Pt 3 Surprising lessons from our recent loss
{Continuing on…} A couple days later a lifelong friend of mine (one of the friends who had shared the “Nothing Can Take My Hallelujah” song with me) asked how I was doing. I shared honestly with her how sad I felt, but also told her about the Ezekiel word. She was the first person I shared it with, and it sounded a little weird even as I wrote it. I had also forgotten that she had had a dream about me (she has an remarkably prophetic dream-life) at the beginning of this year, and she had said that the gist of the dream was that nothing could take my hallelujah. Now, when I shared with her the bit about Ezekiel, she responded by saying she should probably share the actual details of that dream (that I had never heard). She wrote:
You lost a child. I saw you at the grocery store buying oranges. You were walking through the store standing tall, no sadness on your face, maybe even humming a happy tune while you went about your “work” of grocery shopping. I watched it all as if a fly on the wall. I was offended & upset that you were ok!!! I didn’t believe it was possible for God to give that level of peace. To me there seemed to be something fake & artificial about it because I couldn’t wrap my mind around God taking away all sadness & truly giving that kind of joy.
So that is why when I was praying about the dream later that morning & God so clearly spoke “nothing can take Kari’s Hallelujah” that I began to understand the work that He would do.
It is so amazing that He has given you the example of Ezekiel & his wife. I have no idea what it means on a larger scale…if there is a prophetic message for humanity in what He is asking you to do. But I trust He will continue to speak to you & make it clear. Undoubtedly others will be impacted as you obey.
First of all, what a precious friend she is! And second, this was an incredible confirmation to me that this path WAS exactly what God had for me.
It also gave me peace, realizing that long before any of this ever happened, God knew and even informed my dear friend, via a dream, so that when the time came that I needed that confirmation, that she would have it to give. I was so in awe of God’s care!
It is now exactly a month from the ultrasound—I feel like I could share a dozen more stories of God’s faithfulness this month, but for sake of time I’m going to bullet-point the highlights, and hopefully expand on these more in the future.
- Step out in weakness, the strength will come. The first time I went to speak, right after the ultrasound, I was an emotional mess during worship, wondering how I could communicate three messages in one day when all I wanted to do was curl up and cry. Just moments before speaking, there was no strength or joy. And then somehow, as I literally put one foot in the front of the other, up the steps, to the podium, up to the mic, God gave me a CRAZY overwhelming joy and peace. Truly! I felt like I had Him with me in a way that surpassed what I’ve ever experienced before. Every time I went to share His Word this month, and have felt weak in myself, He has shown Himself so strong. But it took actually stepping out, trusting that the strength would meet me there.
- Emotions don’t get to rule. He gave me so many opportunities to practice submitting my emotions to His lordship. I honestly think this is one of the most under-practiced spiritual disciplines of our day. Emotions are not bad, but we can become a slave to them when we let them be lead us. See, it wasn’t that I didn’t have emotions this month–oh my goodness, I did! But I usually experienced sadness or grief at times when it wasn’t appropriate to express those feelings. I have a lot to learn here, but it was really helpful to gain experience at having to place my own emotions aside for the sake of others.
- FLEE the pity party! He continually crashed my self-pity party. Nope, never, nada, not going to let me go there. Self-pity is just about as toxic as can be! Honest grieving is one thing, but self-pity refuses gratitude and intentionally wallows in self. It’s poison!
- God’s strength IS made perfect in weakness. I saw hundreds of women connect with God’s word and respond to His freeing truth, and got to have dozens of conversations with precious people, seeing the way God is moving mightily in their lives.
- Weep with those who weep. This was a HUGE blessing: I gained some valuable insight into different ways we respond to grieving friends and took notes about what was helpful 😉 … and hopefully learned some ways to be a better friend when others are grieving.
- God also cares about ME. The biggest thing I was learning through this month was, hands down, that my little life is part of something SO MUCH BIGGER and if I’m willing to embrace the fact that it’s not about me, and accept that even my sorrow is part of something good and big and glorious, for God’s glory, then I will get to see Him move mightily. But, it’s also true that He cares for the sparrow and He care for me. I’m not just a expendable chess piece in His hand. God does’t just use me, He LOVES me. The actual process of miscarrying (that I won’t share here) was an amazing example of this. It did take place while Jeff was out of town, but God was WITH ME in tremendous ways. He cared for me and took care of me.
- I have a part to play in God’s plan. I also learned some very practical ways to strengthen and support my body, and take seriously the role I have in cooperating with God in His plan. This isn’t “on me” but it also isn’t done without me. If I believe God’s good word in my life I will do whatever it takes to prepare myself, my heart, my mind, and my body, to carry out His will. Often we separate physical from spiritual, but disciplining our bodies is an integral part of our spiritual health. Another often-neglected part of our spiritual lives!
I apologize for the bullet-points. I just wanted to share this briefly, before I run out of Justice’s nap time. 😉 As far as our story goes, it continues. It’s not over.
I welcome your prayers for the future chapters, unread by us, but already written by Him.
Thanks for reading.
Pt 2: Surprising lessons from our recent loss
A few days after my ultrasound, morning sickness kicked in in full force. I was actually thrilled about this. I usually get sick right around 6 weeks, and that timing would line up exactly with the ultrasound dating. I also shared with several people and can’t hearing story after story of how they had had the same scenario, and baby just wasn’t as far along as they’d thought. A later ultrasound revealed a healthy, growing baby.
So that encouraged me. I found myself with all the familiar feelings of nausea, food aversions, all that good stuff. It was so comforting; I had never been so happy to feel awful! This continued for almost two weeks. I definitely felt weak, emotionally and physically, but there was nothing to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other. On a Thursday morning, I spoke to a lovely group of moms at Hearts at Home, then drove for my next ultrasound, feeling very hopeful and encouraged. I tried not to have expectations, but inwardly I thought through some scenarios for telling our families. I knew our kids would be wild with excitement, as they both want another baby. I prayed over the phone with a friend, and headed in.
As the technician began, I could see the dating/measurements on the screen: about 7 weeks. That lined up perfectly with my midwife’s prediction, so I breathed a sigh of relief. But then she finished and went to consult the doctor. Usually, I knew, they let you listen to baby’s heartbeat before they finish.
I sat in the chair, focusing my thoughts on truth, reminding myself over and over that no matter what happened, God was good and it would be ok. Beside me, a blurry black-and-white photo slipped out of the machine. There was my tiny baby. I stared at it, wondering weird things like, “Would they print me a photo if the baby were dead? Maybe that’s a good sign?” She came back in.
“There is no cardiac activity, so our work with you is done.” She opened the door for me to leave, then looked at the photo and hesitated. “Do you want the photo?”
I told her yes please, and thank you and the room started spinning and I walked, without seeing, back into the waiting room to pay my bill. The receptionist said to wait until she could figure out the a correct coding. So I sat in the waiting room and picked a spot on the ceiling to stare. Not yet. Don’t cry yet. Don’t cry yet. Hold on. Just hold on. I thumbed a two-word text to Jeff: No heartbeat.
After ten minutes or so, she figured out the coding. I smiled and thanked her so much for her time and she looked in my eyes and saw everything and her face silently said, I’m so sorry.
I walked out into the incongruent brightness of the sun, finally found refuge in my car, and … I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe you’ve felt it, where grief feels like it will swallow you whole. Where suddenly the accumulation of grief rushes up, and it’s not just one dead baby, it’s all of them and all of it, and I told God it feels like by the time this life is over I will just be a crushed, ragged, ripped-to-shreds heart that has been broken so many times it’s beyond repair.
And as I poured my heart out to God, looking for some comfort, some sympathy, the same verse came to mind again and again:
Be patient in affliction, be constant in prayer.
Romans 12:12
Honestly I felt a little like, That’s it, God? My heart is crushed and Your answer is “be patient”?!
Be patient in affliction, be constant in prayer.
Back home, I tried to avoid the questioning eyes of my kids, and fled to the refuge of my bed. Again, everything in me wanted to slip, sink, let myself go down into the depths of sorrow. All of it overwhelmed me. Another miscarriage? I’m traveling every weekend for the next month! When will it happen? Jeff’s going to Kentucky for a week, what if it happens while he’s gone? Will I be okay all alone? How can I keep traveling and speaking and going about life with a dead baby in my belly and not knowing when I will miscarry?
And, so strangely, over the next few hours, God’s good Word to me was not at all what I expected. It caught me so off guard. I didn’t like it, but had to believe. If He’s a good God, and His Word is good, then this word must be good. Out of Ezekiel, of all places:
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover your mustache and beard or eat the customary food of mourners.”
Ezekiel 24:15-18
So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.
With kindness in His voice, God told me to “groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead.” In other words, Dry your tears, wash your face, and serve others. Put their interests above your sorrow. Don’t cancel anything. Don’t change any plans. Walk out the events of this next month and be patient in affliction.
Even re-writing this, tears well up a tiny bit. This was a hard word to receive. I wouldn’t have believed it was God if it hadn’t been straight from the Bible. I knew not everyone would understand (I didn’t, entirely!). They might think I was just faking, or pretending to be fine. I didn’t exactly know how it would work. But I got up the next morning and hosted company and served pumpkin bread with a smile and prepared for the next day’s speaking events and in alone moments cried quietly and asked God to please help me do what felt impossible on my own. I’m sure you, friends, have had to do hard things like this too…
More in a bit–good, joyful stuff! Thanks for hanging with me through the sad. It’s okay, really. He’s in it all. Bless you, friends. Thanks for reading.
Pregnancy Loss: Reflections on our 3 miscarriages
I’ve so missed sharing with you, all of you (guys, you’re welcome too)! I’ve missed writing, as that is often how God helps clarify and solidify what He’s teaching me. I have not had an hour of free time (besides morning Word/prayer times and Sunday afternoons when I nap!), since early September–no exaggeration. We have been in a season of running hard, and I don’t regret a second of it. It has been rich, fruitful, difficult, and so very good.
Seasons are just that, seasons. In two weeks, when the bulk of my speaking commitments are through and Heidi’s play is over, we’re taking off for a week as a family, to rest and play together. I’m excited for that time together, but I don’t feel desperate for it. This season has been good. That season will be good. Paul said he knew how to roll with every season and be content in it, not just when it’s over. I guess that’s part of what I’m learning too.
Many of you have traveled with us on this journey of having more children. Long story short, in 2016, after a 40-day fast, through a number of confirmations and circumstances, Jeff and I both sensed God leading us to get a vasectomy reversal and have two more children. He gave us two names: Honor and Justice. I was completely caught off guard when Honor was lost. I’d never experienced miscarriage, and God used it to bring up many thing in both Jeff and me that needed to be worked through. He gave me a new girl name: Hope.
Several months later, I was pregnant again. Thrilled. This time I carried 11 weeks before learning Our Hope is in Heaven. Physically, that miscarriage was horrendous, but afterward, I felt tremendous peace. The timing just so happened that just two days later we had a beach vacation planned with our dearest friends, and I felt enveloped in a cocoon of love, prayer, grace, not to mention amazing meals and tons of relaxation. There was grief, but it was like falling into a fluffy friendship cloud of comfort.
In Scripture, especially in the OT, we often see names having great significance, often related to the spiritual state of the parents’ hearts, or what was going on in the culture at large. I never experienced any of this sort of significance with our older children, but for whatever reason, this time around names have been very significant. Also, each miscarried child has had a name.
The day I miscarried with Hope, we had our church’s prayer meeting that night–so clearly I heard “Hallelujah.” I wrote the name across the top of my journal page, then jotting down “Halle” (rhymes with Sally) for short.
I loved that name, and was so excited. I thought she would be born next. A few months later I became pregnant, and two trusted friends separate shared a dream/vision that I was having a boy. And I was:
Justice.
Our amazing, chubby bundle of smiles, Justice has forever changed our lives. His late arrival and delivery brought its own series of lessons (Wasted work; Joy; Psalm 131, Preparations; Delivery). We can’t imagine our lives without him.
He was worth the wait.
So you can imagine our joy when, this September, I found out I was pregnant again. Yes! I had hoped to have baby #2 before I turned 40, and this would make my delivery date just a couple weeks before that date. I started praying for little Halle, our little bean-sized baby.
I did kind of wonder what this journey would entail. Last spring, I had two friends separately share the song, “Nothing can take my Hallelujah” with me. I thought, perhaps, difficult circumstances would surround her birth. I thought the physical birth of “Praise Yahweh” would represent joy in the midst of difficulty.
My midwife scheduled an ultrasound at 7 weeks to see how everything looked. We hadn’t told the kids yet, wanting to wait until everything looked good, so I sneaked in an ultrasound while Heidi was at theater practice and Jeff was with the boys.
It showed baby measuring 5.5 weeks, with no heartbeat. My heart sank.
BUT. Both the technician and my midwife were convinced everything was fine. Often dating can be off, and everything looked good otherwise, so they figured it was slightly too early for heartbeat, so we’d “just wait” and see in a week or two.
While in the office, I thought I was fine. But as soon as I got in my car, a torrent of emotion came. I sobbed to God,
“I cannot do this again. I cannot keep having my heart torn apart.”
I begged him to please let this baby live.
Part of what was overwhelming was the fact that I had eleven speaking engagements this fall, including 5 straight weekends of traveling, giving 20+ messages, plus Heidi’s theater schedule of 3 days/week and a solid week of working backstage for dress-rehearsals plus working eight shows. I had already felt overwhelmed by how to navigate all the commitments.
And now I had to “just wait” to see if the baby inside me was dead or alive? We hadn’t shared about the pregnancy. Our kids didn’t know, families didn’t know. It felt strangely lonely to just keep going along as usual, not knowing whether I carried life or death. That evening, after my ultrasound, a friend and I were hosting a baby shower. It was the last thing I wanted to do, honestly. I was exhausted from crying and my flesh so wanted to just be home and be sad all by myself. But so clearly I knew God was saying, Set yourself aside for the sake of serving others.
But it’s so HARD to set ourselves aside. It takes dying! And there’s nothing more clear in Scripture:
“In humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Phil. 2:3-4
Every Christlike act of love takes the willingness to set ourselves aside for the sake of serving others. This is the very essence of what Jesus did, and that He calls us to do.
It takes humbling ourselves to prioritize others’ needs above our feelings. Philippians 2:5-8 says this is exactly what Jesus did.
The next weekend, I was flying to Colorado to speak at a conference. I was nervous about flying, but once again, knew God’s will was clear: Trust Me. It would take me trusting Him with my body, my heart, my emotions. I was still very sick with morning sickness, so it was a tiring trip, but the ladies were amazing and I could SEE God be strong as I felt so weak. It felt good to focus on others and get the joy of seeing God move.
On my flight home, as I sat exhausted with my hand resting on my belly, praying, I heard the young guy next to me telling the person next to him how grateful he was that his girlfriend was able to get an abortion for $75 instead of $400.
Tears silently slipped down my cheek. For him. For this broken world. For all that’s just so wrong. For the babies unwanted and the babies so desperately wanted and the incongruity of it all and knowing this is only a drop in the ocean of sorrow that is a reality in our world. And knowing the Father can and will sort it all out but the meantime…
We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly…
Rom. 8:21-23
And I whispered into the darkness, “Sort it out, God. Please. Sort it out.”
{Time to get back to my kiddos; I’ll write more soon}