It Doesn’t End in the Struggle

Losing a baby causes many secondary losses—loss of hope, loss of innocence, even loss of strength. Many of us have also lost close relationships as a direct result of our child’s death and how we, and other people, chose to handle it. Loss ripples outward in large and small waves all over our lives.

For me, losing our children to miscarriage meant that I lost a good portion of the peace I had—peace that I realized later was built upon the sand of life’s circumstances. In retrospect, I can see that it was inevitable that I would lose that peace. It was more of a question of when and where that would happen. Since we lost our children in 2013 and 2014, we have walked through many other hard circumstances, and I see now that any of those could have taken my peace just as easily.

I am fighting to rebuild my peace, much like the biblical families in Nehemiah’s time fought to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, with a spade in one hand and a sword in the other. It definitely was not efficient for them, but it was necessary for them to build in this manner. I have resigned myself to the fact that it is also necessary for me to rebuild my life this way. Peace does not return easily, and it is attacked almost constantly, a majority of the time by my own mind and anxious thoughts.

When something so large as the loss of a child shook my life and my faith, I suddenly stopped being invincible. Suddenly, PTSD was a diagnosis that could fit my story, not just something that happened to other people. Depression was suddenly not so difficult to understand, because I had no trouble traveling down those roads now that all sorts of new possibilities of loss were visible to me. Would I ever successfully carry a baby?

Some people tried comforting me in my miscarriages, telling me that at least I knew I could get pregnant. I begged to differ. Pregnancy that repeatedly ended in loss was not an encouraging experience at all. Realizing how broken my body was and how little control I truly had over its functions, in spite of it being my body, was very disturbing and alienating. The anxiety and stress of living after my losses caused a deep loneliness, and a longing to connect with someone—especially God—in a way that would strengthen and encourage me. I struggled to find those moments. I still struggle some days.

But the story doesn’t end in the struggle. I fought to first determine what I believed about God when it came to loss. Did He put me through this to teach me something? Do I believe in a God who punishes wrathfully and then waits for me to figure out what I am supposed to learn, like some sort of unsolvable puzzle? For most of my life, this was what I believe about God. There was a lesson in the loss, something I could learn. It was pounded into me to learn it so that I could get through and be glad that this terrible thing had happened. But that couldn’t be who God was, that couldn’t be the God of peace and comfort that His Word reveals Him to be.

I searched the Bible and searched my heart. I found evidence of God’s mercy, and of His pain in seeing us suffer. I saw Jesus telling us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is where I will meet my babies for the first time. Heaven is where there are no tears and no losses. I saw that God’s justice requires that sin be paid for, and because of the curse of sin we see the loss of so many things—good environments to live in, healthy family members, whole relationships.

But He didn’t leave us in our sin.

He came to earth to give us of hope, and hope restores things that were never thought to be fixable. Hope has shown me how God cares for me, how He loves me, and how He hasn’t forgotten any of the tough parts of my life. He reminds me of these things through friends, memories, realizations of who He is, and most deeply through His Word.

When people remember my babies, I’m reminded that God also remembers my loss. When miracles happen in my life, I’m reminded that God wants to restore what was stolen of my peace and give me the power to do more than just survive in this life. When I have a reason to smile or look to the future with excitement, I know God remembers my pain and is weaving gold threads of hope into my life’s tapestry.

It can be well with my soul, because I am not the only one who remembers my pain. God remembers my pain just as strongly as the moment I experienced it, and He grieves with me over my losses. And my babies are honored through the moments in my life where impossible hope shines through.

“My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end.”
-Lamentations 3:20-22

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Jessie Vazquez is a wife to Jonathan and mother of six, three born in heaven, and three here on earth. She enjoys cooking and eating, and sharing the hope of Christ with people she meets.

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