Healing

Friends, sisters – here is a guest post by a dear friend Kate Turner, who has been brave, honest and open, and has written with strength about her experience with miscarriage, and how it has touched her spiritual life…

Healing

I feel exhausted, wrung out and desperately sad. As a logical, practical individual I can appreciate that the statistics are actually quite high – 1 in 4 – and yet somehow I didn’t expect it to happen to me. I’m talking about something that is rarely discussed in our society, or our church community – the sensitive issue of miscarriage. 

Because despite the pain and the sadness I can’t help but notice that I feel closer to God than I have done in an awfully long time. Surely it can’t be coincidence that since I realised what was happening I feel like my eyes have been opened. You see, as the guilt sets in and I desperately try not to over analyse why this has happened and what I did wrong then I can’t shake the sense that I was going about this the wrong way. I dutifully brought my prayers for a child before God, and joyfully rejoiced when this prayer was answered. And then I swiftly went back to my daily life of work, toddler, husband, chores, shopping and socialising. Child number two on the way, successful career, nice village existence; job done, box ticked, sense of achievement and pride firmly in place. 

What a difference 48 hours makes. I’m not an emotional person – and yet now I can’t seem to stop the tears streaming down my face. I’m not one of life’s “sharers” – and yet now I’m writing down my thoughts and feelings ready to share with my sisters in Christ. I’m not someone who naturally asks for help – and yet in the last few days I’ve had to lean on my husband for support, and good friends for emergency childcare. 

 My hope and prayer is that by being brought low, and turned inside out our heavenly father is working to build me back up – with a renewed focus and a revised set of priorities.

I know of many who are struggling at the moment – as new mums, expectant mums, those who’ve decided not to have children, those who desperately desire to be a mum, and those who are living their life outside of society’s view of the traditional family unit. But do we share our hopes, our fears and our struggles with each other as we try to be women after God’s own heart?

Becoming a mother is genuinely the most divisive thing I’ve experienced. From the early stages you are questioned as to how you’re approaching this; finding out the gender, birth choices, name, will they sit in the meeting or out the back, will you work or will you stay at home, how do you achieve a balance of family time versus “adult” time. It’s quite exhausting; just when did choice and difference equal judgement? It’s human nature to want to pigeon hole peoples experiences so that we can compare and identify them with our experiences.  What I’m realising is that this is where we have to work hardest to emulate our saviour. We need to embrace our differences; are we not all wonderfully made?! We need to share, care and try to empathise with each other (even if we can’t quite understand or it doesn’t make sense to us!) Our journeys are different, and pain can strike us at different times and in different ways – but the key thing is that we all need healing. 

As for me, I’m going to pray; to try to focus on one day at a time and not look to the next big event happening in my life. And I’m out of my comfort zone – sharing my feelings, and confessing my faults (as we are guided in my absolute favourite book of the bible). For having first looked to our heavenly Father, through Jesus, for healing and guidance and then leant on my husband, should I not naturally look to share with the ready-made support group of my fellow sisters in Christ?

How do I feel now, a few hundred words and several cups of tea later?! Calmer, more peaceful, and more purposeful – clearly there is something in this sharing business…

 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father who is full of mercy and all comfort. He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us. We share in the sufferings of Christ. In the same way, much comfort comes to us through Christ”