Miscarriage in the church

I'm learning quickly that we as Christians have created a good, right, and salutary way to do literally anything. Especially in conservative branches like the Lutheran church.

Even walking through a pregnancy loss.

"Miscarriage".

I hate that word, as if I were just bad at carrying the baby, or made a mistake.

On the day I found out, I naturally went down the rabbit hole of doom on Google, looking up stats and what to expect. I know people who have endured losses at all stages of pregnancy, from 4 weeks to 34. I've followed their stories and listened avidly, as if I knew that someday I would need their stories at the ready.

Well, here I am.

Since we believe life begins at conception, even my "chemical pregnancy" counts as a loss of a life. So what do I do?

Some will give directions of how to miscarry into a colander and have a burial and perhaps even a funeral.

Some will say that only applies to later losses. Some will say it applies to all losses.

Pretty much everyone says you should name the baby.

Maybe get a tattoo of an angel wing or something.

Get a painting of your family with your angel baby watching over you with a golden glow.

Tell your living kids that they have a dead baby sibling. Because they do, after all.

Make a Facebook post, for sure.

Maybe plant a memorial tree?

I don't know, guys. I don't know.

From the start, I knew in my gut that this pregnancy wasn't going to go well. I just knew it. After a year of trying, it happened. The two lines. But I wasn't happy-I was nervous. An an infertility patient, my first move was not to laugh and relish the moment as I had in my last two pregnancies...it was to get labs drawn. To quantify the pregnancy.

At first, it looked good. I got the butt cheek shot of progesterone and waited.

Then the numbers weren't good, and it was over. Miscarriage. "Chemical pregnancy." The end.

Even before we got back the "bad labs", I had a feeling. I am convinced that good things don't happen to me. While waiting for the first round of lab results, I called my husband and explained that I didn't want to name the baby if it was gone. I didn't want to memorialize it in any way. I wanted to try again next month. I had never been so sure about anything before in my life. But I was convicted, for lack of a better word. I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.

But should I?

"Life begins at conception", after all.

There was a baby. Then there wasn't.

I told a friend this conviction after the "bad labs", and she assured me that if I decided to name it later, she'd support me. Like not wanting to name it was a poor decision made in grief, and I would come around later.

But for me, it was the clearest choice I'd made in years.

How callous. How unfeeling.

How un-Christian, to ignore your baby's death.

Let me walk you through it for a minute.

For me, it never felt like that baby was mine. I was never joyous. When it was over, I felt like I expected it. It hurt-good God, did it hurt-but it was a pain I expected to come, like watching a train coming down the tracks.

That baby has only ever been God's.  Its heart never even beat.

Every beat of that babe's heart has been with the Lord.

Every. Single. One.

I don't want to memorialize that baby on my skin or in the ground because all I've known of that baby is its death. If we truly believe that life with Christ is the ultimate goal and better than anything we can know on earth, then we also believe that that baby's death doesn't matter more than what comes next.

That's right, I said it.

That baby's life (and all of our lives) is so much more than its death. All I knew of that baby was two lines and its death. God knows so much more. And someday I'll see it after my own death. But for now, that baby is God's more than it was ever mine.

It doesn't feel like I have a right to name it in my grief or mark its death on the earth.

I don't want to name that baby something related only to its death or resurrection. I don't want to define its life by its death.

I refuse to name it some bizarre word purely out of my grief when it is God's more than it ever was mine.

God has always had a name for that child that has nothing to do with its death and everything to do with its life with Him. It doesn't feel like my right to name it.

And in pure hope in our God's power, I believe that we will need to use more of our favorite names someday, so I'm going to save those.

So if you've experienced loss or talk with someone who has, or even if you've experienced this grief yourself, let them grieve their way. Let them get their tattoo or pretend it never happened and accept it without judgment or remark. Let them mark the date on their calendars or forget it. At the core of our beliefs is the resurrection and life eternal; pregnancy loss gives us a very early challenge to those beliefs.

And someday, maybe, He'll teach me the perfect name He picked for my baby.

Love,

The Pastor's Wife