Miscarriage, Wrestling with God, & Staying Off the Internet

A loving God with His angry daughter

Where do all the babies go?

whose laughs and cries we’ll never know,

whose crawls and jumps we’ll never see,

whose little faces will never be.

Who can warn you of the fear that floods

From seeing all that red, all that blood?

Who can prepare you to look into your husband’s eyes and break his heart?

How it will rip into your chest and tear you apart.

Or how one day you’ll go from celebrating a baby

to sitting in an emergency room crying and waiting.

Holding your insurance card, holding it all together.

“Can you tell me your name, your birthdate?”

“At least we have each other.”

“Can you rate the pain from one to ten?”

“I love you so much.”

“When was the start of your last cycle? Lie down on the bed.”

There’s a grief I never understood nor wanted to

until it came barging down my door.

A sadness, a fear, I never grasped until it said,

“I’m here to take your joy, and more.”

Can a mother be a mother without a baby in her arms?

How else do you explain this pain,

helpless from protecting life from harm.

“One in four women,” they said,

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

If that’s so, dear Lord, if that’s so.

Please tell me Jesus, please.

Where do all the babies go?

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I deleted social media off my phone. That seems like a weird place to start, but maybe it's easier to work backwards.

When my husband, Ryan, and I returned from our honeymoon, a dreamy Italian getaway mixed with some stressful adventures of travelling in a non-English speaking country, we were joyful. I was pregnant with a honeymoon baby. We were newlyweds, finally living together with many cardboard boxes still needing to be unpacked, and home renovations and decorating visions on the way. "A season of celebration" we said, with one celebration rolling into the next.

Being a mom was something I always felt like God put on my heart to do (along with writing), and Ryan always talked more about being a dad than a husband. "Hey, that's not true!" he would say, but it's one of the things I love about him. Once when we were dating I asked him, "What kind of man do you want to be?" After a moment of contemplation the first thing he said was, "I just want to be a really good dad." I had never seen someone so happy when we were on the honeymoon and the pregnancy symptoms started to appear one after another. Some people might think we were crazy for not waiting the standard one year to "start trying", but many couples we knew took months or even over a year to get pregnant and that was while "trying". We were 26 years old and 29, excited at the possibility of having a baby, and ready to just leave it in God's hands and see what happens. I had always prayed for fertility in my singleness, so when we realized that I was pregnant immediately, we felt blessed. Until we didn't. Or I should say, I didn't.

Has anything ever made you drop to your knees in anguish? Has a moment of turmoil ever hit you so hard and fast you clutched your chest for air, a quiet scream breathing from your throat? For me, yes, too many times to count. As poet Nayyirah Waheed once said, “I do not pay attention to the world ending. It has ended for me many times and began again in the morning.”

The long game of suffering that has been my life saturates even my earliest memories. It is what led me to become a mental health counselor and feel called to help others. My story is one that I suppose others thought was so appalling, I started to get paid to tell parts of it to audiences now all over the world as a motivational speaker. Which was all the more reason why I cried out to God, Why me.

I remember telling God before I was married, "Please Jesus, I don't think I have the strength to endure another trauma. Can my life just be normal now? I can endure trials, but please no more trauma. At least 10 years of normalcy, Lord. 5 even. There are people who never encounter suffering until their 30's! Or later! Please, God, please." The hard reality to this story is that this prayer, and the ones that followed would be answered with No's.

When I told my therapist about the miscarriage, she immediately leaned her head back on her chair and began to cry. She has known me since I was 19 years old, and walked alongside me and my trauma and heartache these last 7 years. I would say that other than Jesus, no one knows me quite as well as she does. "I wouldn't want miscarriage to happen to anyone," she said with tears on her face, "but especially not you. Not after everything...God, can she just have this one thing?" We wept together.

I knew miscarriage was common. And I knew that the enemy seemed to follow me everywhere I went for my entire life, in seemingly every area of my life. I was one of those people that bad things just seemed to happen to, whose childhood, and early adulthood, just makes people uncomfortable. Every day since I learned I was pregnant, I begged God on my morning prayer walks, clutching my stomach with each step, "Lord, please protect my womb. Please protect my baby. Please don't let me lose this child. I've been through so much, I don't think I could bear it. I promise I'll raise them in Your Kingdom. For once don't let me be a sad statistic. Please Jesus, please, in Your holy name Jesus." I've questioned whether I prayed for it too much. Is having children an idol? I asked myself. Ryan even asked me the same. To which I said, "I don't know...but what mother wouldn't plead for her children?"

I won't describe to you what it's like to experience a life leaving your body or what that emergency room visit is like. But it was as equally spiritual and emotional as it was physical. I was one of those people who intuitively knew I had life within me before a positive pregnancy test, and now I intuitively felt alone as my body bled and ached in pain for the days and weeks that followed. It's an interesting sadness when the body still has pregnancy symptoms and you know you are only growing grief.

There were friends who loved us so well in those first few weeks. They were so present and I still don't know how I'll ever repay them. I know they don't expect me to. But as time went on, I was growing cold toward Jesus. Anger and confusion roused in me. I didn't want to pray. I didn't want to go to church. I didn't want to read the Bible. I still did these things out of dutifulness but not out of joy for the Father. At first I felt like Jesus was close, like how you feel when someone is sitting in the living room with you even when they aren't speaking. You feel their presence even with your eyes closed. And then I felt like Jesus was far, very far. But I knew I was the far one.

The battles waged in my head morning till night. Nightmares of miscarrying haunted me every night when I slept. They still do. Doubt and grief followed me every minute while I was awake. We're newlyweds. We're supposed to be happy right now. This isn't how this is supposed to be. I had been obedient to the Lord. I had been living more righteously than I ever had in my life. I was baptized last year. I experienced true revival. I was unashamed of the Gospel. For the first time in my life I didn't relate to the Prodigal Son, I related to his brother.

All those people who don't know Jesus or refuse to, why could they have children? Every day in my office I sit with the children of parents who would do nothing but hurt and abuse them. Why could their parents get pregnant and bring a baby to term? What about all the parents of babies who say they're Christians but don't actually have an intimate relationship with Jesus? How do any of them deserve it? Why doesn't the enemy pick on them? Maybe that's the way to live to avoid suffering. Stay an arms length from God and the enemy won't bother you because he doesn't have to. And what about all those loving Christians struggling with infertility or pregnancy loss? How is any of this fair? Is it all random, God? Do you even care!

There were many things I knew cognitively that were being brought into question. The question wasn't "Is all this a lie?" The question was, "I know what's true. But do I believe it." I know God is good all the time. But do I believe it. I know God loves and cares for me. But do I believe it. I know He is a protector. But do I believe He protects me? I know God is sovereign. But why would He allow this? I know Jesus paid the debt and penalty for all my sins on the cross. But am I being punished?

I know, I know, I know, I know, I KNOW. But God why have you forsaken me! Haven't I been through enough!

Bible verses started to appear in my life repeatedly, as they usually do when the Lord is trying to speak to me, but I was comforted very little.

"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4).

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28).

"My tears have been my food day and night..." (Psalm 42:3).

Lord, I just got married. You gave us beautiful weather when the forecast said all week it would rain. Our honeymoon was paid for from the registry. I was PREGNANT. I WAS delighting in You. I was so thankful! I couldn't have been delighting in You more!

How can good come from this? If all my trauma has made me a better therapist, if the only redemption is that I can better work with clients, then I don't want to be a therapist anymore! I'm so tired of being used to help others!

Okay you see me, God, but You don't care about me! Why have you never protected me since I was a little girl! Why have you always let bad things happen to me!

And then there was another verse He was using to speak to me.

"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

From glory to glory. Hmph. I can feel everything I'm feeling, Lord, but the Truth is that You're taking me from glory to glory. Whether or not I like it. Whether or not I want to.

I am.

By His grace and His Spirit He revealed this to me, and yet my spirit still felt weak. Was I a bad Christian? Some people in my community find me wise. They admire my faith. I couldn't let them see me like this. Oh dear, pride. I told my therapist.

"I just wish I was handling this better."

"How could you handle it better?" she said.

"By having more peace. By being more surrendered to God's will. By being the type of person who is more of a servant of God and doesn't let this affect me so much."

She said something that still echoes in my mind every day. "Katie, if you weren't asking these questions and feeling these emotions, I would question if you were handling it at all. This is handling it."

I thought of the garden of Gethsemane. I thought of Jesus' sweat, like blood, the night of his betrayal leading to his torturous death. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” He said to His friends, pleading with them to stay awake and pray with Him (Matthew 26:38). I thought of my God, who I had so long loved and followed, who fell with His face to the ground and asked His own Father, "may this cup be taken from me" (Matthew 26:39). Jesus, in His most human of moments, wished for different circumstances. And He is wholly God. And I am only human. I serve a God who understands.

Whenever I have encountered pain in my life, which has been rather constant, I have always sought answers. I wanted to know why. And answers, knowledge, frankly, have in fact made me feel better. More peace, more wisdom, more acceptance and with a blueprint of how to move forward. But this, this particular pain, I have not found an answer for. And it has been unsettling.

I began to read books written by people who love Jesus and who had suffered. One writer's words spoke to me from Joy in the Sorrows by Matt Chandler. The writer had also known mostly suffering all his life. And when suffering came knocking again in his adulthood, he learned that there is no cap on the pain and hardship we experience. Sometimes it just keeps coming.

As my reading continued, it became clear to me that somewhere along the road, unbeknownst to me, I started to view God like Santa Claus, like a vending machine. I'm on Jesus' nice list so He will answer my prayers. If I put in my Christian cents, I'll get the treat I want. When did that happen? I thought to myself. I came to Jesus as a little girl not because of anything He was doing in my life, but because He was with me while I faced great darkness. The essence of Him made me a Christ follower, not the benefits of Him. I didn't fall in love with Him because of what He did for me. I fell in love because of who He is. When did I stray? In my adulthood I had always handled trauma and hardship with unshaking faith in God's love for me, and I hadn't shaken my fists at the Lord like this since I was a teenager.

One session I had with my therapist she said, "It seems you are more hurt by losing trust in God than you are by the miscarriage... This was the straw that broke the camel's back for you. " She was right. God is the most important thing in my life. I attribute my survival only to Him. He is the only person who has never left me, nor stopped loving me. And I indeed felt beat down by life, and hurt by Him.

I love you. How could You allow this to happen to Your daughter? I'm sorry for my sins, I'm sorry! I don't deserve to have a baby, do I! I felt betrayed. And weak. I felt worn and exhausted by my particular hand of cards in life. I longed for heaven. I was forgetting the cross in the dense fog of my emotions. And yet still I could not help but reach for Him. Over and over I repeated Peter's words to Him. Lord, where else would I go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:68).

Would God even let me in now that I didn't feel like a "good and faithful servant"? The Word reads over and over to trust in the Lord. Was I sinning? And then one night a verse was spoken to me.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I cried. How he sees me and loves me.

Jefferson Bethke wrote in Jesus > Religion that we don't actually need answers. What we need is the hands and feet of Jesus: love, comfort, people to sit with us in the midst of our sorrow. He says that is where true healing comes from.

When the miscarriage first happened, I sat on the couch with one of my best friends Cheyenne. Fresh from the hospital, she brought us groceries we were too depressed to buy ourselves, a blanket and candle, tea, a pretty new notebook for my heart, and a heating pad and sanitary products to manage my wounded body. I told her I wanted to write about this, but I didn't have the words. She replied with one of our favorite lines of poetry from poet Lora Mathis. "Some day I will write poems about this," and I joined her in unison, "but first I must survive it."

So, I deleted social media off my phone. Weird way to end this now I suppose. But pain has a way of doing that, reorganizing our priorities. Social media was always a way to keep up with friends, see updates of their life, share updates of mine, and when my growing issues with memory loss began to affect my life and relationships in my early twenties, it was a way to store all the moments I didn't want to forget. A creative outlet for a virtual photo album. But recently I found myself numbing with mindless scrolling. I became disgusted by all the performing I saw in post after post. I knew I was not present, and then I was disgusted with myself. I didn't read as much as I used to. I didn't spend time outdoors and if I did, I was on my phone. I didn't watch my husband make our morning coffee. I never wrote or drew or painted or sang or danced anymore. The creativity and imagination that God had given me were reduced to embers. I felt so unlike myself. And now I feel there is a great returning.

Something from the past is coming back to me, and it feels good. That feeling before technology exploded, before people scrolled their phones in waiting rooms and cafes. They used to read books and newspapers and sketch, or simply daydream and people watch. I feel like a little kid, enamored with the shapes of clouds, the sound of children playing, the music of rain, the architecture of a room. I'm craving travel, the smell of the mountains, to see a play. I feel the creativity being blown into yellows and oranges from the charred twinkling ashes that had come before it.

Compassion in me for people has also once again grown. I felt it in my chest so tangibly in that first week of grief, like a sprout bursting from the ground. And today it is all the more bloomed. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, famous psychiatrist in my line of work for coining The Five Stages of Grief, said in her book On Death and Dying, "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” Sounds like Jesus. And shouldn't we all desire to look more like Jesus?

I still do not have answers, but I do have hope, even when it is small on most days. And I still have Jesus, because He loves me too much to let me go. As the Apostle Paul so beautifully wrote,

"Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?...And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39)

His presence in my life is enough to sustain me. His promise of a world without sorrow and pain is still real. The cross still changes everything. There are truths I cannot escape no matter the condition of my heart. And I still choose to believe that tomorrow might be better than the last. And that He takes us from glory to glory, even when we are mourning. Especially when we are mourning.

Katie Donohue Tona

If you liked this, you might also like:

Pregnancy After Miscarriage & Jesus

You've Been Asking God "Why?" Here's an Answer: Miscarriage, a year later

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