  I've met children who, despite scoliosis, spina bifida, amputated limbs, etc. are smiling and happy.  They are the ones who make me happy when I go into their room.  These are miracles. 

Families ask me to pray for miracles.  Some are simply asking - and why not?  There is no harm in asking God for a miracle.  Others sit, refusing to believe that their child will not recover because God will provide a miracle.  I admire the faith of these people, but I mourn for them. 

A year into life as a chaplain, my beliefs and my words have changed.  When I see a family struggling through their child's illness or traumatic injury, I reach out and pray with them.  I pray for strength, for guidance, for healing.  I thank God for the care given to the child by the hospital staff.  I thank God for the child, for the joy he or she brings to their family.  But I do not promise the family that everything will be okay, because it is a promise I cannot keep.  It is a promise that only God can make, for only God can keep it. 

I believe in miracles. I do not expect them. If we expected them, they would not be miracles. 

A Letter to Baby

Dear Baby,

We haven't met yet, but I'm Mommy. Or I will be when you get here. Sometimes I wish you would hurry up already, but I know that you'll be here someday. I'm ready to love you, to hold you and smother you in kisses. Will you have your daddy's blue eyes, or my ever-changing ones? Will you get my nose, with its funny bump in the middle? Or will you have a new face of your own to bring to our family? No matter how you look, I know I will love you.

It's hard waiting, Baby. Sometimes it hurts. I think that you are on your way, but then I find out I have to wait longer. You'll find this out eventually - I'm not a very patient person. I should probably work on being patient before you get here. In the meantime, I keep wondering who you will be. What will you be like when you get here?

Will you scream like I did? Will you suck your two middle fingers, too? Will you be a snuggly baby, or will I treasure those few and far between moments when you are quiet in my arms? Will you love to run and play outside? Will you tell corny jokes like your daddy, that I can't help but laugh at? Will you sit as I read to you at bedtime, telling you stories from the books I loved best when I was little? Will you love to travel, and imagine visiting every continent? Will you dream of traveling to the stars, or will you be happy here on earth, just like your mommy?

You'll change the world, Baby. I don't know who you'll be or what you'll do, but I do know that. I know you'll change my world, and Daddy's, too. I know you'll make a difference in the lives of everyone you meet.

I'm ready to meet you, Baby. Whenever you're ready to come, I'll be waiting with open arms.

Love,
Mommy

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.

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 hardest prayer to pray

"Then Jesus withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." -Luke 22:42

 When the plus sign showed on the take-home pregnancy test, so faint, but so clearly there, I began praying. Please, God. This time. Please, God. Let it be this time. Each night, I curled my hands around my stomach and prayed with all my heart and soul. Please, God, protect this child. Please God, be with this child. Help me to protect this child. Help me to keep this child safe for the next nine months. 

When the doctor's office called to say that the pregnancy was, again, not viable, I felt betrayed. I had already suffered through one loss. How could I be expected to suffer through yet another? I had prayed for this with all my heart, all my being, but my prayer had not been answered. Silence, it seemed, was God's response.

Not my will, but yours. 

I was reminded, then, of Jesus's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his crucifixion. How, in that moment of desperation, when any sensible person would have prayed to God to be saved, Jesus prayed that God's will be done. "I don't want this," he prayed, "yet not my will, but yours be done."

 I am awed by his trust. At times, I struggle to trust God's decisions in my own life. Sometimes, I can't help but believe that I'm the only one who knows what's best for me. We're self-centered in that way. We struggle to see and understand the bigger picture. It's difficult for us to trust that God sees and understands the big picture. It's difficult for us to tell ourselves that the world is not centered around our lives, that our lives, added together with the lives of those who came before and who will come after, make up the bigger picture that is God's Kingdom.

 Do I believe that my miscarriages are a part of that bigger picture? I don't know. Do I believe that it was God's will that I lose two babies after only knowing about them for a week? I struggle to say yes, because I don't like the idea of God ordaining suffering. But just yesterday, I told a handful of kindergarten and first graders the story of God's plagues on the Egyptians. And there are certainly other times that God allowed (even aided in) the suffering of God's people.

 As I pray each night now, I find my mouth forming the words - Please, God... - but then I stop myself. As I curl my hands together above where a child will hopefully, someday find a safe home, I pray a new prayer.

Not my will, but yours.

It is the hardest prayer I have ever prayed. But it is the prayer I know I must pray. God knows what God is doing. In God I place my trust.