Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why do a couples with stable jobs, a good home in a safe neighborhood have an impossible time getting pregnant when others seem to conceive by just staring at each other long enough?
The above questions are ones that danced around in my head for years over our situation – and to mostly no avail.
Yes, I could answer with some very cliche-feeling sentiments about God’s timing or things just not “meant to be” just yet…but did I really believe what I was reiterating?
Honestly? As the years dragged on I believed them less and less. I stopped believing that it wasn’t in His timing and chose to instead believe things like “my body just wasn’t made to get pregnant” or even convincing myself that I don’t even want to have kids anyways, so it’s okay.
It wasn’t until a conversation that Dan and I had around this subject where it finally hit me…
You see – I really came to despise the song “Blessed Be Your Name” over the years.
This was a frustrating thing for me because back in my worship band days of early college and through my mid-twenties it was my favorite song to sing. Without fail it always brought tears to my eyes.
I found a uniquely unfamiliar solace in the repetition that He Gives and Takes Away. I say unfamiliar because it resonated with me on a level I didn’t realize I didn’t yet understand.
Sure…as a late teen/early 20 something I had my own version of pain and struggle and what that meant to me – but I had yet to experience the reality of what it felt like to have something mercifully given and then painfully taken from you.
Over the years I chose to continue going to church and reciting words or songs even though they didn’t sit well in my heart.
How could I sing to a God who I felt had just left me in a dry desert of waiting and despair?
Where is the same God that laid the desire of motherhood on my heart even before I was old enough to conceive?
In this conversation with Dan (over the general idea of how we view things/bad things -> good people, etc) from my mouth came pouring words that I’m pretty sure God was using for me to hear Him more than anything else.
Over the last 3 years I’ve reflected a lot upon who Dan and I were when we got pregnant and especially in light of who we are today.
You can’t walk through a miscarriage, yet-to-be explained infertility, the adoption process, owning your own businesses and working together full time for 10.5+ years without it changing aspects of who you are.
The ways in which we’ve changed are new belongings to the DNA that makes us who we are individually and as a couple.
For years I’ve told others that I wouldn’t trade that growth for anything. As more time went on I realized I wouldn’t even change it in exchange for the baby that we lost.
That all still holds true. If God would grant me the opportunity to go back and have that baby alive, fully formed and in my arms, I would honestly say no.
But it wasn’t until that recent conversation that I actually understood WHY.
I imagined my 25 year old self, on the couch, bleeding and crying through the days following the miscarriage and wondering how God could call that GOOD.
Then I realized, the goodness came in what I wouldn’t ever know and what I didn’t yet know.
I imagined God looking at my life with and without that baby. He knows us FAR better than we know ourselves. He could see the path that our lives would take because of the loss we would experience and call that GOOD.
But, He could also see the current trajectory we were on: the unspoken conversations, the hot button issues left un-worked, the self-development yet untouched and the businesses and work yet to be done.
All that mess, all that junk unresolved He saw it ALL. He saw both paths and I’ll bet you this – the path (for us) with that baby at that time and all the missed growth and fires yet to walk through? He knew that would be harder. He could see the resentment, bitterness, shame and stagnation and He, in His wisdom knew that was an even more painful challenge with a more heartbreaking outcome. He actually spared us an even harder pain than what we would come to know.
Could He have saved that baby and not allowed that miscarriage to happen? Without a doubt yes. But that does not mean He is not good. I have no doubt that it pained God deeply to watch us suffer, but the greatest mercy came in His willingness walk through that pain with us and usher us into a season that would also be hard, but with greater outcomes.
We couldn’t see it then, heck, we couldn’t see it in the midst of the valley.
And it isn’t lost on me the mercy that comes with the hindsight view of God’s hand being over it all – even when it didn’t feel good. Especially in light that often we don’t get that clarity over loss, pain, rejection and doubt.
During the midst of the harder times I remember looking at women I respected and I prayed for their faith, grace and wisdom.
Although I know there is much left to be experienced and learned, I am so thankful for where this journey has brought us. That gratitude doesn’t make the pain we experienced any less painful or real, but – to me – it makes it that much more cherished and valuable.
I do think I will meet our baby in heaven someday – and I like to think that child was born in the light of the grace, mercy, growth and love we needed to learn for ourselves and for each other. Our baby’s greatest act was the gift of it’s passing right into the arms of Jesus.
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