Life After Miscarriage: Every Storm Runs Out of Rain

She gave me this painting back in April when I was drenched from standing in the middle of a torrential down pour that felt like it might never end.

My heart dripping and my flooded, she had prayed peace and healing over the colors and words she so lovingly spread out over the white of canvas and pages of His Word from James 1, a visual prayer layered with truth and hope.

And that painting stood as an encouragement that my suffering wouldn't be in vain

and

that every storm runs out of rain.

I kept it close day in and day out for months, reading the words from James so many times I could almost say them in my sleep. Sometime during the summer, though, I noticed that I didn't need that prayer quite like I needed it before, so I began paying more attention to some other passages of scripture that were meeting me where I'd been living -- abiding {John 15) and living a life of faith {Hebrews 11}.

A few weeks ago, one of my really good friends lost her baby, and as I sat on my bed crying for her, crying over the brokenness of our world, I looked long and hard at that painting that still sits on my nightstand.

That visual prayer  -- it was right.

Every storm does run out of rain.

It's something I can see seven months away from when we unexpectedly said goodbye to our baby and I said hello to a whole new level of anxiety for a period of time. It's something I can understand now. But when that storm was raging, it was hard to imagine any break in rain would ever occur.

And the first chapter of James was, of course, right, too; every ounce of suffering does produce perseverance and character.

Last week, as I standing in the park watching my boys laugh and play with warm October sunshine warming my face, I realized the storm storm clouds have been broken apart and cleared for awhile now.

I can feel the warmth of the sun again, my heart no longer a sopping wet mess of tears and anxiety,

and I can feel my lungs inhale the deepest of breaths without feeling like I'm exhaling the weight of the world through my mouth.

That very night, I shared while at a session with a beautiful soul whose been walking with me through the grief that has accompanied the loss of our babies that I don't feel like I'm the person I was even a year ago.

She nodded and smiled and agreed, saying that my spirit was calmer, my demeanor softer, my heart less guarded. And while I'd never choose to walk that path of hurt again, I could now appreciate what suffering has produced in my character, my spirit, my heart. All of that doesn't make the loss any less stinging, but it does grow hope in a weary heart that is so very tired of hurting.

I left that session feeling stronger, more of the woman I was created to be than I had in months, even years.

And I left that session realizing that what I thought couldn't be true is, indeed, true-- every storm runs out of rain, passes at some point. I think, perhaps that visual prayer that was an umbrella of hope over my head for so long needs to be passed along, too, a small but mighty shield from the storms of life, a traveling reminder that our hearts can hope for healing because He does heal and He is Healer.

And it will be accompanied by a journal with my story of the healing {and hopefully passed along again with another story of healing}, a traveling visual prayer of hope with stories of how the storms have passed and what He did in the midst.

For Michelle, the painter of my visual prayer, fellow hope seeker and heart-companion who keeps pointing me back to Jesus. 

Bigger Picture Moments: In the Rain

It seems I've been praying for spring for weeks now.

Spring with all of its glorious, healing sun and warmer weather and green buds.

But when I look out the window, all I see are piles of snow and gray skies and long bare branches and rainy sleet dripping from clouds, beading and sliding down the window panes in the middle of March.

I feel like those rain drops.

Slowly sliding down down down into a never-ending pile of winter.

I wake up to more gray skies, and my prayers feel like they've been pleaded in vain.

Same as the ones I've cried and then finally laid at His feet while anxiety swelled in my heart the very first day we found out we were pregnant

Only to lose our baby just before the second trimester began.

Just like the night I begged God to allow our midwife to find baby's heartbeat.

Only to find ourselves weeping over the loss in a hospital waiting room in the length of after hours.

Same as the ones where I cried out for Him to send my body into labor and save me from surgery.

Only to find myself in an operating room late last Tuesday night.

I see a lot of prayers, seemingly unanswered.

I look outside, and I see snow.

I look outside, and winter still seems spread out thick over the land.

But I know better.

I know better than to stop looking after first or second glance. And I know we often see only what we look for.

I know better than to get so stuck on those barren branches that I miss the spring birds that briefly land on them.

So I look closer for spring, and I find it in lengthening days.

I look for spring and see the promise of green just barely poking through dark, wet soil.

I look for spring, and I see beneath the snow, in the rain

where love is showered over our hearts in the midst of grief

and mercy is born in delivering my sweet baby at home

and grace is granted in the OR

and hope is replanted in my heart after a conversation in the recovery room

and Words black on the white page of what Stands Forever.

And I see it all in the rain.

Share your Bigger Picture Moment HERE!

Hope: A Story You Should Hear

It's not my story to tell, so I'll let my words be few.

Last year, our good friends -- John's best friend from college, Jamey, and his wife, Kaila, -- excitedly stood in our kitchen as we cooked dinner and shared that they were expecting a baby.

Life, however, didn't go as planned.

We prayed for miracles.

And, though we didn't get the one for which we had hoped, for which we had pleaded, He continues to allow our fingers to unwrap unexpected ones.

This isn't just a story of grief, a story of loss, though both are interwoven into its threads.

But, rather, overarchingly, it's one of hope

and it's one of what God can do with willing hearts and resolves to trust that even when life doesn't make sense to our minds, God can redeem the seemingly senseless.

Mugford Story - Stereo Final Web from cedarcreek.tv production on Vimeo.

I hope baby Sam's life and story blesses your life in the way it's blessed ours.

Five-Minute Friday: Change

Beneath the late August sunlight

hope hangs thick

like honey dripping from the hive,

soft-sticky amber coating my heart

seeping into open wounds,

filling in the cracks and crevices of hurt,

a salve that sweetens spaces threatening

to harbor bitterness.

I linger long, still tender and stinging,

in its balm

and welcome the slow march

from summer sunlight

into cool autumn air

where honey slowly thickens

and holds strong, solid

those spaces that desperately

needed to be filled with something

sweet.




{This Five-Minute Friday piece was written in chunks because of multiple interruptions by two small children, so it actuality, it's more like a 15-minute Friday piece. Just keepin' it real.}

Five-Minute Friday: Enough

It's early morning, and sun drips through the window blinds, golden like honey from the hive.

I find fullness.

In early morning Bread of Life. In the sleepy snuggles of a toddler. In the soft kiss to my forehead from my husband. And in the sweet good morning greeting from a preschooler.

In a simple moment I leave the sweetness of serenity in my house, going outside of these four peaceful walls by way of Facebook via iPhone, and my heart is drenched in calamity.

Thirteen people killed by a gunman during a midnight movie premier.

There are more headlines promising to take me further into deeper the rising floods of chaos.

But I can't read anymore.

I sit in the gentle quiet of my kitchen.

Like clothes on the line


drenched in last night's rain

prayers drip from my lips

asking for full Sunlight

to emerge

to dry the tears,

say enough is enough.

Bigger Picture Moment: On Being Kind to Ourselves

Just days after I felt like my body had gone haywire, miscarrying the baby we'd hoped would be snuggled in our arms come May, I felt the need to snatch up some sort of control and make the best of things.

So I jumped right back into active dieting on the Curves Complete program, vowing to lose the last of my 10 pounds ... while I was still in the middle of miscarrying.

In retrospect, it was a poor attempt at trying to grasp onto some control over my body and its functioning.

Also it was a poor attempt at listening to what my body really needed: healing.

The last thing my body needed was to be thrust into living off of restricted calories and engulfed in so many added self-imposed "rules" while I was in the process of recovering from such an emotional and physical trauma.

It only {ha} took the stress of E shoving playdough up his nose followed by a super-sized panic attack complete with an entire weekend's worth of tightness running through my chest while my heart beat erratically, breaths short, mind and body exhausted to give me the hint that maybe I should just.let.go and rest.

I tweeted my intentions to allow my body rest, complete with the #EatPrayLose hashtag on Twitter.

Kamille, a soul-sister of sorts, a fellow sojourner on the very same unfortunate journey of loss, messaged me saying that she could sense a peace in that decision.

And that these next few weeks?

These next few weeks were about extending kindness to ourselves, bathing in grace and rest, not throwing all of the hard work of getting healthy by the waste side, but freeing ourselves from living under the stressors of more rules and expectations than what are actually necessary in our jobs as wives and mothers of small children.

And then, in an almost eerie but soul-refreshing fashion, another friend and then another  and then another {!} reminded me -- all in separate communications -- that I needed to be kind to myself, patient, gentle ... none of which I'm really all that great at acting out, especially toward my own body.

I demand a lot from these muscles, this mind, this heart, and demand must give way to rest, prolonged rest, especially after great strain and stress.

Probably, I won't be eating chocolate cake every night after dinner, but this past weekend when John and I were celebrating our anniversary, which actually turned out to be a restoration getaway, I said yes to tea and dessert together.

Sure, it was still relatively healthy-- greek yogurt ice cream and fresh blueberry sauce -- but what I really said yes to had nothing to do with food and everything to do with kindness toward myself; what I really said yes to was relaxing while sipping tea with my husband, enjoying his conversation amid candlelight and freshly-pressed white linen table cloths while letting go of the expectations I'd barraged against an ailing heart and body.

Just as we must know when to be self-disciplined for the good of giving ourselves health, we, too, must also know when to show our selves kindness to help our bodies heal.

And, actually, I don't know of anything that ever healed without it.

Have you seen a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment this week? Share with a community of other women on the journey of intentional living by linking your moment at Lenae's!

Five-Minute Friday: Growing

I want to linger in summer, this year especially, the way I page through pictures in memory books, running my fingers over the softness of first haircuts, running my mind over first steps, first kisses, first heart thumps.

I want to soak in sun, thirsty skin drinking every ray before we move further from the source and days become longer, darker, damper, colder.

Last week today, I woke up ready to welcome in fall, ready to swell, full with new life, pull both feet out of summer and step into the newness of autumn, growing fuller, wider by the week.

But, with the dream of that fullness, wideness faded, instead, I grow deeper.

I grow roots deeper in His promise, into the soil of Truth and Life.

I grow deeper in love with the Creator of the souls I love so much.

I grow deeper into communion with the Healer, the Restorer.

I grow. Not how I expected, but nonetheless, I grow

and I step into autumn, with both feet, embrace what the newness of this dawn brings

and what is yet to come.

Life Unmasked: Joy in the Mourning

At first my knee-jerk reaction was to let these words remain only in the black on white of an unpublished draft, let them fade into the archives, left unread, unspoken.. 


But this  weekend, in my sadness, in our loss, I've found comfort through the experiences of other women who've walked this same road of miscarriage  ... and this? It's been the elephant in the room of my mind for the past almost week as I've tried stepping around it.


And He moves me. He moves me from weakness to strength. So with caution to any pregnant mothers and those with very tender hearts to perhaps skip reading this one, I press the publish button for the prelude to what I wrote last Friday morning. 

I am watching two adorable little boys play trucks infusing their play with a side story of Finding Nemo.

I should be on the floor with them, playing, enjoying, living.

But I am bleeding, being initiated into a secret club I didn't want to join.

Bleeding. The tinge of pink darkening to red, after not one, not two but three positive pregnancy tests.

I am supposed to be closing in, wrapping up this week of being newly blessed with child.

I am supposed to be heavy with new life in my womb instead of heavy with emotion.

I am supposed to be ...

right where I am. I resign again, whisper that God is God, and I am not.

And because I don't understand why

why, why, why

I throw myself into a tailspin, turning and turning and turning, kicking up dust and sputtering on it.

There is guilt mixed with grief.

There is thankfulness interwoven into guilt.

And then there is guilt bleeding back into grief.

Everything bleeding -- the lines of positive tests, my body, my mind, my heart.

I have two adorable little boys playing trucks infusing their play with a side story of Finding Nemo nearby.

And I am thankful that they are still at my feet, able to be scooped up into my arms for kisses and cuddles and giggles.

I circle back around to grief, wishing May 2012 could somehow still bring a new tiny baby born fresh from my body and into our arms, snuggling in for kisses and cuddles and giggles.

And then swoop back to thankfulness for two little boys

and around to guilt again after thanking God for gifting us with their sweet little lives ...

I have two adorable little boys playing trucks infusing their play with a side story of Finding Nemo, and I slip onto the floor next to them and cry out for Him to break me out of the rounds I'm circling.

Because right now, that's taking me nowhere fast; I need to go somewhere good even faster.

I make the slightest cry, and He hears.

So, slowly, gently, He moves me from spinning in the circles of a dusty, dirty roundabout of fear and sadness back to the paved road through His truth and the truth spoken by my husband and the words shared from a friend ... He moves me, layering salves over a wounded, heaven-homesick heart, to the next rest area on a journey where there is grief, yes, there is sadness, yes, but, too, there is both joy in the morning and joy in the midst of mourning.

"My soul clings to the dust;
give me life according to your word!
...
Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will mediate on your wondrous works.
My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word."
Psalm 119: 25, 27, 28

Thinking, that's all: Negatives

So, I took not one, not two, but THREE pregnancy test this past week.

And I failed each of them.

Or maybe I passed each one.

I don't really know.

Because we're not actually trying to have another baby right now, so getting negatives would denote passing them.

But we do actually want another baby at some point, so that would mean failing them?

Probably, it seems kind of like a waste of time and energy and money to take an additional {or two} tests after the initial do-not-pass-go, there-will--NOT-be another-baby-in-nine-months negative results. {And by the way, they don't just give you one negative sign now; it's actually TWO because the control window is a negative sign, too -- how's that for subliminal whatever.}

Admittedly, the first negative test was kind of a relief because at first thought of being pregnant, only the logistics raced through my spinning mind: I still have five to ten more pounds to lose; I kind of wanted to be able to saunter not waddle down the aisle at my sister's early September wedding; I like soaking up the sun outside with the boys during the summer instead of moaning on the couch and puking my guts out into the toilet every few hours.

But then more days passed and I began to get ohmyHOLYWOW nauseaous, which inevitably led to thoughts about the fruits of a pregnancy -- a most beautiful, squishy, snugly baby.

All the while, Aunt Flow hasn't even bothered to call to tell me she's running more than a week late, so I'm left wondering {still wondering} if she's really gonna show.

And I'm also left with some serious pangs of hope -- because, you know, whenever there is the prospect of newness, new life, hope and all the promise that is bundled in the package of a new baby -- it kind of burrows itself into the heart's soil and begins to take root.

So much so that despite the many {um, many} variables of an unplanned pregnancy, there's a bit of a sinking feeling that settles into the gut with the third negative test.

So, yeah, I took THREE pregnancy tests this week.

And all I got were three sticks full of pee, no clarity and a cacophony of emotions I'm not sure how to swallow.

Oh, and an irritating {on-going} lesson in patience.

Five-Minute Friday: Favorite

Early morning sun, it peaks in through the blinds of our bedroom window, and I can't help but open my eyes fully, stretch my arms, my mind high into the day and bask in the prospect of a spring day.

Bright green stems emerge from wet soil, thick with the promise of deep violet and lemony yellow petals, reminding me that warmth is riding in on the nearby horizon.

A friend's expanding abdomen, full, heavy with child and the promise of a new soul filling the vast depths of a mother's heart, a world that craves newness.

Late Friday afternoon, small boys playing together in spotty early-spring sunsplashes waiting for daddy to get home from work, pregnant with the expectations of all things weekend.

April first, fertile with the hope of winter's end.

The lenton season, drenched with pending joy of resurrection and a way for new life.

A few of my favorite things, bundled together in today, this day. And I will rejoice and be glad in it.

****


Stop! I was interrupted several times while writing this, so I doubt I wrote for only five minutes, but I wrote from my heart, which is pretty much the point of Five-Minute Friday over at The Gypsy Mama. Every Friday, Lisa Jo encourages to write for five minutes without worrying about our words being just right. This week's prompt was My Favorite Things.