Soon after Randy and I were married, I became pregnant. Due to some wrong responses from us to some events at the church that we were on staff at the time, my baby died in the womb. I began to miscarry. The Drs. decided to do a DNC procedure to clean my womb. After the procedure, the Dr. told me that the amniotic fluid and placenta was there, but no baby. He said, “It’s like something ate your baby.” (I’ll explain this comment in the next blog). And he sent me home to heal, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
I have discovered that the more honest I am with God, the quicker my heart repents to His perspective and is healed. I have never quite understood why we sometimes tell God religious answers, like He doesn’t know what we are really thinking. My dad had told me, “Be honest with God. When you go through hard times you can’t understand, ask Jesus when He felt the same way. The Bible says that He is acquainted with our sorrows.” I love my dad’s simple wisdom!
So I applied my dad’s wisdom. However, I felt entitled to whine for awhile. I concluded I had God this time. Seriously, when did He go to the hospital and come back with empty arms? Shaking in sorrow, I breathlessly voiced my question. My tears rolled down my face containing unspeakable anguish and doubt only to soak my pillow. Suddenly, I stopped. Breathing normal, quietness filled the room and my soul. A gentle breeze blew across my heart.
It’s like the gentle breeze spoke these words to my heart: “Just as the baby inside of you was real to you, every person on earth is real to Me. Because your baby was not BORN, you can’t hold her like you want. In the same way, when a person is not ‘BORN AGAIN’, I cannot hold him or her the way I want. The difference is, your grief is not eternal. If a person dies without being born again my arms for them is eternally empty.
Well meaning people have tried to comfort you in the thought that you are young and will ‘at least’ have more children. This has stabbed your heart because you know a child lost cannot be replaced by another. Each child has a unique and complete place of love in your heart. How much greater is my pain and my sorrow when one is lost to Me. They can never be replaced. But you need to know this too. You are loved uniquely and completely. There is a place in My heart, in my family, that only you can fulfill. You are uniquely and completely loved, as is each person. This is how you truly love others, because I love you and you love Me and I love them. As a result, your love for Me enables you to love them.”
At the end of this encounter, my pain, oddly enough, became an honor because I had tasted a portion of what God feels for each of us. I gathered myself and purposed in my heart that I will do anything, act as foolish as necessary, be liked or disliked, whatever it takes to fill my Father’s arms with as many of His children as I can. I want to do my part. You see, I may not have a perfect heart of love for people sometimes. To be honest there are some people I don’t even like. But at the core of who I am, I love God. I love my Father. And out of that love I actually am enabled to love others.
My 1st baby may have died that day, but missions was born in my heart that day! Missions is really another word, actually a verb not a noun, for making our Father smile. I want to make God smile!
(When my 1st baby died, missions was born in my heart! These 3 have been ‘on mission’ with God since each were 3. This picture is a blast from a trip from the past. They (+ now 2 of their spouses) fill my arms and make me smile. And I’m sure they make God smile!)
Originally posted December 6, 2016
