Miscarriage and Me

By Julie Wilding

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not;
as Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness.
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

I have always desired children. There isn’t anything about them I don’t find exciting: diapers, tears, bottles, midnight feedings. You name it, I love it. So, you can imagine my joy when my husband and I became pregnant on the first try. I immediately began doing everything “right.” I saw my doctor, took vitamins, watched what I ate, drank lots of water, got plenty of rest and read many parenting books. I was going to be a great mom.

Unfortunately, at our 14 week appointment, I found out we had lost our baby. After a sonogram confirmed what we already knew, we sat in the doctor’s office discussing next steps. The only word I heard was “surgery” and the only thing I felt was confusion. Hadn’t I done everything right? Hadn’t I taken care of myself well enough? I cried until I couldn’t.

What happened next: I had surgery, my husband went back to work, I went back to work, and life went on again. I thought a lot about the baby – a baby I would never hold, whose knee I would never put a Band-Aid on, whose body I would never hug, whose laugh I would never hear and whose eyes I would never see. I had been told that none of this was my fault, but I didn’t believe it. I was convinced that I had lost control of the pregnancy somehow and had failed my baby.

Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not…

I was so focused on me that I wasn’t looking for the Lord when He came after me. That’s what He does with those He loves. For me He chose to use a song and a saint to draw my focus back to Him.

The song was “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” As we sang it in church, I actually heard it for the first time. Oh, I had sung it a million times, but this was the first time I heard it. Words describing the Lord as compassionate, faithful, merciful and unchanging were like water to my soul. How had I missed the beautiful lyrics all these years?

The saint was my sister-in-law. We had a conversation in which she lovingly reminded me that a successful pregnancy does not guarantee a life. That at any moment the Lord could call my children back to Himself, possibly right after delivery, and that if He did, He would be good and just to do so. I needed to hear that truth. Almost instantly the illusion of control lifted, and the massiveness of our God descended on me. He loves my children more than I ever could, and ultimately they belong to Him, not me. Like Abraham with Isaac, I realized that I had to willingly surrender the child I had lost as well as any future children I might have to the Lord that day and every day thereafter.

Great is Thy faithfulness…

Just six weeks after our miscarriage we became pregnant with Emma Grace. Were it not for my miscarriage, Emma wouldn’t exist.

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

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