Flickering lights

It's hard sharing something so close to your heart with strangers.

 It's hard enough sharing with people that love you. I remember so vividly seeing our baby's heartbeat this past April, and feeling so very much like Hannah after she poured out her heart to the Lord when she asked for a child. I just as vividly remember the moment when the ultrasound technician shifted uncomfortably as she looked for the heartbeat at our second appointment, and how short she was with the secretary when she asked for our doctor to immediately come down to our room.

 "Yes, I KNOW what I'm asking for", she said in almost a yell to the secretary, "tell the doctor to come NOW!"

The only way I can describe the feeling when we got the news was that it felt like I was in a dream and was going to wake up any moment. I was crying and I could feel tears streaming down my face, but somehow I felt like I was also very distant, hovering and watching it all happen from above.

 I also distinctly remember looking at Stephen the moment after we found our our baby had died.
We didn't speak a word, but I know we were both feeling as one. Indescribable pain, and a broken Amen.

It's truly only God's grace that can allow a person to fully feel the pain of a loss and at the same time be filled with a compete peace that passes understanding. I never understood that phrase until that moment.

I remember the doctor explaining my options and me knowing without a doubt that I wanted to let it happen naturally. Little did I know what would actually transpire and that my miscarriage would send me by ambulance to the Emergency Room.

I remember Stephen talking to me and reminding me, knowing I tend to shut down and hide when I'm in pain, to let God use me through even this season to be a light, even if a flickering light at times, to a broken world.

I had to get my blood taken right after we left the office at a little place down the street, and I remember just sitting there, silently letting the tears stream down my face as the lady took my blood. I remember thinking how cruel it was to send me in public to be forced to be with people when all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and sleep for a week. As the little lady took my blood, I could sense she wanted to ask me what was wrong, but I didn't want to share with her. She doesn't know me, how can she care about my baby? How can she even begin to understand my pain? She doesn't deserve the right to be invited into this sacred time of grief.

But then I remembered Stephen's words in the car. And I told her. For those of you who have had a miscarriage, telling people, saying those words makes it real. That was the first moment I spoke those words, and it took everything I had, as if I was ripping them out of my heart. At that point I just crumpled into a ball and lost it.

After what seemed like forever, I finally lifted my head. To my surprise, she was crying too. And then she just started talking. She told me of her infertility. She told me of the miracle that led her to having a baby girl. She told me of that baby girl growing into a beautiful thirteen year-old young lady. She wept as she told me how that thirteen year-old young lady, her precious daughter, was tragically killed.

At this point I didn't know if I was crying for me, for her, or for the world. In a blur of tears, snot,  and what can only be the power of the Holy Spirit, we were hugging and praying. And at that moment I knew that my light, though flickering, had been something of a lighthouse to her pain. And suddenly I found myself realizing that maybe me going to this clinic to get my blood drawn wasn't about my baby, but hers.

Maybe it's in our pain that our light shines the brightest. That His light shines the brightest...if we let it. To think I almost shut her out because of my pride and self-pity. The conversation that transpired that day was all God, because there wasn't much of me left. But maybe that's the point.

Maybe pain isn't always about us at all, but about how God can use us through our pain and brokenness to be a lighthouse to the world.

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 

~Matthew 5:13-16