Please visit our new website: http://projectpomegranate.org/
Help us teach by answering these questions!
Friends – please share your stories with us today! We are putting together a presentation about fertility grief and would like to share concrete examples of ways that worship, congregational care ministries, and the programmatic ministries of a church can care for, or inadvertently hurt, those struggling with fertility grief.
Information: Please consider participating! We invite you to
- Answer the questions below.
- Email them to projpom@gmail.com and also cc mehanchey@gmail.com
- If you are willing to share your face and name, send a headshot in the same email that we can use in our presentation as we help give a face to fertility grief. If you are not comfortable with this, that is ok too!
- Provide your name, city and state, and any other identifying information you are willing to share (title, organization, church). If you want us to keep these to ourselves, we will!
DEADLINE: Saturday March 7, but we would love to have your answers immediately!!
Questions: Please provide answers that will assist pastors and lay leaders in ministering to those in their congregations and communities that have been impacted by fertility grief.
- Did your pastor or faith community know about your fertility grief – your struggle with infertility, or your miscarriage, or the loss of your infant? Were you comfortable sharing this story? If so, why? If not, why?
- If your pastor or faith community responded in ways that were helpful – what did you especially appreciate?
- Are there things that you wish your pastor or faith community had done to support you?
- What was the most painful experience you faced in worship during this time? (A particular hymn? Language from the pulpit? Mother’s Day? Advent?)
- What was the most nurturing moment you experienced in worship during this time?
- How does someone experiencing fertility grief experience the programmatic ministry of your church? Consider whether there are adult classes that are comfortable for those who are not parents. Consider the language used in the bulletin and newsletters. Consider the focus and structure of church events outside of worship and Sunday School.
- What wisdom can you offer to pastors and faith communities learning to be sensitive to the fertility grief that is certainly present, but may be undetected?
Mary Elizabeth Hill Hanchey: Fertility Grief: Turning Together
Thank you to Ministry and Motherhood, a Divine Duet, for all of the amazing ministry they make possible in the conversation, and for making space for this post. We are going to pick it up and borrow it here!
As I left the preschool, I passed a woman who was crying. Hurrying, needing to get to class, I barely stopped to ask if she were OK. I must have still been walking even as I asked – and I smiled and nodded as she responded merely that she would be.
I left the building and was walking across the parking lot when my feet stopped and something powerful turned me around– very suddenly, it felt.
Finding the woman inside, I stopped to look at her face and asked her how I could help. In this stopping and asking I learned that she was afraid she was losing a pregnancy.
Because I responded to the realization that I must go back, because I stopped and turned and sought out her face, I had the privilege of sitting with a woman who was anxious and afraid, and who needed someone who understood…
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Shambles
This week, as we face Father’s Day, we remember those for whom the day holds a twinge of pain, or perhaps overwhelming grief. In honor of Father’s Day, we will be posting blogs by men. We give thanks for their willingness to give voice to their own experiences of grief, of loss and of ministry among those who have lost and the promise held in the very act of sharing: you are not alone.
B.J. Hutto is an ordained Baptist Minister and is currently completing his Ph.D. in theological ethics, at-distance, at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland).
8 June 2014
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” – Colossians 3.2-3
No one tells you when you’re young that you’ll feel ridiculous during some of the most important moments of your life. If you were raised on American pop culture like I was, you come to expect that those moments on which life pivots will contain a certain gravitas: John Cusack, feet firmly planted in the soil, hoisting a boombox towards his love; Tom Cruise valiantly tossing Goose’s dogtags into the sea; Ferris Bueller’s friend, Cameron, finally deciding to be brave enough to confront his father. You come to expect a scene worthy of the moment, worthy of remembering.
And so, on the day that I retrieved my unborn daughter’s ashes from the funeral home all the way down on 14th street, it was a shock to realize that I could feel so foolish as I sat on the L train. Foolish because the box—all cheap, shiny white plastic and severe right angles—refused to fit inside of the bag that I had brought to hide it. Foolish because as I sat there cradling in my lap this bulging, unclosable bag, these few tiny ashes, a woman—clearly within days of her due date—sat across from me in morbid juxtaposition.
And so, on the day that my wife and I drove to the Atlantic Ocean to return the dust of our daughter’s bones to the dust of the earth, it was a shock that an occasion so solemn could be so awkward. The stiff breeze blowing in off of the water made scattering Mary’s ashes with any dignity impossible, so I was compelled to wade in and return her not via wind but via wave: wave upon wave, waiting for the tide to finally rinse clean the disposable plastic baggy in my hands (tied, of course, with a predictably uncooperative wire tie). And then what does one do afterwards with the baggy, with the box, with the tie? Sometimes life really is a shambles.
And so, in those uncomfortable moments and in returning to those uncomfortable moments, it is crucial that we remind ourselves that our lives are not lived out before a crowd, bared for the world on some big screen, but are instead hidden—“encrypted,” almost, in the original Greek—in the life of Christ: the child who had to flee from Herod to postpone death; the man who refused to flee from Pilate thereby submitting to death; the Messiah, nail-pierced and scourged, whose resurrection swore that he, and not death and his minions, will have the final word. We belong to him, as do our children. Our lives and their lives are hidden in his. Our lives’ logic, their meaning, their telos are hidden in his, not in some sense of drama or solemnity. And this means that all of our lives’ are, along with his, actually yet to be revealed, revealed to one another, to the world, and even to ourselves. There is life yet. Scars may remain. Suffering will not. Tears will not. This is the hope that we’ve been given, for if Christ is not raised from the dead then we above all people are to be most pitied (I Cor. 15.19), but if he is—and he is—then we know that none of our stories, nor any of theirs, will be fully written until that final day.
Beyond the Silence
This week, as we face Father’s Day, we remember those for whom the day holds a twinge of pain, or perhaps overwhelming grief. In honor of Father’s Day, we will be posting blogs by men. We give thanks for their willingness to give voice to their own experiences of grief, of loss and of ministry among those who have lost and the promise held in the very act of sharing: you are not alone.
Chris Barrett is pastor at St. James United Methodist Church in Spartanburg, SC. He and his wife Elise, also a United Methodist pastor, suffered a series of pregnancy losses over several years, which led to her writing the book What Was Lost: A Christian Journey Through Miscarriage. In 2013, Chris underwent a bone marrow transplant for the treatment of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He chronicled his journey at http://marrowchristianity.blogspot.com/ He is currently working on a book-length project on his experience of surviving lymphoma.
…the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
Romans 8:26
Augustine once described us preachers as peddlers of words. I was a novice word-peddler when we had our first miscarriage. And in those moments of pain, I ran slam out of my own words. That is not to say that no words came to me. But they weren’t my words. Nor were they words that I actually spoke aloud. The words that came to me most frequently in that dim season were these: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” It was these words of Paul that gave me permission to take leave of words for a while, to lean into the dark mysteries of loss, pain, and grief without words getting in the way. It didn’t matter that this sentence was originally penned by Paul, a bachelor itinerant preacher who almost certainly never struggled personally with the loss my wife and I were experiencing. What did matter was that these words, more than any other, gave me consolation. They consoled me because they lifted the burden I felt to interpret the loss in real time and in my own words–first to myself, then to my family, and finally to my churches. They comforted me because they promised that even as I failed to find words that would carry the freight of my raw emotions, God received my inchoate moans as prayers. I found deep reassurance from Paul’s promise that even when I didn’t understand what was happening around me or within me, even when bitter tears flowed more readily than words, God’s own Spirit was faithfully conveying my heart’s needs and desires to God’s heart.
Part of my difficulty with finding words was because I felt helpless. I watched as Elise endured the physical as well as the emotional anguish of the miscarriage. It was her abdomen and legs that were wracked with cramps and it was her body that endured invasive tests and painful procedures. It was she who felt the reality of the miscarriage as a corporeal loss. I stood by, gripped with my own grief, horrified at the all-encompassing nature of Elise’s pain. In the face of her profound physical, spiritual, and emotional suffering, I felt as if my role was to speak as little as possible and be present as fully as possible. Looking back, I believe that I also felt some guilt. It was our relating as husband and wife that had led to this pain, and now Elise bore the greater part. This is fine and good when there’s a new creation at the end of the suffering. But when there is an empty womb and an empty crib, the pain seems all the more harshly uneven. And since I’d had cancer and radiation treatment in the past, my head was full of questions about whether something about my contribution had led to this happening.
Flooded by all these internal uncertainties, I found myself wanting to hug Elise. A lot. I would have said then that I was offering those hugs to console her. And that was true, as far as it went. I understand now that in addition to seeking to help Elise by hugging her, I needed her hugs as much or more than she needed mine. I would encourage all partners of a woman who has experienced a miscarriage to examine the care you offer to make sure you’re crystal clear about how much is for your partner and how much is trying to meet your own need for comfort. There will always be some of both. That is the nature of a mutually supportive marriage. But now, years later, I see that precisely because of the unevenness of the experience between spouses, a supportive partner’s job is to keep the ledger balanced in favor of what feels kind and comforting to the person who endures the lion’s share of the suffering.
Which brings me back to words. My muteness in the face of our loss was an important anchor for me. I believe it was precisely the right way to respond to the miscarriage, especially early on. It helped me lean on God and interact with Elise instinctively and compassionately in the deepest darkness of our shared grief. Here’s the thing. In the 11 years since our first miscarriage, the words above are the first time I’ve ever written on the subject. Sure, I’ve thought about it. I’ve even talked about it, though infrequently. I even helped edit my wife’s book about it. But I don’t think, until now, I’ve processed my own feelings sufficiently to move beyond the silence. The toll that has taken on me and my marriage is a story that’s still being written. Falling silent can see you through the funnel of a tornado, but cleaning up the debris, rebuilding in the storm’s wake, will almost always require patience, discipline, and yes, words.
Movie People
This week, as we face Father’s Day, we remember those for whom the day holds a twinge of pain, or perhaps overwhelming grief. In honor of Father’s Day, we will be posting blogs by men. We give thanks for their willingness to give voice to their own experiences of grief, of loss and of ministry among those who have lost and the promise held in the very act of sharing: you are not alone.
Brian Barrier is a member of Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, NC.
Every year I was in elementary school, there was a guy who would bring in his projector and home movies to show us in the cafeteria. Lots of rickety chairs would be lined up and we would all parade in on our best behavior because this was a terribly special event and we would not want to miss it by being sent back to class.
All the movies were somewhat grainy, and the screen was quite small, but to us they were grand. We went to a small rural elementary school that ran from Kindergarten to 7th grade. Many of us would never even get to leave the confines of the state in our lifetime, much less travel to California to see giant redwood trees or drive in a car on the open road just to see where it took us. Heck, many of us didn’t have a family that remotely resembled the one in the movies. Yet here these places were in living color, rich food for our daydreams.
The people in the movies were a sign pointing to what we could have some day if we maybe paid attention in class and worked hard enough. Some day, we could be movie people too that children would huddle together and stay quiet to see. Some day, God willing.
We all have our own movie people. Maybe they live on Facebook, sharing the warm glow of a birthday cake with their child who just turned five. Maybe they are in a supermarket, chatting to other parents as their children skip merrily down the aisles with a miniature shopping cart. Maybe they are the parent hovering over a baby being pushed around a park in an awesomely decked out stroller. Some day, God willing.
I remember when my wife Jenny and I prayed that prayer. We didn’t really use those words. We just tried very hard to do the right things. We paid attention in class. We worked hard. I had finally landed a job that paid a little more than barely enough to live on. My wife was going to graduate school. Jenny and I decided this may be the time to start a family. We made deals with God. In exchange for our hard work and devotion, God would surely grant us our dearest wish.
Jenny got pregnant. We decided to wait only a short while to tell everyone. My coworkers were planning a shower. Our friends were planning a shower. Jenny’s belly was growing. The open road was in front of us and we were driving just to see where it went. It felt like maybe, just maybe, we were going to be movie people too.
I was out of the state, training hospitals how to use disaster logistics software, when I got the call. Jenny had gone in for a routine ultrasound and the technician could not find a heartbeat.
In elementary school, I remember when the home movies stopped. They usually wound down slowly after a parting shot with all of the movie people smiling and waving to the camera. There would be a profound silence. Then we would file out of the cafeteria back to our classrooms, but we were changed people. Sometimes it took a while for that to really sink in.
It took a while for Jenny and I to get through the profound silence, after our movie suddenly stopped. Folks really didn’t know what to say. Hallmark doesn’t make a card for it.
I confess that I didn’t know what to say or do either. The only times I had ever heard about miscarriage was in hushed tones with very little context – as if one could somehow conjure it at will by speaking its name.
Then friends began to reach out to us and show us how things really worked behind the scenes. We started hearing folks we thought of as movie people tell their own stories of loss, of frustration, of profound grief. They had tried to have children or lost children. We never knew. Could this many folks have had the same deals with God?
The secret of the movie people paradigm is that we are the camera. We can choose where to look, what to focus on, and how the story will be told. I know that my experience with loss and grief has made me try to be a better participant in the lives of others, to better focus on them as real people. And this participation has taught me a lot about how our relationship with God is not transactional, not a talisman against loss to be conjured, but rather a sustained effort of engagement that allows us to express our deepest emotions while receiving healing balm of encouragement.
Too easily we can get caught up in seeing folks just as they present themselves rather than getting to know them better. We need to tell others who have experienced the same loss, the same pain, the same grief, that they are not alone. Then perhaps we can begin to stand the movie people paradigm on its head. Some day, God willing.
Resting My Eyes
This week, as we face Father’s Day, we remember those for whom the day holds a twinge of pain, or perhaps overwhelming grief. In honor of Father’s Day, we will be posting blogs by men. We give thanks for their willingness to give voice to their own experiences of grief, of loss and of ministry among those who have lost and the promise held in the very act of sharing: you are not alone.
R.P. Fugarino is the Senior Minister at Park Hill Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, in Kansas City, MO.
And Jesus said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. – Luke 24:17
Our miscarriage was very public. It was also the end to our first pregnancy.
At the time my wife and I served two different congregations, and we had been open about the conception with both, and the miscarriage happened on a church mission trip…so, well, our miscarriage was very public – for better or worse.
In its aftermath, a couple from my congregation asked us what we would have named the child. We told them, and not long after they presented us with a large, granite, expensive memorial stone engraved with the name we’d shared with them. Such a stone had been meaningful for this couple after a still birth, and they wanted to share their tradition with us. We were touched, blessed.
So when the third Sunday in June rolled around, when Father’s Day eventually came in for a landing, I had a commemorative stone sitting on my patio, but I did not have a child.
I have never really liked Father’s Day. I didn’t really like it before this experience, and even now with a healthy seven-year-old teenage daughter seeking to dominate my existence, I still have been slow to come around.
I know it is cliché to say it, but to me Father’s Day still feels contrived to sell bourbon, ties, and prime cuts of beef. Besides, don’t we procreating guys already get enough days, ample self-congratulatory days of honor on which we watch men and boys mimic war on a football field, days enough to tinker in garages or walk fairways?
So, I was pleased when my deep research (ahem, Wikipedia, he whispers) suggested America itself was also slow to come around. Apparently Father’s Day as we know it slowly bubbled out of events in Washington State in early in the 20th century but was not formally proclaimed until the Johnson administration and signed into law by Nixon. It was resisted by some because of the event’s dogged support by the likes of tobacco pipe manufacturers.
But a similar and quickly forgotten commemoration happened on July 5th, 1908 on the other side of the continent in West Virginia, a few miles from where Mother’s Day found its start. It was born out of a woman’s grief at her father’s death and the shocking death of 250 fathers in a nearby mining accident that left 1000 fatherless children in its wake.
It may sound perverse, and it certainly sounds selfish, but I am little pleased that at least in a small way Father’s Day itself was brought forth from the soil of loss. After all, the first Father’s Day I expected to know as a father became instead a day given to remembering loss.
Yet, I don’t think it’s perverse, at least not too much. If Easter were just about lilies and near-inedible sugar-coated marshmallow bunnies, would that be a good thing? But Easter’s not just that, of course. It’s a shocking, beautiful day born in the shadow of a grave stone, which makes the new life celebrated on Easter that much more sweet and profound.
So my heart swells a little to know Father’s Day isn’t just menswear and “aw, shucks, ain’t being a dad tough?” sentimentality but also an attempt to combat loss with something beautiful and love-stuffed. As someone that has never cared for the (pseudo)holiday that is Father’s Day, that is a remarkable and important development, at least to me.
Anyway, that’ll certainly be on my mind on Sunday June 15th when I’ll be sitting on my back patio sometime in the afternoon. As I sit there I’ll have one eye on my daughter as she pesters me about her upcoming birthday party, and my other eye will rest on the stone bearing the name of the child whose birthday party I will never have the opportunity to plan. And I’ll take a little comfort in knowing that just a few hours earlier both of my eyes had been in worship and resting upon the cross upon which Jesus died but from which he also rose again.
“When they want me to speak, they’ll ask.”
Church Resources Coordinator, CBF NC
This week, as we face Father’s Day, we remember those for whom the day holds a twinge of pain, or perhaps overwhelming grief. In honor of Father’s Day, we will be posting blogs by men. We give thanks for their willingness to give voice to their own experiences of grief, of loss and of ministry among those who have lost and the promise held in the very act of sharing: you are not alone.
Dr. Rick Jordan is the Church Resources Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of NC. As a chaplain resident at Spatanburg (SC) General Hospital, Rick started a SHARE support group for grieving parents. A few years later as Associate Pastor at Viewmont Baptist Church in Hickory, NC, Rick and a United Methodist pastor began The Pregnancy Loss Support Group . He shares this story about an experience that has shaped his own ministry.
I had been visiting the young couple for several days. Their infant was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, not doing well. I was the chaplain over this unit. After a few days, they heard the doctor tell them what they most feared and didn’t want to hear, “We did everything we could, but your baby didn’t make it.”
I was called to the unit. The couple was rocking their baby, saying their goodbyes. I sat with them in silence. When they want me to speak, they’ll ask me, I thought. “Isn’t he beautiful?” the mother asked. “Yes, beautiful,” I responded. After a while, she said, “Will we ever know why?” “Would that help?” I asked. She paused. “Maybe… I guess not. It’s going to hurt no matter what.” Then she said to her child, “I’m going to love you and miss you no matter what.”
The father was quiet during our time together. He was loving and supportive. He held the baby. He stroked his wife’s back. He wiped some tears from his cheek. And he was quiet.
Sometimes, that is the way it is. For some men, the role is to simply be present and supportive. His grief is expressed in the love he demonstrates to the sorrowful mother. The months of pregnancy were different for him. He was not confronted with morning sickness or kicks within or comments from strangers about a changing body – things that she had as constant reminders that new life was on its way. He dealt with her illness and felt some of the kicks and noticed her body’s redevelopment, but it was not the daily, sudden, surprising experience it was for her. Both had dreams for their new child. Both talked about names. Both wondered aloud about the color and curl and length of hair. But the last few months were different for each of them. The grieving will be different, as well.
When she stepped out for a few minutes, he said, “I feel bad that I don’t feel as bad as her.” “You think you should have as much sadness as she does?” “Shouldn’t I? I mean, this is my child, too…I wish things were different. I wish I could just make him live and we could walk out of this place happy, like we were supposed to.” “That was your expectation, your dream, but now it’s gone.” “Yes…but we’re going to make it through this.” “You want to move on past this.” “It won’t help to linger. I mean, I hate this happened and it is sad, but you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt.” “The way you want to play this hand and the way she needs to play this hand may be different.” “That’s true. That’s true.”
She entered the room again and took the baby from her husband’s arms. We sat in silence. She wept silently. He had one hand on the baby and one on her hand. He asked me to pray.
Turn. Turn. Turn.
Holly Jarrell Marcinelli. Holly Jarrell-Marcinelli, MSW, is a member of Christ Church (Episcopal) in Andover, MA.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . . .Ecclesiastes 3:1
Anyone experiencing infertility can tell you how completely it takes over your life. The “big picture” is quickly crowded out by temperature readings and cycle charts and testing and planning and waiting. Waiting. Time passes in increments of degrees, cervical mucus, blood levels, and appointment dates. If you raise your head from the chaos long enough to look around, you are amazed to see your friends and acquaintances blissfully sailing through what you imagine to be their lazy days of worry-free leisure.
A year and a half into our own arduous journey, I conceived through IVF, but lost the pregnancy almost immediately. To say that I was devastated cannot fully describe my feelings at that time. Crushed. Defeated. Hopeless. This had been our first IVF cycle, and the journey to that point felt like it had been so long – tests, appointments, research, questions, vitamins, acupuncture, insurance companies, naturopathy, bloodwork, ultrasounds, shots, pills, and procedures. I felt as if I had climbed a mountain only to find that I was shoved back to the bottom and told to climb it again. Even if we tried again as soon as we could, I knew we had been set back by three months – the amount of time it would take to get back on cycle and get the needed medications to make our way back to the table for an egg retrieval and embryo transfer. Three months. I couldn’t bear it. My clock ticked too loudly for me to accept “wasting” another three months.
The context of my life at the time offered little support. My father had died two months before, and I had found the fertility circus to be a rude distracter from grieving Dad’s death and protecting a place in my life for his memory. As a social worker, my work involved investing little pieces of myself into others on a daily basis. Emotionally, I had nothing left to tap. I was empty. I moped around work and home. I felt like no one understood my grief, because infertility and pregnancy loss are not things one talks about, and I did not know when or with whom it was “appropriate” to share the extent of my loss.
One Saturday I donned my gardening gloves and hat and set myself to weeding a flower bed in the back yard. It was a hot day in late August and it wasn’t long before I’d worked up a sweat with my digging and tugging. As I stood to stretch and take a breath, my gaze lingered on the dense greenery growing at the yard’s edge. I noticed the grass in the yard turning brown, and admired the azaleas that had been covered in blooms a few months before. The trees were still full of leaves, but I knew in another month the green leaves would change to yellow and brown and carpet the lawn at my feet. In my head I counted the seasons we had seen pass by in the years we had lived in our house. What was a season? Three months. Three months was the time between now and when I would see the first snowflakes fall. On the coldest day of a Massachusetts winter, one knows that three months is enough time to fill in the floor of the winter-stripped woods with lush spring-green ferns and see the first blooms venture out from the once frosty ground. How many of these seasons had flown past with little notice from me? How many of these miracles accomplished in three-month increments had I disregarded?
On that late summer day, I found myself washed and healed by the rhythm of God’s world around me – a world that would keep spinning and cycling through season after season. My tired heart began its turning from grief to hope, and in that moment, I knew I could climb back up the mountain. I didn’t know how many times, or how long the journey would take, and I had no idea what would be found on the other side. But there was nothing to do but climb. My hope that day sprang from the promise that the path would rise to meet my steps, as God’s miraculous earth turned steadily, reliably, beneath my feet.
Throwing My Anger at God
Jenny Barrier. Jenny Barrier is a member of Watts Street Baptist Church and a leader in the Hannah Ministry there. She holds an MDiv from The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Job 7:11 NRSV
“God, I am mad. No, furious, irate. And you know what, God? I am mad at you. I have so much anger inside me right now, God, that I don’t know what to do with it. So, God, I’m going to be angry at you because you’re the only one I know large enough to handle this much pain and this much fury.”
This is a rough transcript of a prayer I once prayed. The original was probably longer and I know it included some choice swear words. My prayer was far from being as eloquent as Job’s complaint to God, but both prayers came from a place of deep pain. I prayed this prayer about two weeks after I found out that my husband and I had lost our first baby. It was my twelve week appointment and I had gone to my OB’s office happy. I was excited to have my first ultrasound and finally see my child. Instead I found out that my baby had stopped developing weeks before, but my body had not realized this. My stomach had begun to grow. I was nauseated and exhausted. I had all the signs of a healthy pregnancy except the most important- a growing baby.
In the following days and weeks I felt a barrage of emotions: grief, loss of hope, helplessness. Most of all, however, was an overwhelming sense of betrayal. My body had betrayed me, fooling me into singing at night to a child who was not there, into rubbing my belly when I thought no one was looking. The bigger betrayal, though, came from God. Bible verses like Jeremiah 29:11 that once held promise now seemed to be full of cruel mockery. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I felt harmed. My hope seemed to have evaporated.
My feelings of betrayal filled me with anger. This was a burning, almost soul-crushing anger. My body did not feel strong enough to contain such rage. So, as I prayed my prayer, I did not hold back. Like Job, I complained in the bitterness of my soul. I balled up all the anger I felt inside of me, all my feelings of betrayal and I threw them at God. Part of me wanted to hurt God just as much as I was hurting. The rest of me just wanted to find a safe place to put the rage, somewhere that it could not harm me or my husband.
I would like to say that this prayer healed me. It didn’t. I still felt betrayed and I was still mad. Even as I write this seven years later, I find myself crying as I relive the experience. The grief can still be raw. It would have been foolish to expect instant comfort; it took Job forty-two chapters to reach a new equilibrium. What this prayer did, however, was start the long process of healing. I began to feel like I could breathe again. Eventually I was able to pray again, too.
Just this last Sunday in church school, my class was discussing the topic of prayer and one theologian’s statement that all prayer is based in gratitude. One class member asked if there could be gratitude in lament. I told an abbreviated account of my conversation with God and as I was talking I had a realization that even my lament to God, my anger at God had an element of gratitude at its core. I had no gratitude that I lost my baby. I am not nor will I ever be able to be grateful for that. Instead, even as I was in the depths of my anger I knew where to turn. God took my rage and instead of judging me for it absorbed it into God’s self. Even though I could not see it at the time, I will be forever grateful that God was big enough to take and hold my anger when it was too big for me.
Project Pomegranate 