“Megan, take a look at your baby
girl!” the nurse urged, “She is beautiful!”
I covered my face and sobbed, so overwhelmed by the pain
that had ripped my body open to let this new life into the world that I
couldn’t even hold my baby. Supported by
my husband and a doctor, I stood on shaking legs and was horrified at the sight
of my insides gushing out onto the floor.
“I’m going to die, right? “I stammered, certain that I
already knew the answer. My first hour
of motherhood would surely be my last as I felt the full impact of God’s curse
on women.
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow…In pain you shall bring forth
children.”
Several years later, I returned to this hospital. My husband and I had just had an ultrasound
for our third child, and I guessed by the shadow that fell over his face and
the way he squeezed my hand that our little one had no heartbeat. Suddenly the physical agonies of childbirth
were eclipsed by a pain I had never
imagined. An empathetic doctor wiped
tears from my eyes, giving me permission
to grieve with the words, “It’s got to
be really hard to give up this little one because you know how much you’re missing.” She said that next fall
I’d probably feel the emptiness and sadness all over again, and she was right. The leaves have fallen from the trees 14
times over since my first miscarriage. At
the first signs of autumn, my heart begins to ache for some inexplicable
reason. Then I remember the baby I never
got to hold or name, and my tears make sense.
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow…In pain you shall bring forth
children.”
“Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It
is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
” I had often nodded assent to this
statement in the gentle, early days of motherhood, but I never felt its weighty reality until four
years ago. Having six beautifully formed
children was something I took for granted from my first prenatal ultrasound
when I marveled over my baby daughter and all of her little parts being woven
together so perfectly. I never imagined
that, nearly fifteen years later, I
would be looking at images of these same bones which, seemingly overnight, had
grown so deformed. My shock and fear
were mirrored on my daughter's face when the surgeon told us that she would
need major surgery with metal rods and synthetic bone fusion to fix her
scoliosis.
On the morning of Siobhan's operation, my heart was indeed
outside of my body, vulnerable and terrified.
When they wheeled her toward the operating room, I walked close beside
her, blinking back tears that stung my eyes.
Suddenly I remembered her antics as a feisty toddler in her
stroller. It always drove me crazy how
she would insist on holding my hand the entire time we walked. She would cry and refuse to be comforted
until I contorted myself to reach her little fingers. Now all I wanted to do was hold her trembling
hand and not let go. The days in the
hospital were full of these flashbacks to my first days of motherhood. My strong, independent girl was helpless
again. She needed me to spoon ice chips
in her mouth, dress her, brush her hair, trim her nails, dry her tears. I felt like I was being given another chance
to care for her, perhaps with more tenderness and patience than I showed when
she was small.
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow…In pain you shall bring forth
children.”
Last fall ushered me into a new and perplexing season of
motherhood when we dropped Siobhan off at college. For a second time I felt the overwhelming and
familiar pain of releasing this child of mine into the world. I recalled the phantom baby kicks I had felt
for weeks after she was born. Just as my
womb had been adjusting to this emptiness, my heart needed to learn how to
handle this aching void. So many times I
was certain I could hear her laughing with her little sister in her bedroom or recognize the
familiar and comforting sound of her returning home from work. Then my spirits fell and my heart ached when
I remembered that she was 20 hours from home and it would be months before I
could wrap my arms around her again.
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow…In pain you shall bring forth
children.”
Today is November first – a date that always causes me to
reflect on my journey as a mother. It is
the anniversary of Siobhan’s surgery and the due date of another covenant child
I lost in pregnancy. Three years ago, the
weekend when we would have welcomed the "November Baby" whom I
miscarried, was when I discovered I was pregnant again. My joy was guarded,
mixed with the fear of losing another little one. I spent that Sunday (my due date) at home and
drew immeasurable comfort from the
writings of Richard Baxter who expressed God's truth with a powerful simplicity
that captured my heart and restored my focus on eternity. In his Practical Works Baxter writes, "The
glorious and infinite God, who made the
worlds, and upholds them by his word, who is praised continually by his
heavenly hosts; this God, has sent to you a joyful message to raise you from
the dust, and banish the terrors and troubles from your hearts...He takes
notice of your sorrows. He stands close
by when you do not see him and feel he has forsaken you. He attends you with the greatest tenderness
when you say he has forgotten you. He
numbers your sighs and bottles up your tears.
He feels the groans of your heart..." Baxter also wrote,"...To
stand in heaven and look back on earth, and weigh them together in the balance,
must transport the soul and make it cry out, 'Is this the place that cost so
dear as the blood of God?...Have the gales of grace blown me into such a
harbour? Is it here that Christ has enticed my soul? O blessed way and end!...O
soul, are you not ashamed that you ever doubted the love that brought you here?
Are you not ashamed of your hard thoughts of God and his providences, repining
the ways that have led to such an end? Are you not sufficiently convinced that
the ways you called hard and the cup you called bitter were necessary? The Lord
had a sweeter purpose and meant better than you would believe. Your
Redeemer was saving you as much when he crossed your desires as when he granted
them, and he was saving you when he broke your heart as much as when he bound
it up..." Yes, my desires
had been crossed and my heart had been broken, but I trusted that God would
restore what had been lost. In the
privacy of my living room, I thanked God for building His kingdom through all
of my covenant children - the 6 who made my life on earth such a joy, the three
whom we will meet in Heaven someday, and the precious twins who were growing
inside of me.
I can’t pretend to understand the suffering of so many
others –my sisters who have been deprived the blessing of motherhood, have cradled
a still born child or watched their little girls lose their battle against
cancer. The only explanation I have for
the tender strength of these women is that, with unimaginable pain and loss
comes grace beyond measure.
“We are closer to
Christ when we suffer. Keep close by
Christ, and let the wind blow. Rejoice
in his cross. Your deliverance does not
sleep and his promise is not slack. Wait
for God’s appointed time of deliverance.
You shall lose nothing in the furnace but dross. Not one ounce too much is laid on you…Be
content to wade through the waters holding his hand, for he knows all the
fords. You may be dunked, yet you cannot
drown. Those who went before you went
through blood, suffering, and many afflictions.
Christ has borne the whole cross, and his saints bear only chips…Christ
has handsomely fitted the rough tree of the cross for your shoulders that it
will not hurt you. Your treasures are in
Christ’s coffer and your comforts greater than you can believe. Do not be afraid when you see the swelling
river of death. You may wade after
Christ, and the current however so strong, cannot carry you down. The Son of God, his death and resurrection,
are stepping stones to stay you. You
have only these shallow brooks, sickness and death, to pass through. Christ will meet you and go with you, foot
for foot, yea, he will bear you up in his arms…” (Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ).
If I
had my way I would spare my children every form of suffering. They would never know rejection or
disappointment. Their desires would
never be thwarted, and they would be shielded from the realities of a harsh,
broken world and even from the consequences of their own sin. Since this isn’t possible, I must content
myself with sharing their sorrows, drying their tears and pointing them to the
Father who does not merely allow but ordains their sorrow for some mysterious
good. He is the God who bottles every
tear they shed in this life and promises that someday He will wipe away the
very last one.
“Our heavenly Father
has deep affection for us. The affection
of parents is just a spark from his flame.
His love passes knowledge and exceeds all dimensions; it is higher than
the heaven and broader than the sea. We
are precious in his sight…He is full of sympathy, and pities [us in our]
infirmities. In [our] injuries, every
blow goes to his heart. He did, as it were, bleed in our wounds” (Watson).
