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As I kneel in the woods, there are spots of blood. It is happening all over again.
I had been running into this vacation full of joy, full of life. Now I turn and walk back to the car slowly, my husband’s hand in mine. We wonder together if this new child will be the third to fall from my womb.
We had felt the searing pain of losing our full-term son during birth and holding him stillborn, cold, and quiet. Then we had known the shock of a routine ultrasound showing that another son’s heart had grown silent at sixteen weeks. And now we would fly back across the country to find that our first daughter would never be more than a flicker here on earth.
This was the loss no one knew about. This was the loss that was too much.
I had already grieved, and I had hoped. I had journeyed through waves, and found some solid ground, but the thing about pregnancy loss is that if you are building a family, it may strike again and again. And where is God in that reality? I know that one in four of each of you reading this post will walk this path, and all of you love someone who has.
I had two young sons at home when I lost my third son to stillbirth. I loved those boys with all my heart, but I was convinced I was the mother who had failed the most. My child had grown nine months, healthy and ripe within, and I could not even bring him into the world. My body had failed, and my mind was not safe. Lying in that hospital bed, I breathed a prayer, “Lord carry me through this. Somehow help me.” I was too broken for theology, I just needed my Father.
He answered me. Women began to send emails and Facebook messages. They would come up to me after church services and at friends’ houses to tell me of their precious little ones in heaven and their own journeys through grief.
When God felt silent and the world grew dark, the Psalms and other women’s words became my lifeline.
I read and we gathered for coffee, and since then I have held others and wept their hard tears with them, pressing books and scriptures into their hands.
Now there is a powerful and tender voice that I wish I would have had beside me when I was first navigating grief. Adriel Booker is a member of this sisterhood that none of us ever asks to be part of, and she is sharing her heart in the book Grace like Scarlett.
Adriel writes of grief as an ocean and invites us to dive deep where we can meet the God who loves us not in-spite of our brokenness, but IN our loss. She weaves together her own stories of miscarriage with honest looks at doubt, the theology of suffering, and the hope we have in Christ. She reminds us that no matter how many times we have experienced loss…
“Grief is not linear, you can’t work your way through the stages, crossing them off a list as you go. In my experience, it feels more circular, like going around and around the same mountain… since grief is not linear, we don’t have to be panicked by the seeming repetition.”
I wish I would have had her words as I knelt in the woods, circling back to grief again, treading down a path I never wanted to retrace.
Now I hold three sons and a daughter here on earth. Pure joy, and still the days are fraught with ups and downs. Real life is often just circling around that same mountain. And I know when the next time of loss and pain comes, I will not only revisit tears and questions, I will also revisit the time when God envelops like a cloud. The time when the mourners are comforted and the brokenhearted are held so very close.
. . .
Grace like Scarlett by Adriel Booker releases on May 1, 2018, and you can pre-order now to receive some very special gifts! Adriel created a journaling guide to help women process through and share their own stories of loss and hope. She is also offering a set of beautiful scripture coloring pages and an audio series for navigating milestones after miscarriage.
I am personally purchasing several copies for myself and to give to friends who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss. I am so thankful that I will have this resource in the future to help me love on mamas as they mourn and celebrate their little ones in heaven.
You can learn all about the book here, and order it here.
