One Year

In one year a woman loses hope discovers faith and watches God revive a dream.

By Emily Wierenga

When I was 13 years old, a doctor told me I couldn’t have children. Fifteen years later, in May of 2008, I confessed this fact on national television, telling 100 Huntley Street viewers how I’d starved my body of fertility. I shared that, while God healed me of anorexia, my husband and I had little hope of ever conceiving, having tried for one and a half years with no results.

Following the show, a pastor approached us, asking if he could pray over Trenton and me. He laid hands on us, begging God to give us a son within the year. I wondered at the specificity, but appreciated the effort. Three months later, we conceived. While the line on the stick was faint, our joy was bold. We delighted in a God who did the impossible. We placed hands on my womb at night, dreamt of pigtails and baseballs, and loved our little Papoose.

Then, on October 6, the blood—as bold as our joy had been—let us know that our dreams had come to an end. I could do nothing but sit on the couch and cry. And my husband could do nothing but hold me.

No one had warned me of miscarriage. I’d heard the term before, but no one ever spoke to me of it. I didn’t know that this soul-crushing anguish was an all-too-prevalent tragedy; that one in five pregnancies ended this way; that every year over 800,000 women endured one. And I had no idea that half the women in my church knew what it meant to see that blood on the tissue, to feel one’s breath sucked instantly away, to curl up on the mattress and have no will to rise.

Miscarriage is a quiet funeral attended only by the immediate mourners. In many circles, it’s an embarrassment—a hushed hurt that no one knows how to heal, so everyone ignores. Yet it’s shrugged off by many doctors as a common, everyday occurrence.

God had done the impossible for us—He had given us a baby. And then, He had taken our baby away. I became so tired of crying. Of trying to understand. Yet it was all I knew how to do. As a perfectionist who finds meaning in “doing,” I felt at a loss, having no control over my very own body. I wondered, What had I done wrong? I kicked myself for every bike ride, for every cup of caffeinated coffee, for every scared thought regarding parenthood. It didn’t help when I confessed to my parents the loss of their grandchild, and they just stared, Dad asking, “Was there anything you could have done?” and me thinking, Yes, no doubt there was. But there wasn’t.

“Since 60 percent of all miscarriages occur because of the accidental event of chromosomal mis-combination, trying to find the cause of this random event will not help a couple avoid a similar outcome in a future pregnancy,” says Canadianparents.com.

Nevertheless, as one’s body leaks out the life that once lived, as one sobs over Fisher Price commercials and weeps at the sight of a woman and her stroller, it seems easiest to bottle up one’s hurt and blame oneself.

Yet grief, if left unexpressed, can strain a marriage—and so, it’s important to give each other space to mourn. My husband and I grieve very differently, much as we consume a steak dinner. He devours it, chewing with rapid speed until he’s finished. I, on the other hand, swallow mine slowly, until I’m too full to take another bite. But we still eat together, him waiting patiently until my plate is clean.

After learning of our loss, we both took time off from work and spent daylight hours on the beach. There, we built a stone memorial for Papoose and lay in each other’s arms, watching as the waves washed the shore. We said nothing—just silently remembered. We let go of the dreams we’d had for our baby, sending them out to sea on the foam-flecked tide. Then, we gripped each other’s hands and clung to each other.

It is essential, in the face of death, to hold on to whatever life still exists. Perhaps you know the pain of watching a five-week pregnancy slip down the drain. Or perhaps your miscarriage occurred much further along—after you met your little one face-to-face through the lens of an ultrasound—making the anguish of losing him near-unbearable. Either way, do not lose sight of the man before you, the partner whom God gave you. For that person is still very much alive, and still very much with you. And while he cannot know what it means to have creation planted within your womb but then ripped out without warning, he, too, longed for that child. He, too, had dreams for his “Papoose.” And with him, you can try again. When the time is right.

Soon after my miscarriage, precancerous cells were discovered in my cervix. A dim light began to shine, and people found hope in my miscarriage, saying, “See, God had a reason for this.” But God has a reason for everything, even for situations without silver linings.

While Trent and I began to try again, I secretly gave up hope of having biological offspring, convinced the doctors had been right. I believed, however, that God wanted me to be a mother, for the day the placenta left my body, I had opened my Bible and found this verse: “He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children” (Ps. 113:9 niv).

And so, we began to attend foster training, while continuing our attempts to conceive. Then, when the opportunity arose to adopt a local boy due in May—the same month we’d expected to give birth—we saw it as a sign. Allowed our hopes to rise. But after the papers had been signed and the process was underway, the mother changed her mind. And again, devastating pain. Much like the miscarriage.

In spite of the tears, I still heard His voice saying, “I settle the barren woman . . .” And in March of 2009, not long after the birth mother had changed her mind, we discovered we were five weeks pregnant. Not quite one year after the pastor had prayed. This time, the line on the stick was bright pink. While our joy was hesitant, it became bolder as the weeks passed and my womb bulged with new life.

And on November 12, 2009, we gave birth—messy, miraculous birth—to a beautiful bright-eyed son.

God gives, and He takes away, and He gives again. Life holds seasons of despair and seasons of dancing. I don’t know why He chose to honor that pastor’s prayer and give us a son. I, of all people, don’t deserve the wordless wonder of being a parent. I, who had starved my body down to 60 pounds and wished only to become skinnier. I, who held no respect for the body’s curves and creative power. Yet our God is a God of grace.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father,” the book of James tells us (1:17). In that is our hope. In that is our future.

God—the Father—knows our dreams to conceive. He also knows what it means to lose a child. And when that happened, the earth shook, the sky became black, and the temple’s curtain ripped in two. God was angered and saddened and made sore by the unfairness of it all. But three days later, new life arose.

We cannot know the hows, nor the whens nor the whys. But we can know a God who is bigger than our problems—God who delights in giving good gifts to His children. And one day, in His sovereign timing, we will give birth to the dreams He’s planted within us.