Groaning and Leaning Forward

On the day I found out that my baby, Jeremy, had died, I remember leaving the doctor’s office as the sun was setting. I was alone, and as I got in my car to drive home, I thought, “One day I’ll die and this pain will be over.” I wasn’t suicidal, but it felt hopeless that I would ever get out from under such a heavy weight of sorrow. That was my third, second-trimester loss in a row, and I knew my pregnancy road was over.

I took many steps throughout the next year to move myself toward healing from my losses. In that pursuit, I stepped out of my comfort zone in many ways. I attended a Hope Mommies retreat that next February, decided to share my feelings more openly with others throughout the year, and even began expressing my feelings through art (which was totally a new thing for me). Even though I began to have more good days, it seemed as though, no matter what I did, I still ended up right back in the same place of overwhelming sadness. Grief felt like being under water. I could see what was going on all around me, but I could not fully connect with what or who was there. I would come up for air, only to sink right back down.

After several months, I was exhausted from that cycle. Although my good days were good, my bad days felt as sad and hopeless as they did in the beginning. I started to think that it would always be this way.

”I began to wonder, “Why isn’t Jesus healing me?”
I questioned, “What kind of faith do I have?”
I felt sad that I would always be sad.

One night at church, almost a year after my loss, the message from our preacher seemed to be intended just for me. He talked about how all of creation, even the very earth itself, is groaning until the day when the Lord sets everything right, when He restores and renews all things. When we have heartaches, we too are groaning because things are not as they should be. We can groan to God’s glory as we wait for Him. And even through our sorrows, we can have joy by listening to the Holy Spirit as He brings us comfort and assures us that God will one day make all things right.

Hearing that message brought light to my situation. What I thought was hopeless sadness was actually “groaning.” It was not that God was withholding healing me from sadness, but that I am sharing in the groanings of this world. Instead of feeling that I had to get the sadness to stop before I could have joy, I realized that I could have joy now even as I groan forward to the restoration that is coming. This truth was transformative to me in my grief. I was freed from feeling sad about being sad.

God did not heal me in some ways: He did not heal me to bring forth (some of) my babies. He did not heal me from my grief immediately or as soon I hoped. But when God did bring healing, it was at a moment when I did not expect it. It was not from any of my efforts to be healed. God removed the oppression of my sadness in an instant. Since that day, I have been free of that hopeless sadness. The questions I had struggled with for so long were finally eased. I no longer questioned God’s love and care for me. The faith with which I had been wrestling settled down in my heart and took root. Joy and peace finally were able to bloom.

This is not to say I never feel sad, because I still do. My heart squeezes a little when I walk by the baby section at Target. I feel sad that my youngest child doesn’t have the sibling-playmate I wanted for him. I grow weary of this companion called Sorrow, but I no longer feel that overwhelming sadness and hopelessness. In those moments of sadness, I remind myself of what I am really doing—groaning and leaning forward to the coming day when everything will be restored.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
-Romans 8

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