Mother's Day

May 12th, 2013. That was my due date. After wanting nothing more than to be a mother my whole life, I was pregnant. We told our families right away, but waited to tell the world, just in case. 

We went to hear the heartbeat for the first time when I was 9 weeks along. But the room was silent. We had lost our baby, and my body didn’t know. I decided not to intervene but to let my body figure things out. After a month of being pregnant but not pregnant, I decided to take the medicine to help the process along. I called into work sick, took the pills, binge watched Disney movies, and waited. After a second dose 12 hour later, it was all over. And I could start to heal. 

Except that my hCG levels still showed that I was pregnant. I had to continue to get my blood drawn each week, and the levels weren’t going down fast enough for my doctor’s liking. By mid-December, I was almost where I needed to be, but every visit to Quest Diagnostics tore me apart. I just wanted to move on. I wanted to stop being reminded of it every week. So I stopped getting my blood drawn. I started to heal. 

With the New Year came a new calendar. I started filling in the family member’s birthdays and anniversaries like I did every year. Then I got to May. May 12th. Mother’s Day. I had no idea until then that my due date had been Mother’s Day. All the healing came undone. 

But God is faithful. He really used that season of my life as I clung to Him. In sorrow, we choose whether to move closer or farther from God. I believed what I had always believed. God loves me. God knows what’s best. And God was in control. It didn’t make it hurt any less, but God is the ultimate Comforter. He was definitely close to my broken heart as I stumbled through the next couple of months. 

I wasn’t ready to try to get pregnant for a while after the miscarriage. Then we wanted to avoid a holiday baby. Then we stressed about getting pregnant and for several months the tests came back negative. We finally stopped trying. But God was in control. The next month I was pregnant. With another May baby. I got to hear the heartbeat. I got to feel the kicks. And the hiccups. And after a ten hour labor, I got to hold him. And then bring him home. 

Time has shown me a lot that I could not have seen before. I have a better vantage point of the tapestry that God was weaving. Two months after the miscarriage, Doug lost his job and we both worked part time. Nine days after we found out we were pregnant, Doug was signed on full time with benefits. At the time of the miscarriage, we lived in a one bedroom cupboard that was almost always too hot or too cold and had cardboard walls. A month after Coen was born, we moved into our brand new townhouse. The day before we moved we got new neighbors and we found out just how thin those walls were. The timing was too perfect. I am not saying that God could not have provided for us if we hadn’t lost our first child. He absolutely would have. We didn’t lose our child because God couldn’t work with our situation. I’ll never know why we lost that child. But I can see how God worked everything together for the good of his purpose (Rom. 8:28). Without the miscarriage, there would be no Coen, my rainbow baby. 

This year will be my first Mother’s Day. It has been a journey to get here. This first Mother’s Day feels like I finished a marathon. It will forever be bittersweet. And forever a reminder of God’s faithfulness.