Mother’s Day is not my favorite day to deal with, and this year it had the added sting of following so closely behind a loss and sharing the date with my birthday. I have often skipped church on Mother’s Day to avoid dealing with it – the awkward (for me, anyway) invitation to stand as an acknowledgement of achieving motherhood, the awkward (for me, anyway) gift that I can’t gracefully accept or decline without losing it a little, and the simple recognition of a day that I can’t really participate in even though I have children. It’s just not the same, and it’s a reminder of loss and unattainable dreams. The absolute hardest Mother’s Day church service is definitely baby dedication. It’s a sweet tradition – if you’ve had babies to dedicate – otherwise, it’s a good day to sleep in.
This year, there was no baby dedication during the service, and we decided to brave it. (Actually, I decided to try it, and my sweet husband who wouldn’t have been too affected by the day agreed to support whatever I felt like I could handle…) There was no extra standing ovation for the moms present this year, but there was a request during the greeting to hug a mom near you while greeting the people sitting around you. In the choir loft, mass hugging ensued, but I noticed one of our sweet older ladies on the back row had tears forming in her eyes while she tried to keep her face still. She and her husband have been married for over fifty years, and they never had children. She’s never told me so, but I get the feeling that she probably lost at least one pregnancy; she’s told me that people her age just don’t talk about things like that. I went over to give her a special hug, and she said, “It’s just a hard day.” I said, “I know” and spent the next song trying not to cry when I realized what I needed to tell her after the service.
After church I caught her in the ladies robing room before she had a chance to get out into the crowd so I could tell her this: “You are just as much a mother as anyone else here today who actually gave birth. You count today for all the time and love you have put into the lives around you – including mine. You are a mom, and you deserved a special hug today and to know that.” We were both crying by then, and she said, “It’s so nice to hear that you count.” It is nice, and it’s hard to feel like you count on a day like Mother’s Day when you have failed the simple biological task of becoming a mother. You feel like you shouldn’t count because you failed. It’s silly when viewed logically, but that’s the emotional toll.
I had the honor of helping another hurting lady through that day, and I was reminded less than five minutes later almost word for word by a sweet friend that I count for the same reasons I gave my choir buddy. Mother’s Day was still not an easy day for me, but it was a sweet reminder of how the body of Christ should work: serving and being served, building up and being built up, encouraging each other in love.
Tag: body of Christ
Signs and Wonders
Yesterday was obviously a difficult day; after a week of waiting, we found out that our suspicions were correct and our pregnancy had not continued. One thing I always question God about in this situation is why he doesn’t perform a miracle for me. It’s selfish and a little silly to compare what God is doing in my life with other people who have had miraculous intervention that saved their baby when the pregnancy was endangered. But it’s a hard pill to swallow if I look at it too long from my human perspective without considering that I can’t see the bigger picture of what he’s doing through our losses.
Here are the miracles that did happen yesterday: two people separately and specifically prayed that
God would be enough to sustain me and my husband through this loss; a whole mass of people sent us love and support and prayers through messages and phone calls; we were directly loved by God through an amazing network of family and friends who will continue to hold us up with prayer and physical comfort through the next weeks and months. We have been the body of Christ supporting others, and now we are receiving the support of the body of Christ.
God could have performed a miracle and continued our pregnancy, and he would have received glory from that. It would have been a great story. But what’s the better story? Which ending gives more glory to God? I don’t know, but I am grateful to be able to see that his love being expressed through dozens of people is also a miracle that not everyone will experience. Any loss can be isolating, and miscarriage tends to be even more so because people don’t share it or family and friends feel uncomfortable discussing it. We have the blessing of feeling the wagons circling around us and isolating us from the loneliness instead of the other way around.
I heard more than once yesterday that I should be a bigger mess than I am because of this pregnancy loss and because of the sheer volume of our losses. There are two reasons I haven’t fallen apart yet. Right now the news, even though expected, doesn’t feel real; it will become real and painful soon enough. And, I can confidently say that I have faith that will sustain me, and I have the love of Christ expressed in so many ways in my life that I have no reason to fall apart. This walk would be impossible without that knowledge; logic alone would give me the right to give in to the self-pity and depression. Faith and the sacrificial love of Christ demand and empower me to work through it (trust me, there will be depression and anger and every other stage of grief in its time) and not let it cripple the rest of my life. The song “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger” has been extremely popular, probably because people cling to the thought that just surviving a trial makes us stronger, better people. I won’t pretend to know enough of the words to claim that the song as a whole has any sort of biblical message, but the title certainly does. God uses our weaknesses to show his strength. When we can demonstrate his strengths rather than rely on our own, we are stronger, better people who thrive rather than just survive a trial.
While it certainly isn’t the miracle I was hoping for, God is showing us signs and wonders of a different sort. The weeks and months to come will certainly hold different perspectives for me, and most of them will not be this reasonable or faithful. Once survival mode ends later this week or next week, the even greater miracle will be continuing to seek God’s face through the pain.
Mabbat 