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100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Sin and Snakes {15}

This is not our snake.

Sin snaked its way into my home yesterday. Slippery-bellied and silver-tongued, it took me by surprise.

I am old enough to know better than to be surprised by sin. It is not my first time around the garden. It is not my first time standing under a tree, looking into the beady eyes of one who wants nothing but destruction for me. I should know better than to be surprised to find him lurking and to find myself listening.

But yesterday sin did not come for me. Sin was after my children, and I stood shocked by the underhandedness of it all. These are children. What a low-down and dirty thing to do, to come slithering into the playroom while I am busy about other things.

I should not have been surprised. I know enough to know that sin is no gentleman. He does not care if he hurts my feelings or harms my children.

This common thief of children’s hearts was all too willing to abandon the rules of engagement to go after the innocents. That has been his game all along. He lures with lies and covers with shame, and it all works so well that most of the damage is done before anyone even notices.

But this time, shame did not work. It only took one little child’s voice to open the door to truth and it all came tumbling out, ugly-faced and squinting from spending so much time in the dark. Sin. From the looks of its tangled coils, it had been there for quite some time.

Micah (4) Also, not our snake

My heart felt sick and heavy. I did not know what to do or how to do it. We talked about discipline, and I wondered if I had the strength to follow through with a punishment that seemed to be more a punishment for me than a penalty for them. For a brief moment, I actually felt a little sorry for myself because I was inconvenienced by it all. But then I recognized the hiss of an all-too-familiar foe, and I remembered. That was just another one of his lies.

Sin is not an offense against me; sin is an offense against God. My mother-heart aches when I see the sins of my children loud, audacious, and messy, when other people notice, when consequences are difficult to dole out and require a bit of mutual suffering on my part.

But if my heart is heavy, it should be heavy because my children have been caught playing with a snake in the garden of God. My children have bought into the lie. My children have offended a holy God. My children deserve punishment.

Faith (10) DEFINITELY not our snake

But this God is a Father-God, so unlike the destroyer. He is all of kindness, justice, and mercy. He longs to restore what sin has taken, and so He deals with my children’s sin the way any father would. He gives them a second chance.

Gently, God uncovers the shame. He throws open the windows and lets in the light. He exposes their sin and allows their father and me the opportunity to discipline them now so they are not found lacking later, when life is harder and the stakes are higher.

It is a grace that He does because it is far better to have to deal with the consequences of my children’s sin than to let the consequences of sin deal with my child. It is far better to deal with sin in this world than in the next.

It is not as if I can make it go away simply by ignoring it. I know my children sin. After all, they take after me, and I am well-acquainted with the Fall. Still, it is hard to see, so hard that I might be tempted to ignore the fact that it is a grace to see where my children fall short. It is a grace to be allowed an opportunity to help my children recognize and repent of sin, to correct their natural tendencies and be restored again to God before further damage is done.

So on this beautiful day, I am thankful for sin brought to light. It was not beautiful to see. It was not lovely or good. But also, it is not here anymore.

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: Faith {12}

This is a reprint of a post I wrote for Mother’s Day 2012. Come back tomorrow and see how God wrote the rest of the story using a reluctant mother with a little Faith.

It was the day before our first wedding anniversary when a home pregnancy test confirmed my fear: I was pregnant. The second pink line was so faint, I almost convinced myself it wasn’t there. But when I walked out of the bathroom and showed my husband, his face lit up and he wrapped me up in a huge hug. “Baby! This is such great news!” he beamed.

I burst into tears. It most certainly was not great news, and I was hurt by his excitement. I wanted his emotions to match mine; instead, they revealed the ugliness of my disappointment and fear, the ugliness of a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant with her own child.

It’s not that I didn’t like kids. I adored them. I had worked with street kids and orphans. I paid my way through college by being a nanny to a wonderful little boy. Everywhere I went, I drew kids to me like a magnet. But I didn’t want my own. I never had. I did not dream about being pregnant or holding a baby or decorating a nursery.

Everyone always said that when the time was right, I would want to have kids, and I believed them, partly because it was easier. It’s a solitary thing to be a woman who does not want children. There’s something abnormal about it. “I should try harder to want children,” I reasoned and tried to muster up some maternal instincts by sheer will-power. I wanted those feelings. They just weren’t there.

I held on the hope that one day, my desires would change so I could stop feeling like a foreigner in my own gender. Surely one day, I would want to have my own children. Someday, I wouldn’t have to explain that I didn’t hate children. One day, I would feel like a normal woman.

I did not expect to get pregnant first. I did not expect to have a baby before I was ready to be a mother.

A few weeks later, a blood test confirmed the home pregnancy test. Soon it became obvious that my stomach wasn’t flat anymore. I couldn’t quite fit into my jeans. I stood in the dressing room of Motherhood Maternity with a belly form under my shirt, trying on clothes, while tears streamed down my face. I walked out without buying a thing.

An ultrasound showed the baby was a girl, but I didn’t want anyone to know. Somehow, it made it worse to verbalize the fact that we were having a girl, not just a baby, but a girl. Deep down in the darkness of my heart, I hoped I would miscarry the baby. A friend of ours had lost her baby, and I wondered to God why He would take that baby, that loved baby, instead of mine.

Another couple we knew was struggling with infertility, and we had to call and tell them that we had gotten pregnant without even trying and I had to pretend to be happy because I couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt them to hear that I didn’t want this baby. I didn’t understand why God chose us and not them. Why not them?

The months passed. We found a hand-me-down crib and set it up in our walk-in closet because our one-bedroom apartment was too small to accommodate a baby. I came home from work and saw it there up against the back wall between my husband’s clothes and mine, and I bawled. I wanted to run away. I didn’t know where to go but I didn’t want to be in my own body anymore. I didn’t want to live my own life anymore, but how could I undo it, once it had been done? Something fundamental had changed and I could not put it back. I could not reverse it. I could not run away from it. I wanted to accept it, to embrace it, to be happy about it, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be happy because to be happy meant to let go. I was afraid to let go. I was afraid of what God might do if I let Him, as if my fighting and struggling could keep Him from doing it anyway. I was afraid that accepting this baby might make it okay, and I wasn’t ready for it to be okay.

The thing is, I did love children. I loved them so much, I couldn’t tolerate the idea of giving a child anything less than my best, of loving her any less than she deserved. I knew what would be required of me to be the kind of mother I knew I needed to be, and I wasn’t ready to do it yet. I wasn’t willing to do it yet.

But God has a funny way of taking our wills and conforming them to His own. He has a funny way of using babies to shake things up, of using the small things to take down the big things and to bring to light the stuff that shouldn’t be there at all.

The sun was just beginning to come up when we drove to the hospital to deliver the baby. I couldn’t stop shaking. I shook when they prepped me for surgery and I shook on the operating table. Even with a system full of drugs, I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering. I saw a bright red, squirmy baby pee all over the doctor. My husband named her Faith.

Faith.

It doesn’t take much faith to move mountains, and I certainly didn’t have much faith. I couldn’t even pray for more. But my husband did. He loved me through the ugliness and encouraged the tiny glimmers of love he saw in me. Somewhere in the depths of a very dark heart, that very little love began to grow. It was not immediate and it was not easy, but the more it grew, the more it wanted to grow, until one day, I realized how fiercely I loved this child of mine.

Then I cried. I cried every time I held her. I cried while she slept. I looked in at her and my heart broke because I had not wanted her. I cried because God had trusted her to me anyway, even though I was not ready or willing to open my heart to her. I cried because something I had never had but always wanted was slowly awakening in me, and I did not deserve it.

Over the course of the years, I have grown into motherhood, but it has not been an easy journey. Every year, when the Mother’s Day cards come out on the shelves and the local florists get a surge of business, I feel a sense of sadness. It is still difficult to accept the words “you’re a good mom” because I remember when I wasn’t. Some days, I’m still not.

On this beautiful day, I am reminded that I did not want this life. And I am so thankful I did not get what I wanted.

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