When I was a little girl, I was raised in “the system”.
I lived in foster homes and orphanages.
At 15 I aged out of the system, started working, and got an apartment with a couple of friends.
As a young adult, it was during my pregnancy with my first child, I became a Christian.
And once that happened, I was able to see a slow but sure progression of change that led me to the most wonderful place in my life.
My testimony was simple: accepting Christ can begin a slow, but sure, progression of joy.
And then my baby died.
And a doctor called him “debris”.
And people told me it was my fault.
And I felt like it was my fault.
And I had to tell my Love, my husband, my best friend, that his child was dead inside of me.
The crisis of faith,
The crisis of identity,
has been, at times, entirely overwhelming.
My baby was born via miscarriage during the “Easter season” and it wasn’t very long after, that people started gossiping about another Rapture hoax.
Easter, for the Christian, is the hope that, when we die, we get to go to Heaven, because Jesus did.
For the newly bereaved me, though, it was a cruel joke.
It was one more thing to haunt me.
Why, God?
Let me be punished for my own sins.
Why did my child have to die?
Why does my husband have to be the father of a deceased baby?
And why do we have to wait to be reunited?
I know I’m a sinner.
Can’t you leave them out of this?
The guilt and the pain have, at times, been entirely unbearable.
We have wonderfully informative and even inspiring devotionals here at stillbirthday for families trying to make biblical sense of pregnancy and infant loss, many of which I’ve written myself. In fact, we have amazing resources for families of all faith and culture backgrounds, to help you rediscover the treasure of your heritage.
But today, right now, I just want to pause.
I want to authentically, transparently say,
If you feel your faith has been wounded,
that you just can’t quite catch back up to the joy or even the certainty in your faith that you once had,
You aren’t alone.
