Last Updated: Jan 7, 2024
One of the defining moments in a woman’s life is when she can fulfill a physical role that God had designed for women ever since the creation of the first woman. That is being a mother. Even if a woman does not believe in God, she can readily accept her role as someone that brings into this world, a small copy of herself to share her personal world with. For nine months, motivated by the thought of meeting her child, a mother endures pain and discomfort with gladness. For nine months, a mother dreams of a brand new life with her baby. Then after the final do-or-die pain of the delivery, an exhausted mother, finally, welcomes her child into her world.
Sadly, not all mothers can experience this joy. Some mothers never begin the journey of motherhood, and some mothers finish the journey even before they can welcome their child into their world. As a man, I can’t possibly say that I understand the pain. As a man, I can’t possibly say that I know what it feels like. I can’t even fathom what a mother’s personal world is like in such moments.
Today, we are visiting the world of the mothers who have lost their love prematurely, as much as my imagination allows.
Emotional Divide
For the sake of this post, I have done some reading on the internet to gain a little glimpse of what mothers with miscarriages go through. Though there were varied responses, what I found particularly interesting was the striking difference in reactions between mothers and the “husbands.” My use of the word “husbands” instead of fathers is poignantly understood in the following statement of one mother:
“My miscarriage was years ago, and my husband never represented me as a mother on Mother’s Day until our 2-year-old was born…. It still hurts.”
Some husbands fail to realize that to their wives, the child is a child regardless of whether they were born or not. Husbands identify with their children when they can see and hold them, but wives identify with their children from the moment they realize they are pregnant. To a mother, that small entity in her belly is a new being that has already taken up a big space in her heart.
Husbands can’t possibly understand what their wives are experiencing in such situations. All husbands can do is just be there for their wives and let them grieve to their hearts’ content. What we need to understand is that, in their time of loss, it is not a matter of what can be done, but it is a matter of whether they are given enough time to sort things out.
Spiritual Despondency
But what if, during that time of sorting things out, a mother needs to hear from God? I am sure the readers either know or know of someone who questioned the existence of God in similar situations. It was said that C.S. Lewis, after becoming a Christian, had to revisit his commitment to Christianity over the death of his wife to cancer. He was a man who became a Christian while trying to disprove the existence of God. Looking at C.S. Lewis, because he was such a strong adversary of Christianity, we could reasonably be assured that his conviction was solid when he turned Christian. However, C.S. Lewis, after seeing how cancer made his wife suffer so much and, in the end, take her life, that solid conviction was in question.
To a mother, losing that unborn child is liken to C.S. Lewis losing his wife.
“Why did God let this happen?” “Why does God, who is supposed to be an epitome of good, let my child die?”
I am sure there are and will be, many variations of questions and doubts, and I wish I could answer them all, but I can’t. However, I can offer some consolations through the Scriptures, knowing that understanding the reason for the “whys,” sometimes, does not console.
Wisdom and Goodness of God
The book of Job is very famous for recounting how a devout man of God sought to get an answer from God, in the midst of sorrow.
Job had lost all that he owned, all of his children died together, and his body was full of “…painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). Job scraped himself with a broken piece of pottery to, momentarily, distract his bodily pain, with another pain that is localized and greater. In a sense, intentional hurting was a form of relief.
Without a doubt, Job is one man who would understand the magnitude of unrelenting grief and sorrow that mothers may feel over the loss of their child. This fact is understood when reading his lamentations in the Book of Job.
Utter Psychological Darkness
In Job 3, Job starts by creating imagery of a dark, depressive, and barren world that he questions why he didn’t “perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb” (Job 3:11). He continues his question of “why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day (Job 3:16). “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me,” he says (Job3:25).
Testing the God’s Tolerance
Job then begins his fearful and subtle accusation toward God by saying, “The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me” (Job 6:4). “Oh, that I might have my request,…that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut off my life! Then I would still have this consolation – my joy in unrelenting pain – that I had not denied the words of the Holy One” (Job 6:8-10)
Emotional Storm
True to being a human, Job, frantically, sifts through the myriad of surface emotions, grabs hold of any emotion, and lets it loose!
Paraphrasing Job 7:1-10: “Don’t humans live a miserable life, like a slave longing for the evening shadows, unfulfilled? Mine’s been such for months, and even my nights are a misery. My days whisk away without hope, with no taste of joy. Oh God, I will die now and you will see me no more when you ask for me.”
Paraphrasing Job 7:11-21: “I will shout the unfairness of life, the unfair treatment of man! Why do you torment me with your eyes? Why won’t you leave me alone? What can an insignificant human being do to you that you even examine every moment of my existence? Because we are nothing, forgiving should be nothing to you as well, and yet why can you not do even this little?”
Paraphrasing Job 10: “At this point, there is nothing to lose, all is in vain, so I will complain to God. While I am at it, since there is no good or bad in your sight, I will go ahead and declare that I am guiltless. So go ahead search out my faults and declare them to me! I am your creation and yet you throw me away like a rag. Didn’t you spend all that time making me? You blessed me in so many ways and made me delight in you, but all of that was just an act and I know it. Your real purpose was to stalk me to catch me in my wrongs and never let anything go unpunished. There is nothing of good in me in your sight. Please leave me alone!”
Prophetic Words
In Job 14, Job’s tone mellows out, drastically, and his sayings, though still negative, are appropriately sound. Here Job speaks the truth of Human conditions with a tinge of sadness.
Job begins with the helplessness of humans and their short-lived lives on earth. Then he compares the eternal deaths of humans to the cyclical death of trees, in which new saplings arise afresh, after the death of the old, when the conditions are right.
Then comes the prophecy, “If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed! If only you would set me a time and then remember me! If someone dies, will they live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come” (Job 14:13-14). This is the prophecy of the Saints/Christians rising at the rapture in which we enter the heavenly kingdom! “You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin” (Job 14:15-16)
Even during human grief and anger, God can use a man…woman…and an unborn child for His own Good! Job 14 is evidence of that. What greater prophecy could Job have spoken on behalf of humans than this? This came about because Job was grieving. It could not have come if he was content!
But he is not done! Near the end of Job 16, Job prophecy of Jesus our savior! “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man He pleads with God as one pleads for a friend” (Job 16:19-21).
Unquestionable Love for God
“Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever! I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end, he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:23-27)
Even though his anger and sorrow are great, greater is his longing for God!
Renewed Strength!
After he confesses love to God, Job’s psychological state solidifies with confidence. In Job 23, though he still feels wronged and wants to state his case to God, he is confident of his righteousness, without any false pride, but instead a right amount of fear of God…a reverence to God.
This is the correct path to God in times of grief. We are hurt and we feel wronged, and we question God. Job felt utter darkness in the beginning. He wanted to die, wishing he was never born. Job grasped and blurted out all kinds of emotions, and he bitterly questioned God. But through the process of expressing anger and sorrow he, in a sense, released all the pressure that was bottled up inside of him, and eventually, he equalized to the point of reconnecting with God and he regained his strength…he recovered.
God Enters
Once Job had said all he had to say, God dropped in on them. I want it to be known here that God patiently waited until Job had expressed all of his surface emotions, released all the built-up pressures and regained psychological composure before taking over the conversation between Job, his three friends, and the man of mystery (the fourth guy). God enters the conversation (Job 38), establishes his authority over all things, and rebukes Job and his three friends. Then once Job prayed for his three friends, as commanded, God restored to Job all his possessions and blessed him with more children.
Closing Summary
Human nature is such that, no matter what the crisis, all the surface emotions, and the built-up pressures must be expressed and released, accordingly, before we can continue with our lives. If anger is one of those surface emotions express it! If doubt is one of those bottled-up pressures, let it out! There is no sense in bottling that up even deeper into the confines of our minds and our hearts.
God is not such a small being that He doesn’t understand where we are coming from. God knows the limits of our understanding and the limits of our resources. Express it! Release it! God can handle all that we can throw at him! God will take it all and renew you with the “…peace of God, which transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7), and in that peace, we must renew our faith. In that peace, we must trust that God does all things for the good of His people and for the little ones that He took away.
Russel
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