Grieving With Hope After Miscarriage And Loss By Adriel BookerНамуна

Day Six

A Breathtaking Promise

Scripture: Matthew 1:23

My husband and I named the daughter I miscarried Scarlett Grace. Scarlett was for the pain, the suffering, the life poured out mingled with the hope of resurrection. Grace was for possibility and purpose—the breathtaking assurance that God can be found in our suffering. God’s promise to us is not that bad things won’t happen, it’s that he’s with us through it all—Emmanuel, God with us. 

We were beginning to see it. 

The ache we endured after losing Scarlett uncovered holes in our theology—chiefly, that we did not have a theology of suffering. But we were coming to a deeper understanding that when suffering comes into our still-broken world—as it will—he can be found there too.

Theoretically we understood this, but our bewilderment in the face of bottomless pain confirmed our lack of praxis. Simply put, we weren’t living what we believed because we’d never had the chance to. 

Although we felt sure God wasn’t the source of our suffering, Ryan and I were only beginning to learn that the very thing the enemy of our souls used against us could be transformed by the redemptive hand of God. This wonder-working God was in the process of transfiguring our horrible loss into an invitation to greater life. We couldn’t discern it yet, but God was hovering, preparing to create something new like he always does when all we see is dark, formless, and void.

Scarlett was taking us deeper. But to go there we had to be willing to disarm our knee-jerk instinct to distract, numb, or overcome our pain. We had to resist the impulse to deflect our grief or fight our brokenness. We had to reject the compulsion to figure out how this could be rewritten into a success story. We had to enter in as is. 

The spectacle of heaven is that it’s birthed into the low places. It’s revealed when Jesus is allowed to enter into the lives of those who know their need for him: a woman caught in adultery, a hotheaded loudmouth, a terrorist, a thief, a desperate man and his son, a diseased outcast…a mother staring at an empty ultrasound screen. Heaven is not merely a destination; it’s the Spirit of God writing a redemption story right here and now.

In what ways is your loss changing your view of God? Have you been able to sense God’s presence (“God with us”) even while you were suffering—why or why not?