Today’s post is one I’ve contemplated for months and truthfully I’m glad I had taken that time with my husband to fully process, grieve and heal. Last September, I miscarried at 5 weeks. We had been trying to conceive for almost a year and we were surprised when we finally got pregnant. Negative tests were something we had become used to seeing month after month and I began to feel really defeated. What we learned, how I even got pregnant, the signs that were put in our path and the growth that came from a very hard year are the reasons I am feeling hope-filled today. I see God in everything, and even through the brokenness I know He can redeem our story, which is the hope I want to share with you today. I am not pregnant, I don’t have my rainbow baby or even know what’s to come (especially during a global pandemic). All I know is this, God is good. Today on our podcast we are sharing our full, raw story about what we went through and how we survived one of the hardest years of our lives. It challenged our marriage, tested our faith and made me really invest in the tools for my mental health and battle with anxiety. A miscarriage was truly one of my worst fears, and yet I survived it. It’s part of my story and I am not ashamed, I am human. I learned from 2019, a year that will go down as one of the most challenging but strengthening years: I can do hard things. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
The thing about miscarriages are, even though they’re so common (my doctor told me 1 in 3 will experience one), we feel so alone. It’s not something that is talked about openly or often. I have however seen women online lead the way in sharing their story and they are the ones who made me feel less alone and comforted me through one of hardest things I’ve ever had to go through to date. When praying about if and when we should share our story, this verse came on my heart:
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 New International Version (NIV)
Praise to the God of All Comfort
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Another translation I love from The Message of this verse says…
“He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too.”
We live in the fall of the world and there is brokenness in the fall. Part of that brokenness are miscarriages. I hope that by publicly sharing something so intimate, personal and painful to us we can help you feel less alone and supported. With the platform we have, we felt we needed to share what God has been teaching us and bring awareness to the struggles of trying to conceive and miscarriages. Our faith is not formed by all the blessings (though we are grateful), opportunities or a picture perfect Instagram feed that’s curated and polished. That would be too easy. Our faith and our belief comes from experiencing hard, difficult and heart-breaking things. He continues to give us hope and peace even in the most hopeless of situations. We are not in control of anything (the time we are living in right now is a true testament to that) God is and trust comes from not knowing the outcome. That’s why it’s called trust. I am trusting and believing that our story doesn’t end here. Not for you and not for me. God can bring renewal and God bring good out of brokenness — however that looks and His will and timing. I pray you will leave listening to this podcast with the confidence and belief that is true.
“Staying positive doesn’t mean you have to be happy all the time. It means that even on hard days you know that there are better ones coming.” – anonymous
God Bless you and keep you.
Peace and Grace,
Stephanie
