TW: Miscarriage
Grace, our first child, was due on December 27th. When we found out that we were having a “Christmas Baby” we laughed and rolled our eyes. Being on staff at a church means that December is a terrible time of year to give birth – it’s kind of like expecting a baby in April if you’re an accountant. We broke the news to our moms and told them that we’d have to serve peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for Christmas dinner that year.
But we didn’t get to keep Grace. She left us seasons before winter.
After my miscarriage, my body was chaotic. I didn’t feel like I owned the flesh I occupied anymore. My brain was in fight or flight mode. Old, and as yet untreated PTSD was driving my panicked thoughts. But my heart was maybe in the worst shape. Badly broken and afraid, all that pain quickly turned into anger and hardness. Hardness towards myself, who I blamed as the vehicle of my child’s death. Anger towards all the well-intended people who injured us with phrases that sounded like “At least you know you can get pregnant,” or “At least you weren’t that far along,” or “You know that when a pregnancy ends like this, it’s usually because there’s something wrong with the baby.” Deep resentment toward every round, soft, pregnant body I saw at the grocery store – and there were suddenly so many of them.
But especially, that hardness hung like loud radio static between me and God. I lost the words to pray, because my prayers hadn’t been answered anyway. I stopped taking communion as a form of stubborn protest. I raged against the faith that was supposed to sustain me. This was a different kind of complication that came with being on church staff. I spent many months going through the motions, and though none of them ever said so, I’m sure the students could tell. As my friend Liz says, “Young people have great B.S. detectors.”
I had hoped that by December my heart would be healed, or at least well scabbed over. I had hoped it would stop hurting enough to find some holiness in Advent. But it turns out that a season that revolves around the birth of a child, punctuated by images of a very pregnant Virgin Mary, and so many Happy Families in all things commercial only served to carve out a great emptiness in me. What I really longed for if I’m being honest, was the season of Lent, where we prepared for the crucifixion. I thought it would feel like justice. A child for a child. Christmas was about hope and joy, but I craved blood and tears.
My spouse and I decided that we needed to seek some quiet. We asked our families for a pass on celebrations, and on Christmas Eve we packed our bags and left for a cabin in the middle of nowhere. We spent 6 days alone in the woods, with our dog, doing Very Little. We spent time hiking, reading, napping and sharing space in a way that we didn’t know how to do during the months since losing Grace. We were both grieving so differently, it had allowed us to drift into our own spaces. We couldn’t figure out how to care for each other, and we were too tired to try. Being in that cabin alone required us to slow down and acknowledge each other’s loss. That’s the most important lesson I learned in the woods that week: how to lean into a season of rest.
We didn’t return from our trip “more in love than ever before,” or “healed from our grief.” Neither did I reconcile my anger with God overnight. (Indeed, it would require a season of crucifixion and death, meeting God as the Weeping Mother, to begin to see the ways She was present in our pain.) But in that time away we had learned the importance of respite, so that we had the ability to care for ourselves and one another. We came back to our daily lives knowing that the sacred art of napping was an integral part of our grief and healing.
All these years later, this is something I have come to relish about winter. This time of year where nothing is growing, and everything can seem desolate, it reminds me that it is also my season to rest. To give myself permission to wrap up in warm blankets, make no plans, and go to bed early. To secretly look forward to the forced pause that comes with the big snows of the Midwest. To ease into the ache of old grief and indulge in pondering life with another child. I am grateful for this season that looks much like death, so that deep inside, rest and nourishment can begin to map out the new things ahead.
Sara
12/3/19
Saraline Speaks 