I had been praying and believing God for a miracle—you know, the kind that can divinely reverse your situation in an instant. It was the week of June 8 in 2009 when I started spotting. I was almost thirteen weeks pregnant. I hadn’t heard a heartbeat yet, but they assumed it was because my uterus was tilted backward. A similar situation happened with my first two girls, but not this late in the game.
When I went in for my doctor’s visit that week they said I had nothing to worry about. Even though I was spotting a bit, my hormones were good and the following week, they would try again and were sure they would hear a heartbeat. By Friday June 12, the bleeding hadn’t stopped, and despite all efforts to be hopeful, my heart was worried.
I remember exactly where I was when I dropped on my knees to ask God to intercede. I had snuck away from the cheer and festivities of our dear friend and pastor’s thirtieth birthday party for just a moment. Amidst the laughs and excitement, I knew I needed some alone time with Jesus. So I escaped to the only place I knew no one would find me—the church office bathroom.
It was a single room with a toilet and sink and some pictures on the wall of memories throughout the years. The minute I pressed that little lock button on the door I began to weep. Alone with Jesus at last, I knelt to the floor, sobbingly clung to the toilet and did the only thing I could do: plead with Jesus to save my baby. A black shaggy rug lay on the floor, leaving little imprints on my shins and knees where the fabric bulged out.
After some time, I knew I needed to return. My face was blotchy, my eyes looked like baby marshmallows and I felt like I had just used an entire roll of toilet paper as Kleenex. I rose to my feet, straightened up my brand new shirt from Forever21—the black silky one, with tiny jeweled flowers sewn delicately to the top—and made my way back to the party. Still
praying for a miracle.
In those desperate moments, you don’t really care about where you are or what you’re touching. I doubt I would have been using the toilet seat as an elbow rest to hold my praying hands upward in my normal frame of mind, but I was desperate.
It’s amazing how you can love someone so much that you haven’t even met.
I was, after all, a good six weeks into my dreaming for this new little Klusacek baby and I wasn’t about to accept the possibility of losing it.
Sunday, June 14 rolled around. It was Father’s Day. We decided to make the drive up to my dad’s to spend the holiday with him. I was sitting on his light cream sofa when I got up to notice a spot of blood on the sofa. I quickly covered it up with a blanket and walked calmly to the bathroom. As soon as I sat down the intense bleeding began. I started sobbing and called for my dad—who, being the amazing, compassionate, level-headed doctor he had been for over thirty years, proceeded to stick his hand in the toilet and search through the heavy clotting for a baby. Now that’s fatherly love!
He told me to get in the car and drive to the ER. I cried the entire way.
I cried while calling my dear friends and asking each of them to pray.
I cried filling out the ER paperwork.
I cried when they did the ultrasound.
I cried when they told me my baby had no heartbeat.
I cried when they had me schedule my first D&C procedure for the following week.
I cried on the way to the D&C.
I wept like a baby when I woke up from the surgery, realizing that the life I once had within me was gone, never to return. Little did I know in that moment, it wouldn’t be the last time I would experience this situation.
With your permission, I’d like to tenderly transition this post over to the loss of a dream.
I’m not blind to the fact that some of you reading this chapter have suffered painful physical loss. Loss of a loved one or perhaps more than one loved one. Maybe your loss was attached to a mother or father abandoning you or a spouse deserting you. For that, from the depths of my heart, I am truly sorry.
I pray that as time progresses, God mends your heart, soul and spirit. I’ve had my own personal losses throughout the years. If you allow me, as lovingly as I know how, let me share with you some of the things God has tried to teach me through them—in ways that only He can.
So let me share some parallels from my personal loss and the loss of a dream and how they relate.
Release your need to understand it all.
Losing two children through miscarriages was a huge personal loss for me. I was left asking God, why? Why did He allow this to happen? Was it something I had done? Was it something I hadn’t done? Did I not pray hard enough? Did I not have enough faith? What was wrong with me? If an all-powerful God who created heaven and earth could raise the dead and heal the sick, why was I not precious enough in His sight to intervene?
All these “why” questions consumed my prayers. In the days after the surgery I can remember getting up and making the slow descent to my basement every morning to spend time with Jesus. The first month I think I cried every day and asked Him why.
I was completely open with Him, baring all my feelings, and He was just there to listen. It was a sweet, precious time that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Not once did I feel Him reprimanding me or telling me to suck it up and be strong. Instead, I would imagine Him simply holding me in His arms and whispering to my heart that everything was going to be alright.
Through time, He moved me past the hurt and heartache and renewed my trust in Him once again. I had to be honest with Him in order for Him to bring healing. I released my need to understand why it had happened, because in all honesty it was out of my control.
It is the same with our dreams.
Sometimes there are reasons why the dream is not happening that we can control. Maybe as we ask God, He will reveal that we need to be more diligent in pursuing it. Maybe we need to slow down and release it to Him. Maybe we need to change our lifestyle a bit to accommodate it. But when it comes to things that are beyond our control, we must release our need to understand why it’s not happening back to God.
You don’t understand all of God’s ways? You find yourself asking why? Welcome to the club.
Yet God tenderly asks us to trust Him past our present understanding—releasing it completely to Him.
He taught me this through my physical loss and He’s showing me this through the delay and sometimes denial of things I thought were from Him. He teaches me this through things he allows into my life that I would rather not be there. Continually asking me to release my need to understand it all and simply trust.
This was and is sometimes a hard, painful lesson to learn yet as I release it opens the door to healing in my life and a deeper intimacy with God.
I hope this part of my story touches your heart in the present. In the following weeks I'll share a bit more about what I've learned in this journey.
To Be Continued…
Photo Credit: Pixabay
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