Christianity Archives - Page 24 of 41

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Miscarriage {13}

“So, what brings you in here today?” the ultrasound tech asked, even though she already knew. She had a paper on a clipboard that told her everything.

I looked at the woman. She wore her silver hair in a chic haircut and looked at me over purple-rimmed glasses. It took me a minute to form the words. “I think I’ve had a miscarriage,” I answered, willing myself not to cry. I was not going to cry, not yet.

“What makes you think that? Roll up your shirt a little.”

I did not want to talk about it. I did not want to go into the details with this woman who was about to tell me my baby was dead.

But she gave me a grandmotherly look that said, “Spill it, Kid,” and I found myself compelled to tell her all the same.

The blood had started suddenly and came in a great gush. I felt it as soon as I stood up, and I knew. The giggles from the children, the clanking of the silverware against the plates, and the smell of dinner all faded in an instant. “Oh no!” I had said to my husband who was still sitting at the dinner table with the children.

I ran from the room, leaving him there while the green beans burned on the stove.

“What’s wrong?” he called, but I couldn’t answer.

I was in the bathroom. The blood filled the toilet. I was only eight weeks pregnant. Maybe nine. I hadn’t even been in to see a doctor yet.

My husband knocked gently on the door. “Are you alright?” He looked in. When I saw his face, the tears came.

“I’m…”

But I couldn’t say it. I tried to speak but there were no words. I’m losing the baby.

“Get in bed and put your feet up,” the on-call doctor said when I finally managed to control my shaking voice long enough to talk on the phone.

“Will that really help?”

He paused. I could tell he was trying to think of the right way to say it. “There’s really no way to stop a miscarriage,” he said.

I was quiet.

“You need to get in for an ultrasound as soon as possible to make sure the fetus has fully aborted. Then we can schedule a D&C, if necessary.”

“This is not a fetus,” I said. The words came out hotter than I expected. “This is my baby.”

The phone was silent. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. He sounded young, but not so young that he hadn’t already begun to reduce miscarriages to nothing more than the ordinary process of a woman’s body aborting flesh that couldn’t be sustained.

Still, he tried to soften his voice when he told me to watch for the body of my baby to pass. “Don’t flush it,” he cautioned.

Flush it? Flush my baby? Sorrow welled up in me. I choked into the receiver. But the doctor didn’t hear. He was busy with his instructions about bleeding and fevers and cramps. “Whatever you do, don’t wait to get that ultrasound,” he said.

But waiting was all I could do. The ultrasounds were booked out and I couldn’t get an appointment the next day. I couldn’t get an appointment the day after that because it was Saturday. That meant I had to wait through Sunday too. “The earliest I can get you in is Tuesday,” the receptionist said. “Do you want to come in at 8 or 10?”

Four weary days and four long nights stood between me and the final answer, the confirmation that this pregnancy was over, that somehow, my body had not been able to protect this life. It was altogether too much time to think, too much time to wait, too much time to suspend grief.

I deserve this, I thought. I deserve it. Five years earlier, I had not wanted the child I had been given. I had railed against God for making me a mother when I did not want it. I had thought then that He should take that life from me and spare another. Perhaps this was the life He was taking. Perhaps it was time to give me what I had wanted, to give me what I deserved.

“So, you didn’t do anything unusual to cause the bleeding?” the ultrasound tech’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“No,” I said. “I was just making dinner, like always.”

The woman had listened to every word while she smeared goo all over my stomach. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “sometimes bleeding happens, but Baby is still fine.”

I turned away and tears came to my eyes. Don’t give me a hope you can’t make good on, I thought. Don’t let me think there might be a chance, not now. I had spent the last four days numbing my heart, and she had the nerve to try to wake it back up.

“I’m just going to take a look,” she said as she pressed the wand onto my skin. “I won’t turn the screen on just yet.” Her voice was a whisper, sad and loving.

Jeff grabbed my hand. I felt cold. My toes were numb.

“This must be a hard job,” I reasoned out loud, partly to take my mind off the reality of what was happening, and partly because I suddenly had compassion on this woman who had to tell mothers their babies would be waiting for them in heaven.

“Some days it is very hard,” she agreed. I could see the light of the computer monitor reflecting in her purple rimmed glasses. She seemed to smile. “This is not one of those days.”

She flipped a switch and the screen above my head lit up before I could even process what she had said. Without even intending to look, I saw it: a black and white image of two tiny babies on the screen over my head.

“You have twins,” she said, the smile spilling over into her voice.

My body shook and my hands flew to my face. I couldn’t stop the tears. I heard Jeff laugh, but my mind could not comprehend it. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be!

“Are they…alive?” I could hardly say the word, could hardly ask the question.

“They’re perfect.”

The words were soft and preposterous, beautiful like snow on a cloudless day.

“Look at your babies, Mamma,” she said.

I opened my eyes again. There they were, two little babies kicking their lima bean feet inside my womb. Safe. Perfect. Two.

It was unfathomable and ridiculous and wonderful all at the same time. There on the screen was everything I didn’t deserve. I was the mother who hadn’t wanted children. I was the mother who had wished for a miscarriage not that many years before. I was the mother who had to learn how to love her baby.

I was the sinner.

I was the prodigal.

I was the woman at the well, fully expecting the punishment for the guilt I carried.

But God was not throwing any stones, and God was not giving me what I deserved.

Here I was, on the cutting side of grace. No fire from heaven or torrent of hell could have proclaimed my unworthiness more than the sight of those two babies on that screen. I knew I did not deserve them.

And yet…

And yet He loved me. And yet He poured out His lavish and frightening favor upon me. And yet He heard my cry and said to me, “It is forgiven.”

Oh, but I couldn’t let it be forgiven. I couldn’t let go of what I had done. I couldn’t let go of what I had thought and how I had felt and how I had fought His hand and the child in my womb. I could not let myself have that kind of atonement. Justice I could stomach, but not mercy.

But on that day, mercy found me. On that day, mercy paid double for the life I had not wanted. It redeemed a motherhood I thought I had ruined and restored in me the hope that God could indeed work through someone so undeserving.

“Are these your first? I mean, first and second?” she asked.

“No!” I laughed. “These are four and five!”

The woman on the other side of the monitor laughed. “Well then, you are blessed!”

Blessed.

On this beautiful day, nearly five years from the day I saw the face of God on an ultrasound screen, I am thankful for mercy, for the lavish love of a redemptive God, and for the beautiful truth that today, and forever, I do not get what I deserve.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Daily Bread {10}

When I was a girl, my mother made all our bread. It took forever to rise and even longer to bake, and while we waited, the scent of it crusting up and browning inside the oven filled the house and tormented me.

I pressed my hands against the oven glass and looked in at the two loaves inside. One was the sacrificial loaf. As soon as the timer went off, we’d cut into that loaf, risking the release of steam that might burn our fingers. Each butter-saturated slice was devoured with absolutely no concern for whether or not it would ruin dinner.

The second loaf was never as good as the first because we were not allowed to touch it until it cooled entirely. That loaf was reserved for sack lunches and breakfast toast, even though the butter didn’t taste as good on breakfast toast as it did on bread fresh from the oven. But it nourished us, body and soul, and that was the most important thing. With three growing children and a husband to feed, my mom felt that day-old bread was a blessing. Two-day-old bread was a miracle.

These memories came back to me today as I mixed up a big batch of dough in my stand mixer. I don’t need to do much more than dump ingredients in and let the mixer run. But sometimes, I like to connect to the process a little more, to remind myself of the earthly necessity of providing for my children and the joy that comes from being able to do it well. So today, I decided to knead the dough myself.

A connection to the common

I took off my rings and put them on the windowsill, just like my mother used to, and the way I imagine her mother did before her. When I was a little girl, I used to wear Mom’s wedding ring while I watched her work. I liked how it carried the warmth of her finger in the heaviness of the gold.

I turned the dough out onto a floury counter the way I had seen her do so many times before. In my mind, I saw her hands covered in dough. But I felt the work of the kneading in my own arms. Sweetly scented yeast and the fragrance of freshly-ground flour connected me to the generations and generations of women who have come before me, an entire lineage of mothers who have served their families in the making of their daily bread.

Sometimes I feel alone in this parenting thing. But not today. Today I felt a part of something bigger.

The children crowded around, observing my work and begging for scraps. I remembered pestering my mother the same way, and how she would give us little bits of dough to work until they were grey, sticky, and completely inedible to anyone but a child.

“If I give each of you a piece, there won’t be anything left to bake!” I said.

My children considered this. I knew what I would have said.

“We don’t care!” they shouted, as if on cue. I gave them each a little piece of dough and noted how quickly the loaves diminished when five children had gotten their share. But some things are worth the memories.

It is a different world now than it was when I was a child, I thought as I waited for the bread to bake. Motherhood is all at once more complicated and less valued than ever before. Sometimes, I don’t think my great-grandmother would understand my struggles very well, and I wouldn’t be able to relate to hers.

But then, I wonder. Perhaps it is more the same than I know. I thought of my mother’s hands, shaping the loaves, and my grandmother’s, and mine. We are, all of us, mothers. We understand what it is to do our best to provide for our children. We are mothers who have lived in different times and under different circumstances but yet we have felt the same heartaches and triumphs that come with trying to raise children to the praise and glory of God.

It is a common loaf we share.

Daily Bread

Whether we feed our children with rice or with wheat, we understand. We are mothers.

On this beautiful day, I am thankful that I am not alone, that I share the common experience of uncommon motherhood with women of every space and time. I am glad to know that I am putting my hands to the work that has been done so well by so many others before me, and that, by the grace of God, will continue to be done by so many after me.

Today, I knead and bake and taste the bread of a thousand dailies, the bread of a thousand generation of mothers who are just like me.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Hospitality {9}

We are having company for dinner tonight, which means I am in a mad scramble to make it look like no one lives here. I have almost finished the lasagna but the floor still needs to be mopped and the kitchen is a wreck and there’s an entire corner of the living room where random Christmas trimmings have been collecting since the morning of December 25.

I look up at the clock where the minutes keep on ticking by and I realize that I never fixed that tear in the couch. I notice that I don’t have enough matching dishes and I’m completely out of napkins. I have forgotten all about making the brownies for dessert but I have become acutely aware of the fact that my children still have not learned to flush the toilet in the hall.

Anxious thoughts flood my mind. I don’t know what to do next. I can’t think. Then the children stomp through and demand my time with comments and questions that seem so menial in the light of my greater responsibility. “I had it first!” “He hit me!” “Can we have a snack?”

I feel anger welling up. Why are they bothering me now? Can’t they see I’m busy? “I don’t have time for this!” I snap. “Go find something to do!”

But what I really mean is, you are too much of a bother. You are getting in the way of the little show I’m trying to pull off. You are messing up the mirage that we have it all together.

Why do I do this to myself? I think as I mop the floor. Every time we have company over, it’s the same way. I fall into a trap of trying to be perfect. I suddenly become dissatisfied with my home and my children and my husband and especially myself. My husband can never be helpful enough and the children can never play quietly enough and I can never do enough to make myself look much better than I really am.

It’s the old hypocrite in me coming out to play. I talk a big talk about grace, but on Friday nights when company is coming over, I don’t want it. I want a clean house. I want to keep up appearances. I will worry about all that sin that is death after the company goes home and no one cares if I have dirty dishes in my sink.

After every one goes home, I will apologize to my husband and the kids and say things like, “I’m sorry I was a little cranky,” because saying “I’m sorry I was a little cranky” is easier than saying, “I’m sorry I yelled at you” or “I’m sorry I didn’t have time for you” or “I’m sorry I loved a clean kitchen sink more than you.”

I will say it sincerely enough, though, as if I learned something. But really, all I want is to justify the tyrannical behavior that got me what I wanted. I acted unlovingly toward my husband and children but I got a clean house. It seems like a fair enough trade.

But of course, it isn’t. Trading grace for works is the ransom of a birthright for a pot of stew. It is a cheap exchange that leaves everything around me tainted no matter how hard I clean.

Today, getting the house clean in time seemed to be more important than love or grace or any of those things that tend to leave dirty footprints on my floor. Today, checking off the to-do list was more important than being honest and real and kind.

But on this beautiful day, God did not leave me in my sin. He reminded me of grace. Deep down, I know that a friend will not care if my house is clean or not. I certainly don’t care if hers is. In fact, I don’t mind if there are a few crumbs on the floor or dust on the windowsills because I can understand that. That makes me feel right at home and I love her all the more because she trusts me enough to know that it is okay for me to see her smudges.

And I am nothing if not a little smudgy. I fall short just like everyone else. I understand that, I think, until it’s time for me to be on the receiving end of grace. Then I don’t like it. Then, I want to work it out so I can give grace without having to swallow any of it myself.

But it’s not enough to give grace. I must receive it. I must let people in to the mess and the brokenness and trust that they will love me all the more for my weakness. I must hold on to the promise that Christ will indeed be more glorified through the broken pot than the whitewashed vessel.

On this beautiful day, I got to be a broken pot, an open door, a woman acquainted with grace.

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