The Tears Flow Easily Today

I have contemplated writing.  I have felt the nudge to write.  Perhaps I am hoping for some kind of healing or maybe for a small release from the grief that weighs so heavily on my chest.  I did not see my Lenten sacrifices coming, and they have been many.  So I sit here, on a snowy afternoon, in the wake of some of the toughest weeks of my life.

When you become a mother you do not realize that it will take everything, and I mean everything.  It takes your mind, spirit, and body.  With the latter you never realize just how much of your body you will have to give and at times with no happy reward. Love comes with the deepest of pain. I have had my third miscarriage and this time it came with full force.  It came with fear, trembling, and deep sacrifice.  My body poured out for a baby that had long been gone and it literally ended with me cruciform on an operating table.

My pain right now comes from having given so much with no reward.  I carried that child, Marie Therese, for such a short time, but suffered mightily for weeks.  This particular miscarriage has tested me in ways that I did not know possible.  I repeatedly cried out to Our Lord and Our Lady.  I asked Our Mother to wrap me in her mantle and asked her to pray to her Son for me.  It was all I could muster.

I am struggling to understand.  I will never understand. It may be that the fear and trauma have a good grip on me right now.  Or that the pain is just too fresh.  I went to Confession the other night.  I literally stumbled into the confessional.  I walked in without even knowing what I was going to say.  I just needed something.  I need to hang on.  I needed His grace to be right in front of me because I am so blind right now.  My heart is shattered in a million pieces and my body is weak and beaten.

The Lord met me in the Confessional through our new priest Father Mike.  I had never been to confession with him because the last couple of times that I have gone have been with other priests.  He was the right priest for the job.  I knew in that moment that Our Lord was trying to tell me something.  He was telling me to be patient, that it is okay to be mad and confused, to feel the same as Psalm 22 and as He himself cried out on the Cross "Why has thou forsaken me?", to struggle, but most of all just pray.  He told me to pray.  He told me that it does not have to be contemplative or brilliant.  These are the times that memorized prayers are best.  They lead to deeper prayer.  They are a life preserver in rough seas.  They are all that I can summon right now.  They were all that I could muster as I lay bleeding in the ER Sunday night.  The tears flowed as I confessed and then He washed me clean.

This miscarriage is harder on me than my last two.  Not because I did not grieve the loss of my other two children.  I still grieve for them.  It has been harder because it has shown me the Cross in all of its horrible weight and glory.  And I don't mean some fuzzy warm feeling.  I mean in the awe inspiring and fear ridden kind of way.  To truly bleed out for another, even with no reward.  Christ saw all of the people who would ignore His call to love and truth.  He died for them.  My life was put at risk for a child I would never hold.  I am an anxiety ridden person.  Between hormone fluctuations and genetics I tend towards depression and anxiety.  This has been a great test of trust for me and I am not even through it.  Now I have to process and grieve in the aftermath of it all.  This will be the real struggle for me.  Balancing the fact that God led me through this suffering and has let me stay here to mother my daughter and be a wife to my husband.  He granted my prayer, because that was the last prayer that I uttered before the lights went out and my surgery began.  I need not push myself too hard.  Like He told me in Confession: be patient.  I will continue on in my journey.  Right now I just ask Our Lord to carry me for I do not know the way and my grief has blinded me.  Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me.  Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for my family and me.

**Side Note: In the future I will write about my actual miscarriage and emergency D&C experience in the hope that it helps another family who has gone through this tragic experience.  God bless you.**