Facing my fears

11/05/2015

Those moments that nothing is like it was just one second ago…

Wednesday. I was happily getting my flu shot and marking the pregnant box one moment. Then I went to the  bathroom. I have seen that pink before on a previous Wednesday. Then the floor dropped out from beneath me.

I was resigned to what was to come. I didn’t try to make myself feel better by hoping. My body knew it. I knew it. The nurse whispered hope, it didn’t convince me. 

I may not know what second trimester is like, but I know what it feels like to lose your baby.

I knew I was losing baby #2.

I have feared this day so much. Telling myself I would not survive if this happened again, the pain would crush me. The shame would swallow me.

I had started a study on fear. I came home and did the next chapter, appropriately named “Facing Your Fears.”

Overall, I felt numb. A little mad, a little sad. Scared to feel anything too much in the event it would overtake me. As much as I was resigned to what was happening, a part of me couldn’t believe it was real and I still do not want to.

How could God do this? Give us such hope; hope to rock our baby, to redeem the month of July and then to instead ensure it will be the absolute hardest time as we grieve two babies.

The study asked what my greatest fears are. 

1. Losing this baby. 

2 Not trusting God.

It then asked that I go deeper, to write honestly what exactly I am afraid of.

I fear this baby dying and not being able to hold this baby. 

I fear being childless. 

I fear never getting to be a mom. 

I fear being what is wrong; that my body is killing my babies. 

I fear the absolute devastation that I know too well that comes with this loss.

I fear being angry and hating God. 

I fear His plan.

The study points out how often the bible commands us to fear the Lord. That kind of fear is described as awe, respect, wonder, reverence, and worship. And it is this only kind of fear he wants us to have.

“When we choose to fear God...we choose to live in His will and under His protection. We don’t need to fear anything or anyone else.”

I woke up this morning, for a moment I hoped. I hoped that we would look back on this scare and think about how God delivered us. As pink turned to red, I understood again that deliverance isn’t coming.

Today, to live in His will in my life means to lose our second baby.

I don’t understand it. Again, I mourn it.

The God that numbered the hairs on my head and the stars in the sky, the God that suffered a death on the cross to give me eternity, the God whose plan spans far beyond the vapor that is my life, the same God that holds my babies… He is doing something. Something I can’t bring myself to question this time, I rest in it.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelations 21: 3-4

This stirs such longing within me, and every part of me is grasping to these promises now as all the pieces of me threaten to fall apart.

I will wait on the Lord and in His word, I will hope.