Our Miracle Girl (Part 8)

It is at this point that the story has come back to (Part 1). It would be helpful to re-read it before continuing.

Here I was again, in that strangely familiar place. Except that death and beeping machines and stic*ky, w*et tummies and unanswered questions aren't supposed to feel familiar, are they? Once again, I was lying alone in the dark with the glow of the monitor faced away from me, waiting for someone with an awkward smile of pity to return and tell me my fate. Except this time, something was very, very different.

It was O.K.

Not because of any great revelation I was given. Not because my spiritual understanding had suddenly catapulted in the last 6 months. Not for any reason I could either pinpoint or even question.......This was It! This was what the Bible is referring to when it promises us we will be given "the peace that passes all understanding!" I couldn't explain it. I didn't even comprehend it myself!

But it was simply O.K.

I very consciously knew that this was not denial. I was well aware that what was happening was real. This was the very presence of my Creator, the author of Everything, with me at that very moment. I couldn't have conjured it. It wasn't some reward for my having "enough" faith or courage or maturity. It wasn't an answer to the right amount or intensity of pleas for a healthy child. It was simply - Him. And that's how He is. Simple in His dealings with us. I realized that He is not some mystical force that can only be accessed by rubbing the Genie's lamp just so. He is personal and relational, just like my parents or my husband or my best friend are, except without all the quirks and faults.

It's not that I knew that the doctors would be returning with any better news than the last time. It's not that I realized all the great lessons I would learn from the hardships if I was about to experience them all over again. It really did just defy explanation, or even needing an answer. I was being held and protected COMPLETELY.

People have asked me why I would have such an experience this time, but not the first. Hadn't I been angry with God the first time? Hadn't I been "holed up like a hermit crab?" Why didn't He make Himself feel nearer to me then? Those are excellent questions to which I have no answer. Except I guess that God had a plan. He knew what He was about to do, although I had absolutely no idea! And perhaps the context of the first event made this one all the more dramatic as it unfolded.

This time it had not been the doctor conducting the ultrasound, but the technician. This time when she disappeared out of the room, she returned just a minute or two later with all sorts of reinforcements. To the outsider who didn't know any better it may have seemed unprofessional to have four or five staff people there while Dr. S. tried to stammer out the unthinkable. But I knew they were wanting to make me feel very supported. A couple of ladies had teared up as I had left there alone a few months earlier. Under the scrubs, they were just women relating to another woman. This time it was Dr. S. whose eyes glassed over in restrained tears, as he managed to tell me in his firm doctor's voice, "I've just never had to tell someone this twice before." It actually surprised me. After discovering just how common miscarriage is following the first one, and knowing he had been in practice more than a decade, I would have assumed at least one of his patients had experienced multiple miscarriages before.

I asked the obvious question, almost clinically, as another doctor would rationally discuss a diagnosis with him. (I was simply feeling calm.) "Does this likely have something to do then with my physical makeup?" His answer was "no, that's why it's so surprising. Miscarriages are not all that uncommon, but multiple ones by fluke - that is - spontaneous, which is why they call it that - they are without medical reasoning - at least as far as our scientific knowledge comprehends, that is pretty rare. I've never had to deliver this kind of news twice consecutively before."

His words trailed as if he were ashamed to speak that last sentence. I wanted to comfort him, and so without thinking I gave him a look of "oh, it's O.K." and a small hug. I even noticed the humor in it. Me telling him it was going to be O.K. Especially, because I am NOT by nature the strong person that was coming across at that moment! That's when he said to me, "are you O.K.? You seem so calm." And without thinking of my response, I said something that sounded like someone else putting the words within me to speak. "I just know that God is going to do whatever He has planned." (For the past few months, I had considered this to be mostly a sad fact. Now, hearing myself say it like some third party, it was inspiring and comforting.) He looked at me quizzically and I probably mirrored his very expression. If I had thought through my response ahead of time, I most certainly would have agonized over picking words more meaningful or eloquent than these. I am going to be honest. I had never done a very good job sharing my faith with strangers. Meaning that I rarely had ever tried. Family that I love and care for and worry about, sure. But those words were spoken through me and not by me. I was being "used" of God, and the feelings were not that of an instrument of manipulation, like a robot, but of BLESSING. I was sensing that some how, some way, I was GETTING to participate in something very sweet.......