** The contents of this post may offend your sensibilities, gross you out, and/or not be something you wish to fill your pretty little head with– you have been warned. **
If you follow my blog at all you are probably wondering… part two? What was part one? Well I am getting ready to revamp the blog a little bit and that also means renaming some of the previous posts and giving them a featured image that makes more sense. Here is part one, if you missed it last time. Now, on with this post:
I have NOT been coping well with my mom’s passing– when I should be turning toward God I find I am more inclined to turn away. I used this analogy recently to explain my feelings about God right now to a friend of mine:
You know those movie or TV scenes where Person A is angry, sad, scared, etc– feeling lots of hard emotions– and Person B, who may or may not have anything to do with the feelings Person A is experiencing, either approaches or just happens to be in the way of Person A and Person A lashes out fiercely against them? Incoherently screaming at them, beating them hard in the chest, unleashing all of the pent-up rage that has boiled up inside for too long? And Person B, stands there and takes it, eventually trying to restrain Person A–not to protect themselves, but to protect Person A– because Person B knows the rage and emotion comes from a primal place of fear, sadness and longing and really they aren’t trying to restrain Person A so much as they are trying to embrace them and let them know they are not alone?
I am Person A. God is Person B.
But I am still raging.
BLAH BLAH BLAH, I know God didn’t CAUSE my pain and BLAH BLAH BLAH it is not right or okay to be angry at Him and BLAH BLAH BLAH again and again with all the things people say to you when you tell them you are angry at God.
Just because I know it, doesn’t mean I feel it AND it doesn’t help to hear it again– you are not telling me something I don’t know.
Eventually I’ll let God embrace me but not right now– I can’t.
This isn’t meant to just be a rant about God but it felt like the place to start before I moved on to why I am really writing.
On March 5, 2018 my husband and I were informed the heart of our 8 week little life was no longer beating.
Yes, I was pregnant.
Yes, I just experienced a miscarriage.
The only photo of my precious child before their heart stopped beating. 2/23/2018
But because my body had not “purged the tissue on its own” I had to do it with medication. I had to FORCE the husk of my unborn child out of me. Wanna guess how you do that?
Let me just tell you. You shove four little pills into your vagina as close to your cervix as you can get and lay flat for four hours and wait for the meds to do their thing. My doctor also prescribed me a percocet so I didn’t have to feel the gut wrenching physical pain of forcing the miscarriage to happen. So then I wake up, deed having been done, and deal with the weirdest period ever for the next week, week and a half.
That’s how, IDEALLY, it is supposed to happen. Except I woke up, four hours later and nothing happened. SO, I got to take the remaining two pills orally and wait to see what would happen– and this time, I didn’t take a percocet. I get very nauseous when I take medication like percocet and vicodin so unless I am going to go to sleep immediately after taking it, I would rather be in pain than be sick.
So I felt every massive, gut-wrenching cramp as my uterus seized up and spit out the amniotic sac with the tiny little fetus inside. It was by far the most horrific thing I have ever experienced.
Apparently, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a miscarriage… I realize that is only 25% but that seems high to me… especially since I know of only like FIVE people in my life who have openly told me (or the world) they have experienced a miscarriage/still birth. This means there are a LOT more women out there not sharing their stories… and as a result making us ALL feel alone during these tragic moments.
Just as a side note, we should most definitely not be doing that to each other– or ourselves. I’m not saying walk around introducing yourself like, “Hi, my name is Valerie and I’ve had a miscarriage. What’s your name?” That is obviously silly, but the notion behind it is not. What do we have to lose by being open about this sort of thing with our sisters? What do we have to gain? Personally, I think there is a lot more to be gained. #sisterhood
Back to the regular scheduled programming: Here is my pain. My mom is gone– that hurts like hell. We accidentally get pregnant, there is mixed emotions of elation and fear not to mention thinking about how my mom will never see this child, but I warm up to the idea. This baby will be a light for me, for my family, for all impacted by my mom’s death. Then in an instant it is gone, the little glimmer of hope, the bright spot in my darkness vanishes, and I am left wondering why give it to me, to us, at all if it was just going to be taken away? The cherry on top, though? The one person more than anything that I want to comfort me is gone…
Gone.
I have not been coping with my mom’s death well and this latest devastation is making it harder; I am still fiercely beating my fists against God’s metaphorical chest as one thing after another comes crashing down on my head.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Even one of the greatest giants of faith struggled with fear and grief at the passing of his wife in the 60’s. I, too, still have much to wrestle with and I am sorry if you have become collateral damage in my path of grief– please allow me some grace while I walk, or sit stubbornly, on this dimly lit or darkened path.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
— Revelation 21:4
I cannot wait for this day.
But this isn’t a post about how to find yourself during a time of great turbulence or how to make your way across the desert unscathed– it is not that kind of post because I have not found myself and I am only 50 yards into the desert and I have already hit a cactus, been stung by a scorpion, and scorched by the sun… I have not yet made it to the other side to tell the tale of hope and redemption.
But I believe these stories are just as important and are so rarely told be cause everyone likes a good “happily ever after”. It is important to know we all struggle, and trudge, and trip, and get snared, and plummet, and bruise, and scar, and collapse. It is important to know there are times when others, like ourselves, do not see the light at the end of the tunnel, but hold out hope that it is there and plod along, however slowly or circuitously the journey may progress.
I am already making great strides, though! I started writing this post in anger and stubbornness because I was unwilling to be anything BUT angry and I wanted to VENT… then as I wrote, something amazing happened. I began to feel a little weight lifted from me and I felt freer than I had in a good long while. Just like the fortune I randomly decided to keep in my phone case shortly before my mom passed away says, “…sorrow shared is halved” I believe sharing my feelings here has helped me to wrestle more completely with them. If you get one thing out of this post I hope that it is to find whatever method of “halving your sorrow” works best for you and pursue it whole-heartedly– and you are not alone. Unfortunately for all of you, that means you get to hear from me more.
Don’t be afraid to share your mess.
The Messy Phoenix 