Held in the Storms: Miscarriage and Thereafter

God is faithful. His steadfast love endures forever. He is rich in mercy. He hurts when I hurt. He has a sovereign plan that cannot be thwarted. His plans are always for my good and for his glory. “…this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

These are some of the truthful thoughts that helped me endure and trust God in the midst of my most recent trials. The past three months since graduation have been a hurricane. The winds and waves have rushed over me, body and soul, but as the sky begins to clear, I am still standing, and my faith is still intact. God held me fast.

That was my heart’s prayer when it all began. Lord, please hold us fast. I wanted to live out James 1:2-4. I had no idea what was in store for me and how much God would test my faith in a short amount of time. I recall the inland hurricane that struck the Heartland on May 8, 2009. Some elements of the two trials are the same, including my ignorance of what was coming. I thought it was just a short, passing thunderstorm. But it would go on and on, with tornadoes and floods everywhere. The power would go out of me like the electrical power lines that went down. I was not able to shower for days either time.

It started May 25, the day of my first ultrasound. The baby was two weeks less developed than expected and gave no heartbeat. After a hard week of waiting, I underwent a second ultrasound that confirmed the baby had died. We were trying to grasp reality and deciding how to miscarry at the same time. I first tried taking pills to induce the miscarriage, but they were ineffective, according to ultrasound three. We reluctantly scheduled a D&C for the following Monday, June 13. On the weekend prior, however, I started to bleed and cramp on my own. We wondered whether God was answering prayers for a natural miscarriage. He was not. I bled and cramped for days with no miscarriage. I went to the ER Wednesday night, feeling weak with low blood pressure. My vitals and pelvic exam showed good health, so the doctor discharged me. Unfortunately, he may have caused my cervix to open via the pelvic exam. A while after returning home and eating, my cervix opened. The gross trauma began, involving collapse and near fainting, lots of blood, passing of tissues, and a call to 911. I became hypotensive with uncontrollable shivering and much pain. A kind and compassionate doctor performed the D&C Thursday morning, the 16^th.

I felt good when I woke up from the anesthesia. I thought the trial was near its end, and happy days were on their way. The miscarriage was the worst of the tornadoes, but the storm was not over. A few days later, my pain increased. Then began a week of varied physical problems and more tests. In summary, I popped the disk in my left jaw, found out the pain was from a UTI, suddenly lost vision, developed inflammation in my back, ribs, shoulders, and neck, and suffered from sinus pain and headaches throughout. Near the end of the week I struggled with anger toward God. I was tired of fighting the good fight and was losing a divine perspective on my troubles. God swept in, it seems, with the refreshing rain of Scripture, and I submitted to his will yet again.

Though God had sustained me throughout the traumatic, drawn-out miscarriage and had remained faithful to his promises in the Bible, I clumped the events together in my mind. The physical suffering had lasted for what felt like a long time so that I had not fully digested and mourned the emotional pain. After my follow-up visit at the obstetrics clinic went well, the emotions kicked in, just as my doctor had warned me.

Grief seemed to me a trial in itself. I lay awake during the nights with so many thoughts and images running through my mind. Some thoughts were trite, but inevitably the miscarriage would come to the forefront. Sometimes I would cry. Other times I wish I could. In the daytime, my soul would ache. To people who invited me to share my pain with them I could not find words to say, and to those who did not acknowledge my pain at all I felt hurt and disappointment. In social situations, I felt pressure to pretend like everything was fine—as if no ache or emptiness loomed from my gut. In a short time insomnia set in. Enter more winds and waves.

Grief, hormones, and insomnia can create a vicious cyclone that strengthen each other’s impact and exhaust the whole person. I struggled to think clearly and to walk quickly. I still prayed and called God’s promises to mind, but I was also overreacting to daily stressors and giving way to anger toward my husband. I had to repent of sin several times, as I was causing much damage. I felt unstable. Through it all, though, God continued to minister to me and uphold me. Praise him that his mercies are new every morning! (Lamentations 3:23)

Finally, after a couple weeks of dissipated symptoms in the eye of the hurricane, I face its tail end, I think. I finally rid the UTI after four rounds of antibiotics as well as a yeast infection. I am now only dealing with neck and back problems. Lord Jesus has exposed my idolatry in desiring good health too much so that I am beginning to learn to rejoice and hope in him and not good health.

I am still grieving, of course, but I have come to accept the miscarriage. It is a gift from God’s hand. God truly has held us fast. He gave us supportive family members and sermons, including a timely one on James 1 by our brother-in-law. He gave me counseling training lectures on relevant topics (e.g., anger, depression). He ministered to us through his church by means of prayer, consolation, and meals. He provided my mother-in-law to care for me while my husband worked. He renewed our inner selves by means of his Word, the Bible. Hymns like “How Firm a Foundation” and “My Hope Is Built” brought assurance and encouragement. God’s fingerprints were all over our trial and still are. He is in control of every wind and wave and never loses sight of us. Even when we do not know what good will come from such a season, God is working. If we saw every move he made we would not need faith. He wants us to trust him. The thoughts are true:

God is faithful. His steadfast love endures forever. He is rich in mercy. He hurts when I hurt. He has a sovereign plan that cannot be thwarted. His plans are always for my good and for his glory. “…this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

This Night Last Year I Wore a Pink Dress

Last night while brushing my teeth I recalled how the same night last year I wore a pink dress. It was the night after Thunder Over Louisville. I enjoyed the music of a friend in the afternoon (I remember the songs), finished my paper, ate chicken cashew ding at Cafe Memosa, and took food over to a friend who gave me a souvenir from Korea. My to-go box leaked juice onto my dress, leaving  a nasty, brown stain near the rear, I fell down a couple steps on my way to Cefiore, and accidentally hit a friend in the face--all full of laughter and apologies. I remember these things and more with ease. The major circumstances (confidential) that surrounded that day changed my life. The minor details I've mentioned have stuck with me because of their proximity to the dramatic. As I continued brushing my teeth, I wondered, as I am in the midst of ongoing family trial with a grim prognosis, what will stick with me after the traumatic? What moments will be etched on my mind, particularly the ones with my dad? How will my life change? We'll see. I think the deepest valleys are yet to come. But I do know this: It will be good. Not pleasant, but good. (See previous post for clarification.)

Good Does Not Equal Pleasant

[Disclaimer: I recognize that good can function as a noun while pleasant cannot, but I think my point still stands.]

Languages are dynamic. Like living organisms, they change over time. Some develop, others die along with their people groups, and still others morph due to societal factors and the influence of other languages. The English language is no exception. For example, the progress of technology has decreased the demand for words like rewind, cassette, and darkroom. Another example: In the 1980s, the word cool became popular to say for all kinds of uses. Those of us born in that decade probably still use it as slang, but as its popularity seems to fade, it may not be as cool to use it anymore.

Beyond the flux of idioms and clichés, I have observed communication confusion due to semantic breakdown. Situations supply connotations for words that eventually adapt to a manipulated range of meaning as people confuse denotation with connotation. To be plain, a person will ascribe a meaning to a word beyond its “original” range of meaning because of the idea or feeling the word invokes. It seems to me that as more people do this to the same word, the word’s semantic range expands. Expansion, however, can lead to near replacement in meaning, which causes the communication confusion.

I faced this phenomenon over the winter while on the backside of a family crisis. My mom nearly died from sepsis; my dad was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, underwent major colon surgery, and began chemotherapy; my uncle was diagnosed with incurable bone cancer the same week as my dad; I was sick five times with five different illnesses in one month; a good friend moved to South Korea for a year while I was out of state with my parents, a different friendship ended after returning home, and another friend temporarily abandoned me; and a week after my return I started a new seminary semester and resumed my service to my church family. All this happened in the span of two months. The question was inevitable: “How are you?” My response: “I don’t know.” Another inevitable question: “How are your parents?” I would try to answer positively.

What is the common response to such questions? “Good.” I struggled to know how to answer because, as the Lord sustained me, sometimes my inner being was in a good state though the circumstances were grim. If I answered “good,” however, the person would likely interpret me to mean that I feel no pain or am unaffected by the circumstances, as if they were pleasant. For me to say that things were pleasant would be a lie, but to say that I was good (which grammatically should be well) would not be. Do you see the dilemma? Good does not equal pleasant.

Since the Bible is my ultimate authority, it shapes much of my understanding of the word good. Scriptures like Romans 8:28-29, Hebrews 12:10, Deuteronomy 7:24, and Genesis 50:20, in their contexts, present a different “good” from how we often understand it today—very different. Someone tells us how an event went, and we say, “Oh, that’s good.” I am not saying that this use of good is wrong. I think it is appropriate to associate good with favorable circumstances. On the other hand, I am saying that using the word very liberally cheapens its greater use.

Throughout the winter I was often crushed in spirit. Even when the darkness would lift a little, I felt the deep inner wound. I thought much of Jeremiah 15:18-19. When I returned to Louisville, I asked Frodo’s question, “How do you pick up the pieces of an old life?” I know that now, if I try to recount all that God has done for me to carry me through and begin healing, my reflections would be incomplete. Let me just say that I have indeed tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:4). A sweet and intimate knowledge of him such as I have now I would not have otherwise known. Toward the end of my time in Missouri, I was thankful for sharing in Christ’s sufferings. I did not maintain this thanksgiving consistently in the days following, but to know it for a moment is worth it all. That is good. And the goodness does not stop there. Like in Genesis 50:20, what God did and is still doing is bringing about good for other people, not just my family and me.

The catch in the disparity I have observed between good and pleasant is that within this good I have put forward is pleasantness. It is just not pleasantness seen from the outside. It is not the sort of pleasant we naturally conceive. We must be retrained in order to grasp the greater use of good. From all this we see that sometimes good is misunderstood because of its association with pleasant, and the confusion spreads as its frequency increases so that they are sometimes considered equivalents. Do they overlap? Yes, but not entirely. I tell you, good does not equal pleasant.

Isaiah 41

I have been studying Isaiah for a while. Today I read Ch. 41. It starts out with God describing His sovereignty over world events. God uses even secular world leaders like unbelieving Cyrus the Great to accomplish His purposes, and unbelieving nations do not realize that His hand is working. When they see the Lord act, they fear and tremble, but they do not turn to the Lord. Instead, they work together to create more gods (idols) to worship and in whom to hope.

Then God reminds Israel that He chose them. He chose them from the beginning. He remembers His covenant with them. And He tells them, "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand" (v. 10). This same Israel who rebelled against the Lord, this same Israel who partnered with unbelieving nations around her--God will help her.

Isaiah 41 continues with Israel's opponents being no match for the LORD God. Because of the Lord's devotion to His people, He will not let Israel's opponents stand. They will go to nothing. He holds Israel's right hand, none other's. God then reiterates again that He Himself is the One who helps Israel, so they have no reason to fear (v. 13). He will give her the victory, and He will receive the glory. He will use her against the nations.Then God will give aid to the poor and needy in ways that are unnatural, so that the nations will know that God is the One who has done all this.

I see myself in this passage. I was filled with hope in reading God's commitment to protect and uphold His people in covenant faithfulness because I know that He has that same commitment to me. Israel was a harlot, but God never forsook her. I am like her. Israel experienced oppression, exile, and many threats, but God is her God, and He is with her and for her. I am like her because in my suffering God never faints or grows weary, and walks with me, having suffered before me.

I am seeing and experiencing His love afresh. It is in this passage. It is in my life. Lately I have had many questions and concerns about my calling, ministry, education, and understanding and application of biblical womanhood. I felt lost, which in this case, I think, was a good thing. I have come to realize that fear of making a wrong decision about the future paralyzed me from making any decision at all. But God has helped me and is helping me. He is speaking to me and guiding me through Scripture, sermons, friendly counsel, and prayer. I was never lost. He found me long ago. Thanks be to Jesus Christ!

I have no reason to fear. God is with me. When God Himself is with me, who or what can stand against me? Even failure and loneliness is no match for the living God. "...the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other" (Deuteronomy 4:39).

I Was a Feminist and Didn't Know It: My New Quest

I am on a new quest these days to learn all I can about biblical womanhood, women's ministry, and what my role is. I have desired to serve in women's ministry for about three years. The heart behind that desire has changed though in the recent months. I started with the desire to the serve the church, then that desire narrowed to teaching Sunday School, and then it further narrowed to teaching women, simply because that is what SBC said was appropriate. I understood the actual teaching and discipleship as being fundamentally the same as teaching and discipling men.

Now my heart wants to minister to women not because of obligation but because I want to see young women grow into faithful women of God who defy the culture's skewed view of women and who stand strong against gender confusions. I realize now that a difference between men's discipleship and women's discipleship does exist by virtue of the fact that men and women are different.

God has humbled me. He has used different ways to do it. He has shown me that I know nothing and need to get busy learning from seasoned, godly women and preparing for who He wants me to be and what He wants me to do. I listened to a podcast message tonight from True Woman. In it, Mary Kassian gave a overview of the material she covers in her book about feminism. While she shared a brief history of feminism, I realized that I am a feminist who professed complementarianism. (What?!) Yes, it is true. As Nancy Leigh DeMoss points out at the end of the message, feminism has even permeated the Church in North America. I see that. I used to work from the feminist framework that women's ministry was just a ministry on the side--a place to put women who were gifted in teaching and leading in spiritual formation but would go against the rule of teaching men if they were not put in their own corner. I bought into the belief that women were second-class and men called the shots, even in church. Such a tainted framework mixed with pride produced my ignorant stance that I did not need gender-specific instruction for ministry and that I might even be better-off for learning under men and experiencing dominant male influence throughout my life.

But God tore down the framework and spoiled my pride. He brought me low. Now He is building me back up for a right form. I am realizing that women's ministry is beautiful and necessary. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Mary Kassian, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Joni Erickson Tada, and many other wonderful women are on a mission. And I think I want to join them.

Learning How to Die

I've had five reconciliation experiences in the past month. I just finished one today. Your first thought might be, "What's your deal?" I don't blame you for asking. I've wondered the same thing. Scripture this past week has especially ministered to me by way of conviction, correction, and teaching. I am reminded that I have so much more to learn! (It's a good thing I like to learn...) I have not been walking in wisdom, or at least I feel so confused. I talk to some trusted people who tell me one thing, and then I talk to other trusted people who tell me the opposite. Dare I forget to examine the Scriptures? I appeal to Psalm 19:8b.

I must say the Lord has used experiences in the past month to humble me. I feel very young and in need of much wisdom and growth. It motivates me to want to lean on God more. It's a beautiful thing, though I feel so unlovely. Bittersweet, I guess. Reflecting on this brings a song from Jon Foreman's "Winter" EP to mind. Part of "Learning How to Die" goes like this:

"All along thought I was learning how to take,

how to bend, not how to break,

how to laugh, not how to cry,

but really I've been learning how to die."

I'm thankful that the Lord loves me so much that He'll take me through momentary pain to make me more holy in the end. The passage I've been studying for a school assignment is relevant. Isaiah 1:21-31 presents God's plan to restore unfaithful Judah through judgment. He's going to refine them by fire, removing Judah's unbelievers until a remnant of obedient people are left. That's what He's doing to me. He's little by little removing my impurities so that eventually I'll be pure silver. This means my flesh must die.

So thankful.... The Lord is loving even in His discipline. Read Hebrews 12 and Psalm 19. They're really good! :)

"Foolish Games"

I heard this song last Wednesday. I hadn't heard it in a long while. It was in my head this morning and throughout the day.... Sometimes when I struggle to process pain, music and tears seem to be the only way I can let it out.... It was a hard day today, a hard week.... The lyrics don't fully apply, but some do--some do very well. It's mostly the mood of the song and the emotion the music evokes that resonate.

But I won't stay here. I refuse to stay here. I must look to Jesus. My mourning will turn into dancing when I turn to Him. My emotions will follow. I can always lean on His everlasting arms.