When Life Doesn't Go As Planned

I’m living a life I never prepared for or expected. I’ve lost four babies in four years. Each child and loss is burned into my memory. I have so many questions about who they would have been and how different my life would be if they were still here. The main question I wrestle with is, Why? Why were they here? What was their purpose? Then I hear, “God works all things for good”. Is that just a trite flippant phrase? If so, it would be incredibly insensitive and hurtful to say to a grieving mother. Unless it is true. How can that be? What are the good things that came from the death of my babies? If Noah was still here I may never have learned what my ex husband was up to. He may never have been overwhelmed with guilt and decided to give me a partial confession. My girls and I could still be living a lie. For each loss afterward I can only learn from them that life is fragile. That death is so near to us, yet no one wants to be made aware of it’s inevitability.

Each loss makes me question to my core, why? Why did they live only to die? Why did I hold on to hope every time? Why should I give up the dream of a 4th living child? These questions are deep and painful and most days I struggle coming up with answers. Will I ever be okay with them being gone? Probably not. However, each day I’m learning that I can’t wallow. I can’t sit still and fester in grief, constantly questioning. It is so easy to do, to shut down and only be deep in the despair of grief. What’s scary is living and loving again, knowing that at any time for any reason the people you love can be taken away in an instant.

In 2019 I lost half of the blood in my body and I should have died if it weren’t for God. My girls could be living life without their Mama. In 2021 my husband nearly died in the ICU and only by the grace of God did he leave there on his own 2 feet. It’s terrifying to think of the capacity the heart has to feel pain and how close we are to feeling it once again. In some ways I feel as if I’m bracing for the next blow. Flinching, bracing and trying to protect my heart. That is not how God intended for us to live.

We are to live and love with abandon. Knowing that God has things worked out for His purposes. He has given us the people in our lives for a purpose. Those of us who are so closely acquainted with grief know on a deeper level how everything can change in the blink of an eye. May that thought make us more joyful, more thankful, more purposeful in the life we are living. I want to use this knowledge to motivate me to invest in my children, love them more dearly, patiently and purposefully. I want to use this knowledge to love my husband more selflessly and deeply. I want to cherish the little moments of this life I have been given, even down to the most mundane. To enjoy the quiet morning cups of coffee, to revel in the dull roar filling the kitchen during the girls school mornings. I don't want to take any moment for granted. I don’t want to live paralyzed by my pain and loss. I want the icy cold reality of loss to motivate me to love deeper and feel life, not shut it out. I don’t want to use it as a reason to resent those who have things that I wish I had.

I have so much I am so blessed. There are days or moments that I can’t get there but those moments are further apart than they used to be. It’s hard to keep the right perspective but the questioning keeps driving me back to the answers, and the only real answers to be found are in the peace of God through the Holy Spirit. He will wipe away all our tears one day. We must find our purpose here on Earth. God had much different plans than I did on what that would look like. Pain and grief cannot win in the end.