A Wife Loved Like The Church

My pregnancy with Julia went as smoothly as I could have hoped. Only at the beginning was there any concern, when I had some cramping, that ended up being the symptoms of a urinary infection. Through out my entire pregnancy, I clung to the truth God had taught me.

God is good. No matter the answer, no matter the circumstance. God is good. 

November 23, 2007.

Julia Mabel entered this world. My path as a mother began. There have been some valleys, there have been some mountain tops. And in it all, God is good. 

The day I came home from work sick (due to the uti), I was concerned that I would loose this baby too. I sprawled out on our bed, read and prayed. During that time, God comforted me, assured me that His answer really was “YES” and then gave me this verse that I prayed over my entire pregnancy, and continue to pray over Julia:

“O Lord, you alone are my hope. I’ve trusted you, O Lord, from childhood. Yes, you have been with me from birth; from my mother’s womb you have cared for me. No wonder I am always praising you!” Psalm 71:5-6

Julia literally is an answer to my prayers. She is the delight of my life and a gift from my God.

March 19, 2007. 

I was 4 days late. Which, in my post-birth control, post-miscarriage life meant absolutely nothing. But that night, around 9pm, I crawled into bed, complaining that I felt sick. Jonathan brushed it off, saying I’d eaten too much for dinner. Then when we realized we had had dinner 3 hours prior, he started inquiring about my cycle, if I’d started, when I was suppose to start. When I said that, technically, I was late, he suggested I take a test. I refused. I had just started to fully believe God was good, now was not the time to test that new found faith. But Jonathan insisted. He said I should take the test, but only he would look at it. 

I got up, took the test and walked away. A few minutes later, Jonathan went into the bathroom. When he came back I immediately asked about the results. He wouldn’t say. All he said was “Sarah, is God good? Where are you putting your trust?”. He had me promise that I would take another test and that I would wait.

So I waited.

All week.

Every day, multiple times a day, I asked Jonathan the results. Each time he said “Sarah, is God good? Where are you putting your trust? Does yes make God any better than no?”

It was a constant check on my heart. Was He good? Each time I had to answer, yes, God is good, because He had promised He would be, even if that promise looked differently than I expected.

By that weekend I was noticing changes. Changes I never had, even with my cycle. Jonathan, four of my girlfriends, and I went to Des Moines for a night in celebration of my 25th birthday. I kept asking Jonathan, the entire trip, if I was pregnant. At one point he went so far as to say he’d forgotten the results. 

March 25. 

I was turning 25. My golden birthday. We rode to church that morning with our friend, Brittney. The whole drive, Jonathan sat in the back, humming a tune, in a world of his own. I remember Brittney and I making fun of him. It was a beautiful spring morning, and most people were standing out side, enjoying the warm weather. At some point, Jonathan came up and asked me to come with him into the building. I followed him into a room off the sanctuary, where 5 of my closest friends sat in a neat little row. Jonathan explained that they were going to sing me “Happy Birthday”, but a new version Jonathan had made up, special for my 25th.

Honestly, I don’t remember many of the words. Golden birthday, special, something, something. All that sticks out is the last sentence: “And you’re having a baby”. I’m sure the look on my face was utter shock. I looked at Jonathan for reassurance, he nodded yes. I hugged him and immediately wept. Not tears of sadness, but for the first time, in a very long time, tears of complete joy.

God had finally said yes.

I kept my dark thoughts from everyone, even Jonathan. I was afraid of them. I was afraid of myself. As much as I wanted to be alone during this time, I was terrified that if I wasn’t around people I might actually act upon my thoughts. I made sure that I was always with someone, even if it just meant going to the store to be near strangers.

By the middle of February, another woman at church announced her pregnancy. I felt numb. I kept calling out to God, but was loosing all feeling. The only thought that kept me going was knowing that I had lived my life without God before, and while things seemed awful, I couldn’t imagine them if God wasn’t at the center. I read and prayed and battled. It seemed almost as though a war was being waged within my soul. God verse Satan. I continually fought against thoughts of suicide, while in the midst of everything, trying to figure out if I really believed God was good in all things.

March 17, 2007. I went to Lake McBride Park for alone time. I was gone two or three hours. Probably the longest I’d be away from anyone in nearly two months. I walked along the trails, praying and trying desperately to connect with God. I left, no more assured about having a family, but with a new peace. For the first time in three months I knew I could say that God was good, in all things, babies or no babies. 

I went home and wept. I told Jonathan everything. My thoughts of suicide, my struggle to stay after God, my new growing hope that He really is good. Jonathan held me for a long time and we just prayed. Prayed for peace and comfort, but mostly just prayed that God’s truth would reign.

I started reading through Psalm. It seemed the most emotional, the area that I connected to the most. I would read, I would cry. I spent a lot of time yelling at God. Questioning who He really was, how He could call Himself good and faithful, compassionate and loving, when He allowed His daughter to suffer. For the first time in my life, I poured it all out. I bared all before my King; I exposed my inner most being.

I couldn’t understand why He had told others “yes” and me “no”. What sin had I committed, what had I done wrong to deserve this? Where was I to go from here? How could I recover?

The only thing I knew to do was read and pray. I poured over my bible every day. I tried finding a promise in everything. I started searching for the promise of children, the promise that God would make my womb fruitful. I found nothing. Nothing that spoke to my soul, nothing that gave me assurance of becoming a mother. I did find that God was good, in everything. The world could be stripped away, but God was still good. I could be killed, but God was still good. That’s all I ever found.

“O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!” Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me.” Psalm 13.

Somewhere around the end of January, beginning of February 2007, I realized that God never promised me children. It slowly began to dawn on me that I might never have children. This was a tough blow. I had been holding on for so long to the idea that God being good equalled me having a child. Then, when I seemed to really be sinking lower and lower, the true attacks came.

I don’t know where people stand on their beliefs on being attacked by Satan, but I know it’s real. Every day, for over two months, I cried out to God. Every day, His response was “Wait. Know that I am good.” Every day, Satan’s response was “Give up, just end it now.” I went into a depression. I can vividly remember walking down the hall at work, plotting my own suicide. I had all the details planned out; where, when, how. I dwelled on death, a lot. I wanted to be free from this world and all it’s hurts. The pain seemed entirely too big for me to handle and God just didn’t seem to care. 

I slowly began telling my friends what happened. I did a pretty good job, in my mind, of acting like I trusted God, that I was ok, that everything was fine. At at first, I really think it was. 

Then on January 3, 2007, my dog passed away. Judah was so much like my own child; my childhood dog, my best of friends. Just like with my miscarriage, I knew it was coming, but when it happened nothing prepared me for how much pain would follow. He passed away on a Wednesday night and I couldn’t go to work for the next two days. I was doing my best just to hang on, just to get out of bed and know that despite loosing a baby and my best companion within 3 weeks of each other, God was still good. I understood the logic, I understood it because this is what I was told, but I didn’t feel it, I didn’t believe it.

Later that week, my friend, Jessica, announced her pregnancy. That made three. Three girlfriends from church were pregnant. Three women would go on to have children, and mine was taken away far, far too soon. 

I got mad. Not at these women, not at the people around me, but at God. Why me? Why me? What lesson was God trying to teach me? Was it necessary to cause so much pain in order to show me? Was God still good? I didn’t know. I couldn’t say that He was. All I knew was that His word gave truth, and His word said He was good. 

So I began to read.

I’ve been inspired to share my testimony of Julia and her pregnancy (or do I say my pregnancy with her?). 

In November 2006, the day after Thanksgiving, I found out I was pregnant. I wasn’t thoroughly surprised, as we’d been trying for a few months, and I was pretty late. It was a strange feeling, because just a week before I woke up feeling rather sick and immediately thought “I’m pregnant”. Since I’d thought that every month after coming off the pill, I prayed that God would calm my heart and that if this was “it” He’d reveal it to me through morning sickness/test/etc. Within a few days I stopped feeling very sick, just tired. A few days later I took a test. Positive.

Yet, there was a fear that surrounded me. How was it, that I felt sick, but now didn’t? Was that normal? I mean, the test said yes, but something deep, deep inside me said no. But time went on. One week, then two. Jonathan was reserved about sharing our news, where part of me thought if we started sharing then it would be real, and these fears would be unfounded.

On December 10, two weeks since I took the pregnancy test, I began cramping and spotting. I immediately knew things were wrong, that I was having a miscarriage. We went about our day; it was Sunday so we went to church that morning, had lunch with some friends, then went to house church that night. We didn’t make it through house church, before I begged Jonathan to take me home. My body was breaking, as was my heart.

That night I took a long bath, trying to meditate on God, trying to realize that everything was and would be okay. That God was good and would come through. Maybe everything would be fine. Maybe my baby was fine. I’d call the doctor in the morning, and maybe, just maybe, they’d tell me that this was normal, that the baby was still alive.

Monday morning I went to work, called the clinic and explained my symptoms. I will never forget the nurse on the other line when she said “You know there’s nothing we can do. You know that you’ve lost the baby. Come in anyway to see a doctor.”

I lost it. I’m not sure if in all my fears I was still clinging to the shred of some hope, but in that moment everything was shattered.

Jonathan met me at the clinic, where we were seen right away. The worst part of the process was that my doctor wasn’t there, so I was seen by someone new, by a man. There was something invasive about the whole process. His mannerisms, continually referring to my baby as a fetus, never acknowledging that my baby was just that, a baby. Today was just the beginning of what seemed a long and too painful road to endure.