Miscarriage stays with you forever. Losing a child at any age is life changing and sticks with you throughout the years. I am not that far out from my two miscarriages (only a few years), but they stick with me throughout my days.
Now that can be a sad thing. And sometimes it definitely is just plain sad. But it can also be a glad thing. I know that my two babies are not actually lost. They were perfectly planned by God and are now with Him. And that thought brings me joy in the midst of the sorrow of loss. Though they are not in my arms, as I long for them to be, they are in God’s.
The famous English poet, John Milton knew this pain of child loss well. His sister lost a baby to a cough one winter and he wrote a sorrowful poem for her. The first lines and verses are filled of the saddening story of how the winter’s deathly chill came and her child breathed their last.
But then Milton turns the poem back to the mother and encourages her in the midst of her sorrow.
It’s these last lines that I want to share with you. Whether you are a miscarriage mama, or lost a child who was a bit older, I know these words will resonate with you.
“Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;
Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render Him with patience what He lent;
This if thou do, He will an offspring give
That till the world’s last end shall make thy name to live.”
Though our losses will stay with us forever, we can cease to lament them. Learning to curb our wild sorrows is wise. But notice that they are only curbed, not totally done away with. Then be encouraged by remembering that your little one is with God, you’ve sent them there as a present for the Lord.
Our children are only lent to us from God. They are truly His and we only have them with us physically for a short time, sometimes a very short time. But through the pain of suffering, loss, and having to be patient, God creates in us an immovable hope in Him.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “…Do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Our outer man is decaying. But that inner person, the faithfulness in God, the hope we have in Christ, is being renewed day by day. Our inner person will last for eternity in Christ. That is the hope we have every day even in loss.
Every time that we remember our littles ones who have gone on ahead of us, we can remember the hope we have in Christ and curb our emotions into praise of God’s glory.
So even though our miscarriages may stay with us forever, God’s faithfulness does too. And that’s something we never want to forget.
Related Posts:
Hope in the Midst of Miscarriage
Losing a Little One | Scripture Promises for Miscarriage Mamas
To the Mama Waiting for Her Rainbow Baby
