On January 9, 2015, my life changed forever. Two pink lines. I’ve seen more than my fair share of one pink lines, but this was my first time to see two pink lines. My hand trembled. I was shocked, excited, and nervous all at the same time. After a time of infertility and fertility treatments, the day I dreamed about and longed for with all my being was finally here. I questioned if I would ever see those two pink lines.
It was very early in the morning. Not even 6 AM. I woke Chris up to tell him the most exciting news I had ever shared with him up to that point. We cried and prayed a prayer of thanksgiving together. In my excitement, I even called and woke my parents up to share our exciting news. At first, we only told our family and close friends. I loved sharing our joy with them.
At eight weeks, we saw a perfect little heartbeat. I felt the end of the trial and all the hurt and longing we felt in dealing with infertility was over. I didn’t think anything would go wrong after enduring all that. I mean, God wouldn’t allow us to go through infertility, undergo fertility treatments, and then allow something to happen to take that dream away, would he?
Two days prior to my twelve-week appointment, I knew something was terribly wrong. Chris was out of town working. I drove myself to the ER and was completely alone when I heard the most heartbreaking words I had ever heard, “I’m sorry, but there’s no heartbeat.” I felt like my whole world was shattered in an instant. We named our baby Angel. We did not know if we were having a boy or a girl. So we chose a gender neutral name. Also, since our baby was in Heaven, a heavenly name seemed appropriate. Although, I want to be clear, we do not believe our baby became an angel in heaven. Our baby is still our child but with a perfect body living in a perfect place without sin, sadness, decay, death, and all other evils of our fallen, broken world. Angel is being cared for by our perfect, holy, loving God (as are all three of our babies that never lived outside of my womb).
In the immediate aftermath of hearing that terrible news, I felt either numb or the deepest sadness I had ever experienced up until that point interchangeably. The road to healing was long and hard. Seeing baby things in the store, pregnant bellies, baby shower invitations was more than my heart could handle and would send me into a fountain of tears and into the pit of despair. These visual reminders of my pain tormented my very soul.
Even though I did not understand God’s ways or why He allowed this to happen, I knew I needed to cling to Him. I knew I wouldn’t make it through this without Him. The tricky thing was that I needed to trust Him and cling to Him despite being angry at Him. This was the first time in my life that I walked through a season of being angry at God. The good news is that I didn’t stay angry. Later, I’ll discuss what I learned in a season on being angry at God.
