Lies in Grief: “My Body is Bad”

Friend, since becoming a Hope Mom, have the negative voices in your mind—and the ones around you—intensified? Losing a baby makes us especially vulnerable to believing lies about ourselves and God. Having to unexpectedly say goodbye to our babies breaks our hearts, creating cracks that need filling. Unless we fill those cracks with God’s healing truth, the enemy is going to fill them with his lies. This month I am going to be covering what God’s Word says to some of the common lies found in our community of Hope Moms.

We were never meant to live life alone, and that is especially true in grief. I pray this month’s reflections help you know you are not the only one carrying the shame and anger that falsehoods create. Let’s fill our broken hearts with God’s Truth, together.

Lie: My Body is Bad

Since pregnancy and childbirth are innately tied to our physical bodies, it makes sense that one of the main falsehoods we quickly gravitate to in grief is that “our bodies are bad”.

Some of us can even point to diagnosed conditions or limitations as the reasons why our babies are not still here with us. Whether it’s an incompetent cervix, diabetes, PCOS, infections, autoimmune disorders, ‘bad genes’, or any other health issue—our bodies often bear the blame for our grief. So, we conclude: My damaged body failed my baby.

Maybe you’ve had loss after loss after loss and all you can conclude is: My body is a place where babies go to die.

Do you hear the utter shame these lies heap upon our bodies? What is it about our physical forms that make us so prone to accept these degrading ideas?

I think the answer is found in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 1-2 recounts how God created humans as His final masterpiece, and women, the beautiful life-bearers, as His finishing touch.

When our jealous Enemy approached the first humans in the form of a serpent, who did he target first? The life-bearer. Satan hates that women are the ones who get the chance to create life because we uniquely image God unlike anything else in all creation. And Satan hates God above all else.

Since childhood, he bombards us with untrue messages about our bodies. We become convinced that our physical forms are not good enough. Whether it’s their appearance, abilities, or capacity to sustain, our bodies become attacked not only by him and the world, but eventually by us. We spend our whole lives trying to change, fix, or improve them, becoming so distracted trying to hide and disguise our shame over them that we forget to look at their Creator and be mesmerized by Him.[i]

So, when the unthinkable occurs and our babies die in our bodies, we, by default, blame our physical forms.

God’s Truth About Our Bodies

But, Mama, sin and Satan have so effectively clouded our minds that, in order to heal, we have to consider another reality. To grieve well we must let God have a say in the matter. Will you open your mind to examine His perspective? He is the God of the Universe after all—surely He has something worthwhile to say about those who bear His image?

Truth One: God created your body with intention, dignity, and goodness. 

In Genesis 2, God lets us in on the secret, intimate moments when he created the first humans.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature…The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. (Gen 2:7,21-22)

God shares these special details with us (strange though they may sound to our modern ears) to show that we are set apart—humans surely are no bird, fish, or beast! He himself has breathed life into humans, has cut men open and sealed them back up, has formed women from intimate parts and shepherded us where we will be most fulfilled.

Later in Scripture, Psalm 139:14 states “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. I don’t know about you, but this verse is hard to believe for myself. I focus so acutely on my flaws, my scars, my diseases and inabilities that I glaze over his declarations of my worth.

But God purposefully uses these particular adjectives to describe His most cherished creation. “Fearfully” means to fear, revere, cause to frighten.  “Wonderfully” means set apart, distinguished, show as marvelous.

Mamas, do you see what He is saying? We are not only God’s Royal Image-Bearers, but we are so distinguished—so worthy of marveling over—that we are feared and revered by the rest of creation as the ones who most glorify God. It also means that we were made in such a way that we cause our enemy to tremble.

Truth Two: Your body was created by God and declared good, but is now broken by sin and the fall.

While our bodies are unmistakably valuable, they are not perfect this side of Heaven. When Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s deceptive temptations, the entire world broke, including our bodies. They are still the beautiful creations of God, but they’re more like shadows than the real thing. Our bodies’ limitations are the result of living in this broken world—not evidence that we are defective and worthless.

Truth Three: Your body is made by God, loved by God, and will be restored by God.      

In Romans 8, Paul expresses how the “the whole creation has been groaning” under the weight of sin (Ro 8:22). Creation remembers what it’s like to be unaffected by sin and yearns deeply to return to that perfected state. Thankfully, one day, God will renew all of creation, including our bodies. We wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Ro 8:24).

Mama, one day, all of your person will be made right again. Your mind, your heart, and yes even your body. Isaiah declares that one day we will proclaim: “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you dwellers in the dust! For the dew of the morning is your dew; the earth will give birth to her dead” (Isa 26:19).

__________

While we wait for this glorious restoration, will you battle with me against lies about our cherished forms? Let us keep these truths close and watch as God seals over the cracks in our hearts with his lasting, healing Word. Your body was intentionally made, with royal purpose; it has been marred by the fall, but not destroyed, and your Maker will restore it to new glory.

With you in the good fight,

Kelly

[i] The thoughts that we repeatedly encourage—whether they be true or false—eventually become stronger and harder to change in our minds.  The adage “neurons that fire together wire together” explains this phenomenon of how repetition rewires the brain. By submitting to certain thoughts day after day, we create heavily-trod ruts on which our brain cells learn to travel automatically; veering off to other thought paths is harder work for the brain so it prefers to choose the familiar. In fighting against deeply-held beliefs, we are asking a lot of our brain. However, the same firing-and-wiring principle applies: once we repeatedly choose God’s truths day after day, we will create new, well-worn paths for our thoughts to follow, ones that bring peace to our souls.

To further help you combat lies about your body with God’s truth, we have created a Bible study on Psalm 139, I Am Known. This Summer we will be using this study in our Summer Mini-Hope Group (June 15- July 13). We would love for you to join us as we explore, together, this timeless passage and how it relates to our grief. Registration is open now through June 14: https://hopemommies.org/hope-groups

Kelly is the Ministry Support Lead for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Dan live in Brenham, TX with their two earthside children, Annabelle and Eli (and lots of pets). Their firstborn, William, went to Heaven in July 2017. To balance out the fullness of life, Kelly enjoys gardening, yoga, and sipping on some matcha while reading historical fiction. She considers herself beyond privileged to share the amazing news of Jesus’ Hope to all who need it, and loves that William gets to be a part of that message.