Breaking a contract, part 2

Most women love the lure of flowers, the attention of a suitor. There’s a thrill to a telephone call or an evening stroll in the park.

If you’ll read yesterday’s account, you’ll know I deserved no courtship. I had chosen a silent separation and had earned no suitor’s pursuit. The covenant had been broken in my reckoning; my Bridegroom had not done his part.

But on a summer camping trip, with a time for quiet and reflection, my heart begin to expand. I missed my Lord. I felt his warm breath as he called my name. I opened my Bible and began a slow climb out of a black hole.

The miscarriage happened in March and by October I was passionately in love with my Savior. I did not understand my loss but what mattered to me was that I was loved by the Creator of the universe.

I was scheduled to speak at our church’s Christmas tea in early December, now a delightful task. And the joy was expanded when I discovered I was pregnant again. I felt certain that God was restoring what had been lost.

My speech-writing tasks were easy and the outline pulsed with life and vitality.

But lightning crashed again. This baby, too, was lost. I gave the long-anticipated speech knowing that life was draining away.

Things were different. I was desperate not to lose the relationship I had just re-gained. My cry that weekend was that I not lose hope in my King.

And this time, as I sat in a hospital bed facing a surgeon once again, there surged in me a certainty I could never explain apart from my Lord. I told the doctor that there had to be a cause for this. He told me I might never know a reason.

But I knew that I knew that I knew that I would find cause. A specialist informed us, after a month of embarrassing interviews and tests, that I had a progesterone inadequacy.

Daily shots, mood swings, fear blurred the new few weeks. This pregnancy didn't start with the joy and anticipation that it should have had. My thoughts were simple: “I don’t know if I can go through this again.”

A thin little heartbeat thumped on a 6-week ultrasound, while I was still getting twice a week shots to stave off yet another miscarriage. A tiny being moved strongly in the 10-week ultrasound. Joy mingled with cold fear gripped me.

Our son was born on Nov. 7. The first baby lost had been due on Nov. 7.

I had once hoped that my friends or family would comfort me during the one-two punch of miscarriage. But what’s more important is that the Bridegroom never left my side. In the humiliation of loss and the agony of inadequacy, he whispered my name and drew me back. He kept his part of the covenant in the face of my accusations and my silence. He never left me.

The prophet Joel speaks well for me:

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has worked wonders for you.

Joel 2:25-26