Broken Mama

To those babies I never held in my hands…I want you to know…I held you close on my heart. I prayed for you before you were formed. I longed for your beings to wrap inside mine, to provide you nourishment, to feel the wonder of all of you growing inside me. I wondered what you would be. I am sorry I never knew. I wish I didn’t refer to you as “it.” I know you were more than that. Were you my stalwart sons or daughters fair? I wanted to travail…it would bring me closer to you. I ached to know your futures. To hear your first cries, to snuggle you close on my chest the way mothers do, to hear the first giggles, take in those first steps. I had hoped to see all that you would become. I wanted to be yours. I wanted to show you Jesus…I cried out, “Why Jesus this way?” This cut ran deeper than most. I bled on the inside and out. Why wouldn’t the bleeding just stop? I wanted to itch it all away. It was a scab that kept breaking open.

To my first heart held baby…I had heard the beating of you within me. I had worried over you. I just wasn’t sure how the pregnancy was going. But at 9 weeks, the doctor heard the thumping of you sure and true. You were strong until suddenly you weren’t. They wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, but I knew. The somber silence of the technician gave words to everything I already knew. I sat alone, on an icy paper sheet, all spread open for her to tell me, “I’m so sorry, there’s no heartbeat.” I tried to hide the tears. Tried to be strong as I held all the cold places of you inside me. They told me that it’s pretty common…that one in four women have a miscarriage. And most miscarriages mean that something is wrong with the baby…so it was probably for the best. They tried to comfort me with statistics. But you were more than a defect statistic. I passed you and I didn’t know what to do. I flushed you away like you didn’t matter. And I’m just so sorry. I always wanted to tell you that I just didn’t know what to do. It’s like I was waiting for this moment-I knew it was coming-The blood ran red for so long and finally small pieces of you were there beneath me. It was too much to bear. I felt lost. I lost you. Your Dad gathered me to himself. He shared in the broken. He wrapped me up, held me close, and we mourned. He told me men die on the battlefield and God knows where they are. He knows them all by name. I realized we never gave you a name…what was your name? My wound sharer, he said there are martyrs that breathe their final breath at the stake where they are burnt to a crisp. And their souls will reunite with their bodies at the second coming too. God makes all those broken pieces of people whole. I don’t know why, but it made me cry. They put me under surgery-just to make sure all the pieces of you weren’t filling me anymore. I came out from surgery, and they handed me my discharge papers for spontaneous abortion. I wept. A nurse told me it’s ok to cry. They gave me a little ring that was supposed to remind me of you. For some reason I couldn’t look at it. I tucked it away in my drawer. Maybe another day...

I mourned for a long time. We had just moved. We had so much ahead of us, yet I was grieving. Someone asked if maybe the busyness of moving contributed to this? I felt so guilty. Did I make you die? Another woman tried to instill hope. She said she had been there too…but I shouldn’t worry, I would get pregnant again. I know she was caring, but I almost broke into sobs that I wanted you. You weren’t an afterthought to me. I didn’t know how or who to share this sadness with. A woman from another church, who knew this path, she sent me a card. I felt the communion of the saints from far-away places. Someone emailed my husband and said his wife, she understands this broken way too. And if I wanted, I could share my broken with her. I didn’t know how. I painted our house. Maybe if I colored our house, it would cover the pain.

We got pregnant again, but I still missed you. I felt bad for feeling joy at this new expectation God had placed within me. It’s not that I didn’t want you. But we were thankful. Maybe our daughter would have a sibling after all. One week later the blood ran red like the Nile again. Why am I so broken? We went back to the doctor. They ran tests, we scurried past a pregnant woman from church. I never saw her…I was too caught up in my emptying. They told me this miscarriage was different than the last. Two in a row was just a coincidence. I thought maybe God was punishing me and I didn’t know why. This baby…this second miscarried baby…you would think when I saw you come forth that I would have known what to do. I had been through this before…just a few months before. But I was frozen…and I flushed pieces of you away too. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I kept it all inside. And it ate at me. I still went on that planned trip to visit family without my wound sharer. I got car sick one day, and jokes came, “Maybe she’s pregnant.” They didn’t know. It was honest jabbing. But it was a lesson to me-pregnancy isn’t a joke. The river that ran from me was not something to laugh over. How do you say, “Well, I am sort of pregnant, but not really… I’m in the middle of passing this baby to a place only God will know about.” I realized you were my second baby without a name. I wailed in silence. And I held your sister closer.

Three more babies came after my two heaven held babies went. The pregnancies weren’t always easy ones. Two pink lines appeared, and I went from elated to terrified in a split second. Somehow the damage of miscarriage has somewhat robbed the joy of getting pregnant. I wonder if that makes Satan happy. I wanted to make it to 14 weeks before sharing the news…because they say after the first trimester, things usually go well. I didn’t want to share my broken again. God gave and God took away…and God gave again. Pregnancy has been travail from the minute I knew there was something being woven deep inside me.

Our latest child is our number five living baby. People look at me and say, Five kids!?!? All 8 and under? Your hands sure are full!” They usually mean well, but sometimes it is said like it must have been an easy thing for us. Like we don’t have a clue what birth control is. Like we don’t know anything of pain. And I want to tell them I hold five babies on earth, but there are more in heaven. And that my hands are full, but my heart is even fuller. But I usually just smile at them through the chaos. Before our fifth, we experienced miscarriage for the third time. Two faint lines stared me in the face. There was an overwhelming…wow…ok…so we are going to have five feeling that swept over me. But mostly…mostly I was excited. I was busy with four little ones first grade and under. But God would sustain. And two days later the spotting came. And all those memories came with it. I felt like a broken mama. I knew I was a broken mama. They told me this baby wasn’t even a baby. That it didn’t even have time to form. It was just a couple cells. The burden of technology these days they said…that when you pee on a stick it tells you you’re pregnant when you’re really not. I knew they were wrong. I didn’t buy into the lie. You were you in all the places God had formed you. And you were perfect. I didn’t know you. But this much I knew to be true. And when I go to the doctor and that box asks how many live births I have had and how many miscarriages-I always count you.

And this time I decided to call her up…that faith filled woman whose husband emailed mine years ago. The woman who knows this shattered way. She listened. She held my tears. She cried with me. And I knew she understood. I shared my worry and pain. We acknowledged our husbands just didn’t know to the extent the affliction we felt, even though they wanted to. I shared my heart, and she thanked me for giving my agony to her. Like it was a gift or something. She checked in on me and sent thinking of you texts. And she was one of the first ones I called a couple months later when God placed another one of His children in me. She prayed over me and that baby. And many months later, when I was in an ambulance being brought to the hospital with my sick newborn, she texted a prayer for my hurting heart. We don’t know each other that well, but she was the one who came to my house in the middle of COVID to watch my kids so my husband could pick me up from the hospital after that ambulance ride. She washed my dishes like a washing of my feet. And she brought me a meal when she knew I was sick. She and me-we shared some of this broken together…and I knew in that moment as I have in the past, that these babies I have never met-they have brought me closer to God and in communion with others.

I wonder how Bathsheba must have mourned when her son died. David seemed to have the assurance that he would see his son again in glory. I call to mind my mother telling me that she missed that baby she lost before me, and she still does, but she knows that without the losing of that little one, she wouldn’t have gotten me. She told me I filled in some of her hurting places. God’s ways are always best. Sometimes the pain doesn’t make sense. But I am sure of a Faithful God in the unknown. The unknown where I search for answers is dark and cold compared to the warmth I have as Father holds me. And when I utter those wondering words, I hear God’s words on my heart, “Because I love you.” He has engraved, “Beloved,” there on the palms of His hands, and I feel it engraved on my heart. And I know He loves them…all those unnamed babies more than I ever could. He has shown them glories I have yet to behold. They are in a wholeness I have yet to experience. And this turns the weeping into joy…

To all you Broken Mamas as Mother’s Day approaches…I see you. To the ones who carried your babies for a few short weeks, months, or even years-I pray for you even though I don’t know you. I know it breaks you up just a bit to see the swollen bellies of your sisters in Christ. I know the hidden hurt of your heart. It’s ok. It’s ok to let the tears fall. It’s ok to break into the real…to be sad. God sees you. He knows you had plans for that baby. That it wasn’t in your wildest dreams to empty yourself in miscarriage. That you didn’t plan to have your child, His child, enter the grave before you. He understands the vacant places and the want. He is your Father. He is your baby’s Father. He holds them in the palm of His hand. And there is nothing that can separate His love. It’s firm, safe, secure. And although we feel the pain here below, those children of ours…they see only joy. Dwell on their perfection in Christ, and on God’s sovereignty. That’s where there’s comfort.

And this song I attach…it’s helped hold me through the lows…God is carrying you. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61ncM07RU_U