Life just IS sometimes

I have been quiet these past few days. At least when it comes to babies. I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying about what it means to be a woman who has lost a child. The date July 4th now haunts me. It has been a date of celebration in the past, but next summer it will hold a new meaning. Something that was, but never got to be.

I wonder, why do women keep quiet about this loss? Miscarriage? "I've lost a baby." Maybe it is because of the pain. It hurts. Maybe it is because the language we use to describe the loss. It all points back to me. As if it were my fault. I had a miscarriage. I lost the baby. Why can't there be a way to describe the situation that doesn't make me feel like I caused the loss. Anybody have any suggestions? I tried telling people that "we" had a miscarriage; that Jason and I lost the baby. But the truth is, that didn't feel right either.

So, here I am, having told everyone except one person (I don't see them or talk to them very often) that our child is gone. What does this mean for hope? How do I live hoping for something lost and not expecting that it come? Hope surrounded by expectation feels truncated by fear. I'm afraid that next time I get pregnant (if, please God it happens again) that the same thing will happen. Our lovely doctor (and I mean that seriously) says that because it happened once doesn't mean it will happen again. But, I am afraid. Afraid of allowing myself to be overwhelmed by joy again, only to lose it later, being swept away by grief and sadness.

Isn't this what it means to risk becoming a parent? Joy mingled with grief and fear and love? Until this point I hadn't felt the grief of being a parent. Joy, yes. Love, absolutely. Fear, certainly. But, not grief. Honestly, I haven't had much grief in my life. Lost first love, but not the loss of life itself. And how does such grief come from losing a life so newly found? We had only just heard of the pregnancy. I can not imagine the pain from having actually grown the babe...

I am a woman. A woman who has joined a club none wishes to enter in. We have no secret handshake, only a code. Silence seems to be the code, but I'm not having it. I need time to be alone, time to move on, time to muster up the courage to try again, but I want women to talk about this. Lord please give us courage to enter into this hurt full of sadness, yes, but full of hope and love too. May these words and the experience I have now had be of some greater use.