Can pain be sacred too?

Another sweet word from Caila. Receive, be blessed…

~

Something happened to me a few years ago that may have happened to some of you. In fact, according to statistics, it’s happened to at least half of you who are women and who have been pregnant at one time or another. I had a miscarriage. 

I’m not here today to give you a sob story. It was a struggle that ultimately brought me to the question, “How can something so awful be sacred?”

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, the loss and pain and heartache of losing a child, no matter how small. Maybe it’s because Mother’s Day just passed and although I spent it blissfully with my three children, I know others were mourning the loss of a child, or the inability to conceive one.

“Pain” is a hard topic and I am certainly not going to attempt a Theological presentation on why God allows pain. I am not here to tell you that pain is good (I don’t think it is) or that you should handle it with thanksgiving (I don’t think I always can). I’m simply here to ask the question, Can pain be sacred? And if so, what should we do with it?

I was 27 years old and already the mother to one little blonde boy when I received the news of my miscarriage. I lay on the exam table next to my husband and my boy, looking at the screen when the doctor put the Ultrasound down and looked me in the eye. She was sensitive but direct: there was no heartbeat. The strong beat we had seen and heard two weeks ago was gone. The diagnosis was clear.

Despite all my resolves that, should anything like this ever happen I would be strong, I felt myself crumble. I had wanted this baby so badly, already suffered through being so sick and now it was all nothing. The doctor gently gave me my options. Would I like to have a D and C now, or later?

Here in the United States we like to anesthetize all pain. Every time Abby stubs her toe, I run to the medicine cabinet saying,  “It’s ok, honey. Mommy has medicine!” I want the Neosporin to take away her pain. When I have a sore throat I go for the Ibuprofen. And I’m not ashamed to tell each one of you that near the end of labor, all three times, I’ve had an epidural stuck in my spine. Doctor, take that pain away!

So, I’m not opposed to pain management. But that day I paused before I rushed to answer the doctor.  What would God have me do? The answer came gently into my heart, with a slight tightening in my stomach muscles. Wait, was the answer. Don’t have any procedures done yet. I want you to wait.

Now let me pause here for a moment: I truly believe that we all have different needs, different abilities, and God knows how to guide each of us specifically through every circumstance. He doesn’t give us things he won’t make us able to handle. In this case, I was not supposed to have a D and C. I had my reasons for that decision. But you, you might make a different decision in the same circumstance. Perhaps you already have. I’m not here to tell you I made the only right decision. I believe, perhaps, God had something to teach me while I waited. Something about pain. And something about what comes after.

So we went home and I waited for the baby to pass. Every morning I woke up, waiting for the pain in my body to begin, waiting for the pain in my heart to ease. I waited two weeks before anything happened and in that time these truths grew in my heart.

Pain brought me up against the “real world.” I think we often don’t understand how much hurt the world holds for other people until we feel real pain.

Pain made me realize my own mortality. I couldn’t make my baby’s life happen and I couldn’t preserve it, either. Life is up to God.

Pain made me surrender my dreams to God. I had to wait two weeks for the child to pass and every day was surrender. Then I had to wait months and months before we conceived again and those days were a different kind of surrender.

Finally, my body let the child go. It was a sweet surrender; pain had wrought its work in me. I felt quiet inside, like I had aged ten years and fought one of the mighty battles of the universe. I did not run from pain, did not hide from the suffering. I had met it face to face and survived.

I had suffered pain and found a beautiful truth: God is close to those who suffer.

Can pain be sacred? Is it ground for growth? Certainly, yes, to each of these. I would not choose to hurt again, but I cherish the depth I gained in that time. I know my children are God’s own creations, brought into this world by his hand in his time. I know I am their shepherd but not their creator. I know my heart is loved by God and that he knows how to guide me through pain. I know the world can be hard and awful; atrocities happen but eternity is true and one day He will wipe those tears from our eyes.

Those who suffer are not alone. Even He, the most Sacred One of all, knew how it felt to weep. (John 11:35)

These are the sacred things suffering brought into my life. Pain can be a enriched soil if you let it be. If you quiet your heart before God and lift the hurt up to him, he can take it and fashion something beautiful. Others may not see it, but you’ll know it’s there, shining beneath the surface and coloring every day of the rest of your life.

That’s why there is hope in the midst of great pain. Because with it comes the promise of the Lord’s help in suffering. There is a song that I love and almost hate because it is so true. These words slay me:

This hand is bitterness

We want to taste it

Let the hatred numb our sorrows

But the Wise Hand opens slowly

To lilies of the valley, and

Tomorrow

This is what it means to be held

How it feels when The Sacred is torn from your life

And you survive

This is how it feels to be loved and to know

That when everything thing fell

We’d be held

Lyrics from Held, by Natalie Grant

Here I am three and a half years later, with two more children since my miscarriage. I still hold those lessons tight and one stands out to me today: never downplay another’s suffering.

If any of you are suffering today, I am so sorry. We have little to give each other but a hug (over the internet waves) and a prayer. Just know that you are not alone, you are loved, and one day we will see Him face to face. Surely then, these things will be put right.

{Thank you, friends, for reading.}