Here is something I should have journaled about long ago. Something I wrote because I was asked to talk about it with my Bible study group next week.
Hi. Well I don’t know where to begin, really. Most of you guys don’t know me. I don’t attend Cross Bridge. Actually we are members of Bulverde Baptist Church in Bulverde. I’ve come to be involved with Cross Bridge’s Ladies Ministry through JoLynn Posey, who I went to high school with. That itself is just a blessing from God because we only moved here in May and JoLynn has been instrumental in helping me maintain a strong relationship with God in the midst of moving to a new town away from one you loved, a town your husband doesn’t work in for the entire spring and summer, and having my first kid start school this year. It was a crazy summer, and I was so glad to be a part of the summer series with Cross Bridge’s ladies because it was some of the only proof I had this summer that God was indeed in San Antonio too, not only just back home.
I really don’t even know where to start this story because it has been such a long story in the making. Well, at least for me it seemed long. I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. On New Year’s Eve of 2007…so the night before 2008…last January I was about 15 weeks pregnant with our third child. I began bleeding, and my husband and I went to the ER, being that it was New Year’s Eve. The ultrasound showed a perfectly formed little body complete with 10 toes and 10 fingers, but no heartbeat. I have to interject here that I have lived this charmed little life. I’ve never suffered through much of anything, so mourning, loss, depression, real suffering were all a VERY new concept to me. I didn’t even really know how to suffer, but I was about to learn. I did the regular questioning of God and begging for an answer to the WHY?? that I knew God MUST have for me. It was a very dark time for me, something I know has changed me forever in numerous ways. I was sad, I was angry, I felt VERY lost, and it was not something that ended after a short time. I’m sure anyone that has endured a miscarriage, especially one nearly half way into a pregnancy knows exactly how I must have felt.
So now I have to skip to the part of the story where I am here, involved in the David Study we did this summer. Now, through that study alone, I learned a lot, and God revealed many things to me, but I was still very much dealing with my miscarriage from the previous year. Partially it was because I wasn’t “over it” and mostly because I was pregnant again, just 13 weeks when we started, and struggling VERY much (as I continue to do) with just trusting God with this baby. I agonized over everything, though I tried very hard not to, and convince myself I wasn’t, I was, and I often still do. I refused to do anything other than just be pregnant. I didn’t wear maternity clothes until I absolutely HAD to. I continued to work out as though I had no physical limitations, and I made the extra room the guest room when we moved. I bought nothing, and didn’t consider buying anything. I stayed as disconnected as I possibly could, justifying that thinking that if I didn’t allow myself to get attached, I wouldn’t be as hurt when my hopes were stripped away. I just wouldn’t have any hope, then I couldn’t lose anything. I am sure I am not the only person who has been in that place.
ENTER BETH MOORE!
What a revelation through her words did God have for me and, though I don’t feel completely transformed, I am no longer afraid to have hope. To have hope that in a few weeks I will deliver a healthy baby girl!
So what did God reveal you might ask. Well this is the best part of the whole story. Beth talked a lot about devastation, and what it is like in the bottom of the pit of despair. She talked about the way God can redeem us from those circumstances if we are willing to be redeemed. Christians do one of two things when we enter a time of need or hurting. We turn to God or we turn away from God. And after my loss, I turned to God. I spent so much time in tearful prayer, mostly trying to understand the new concept of grief in faith. Whether I recognized it or not, at the time, my relationship with God was indeed growing. I felt deserted, but He was there, sustaining me all along. He never left me, and he filled my saddest moments with whatever I needed at the time. And looking back, especially, I can see that. About a week after my miscarriage, I lost the center stone in my engagement ring somewhere between Upward practice and home. Needless to say, I had quite a bit of perspective on the loss of a THING. If that had happened the weeks previous, I’m embarrased to think at how I may have reacted over the loss of just a THING.
As my relationship with God grew, something I probably wasn’t even acutely aware of the time, another drama began to unfold. My youngest son, then about 2.5, woke up one morning with a crossed eye. This began in early March of that year, so about 2 months later. We were in the Ped’s office that morning, who had us in the Ophthalmolgist’s office later, and then to a Radiologist later that day for an MRI. Sudden onset of eye crossing in a child of that age very often means brain tumor. And unfortunately for me, at the time, I knew that before we even went to the Ped’s office. Well, praise God, it wasn’t a brain tumor, and we went back and forth to Dr appts for 6 months with no explanation for the crossing, which never went away inspite of several different and exhausting therapies. About 5 months into it, our Dr suggested surgery, which would have to be on both his eyes at one time. We even took him to Oklahoma to see a Pediatric Neuro Opthlamologist who did a very thorough exam, and ultimately rec’d surgery. We went home and had surgery in September of last year. And I am happy to say that it was successful and even the problems that he had as a result of the crossed eye have resolved, which only do so about 50% of the time. We feel so blessed that his outcomes were as good as they get.
Now I know you are wondering how all of these event tie together. Well Beth tied it altogether for me. Something she talked about at length was about being IN a relationship with God. When a stranger calls you on the phone, you don’t recognize their voice because you don’t have a relationship with them. But when your best friend or your husband calls, they don’t even need to identify themselves. You talk to them all the time, you know their voice, so they can just start talking you’ll know who you are hearing. That is no different than our relationship with God. You could totally be going through the motions, doing all the things you know you are supposed to do and still not be in a relationship with God. Spending time in prayer, with God, talking to Him and opening yourself to his response and to His voice is being in a relationship with God. When you are in a relationship with Him, when you are talking to Him, depending upon Him, and pouring your soul over His words, you will recognize his voice when he speaks to you.
I finally understood what God was working out for me when I lost that baby last year. God used that circumstance to draw me into a deeper relationship with Him because he knew my future. He knew my son's future. He knew my response to losing a child, would be to turn to Him for the answers only He had. He knew that if I wasn’t in a deeper relationship with Him, I wouldn’t recognize His voice when my son desperately needed me to recognize his voice. We spent months praying and asking God for answers about how to treat our son. And when we decided to go ahead with a surgery that wasn’t guaranteed to work, I was CERTAIN it was God’s voice telling me that was the right decision. A voice I’m not certain I would have recognized distinctly if I’d not been drawn into a deeper relationship with God because of great suffering. This summer I finally understood that I had to lose that baby in order for God to use my grief and sorrow as a time to draw me to Himself. That sorrow lead me into such a close relationship with God that when He spoke to me, I knew His voice.
He also knew that I’d have that baby girl my heart so longed for, but that it would be in His time, not in mine. And the transformation from waiting on the impending doom and unending despair into hope and renewal came only a short time after God revealed all of this to me. From the beginning of this pregnancy, when I refused to have any hope, to now, living in Romans 5:3-5 which is sustaining me with only 11 weeks to go. Romans 5:3-5 says:… we[c] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (NIV)
