A personal story in serial, fourth installment

Yeah, there's more.  I told you there would be.  (Confused?  Read here, then here, then here.)

As I write, I realize that this is turning out to be a story about surprises.  Surprise that I was going to get pregnant with child #3 way ahead of schedule.  Surprise that the pregnancy only lasted a few weeks.  And, if my calculations are correct, there are two more surprises, which, to be perfectly honest, will probably seem rather anti-climatic, so please don't get your hopes up for an outrageous plot twist at the end.

I do not like surprises.  I don't adjust quickly to a change in plans.  I never respond well to the unexpected.  And a very early end to this pregnancy was totally unexpected.  In an effort to avoid being caught off guard, I worry.  As the worrier that I am, fears of miscarriage floated around quietly in the back of my mind during my previous pregnancies.  But this time I had completely, blissfully, forgotten to worry.  Shouldn't the fact that I was doing exactly what God told me be a pretty good insurance policy against anything going wrong?

Ready for the next surprise?

I did not experience a crisis of faith.  

I attribute this to the four thousand crises of faith I have previously had, through which I struggled and, apparently, from which I emerged stronger.  After miscarrying, I braced myself to feel betrayal, anger, and despair.  And I braced myself for a wrestling match with the question "Why?"  But, instead, I felt assured that the Lord was watching out for me, walking with me.  I trusted Him.  And I knew better than to ask, "Why?"  That doesn't get you anywhere.

But you know what?  It was still really hard.  Did you know that life can hurt really bad even when your faith is not wavering?  I'm not sure I did.  I guess I figured that if I allowed myself to be filled with God's love that life would not hurt.  I was wrong.  While I didn't feel despair, it wasn't all warm fuzzies either.

I found myself feeling things that, yes, seemed perhaps a little petty, but were prickly and uncomfortable.  Like annoyance.  (So I'd felt like crap for three weeks and developed first trimester acne for naught?  And what happened to my summer baby?)  And impatience.  (After six months of planning and preparing, I still wasn't even pregnant with the kid who was supposed to join our family?  I have to wait some more?)  And more impatience.  I think the only thing worse than surprises is waiting.  The prospect of still more waiting made me sick.

 

But more than anything, I felt disappointment.  The deepest, darkest disappointment.  The kind that leaves a twenty pound rock in your stomach.  The kind that's not there when the fog of sleep lifts and you have a hazy moment of the world being perfect until, boom, everything comes into focus and the rock returns, this time weighing forty pounds.  The kind of disappointment that leaves you incapacitated on the couch.  I tried to hide from the disappointment.  I hid under a blanket for three days, but it followed me there.  So I did what any busy mom would do.  I welcomed the disappointment into my heart, folded it up, tucked it away, and ignored it.  (Repression.  What would we do without it?)  It was time to get our Christmas celebrations under way.  Grief could wait; Santa couldn't.

There is one more surprise, but I'm itching to upload my pictures, so you will have to wait.  Remember what I said about not expecting anything exciting.  (In other words, I am not pregnant.)  But I will tell you this:  God spoke again.