Back to Normal, but Forever Changed
This was a big week.
Standing in a closet full of professional clothes that I have avoided for weeks because they don’t fit right anymore and they are reminders of what I have been through.
Rising early to serve my family and get to school. Pouring into young minds all day and being on my feet. Returning home to spend time with my kids and husband and going to bed before doing it all again.
Facing the faces- the faces of caring coworkers, empathetic students and their parents.
How do I do this well, Lord? How do I continue to grieve while picking up more balls to juggle? How do I lead my students while being genuine? Those were some of my questions.
I will be honest- the first three days were immensely difficult. Unbearable at times. And it wasn’t because of anything people said or did, it was just because I was reliving our loss again. I felt like a spectacle, simply because something terrible happened to me- inside of me- and everyone knew it. And being a teacher is much like being on a stage. I couldn’t hide behind my desk and check tasks off a list, pretending it all away. I had to face it.
Being in my classroom also reminded me that the last time I was there, so was Maggie. The last time I sat at the piano bench with a student, I felt the little tickles in my stomach of Maggie’s kicks. The last time I sat at my desk, I was nauseous and putting my pregnant feet up during my lunch, excited for what was to come. I longed to go back to that time and ached knowing that there was no way that could happen.
I was reminded of my physical emptiness this week- an emptiness any mother who has lost an unborn child could understand.
I felt raw, undone, weepy, and exhausted. Did I feel ready? No. I’m not sure if I ever would.
The amount of hugs, cards, chocolates, and cookies I received were staggering and yet not surprising with how amazing my community is. As I sit and reflect on the week, that has brought me such joy and gratitude.
There have been moments of personal pain this week that made me wonder if I should have told my students’ families what had happened in the first place. You see, the morning we went into the hospital for me to be induced, I sent an honest email to parents about our present reality: that I had been 16 weeks pregnant (and had planned to tell students that week), and that our daughter had died and that I was going to the hospital to deliver her and would be out for some time.
I am a transparent person; otherwise, I don’t feel like I am being genuine. It’s just how God made me. And that honest email set off the most beautiful domino effect of meals and prayers and care that blew us away. I have felt so cared for and loved then, and I felt so cared for and loved this past week as well.
This week, though, it all felt painful. And so I asked myself, “Should I have not told families what had happened?”
Would that have taken away the pain when I noticed my younger students looking at my stomach sadly and looking away?
Would it have brought me relief to walk into a class of students who weren’t so somber? The atmosphere in my classroom at the start of every fresh class this week was very sad, honoring, and mellow.
But now, looking back, I am still glad I shared. Because while it hurt to relive seeing and leading all 10 new classes this week, continually feeling this loss each time, it was part of the healing process. These students and families loved on me so beautifully and ministered to me and my family. And it would have hurt me much more because of how God made me as a person and a teacher for them to not know why I was gone.
To see my students and parents shoulder the grief and express it with me was so incredible. God designed us to not carry these weights alone, and it brought me satisfaction and relief to allow their love to cover me and their sadness to join with me.
I had to accept, once again, that there is no way out of this pain but to wade through it and to embrace the beauty in the difficulty.
By Friday, I had seen all of 220 students for the first time and could just focus on moving forward in the music, and that was such a relief. There were moments I felt lighter and could fully engage in teaching, nothing else on my mind but the music, and that was such a lovely reprieve.
This week highlighted this pondering for me- I am so fascinated by the scope and cycle of grief and how God designed us to not live in it every moment. For instance, the concept of shock. Shock is a common grace He gives us to protect our bodies and brains. At times, I have felt unsteady for feeling numb or for not fully letting reality sink in, but I know it is part of God’s design to protect me.
And then when the shock wears off and the waves of reality come crashing over me, pushing me below the surface, I have learned to swim upward and lay flat on my back, letting the waves carry me until they calm. To cry and let it out, but to also trust and know it won’t last forever.
Monday night, I laid in bed and couldn’t stand up, my nervous system shot and my body weary. Tuesday night, I once again needed to lay down in the quiet, doing deep breathing exercises and listening to gentle piano hymns. Wednesday night, I bawled in JB’s arms. Thursday morning, I felt a little lighter, and by the afternoon I was making silly jokes with my older orchestra class, sharing stories of crazy wedding gigs I have played and laughing with them over who knows what. I went home and finally vacuumed the house. I read with my kids. And while that still felt uncomfortable and off-putting to me to feel normal and have more capacity, I know that that is not only okay, it is good.
I have entertained those mind games like many other moms in this situation- Am I honoring Maggie if I’m not sad all the time? Should I feel guilty thinking about the future of our family while also grieving her? And the answer is no.
Once again, her reality is eternal joy and happiness. Unending provision. She doesn’t have to fight for peace; she doesn’t have to slip away to a quiet cabin for days to feel Jesus’ presence near or desperately pray for a word of God in a season of turmoil.
And while I grieve not getting to comfort her when she cries from the pain of teething as a baby, when she scrapes a knee as a young child, or when she goes through her first break-up as a teen, I also feel immense joy and thankfulness that she will never need to be comforted from pain or sorrow. She will never cry a single angry, sad, or hurting tear.
She will only ever know rejoicing, contentment, ultimate purpose and provision.
And there is some real comfort in knowing that my group of loved ones is growing in Heaven. While I did not want it or ask for it, my father-in-law and my daughter are together. My relatives and family friends who ran the race well are there. And now I have another person to greet me when it is my time. What hope and excitement.
So I can laugh, cry, vent, and play music, knowing it is all okay.
And I can also walk through my same routines and schedule, knowing things are different and I am changed because of what has happened. And that is a good thing.
A wonderful friend who has known immense grief in her own life sent me such an encouraging text the day before I went back to work. She said:
“I have found as I have walked through some really hard times, that as you come through the most intense grief, things have shifted- in you and in your world. For me, life was never quite the same afterwards, and I had to learn that that was okay. That I didn’t have to try to make everything the same way it was before, and that I needed to give myself space and grace to explore my new ‘normal’. “
What a clarifying word that was for me as I faced going back. I praise God for the rich, deep, Godly people He has placed in my life- and all of this richness and depth is due to their own suffering. We each go through difficulties, pain, loss, diagnoses, discontentment, in this life. And He uses it all to grow us, draw us closer to Him, and to minister to others:
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 reminds of this promise: “...the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
Think of it…This is a tragedy, losing my daughter.
And yet…She is in Heaven. I never need to worry about her again.
And yet…I have felt Jesus’ tangible presence so strongly in all of this.
And yet…I have grown closer to Him and hopefully become a bit more like Him.
And yet…I have grown closer in my marriage and all my relationships.
And yet…I have been blessed by others in their love and care toward us.
And yet…God gives me the desire to write and share my story and His truths with others.
And yet…He gives me the opportunity to witness to my students and my own children who are watching how I approach this.
And yet…He is equipping me to bless and encourage others who may go through something similar someday, just as He has brought ladies into my life these past two months to do the same for me.
All the good from it is pretty staggering when I let myself think about it.
It doesn’t minimize what we have been through, it just gives space for what is true. The duality of loss as a believer points to the hope we have always.
It’s the most oxymoronic, bewildering, bolstering, beautiful thing.
Thank You, Lord.
His Eternal Word- Applicable in Every Situation and Season
God is so cool. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened…
I feel in dire need to hear a word of encouragement, guidance, comfort, etc. from God and am reading my Bible consistently, listening to sermons, and actively looking for Him. All of a sudden, the same verse or passage pops up multiple times in one week, and it’s always from different places- the Verse of the Day on the Bible app, a selected passage in my daily reading plan, a shared Scripture from a friend, a verse image shared on social media, a topic discussed in a sermon. It’s a gentle, loving reminder from God that He is here. He is speaking to me, guiding me, loving me. When I seek Him, I will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 7:7-8).
Well, that happened to me again this week in the form of Psalm 71. This Psalm came to me early on after we lost Maggie, but God renewed my experience of it during this first week back at school. When I read it a few weeks postpartum, I read the passage through the lens of Maggie- who she is, and what her reality is.
Holding her in my hands when I delivered her, I could feel her joy. It’s as if I could feel her soul actively worshipping, dancing, and praising God in that very moment.
I read verses 5-8, knowing these are words Maggie could have said herself when she embraced Jesus in Heaven:
“For You, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon You I have learned from before my birth; You are He who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of You. I have been as a portent to many, but You are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with Your praise, and with Your glory all the day.”
I forgot I had read that Psalm. And then it popped up the other evening in my Bible reading. The verses now felt like they were tailor-made for me, this week, this moment. I went to write it down…and lo and behold, in my notes I had written about it a month ago and had completely forgotten.
This same passage that brought me such peace imagining my little girl who has gone on ahead of me has now brought me such relief and comfort. Now it feels like my song as I forge ahead through life without her.
Verse 3 says, “Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; You have given the command to save me, for You are my rock and my fortress.” I think about that phrase, “Continually come”, and that is where I have been this week. Desperately clinging to Him, coming to Him in every moment. I will need to continually come to Him.
A theme that God has brought to my mind this week has been hope. Hope in the future, hope in God.
Loss can drain hope. The darkness of grief can settle so thickly on my heart that I am left with nothing but despair and fear of what is to come.
But God reminds me over and over that there is hope. Hope in His name. Hope in His righteousness. Hope in a future with Him. Hope in His promises, which He never breaks. It is all over His Word.
Verse 5 of Psalm 71 reminded me of that again this week: “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.”
I don’t need to muster up the strength to have a temporal, superficial hope. Just like God is love, He is my hope. I can dare to hope because of Him.
I loved my study Bible’s commentary on that verse: “God’s righteousness is His faithfulness to keep His promises, and this is the ground of hope.”
My ground of hope, my foundation of hope, is in His unwavering character, His unending love, His eternal righteousness. Thank You, Lord, for that.
When my current reality feels like misery at times, I can look back to His hand in my life. Verse 6 says:
“Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are He took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.”
The study Bible commentary says, “These believers learn here to trace God’s work in their lives back to the very beginning of their personal existence, before they were even born. Indeed, they even consider the faith that they articulate now to have begun then, before they could speak it.”
I can’t even grasp His faithfulness to me- that it began before I was even formed or born. The same truths for Maggie apply to me and to you.
Verse 18’s Study Bible note says, “the life of faith is meant to be passed on to one’s descendants.” What a privilege I get to preach of God’s faithfulness to my children here on Earth, as well as to others I speak with.
Verses 22-24’s breakdown in the Study Bible also summed it up so well: …we can have confidence and anticipation of giving testimony in worship.
Our very lives are worship. Prayer is an act of worship. Singing, playing my cello, serving my family, teaching, grieving…it is all an act of worship. And I can have confidence of His faithfulness and of this hope I have in Him, sharing all He has done and who He is.
Continuously Wrestling with the Questions
I was talking to a dear friend the other day about the places my mind goes when thinking about Maggie dying. Sometimes, I can just sit in the sorrow and mourn her being gone. Other times, though, I go back to the spiraling of the mind, replaying what happened over and over as if I can retroactively fix it. The denial and bargaining of grief.
How could I be so far along and she still died? Was it something I did? Was it the twinge I felt that one time, the spotting I had for two weeks leading up to losing her? The doctor reassures me it’s not any of those things…as does Google. And yet, I want to find the answer.
Radical acceptance, once again. It is sometimes a daily choice to not be consumed by the spiraling and to lay it down.
I was lamenting these things to my friend, wishing my mind could just rest for good, stop trying to find answers and fight the battle to put this down. My friend gently pointed out that we, as humans, are meaning makers. We long to make sense of things- to solve the puzzles, to have the reasons. Yet, there are so many things in life we will not have the answers to. And I continue to tell myself- and joyfully accept from others this same reassurance- this isn’t my fault and I am not to blame.
With acceptance that this wasn’t my fault comes acceptance that this terrible loss happened. With that acceptance also comes freedom- freedom to find peace in the impossible. Freedom to not be consumed by guilt, fear, what if’s, or trying to “solve the mystery” only meant for the Author or Life and Death. Freedom to trust God and His plans above it all.
This quote from Seasons of Sorrow by Tim Challies after losing his son was helpful to me:
“It falls to me, then, not to take blame for what happened, nor to attempt to determine God’s reasons for it, but simply to accept this as his will- his divine will, his secret will, his good will. There is much that God aims to teach me through it, I am sure. But I need to be careful to distinguish the purposes from the results, why God did it from how God will use it.”
Sharing the Load of Grief
Now that this tremendous week is laid to rest, I can think back and be grateful for all the moments of shared mourning I got to be part of. While it is so painful to have all of the memories at the forefront of my mind, I have been able to witness and accept the beauty of what it looks like to let others into my grief.
While painful at the time, my students’ somber tone was so fitting. Their cards were so meaningful. Hugging and crying with friends and family…it was all so beautiful.
A lot of big “firsts” are out of the way, and I am grateful for that. But I am also grateful for those moments and choose to see the light in them.
I think about when we went back to church for the first time after losing Maggie. It was my first time in a public space where I couldn’t hide because everyone knew what had happened. Our congregation had prayed over us and loved us so well. Walking into the building with tissues stuffed in both pockets, there was a tremendous buildup of emotion that was released through tears all morning. But I felt nothing but relief to be there, with my church family, before God in corporate worship. I knew I could be safe there to cry, to grieve, to praise Him.
And we Christians love to praise God from the mountaintops in life- when our hearts are bursting with joy and overflowing with gratitude.
But to worship through tears? Through agony? To be so heartbroken that I can’t even speak, simply worshipping Him in my heart? That is a different kind of worship- dare I say, even more deep and rich- and I felt His presence and comfort so near.
Psalm 7:17: “I will give to the Lord thanks due to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, Most High.”
Psalm 42:5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation.”
Hebrews 13:15: “Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to our God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.”
Revelation 21:4: “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.”
I can hold onto the truth that someday, my worship will be filled with nothing but joy for all my days.
The Weekend Before
I sat in the dark hotel room, curled up on the ottoman, staring out the window in tears. My dear husband had stepped out of the room to shower before bed; when he had left the room, I was fine- joyful, even. And yet, a few minutes of silence and some painful reminders hit me like a huge wave. I was wrecked.He came close and took my hand, listening to me pour out my heart for the hundredth time. Fresh waves of grief about how different I had thought this getaway would have been when we planned it months before came tumbling over me. Fear of the future, grief over the past, and a lack of clarity in the present all plagued me.
I stared through the glass at the dreamy path of snow below that was lit with lanterns, beckoning drivers and dreamers to follow it through the forest and toward the mountains. I stared at the grand peaks, still glowing with snow in the utter darkness. I felt so small looking at them. I felt so loved looking at them, knowing God created them for me to enjoy.
I took in this Narnia Land while my incredible husband spoke words of Truth over me. He prayed for me, he encouraged me, and then he got out his Bible. This has been a pattern our whole marriage, but especially in these past few weeks.
I had asked him questions no one could answer-
Why was this God’s plan?
What would become of our future as a family?
Is my body broken?
I was spiraling and hurting.
JB’s response was to read Job 38, and I can’t tell you the peace and relief I felt hearing God speak to Job with authority when Job came to Him with his grief-driven, pained questions.
-Where was I when He laid the foundation of the earth? (v. 4)
-Have I commanded the morning since my days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? (v. 12)
-Have I entered the storehouses of the snow? (v. 22). Sometimes I feel like I have, living in Alaska, but I haven’t…
-Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help, and wander about for lack of food? (v. 41)
I can tell you the answer has nothing to do with my power or knowledge.
And lo and behold, two days later, the next reading in my Bible app reading plan, called Inconceivable Redemption: God’s Presence in Miscarriage & Infertility, wrote of Job 38:
“Think about Job, who continually asks God his questions with raw honesty throughout his grief and loss. When God finally shows up with a reply, it isn’t to explain Himself or provide the reasoning behind the circumstances. It is to declare His sovereignty and character (Job 38-41). He doesn’t give an answer; He is the answer [emphasis added].
You see, tragedy and triumph go together. When we overcome pain with the love of Christ, when we embrace grief, knowing that God will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death to the other side (Ps. 23:4), there is a promise for those who are faithful. This promise is not that our dreams will come true, as we so often want to believe. It is for God’s will to be done in us and for Him to be glorified.”
In all my spiraling and wondering, I can return to God’s peace and foundational truths. I can accept His Will because I know His character, finding comfort in my questions because my God’s name is I Am (Exodus 3:14).
A quote from Seasons of Sorrow by Tim Challies faces some Job-like questions and answers:
“For something to be good is for it to meet the approval of God, and for something to meet the approval of God is for it to be good. If that’s the case, then who am I to declare evil what God has declared good? Who am I to condemn what God has approved? It falls to me to align my own understanding of good to inform my own. Ultimately it’s to agree that if God did it, it must be good, and if it is good, it must be worthy of approval. To say ‘Thy will be done,’ is to say, ‘Thy goodness be shown.’ It’s to seek out evidence of God’s goodness even in the hardest of his providences. It’s to worship him, even with a broken heart.”
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God loves children, and Jesus did not turn the little children away.
Our Bible study group has been reading through the book of Jeremiah, and I am reminded of the agony and anger God felt when seeing His people sacrifice children to other gods, going against His plan and leadership of the people. He disciplined them severely for this (Jeremiah 7:31 and beyond).
He loves Maggie, and He loves me. And He understands my grief well…
Because God lost a child, too. To save me.
Amazing love, how can it be?
