Having been married less than 18 months we are still often asked how marriage is treating us. People generally expect us to gaze romantically at each other, sigh and talk about how fantastic it has been, or they expect the usual cliched jokes about arguments over dirty socks left strewn on the floor, who is doing the dishes and which programmes to watch on the telly.
It's not been so black and white for us and our answer doesn't fit into either category. It's not that we are not getting along, in fact our relationship has never been stronger. But the truth is our first 16 months of marriage have been laced with trauma.
After a chilled and lovely engagement, and a completely joy-filled wedding day I expected we would coast into wedded-bliss and be gazing and sighing and generally in a wee bubble of newly married loveliness for a while. But almost a month of not having a proper home, followed by the discovery that we were pregnant and the subsequent discovery that we were losing the baby burst our wedded-bliss-bubble within our first two months of marriage. And honestly, it's been really hard. Somewhere amidst the pain of what happened I lost a part of myself. I became an envious, bitter, obsessive monster that I didn't recognise and it was scary.
I know that for some it will be hard to understand how deeply our miscarriage shook me. Often I have given myself a hard time for the heavy weight I felt I was carrying, because it seemed I should have been doing better. But in amongst the grief and deep feelings of loss were questions over my identity as a woman, shame, and a deep and desperate longing to be pregnant and give birth.
Around the anniversary of our loss, I had a bit of a meltdown. It hit me one day at work, out of nowhere and I couldn't stop the tears. My boss sent me home, Owen rushed home to be by my side and then on the Monday morning I pulled myself together and went back to work. As I chatted with my boss during the week she asked if I had ever considered going along to the Healing Rooms for prayer. It had been something I had thought about but never quite gotten around to doing, and as the busyness of work carried on through the week I forgot about our conversation.
A week later we had our church weekend away. The weekend was very significant for me and I spent most of the worship times in tears as I remembered afresh the truth of God's unfailing goodness; something that I knew in my head was true but that I had lost from my heart. On the Monday morning I woke with a debilitating migraine and had to call in sick, but in my usual style I was back at my desk first thing on Tuesday morning, exhausted but determined to work. My boss, however, was having none of it and sent me home, telling me not to come back for the rest of the week.
Her kindness reminded me of our conversation about the Healing Rooms, and I felt that the least I could do was to give it a go since she had given me the week off. I have now been along three times over the course of a couple of months, and truly believe God has been doing a healing work in me.
Through all of this I have discovered that I have a habit of trying to join the dots and see the finished picture before it is ready, and throughout the past few months I have come up with many grand versions of how my story will pan out, one example being that God would heal my body in the first prayer session and I would conceive and be able to testify to His greatness. At the same time as I was beginning to seek healing through prayer I was having a series of blood tests to look at my hormone profile and to see if I was ovulating. Of course, with the great story I had convinced myself was going to unfold, I was sure the answer was yes, and not only that, but that I was pregnant too. So I was bitterly disappointed when the results showed that there were no signs of ovulation. But God challenged me, "Jen, who is the better storyteller, you or me?" And I had to concede that the One who knows the end from the beginning is definitely the better storyteller.
What I have come to realise in the last few weeks is that God has done a serious work of healing in me, but it's not physical, it's a healing of my heart and mind. This is consistent with some of the pictures that the folk who have prayed for me have shared, and I can also feel the evidence of it in my life. I feel much lighter, envy has no hold on me, bitterness has melted away and I am no longer desperately obsessing over pregnancy.
What I know is that God knows us intimately. He knows exactly what is happening in my body, and I believe He has promised us that children will be in our future. So, rather than spend this season striving for something that will come later I've decided to enjoy the season we are in. A season that is not just for waiting but a season that is full of adventures and blessings that are for now.
I am not for a moment saying that I am over the grief, I have enough experience of grief to know that it doesn't work like that. But the heavy weight that I was drowning under has been lifted. I am enjoying my work, I can see beauty in the world and I can rest. I have a renewed energy, a hope for the future but also a hope for today. God has revealed truths about Himself to me and has spoken to me about who He has made me to be. I am left hungry for more of Him. I am hungry for Him, not just what He can give me. And I trust Him, that He knows me best, that His story for me isn't like His story for anyone else, it's uniquely mine. And that His version of the story is way better than my own!
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