Among the fields of gold (Losing my baby in Italy)

July 5, 2014: The following is an account of my second miscarriage, which began in Italy and was completed in America. It happened after what was perhaps the most dreamy week of my life while on a writers retreat in Tuscany. (I don’t use the term “dreamy” loosely – Tuscany was an incredibly romantic experience, and can only be described with excessive use of words like beautiful and heavenly and breathtaking, and of course. . . dreamy. Maybe even words that aren’t actually words: fairytaleish?) I’ve written this account during one sitting (mostly), and am publishing it without the thorough editing it needs. (I did, however, run spell check and delete a few sections that didn’t make much sense when I re-read it – you’re welcome?) It’s raw and unpolished and far too long, but I needed to waste no time in getting my story to paper to help me begin processing the tangled up mess of what just happened. (I did the same thing last year after losing our first child to miscarriage, and it was a healing balm to my battered soul. But wow, are these two stories different.) Please understand, should you choose to read this, that I’ve sugar-coated nothing and my descriptions might sound crude, especially to those who’ve never experienced this type of loss and grief before. My perspective and my faith are wound up tightly together, and my theology might sound very experiential to some. (Frankly, I don’t care, because I’m writing exactly where I’m at – convictions and doubts and all the gray in-between.) And to be perfectly honest, this probably should be edited down to a few separate posts, but at this point I’m not interested in the “rules” of writing and blogging. I’m only interested in the personal rules of writing to process and writing to keep breathing (of which, there are none – hallelujah). In saying all that, thanks for reading with eyes of grace. I hope you can find something for your heart buried among these words, too. Because somehow, that makes the pain a little more bearable.

 “She is clothed in strength and dignity, and laughs without fear of the future.” Proverbs 31:25

This was the last photo I took before the spotting began. Later that night, as I thought of this photo, I sensed God whispering this verse to me. I certainly didn’t feel it at the time (and still don’t), but I chose to receive it anyway.

The story of my second miscarriage cannot be told without also telling the story of my time in Italia. And so we begin in Rome. . .

 

Written July 3, 2014:

Years ago she explained to me her vocation. She had always wanted to become a wife and a mother so it shocked me when she became a nun instead.

But then she began explaining how she realized that all along her heart had yearned to be married to Christ and to mother the church; she only needed to discover what the depths of her soul were crying out for.

To me it sounded romantic and beautiful and fitting for a woman as faithful as she. And yet still, it was hard to wrap my young brain around. In my early twenties myself, I also longed to get married and have children. I found a vocation void of those things incomprehensible. Admirable, yes, but also a little bit. . . crazy?

We lived on different continents and sporadically kept in touch by email and sometimes letters. I smiled when I received her notes signed “May God bless you and Mary keep you, Sister Maximillian Marie” and cheered with her when she met the Pope and was invited to give a reading at a special mass at the Vatican.

I was proud of her, and not a little in awe of her dedication. She had followed her dream and God himself was truly leading her – it was clear to see how much she loved Jesus and loved her vocation. The habit she wore, she likened to a wedding ring: a sign for the world to see who she belonged to.

I planned to visit her in Rome after a writing retreat I attended in Tuscany. She worked near the Vatican and was helping to disciple young seminarians in their spiritual formation and studies, as well as provide a feminine presence in the largely male community.

Following what was, perhaps, the most idyllic week of my life with a group of writers-turned-friends in Tuscany, I landed in Rome excited to see my high school friend. We were twenty years removed from jazz choir and our afterschool jobs at a near-by day care center, but I had the excitement of a young freshmen, nonetheless. I was bursting with anticipation about learning church history and tradition through the Catholic eyes of my devoted friend, and after our transformative week in Tuscany I was still pinching myself, amazed and grateful that this was my real life.

What I was not expecting during my brief two-day visit to the Holy City was that after joining in with the masses as Saint Peter’s Square to hear the noonday Angeles and blessing from Pope Francis, I’d be waiving down a taxi knowing something was drastically wrong, even despite my very full heart. Within the hour I’d be labeled patient #788 in the emergency department of Gemali Hospital while bleeding my dreams and my 11-week-old baby down the toilet.

Perhaps that sounds coarse. . . and it should because it was.

Stuffed into a narrow hallway in the obstetrics area of the emergency department I waited for my number to be called. All around me swollen bellies attached to hopeful mothers reminded me that I didn’t belong to them any more. When I was finally invited to see the doctor she took me into the examination room and instructed me in broken English to drop my pants.

From the other side of the curtain I heard the loud whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of a baby’s heartbeat on the fetal monitor of a young, anxious mother – a magnificent melody turned to taunting, the rhythm of a slow, quiet torture I had no way of escaping.

The obstetrician scanned my uterus and I recognized the black, empty screen. I’ve seen it before – the kind of nothing that’s enough to simultaneously set the eyes ablaze and extinguish the brightest hope. I hated that cursed technology – mocking my emptiness, leaving no room for possibility.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. Not here. Not now.

Not again.

The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams.
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to his name.
Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.
You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
forever. -Psalm 23

(photo by @tshoxenreider)

When the examination was finished I was told I’d need to wait two or three hours for my blood results to come back so they could determine the best course of action. I asked to lay down and was put on a roll-away cot in the hallway. Turning my back to the row of expectant mothers behind me—so close they were within arm’s reach—I began to sob. I tried to hold it in, knowing the last thing these hormonal women needed was a reason to be afraid or sad. (Sad seems too small a word. Despair?) But there was no holding back the avalanche and as soon as I started, a few of them followed suit.

Sometimes tears are the only answer when the questions loom so heavy. They knew what was happening. Maybe we were more alike than I thought.

It was in that moment when I might have finally understood Sister’s vocation. Her hand rested gently on my back until my weeping slowed to whimpering. I was mothered by her – mothered by my friend who saw her very calling in life as a mother to God’s holy people. Being separated from my husband and children was excruciating but she cared for me and loved me as I needed in that desperate hour. (This, the work of Jesus; the work we are all invited to be a part of among those who are suffering.)

For a few days leading up to that unwanted hospital stay I had been spotting off and on. It was the tiniest bit and I knew it was a normal occurrence for women near the end of the first trimester as hormones fluctuate and the body works hard manufacturing the placenta. Sometimes it can help to know the stuff, but from those first few unwelcome drops I was terrified. Paralyzed. When you’ve lost a baby before, no amount of logic can shoo away the fear when the first sign of death creeps quietly onto your radar. Surely this wasn’t happening again. Not like this. Not while I’m a world away from my family. Not during my fairytale. . .

My writers group had been dining in a monastery that evening and we’d eaten ourselves happy on another four course meal. My wine glass sat untouched – ever attentive to the little one I carried – as we swapped stories and shook our heads, recounting the ways Tuscany had swept us off our feet.

Before the drive back to our villa I visited the restroom and it was there I first saw the blood. Tucked away in the tiny stall under the stairs where monks had once hushed their way to vespers and to lonely rooms for solitary study and quiet communion with the God of the hidden places, I broke the silence with groans of terror and a flailing of spirit as two of my friends came rushing to my side.

No, no, no, no, no….. I can’t remember saying anything else. All I can remember is wanting to rage against the darkness around me. If I could have torn down those ancient stone walls with my trembling fingers I would have.

This tiny band of writers whom I had fallen in love with gathered around me and held me and prayed for me and all I can recall is one laying hands on my head and another praying to the God “who holds all things together.”

It was enough to break me. (Is this God still holding me together? I wanted to believe.)

I tried to rationalize what was happening (this is common, a little spotting is no big deal) but I couldn’t deny that for several days I had felt much more “normal” than I had before the trip. Where was the mild undercurrent of nausea? Where was the debilitating fatigue I had been experiencing for weeks? Why were my breasts no longer so tender? Why did my fleshy belly feel less swollen and more “squishy”?

The truth is, I didn’t want to know the answers to those questions. If my worst fear was materializing, I wanted to deny it until I was home with my family. I wanted to stay in the dreamland of Tuscany where everything shone with the illusion of perfection and this understated magnificence that seemed too good to be true. And yet it was – true, real, touching on glory.

Under the magic Tuscan sky, we joked that we had stumbled into heaven on earth. We made our home in a luxury villa overlooking the painted countryside where our towels came wrapped in satin ribbon and fresh pastries were delivered by Carlo before we woke each morning. We shared a walled-in village built in the 1300’s with 250 townsfolk who took pride in their slow pace and their windows lined in linen and doorposts adorned in flowers. We soaked in the scent of jasmine and lavender and feasted our eyes on rows of cypress trees and vineyards swelling with what would become the finest of wines.

These were gifts of pleasure for no other reason than to usher in delight and remind us to taste and see that the Lord is good. We ate four and five course meals and walked among masterpiece landscapes that seemed too serene to be real. And yet they were real – it all was. And we were convinced it was created for us (and a thousand others just like us).

Our retreat was filled with rich conversation and deep spiritual encounters. The artist spirit among us was nurtured and inspired and we learned to relax into the generosity of God as he invited us to go deeper, to see wider, to listen closer. Loosening our grip on our undeservedness* and embracing his extravagance became the work of our rest. We took our work seriously, with solemn vows to receive it wholeheartedly. (Especially when it involved a hefty portion of glory—also known as gelato—on the side.)

I felt like I was floating on fields of gold the entire week, the beauty bringing me to tears daily, in intervals like a liturgy. Dressed in white linen, I was surrounded by the glow of a smiling God – wholly pure in his motivation to saturate us with excessive goodness. I felt it – utterly unworthy and entirely worthy to receive all that was offered. (All is grace.)

(photo by @nishweiseth)

When my dream jolted into a nightmare there in the crowded emergency department hallway in Rome, I was confronted with another reality: I really hadn’t found heaven on earth. No matter how wonderful our surrounds, now matter how perfect it all seems, we will never know and experience heaven on earth until the Christ himself makes all things new. All that we see and taste and touch, though being redeemed, is still flawed – deeply, desperately.

Heaven is still coming.

I wanted to linger in my fairytale, wanted to believe perfection was within my reach, but seeing the lifeless ultrasound screen was a stark reminder that we still live in the tension between the Now and the Not Yet. Jesus has come, but he is still coming to rescue us and take us home. Restoration has drawn near, but it is still approaching. Heaven is at hand, but it is still descending. Every tear will be wiped away, but for now we still sow the hard ground with tears of suffering.

My hospitalization in Rome left me suspended – neither pregnant nor unpregnant* – with a day of limbo before my flight home. I wasn’t able to change my flights without inviting more drama into the story so I spent Monday trying my best to blend in with the throngs of tourists in Rome. I marveled at the wonders of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel – surrounded by manmade beauty (clearly inspired by God himself) while carrying death in my womb. The significance and the irony wasn’t completely lost on me, though there’s probably much more to the story than what I can now see.

I left Rome wondering what the hell happened during the soaring highs and crushing lows that had swirled into the jumbled mess of my Italy experience. I was a hurricane of emotions in search of a shore that would tame and downgrade the storm and untangle the currents that pulled me in opposing directions, threatening to drown my lungs from the inside out. I knew my refuge could be found in Jesus and yet I wished to find it somewhere else – in something concrete that could hold me and reassure me in words I could hear with my physical ears. (I needed my husband.)

At times your convictions and your feelings feel at war with one another and I’m convinced nothing highlights that war more than staring face-to-face with your worst fears and pain and grief.

I wondered how I could feel so angry and so overcome with sadness, while also feeling almost numb and outside of myself, as if I was watching someone else stand in the middle of the script of my life story. And yet even in the turmoil there was this peace that ran deeper like an untapped well and again and again the lines of the old hymn turned over in my head It is well . . . It is well with my soul. (Shock and sorrow mixed with faith is a peculiar and spectacular concoction.)

All is grace. (Have I said that already? Because it is.)

After long flights I was delivered safely into the arms of my beloved three, collapsing into tears of relief and a heavy love that outweighed my sadness, if only for a moment.

Twenty-four hours after landing I labored and birthed our lifeless child with Ryan by my side. The process sideswiped me, each contraction inviting the rush of pain and injustice and agony all over again. It was a misery unparallel and unsolicited – no endorphins or adrenaline or promise of holding a child on the other side of the pain. (I certainly wasn’t expecting a physical pain like that.)

My mind spun with the thought of laboring death and I wished I could take those hours back and readmit myself to the hospital for the surgical procedure the Italian doctor had recommended. I realize every woman handles this sort of thing differently but I hated every second of it and longed for the familiarity of waking up from the anesthesia with someone whispering, “don’t worry, it’s all over now.” At least when they scraped Scarlett from my womb I could blame them for taking her. This time I couldn’t shift that awful burden to anyone else – I was the one who delivered this child to his grave.

Losing one child felt like a tragedy that happened to me. Losing a second felt like something happened through me. Despite the “right” answers and the science and statistics and the order of the universe in which we live. . . I’m still left wondering what I have done for my body to betray us so?

How could this happen and how could I ever risk letting it happen again? (Questions I shouldn’t be asking.)

It’s been hard for me to see God’s grace these last few days, it has. (Though perhaps I haven’t been looking very hard.) But if I recognize an ounce of Grace it’s in the timing of the onset of this labor of death. Had I gone into labor in a tiny Lufthansa stall over the Atlantic Ocean I may have wanted to flush myself down the toilet. That call button would have done me no good. If there’s a sliver of gratitude in my heart it’s because the bleeding didn’t pick up until I was safely back on American soil – the home of my own birth.

I feel confused and sad and angry and numb. I don’t know how to pray, so again – writing becomes my prayer and I offer it hastily and freely and perhaps without much of a filter.

Italy has changed me in a thousand ways and charged my heart with lament for a beauty just beyond my reach. In these quiet early morning hours I listen for God but only hear the roar of my wall clock, ticking steady and strong. It mocks my jetlag and reminds me that I still live in the time-space continuum of flesh on earth. This place, not my true home. And I – beloved dust.**

In the quiet I cling to the truth that he draws near to the broken-hearted. I don’t feel it, but I believe it, and I’ll find my peace there.

I’m quite sure I’ll be unpacking all that I learned and experienced in Tuscany for months to come as I peel back the layers and read between the lines of my journals, and as I study the images burned into my memory and my hard drive from a thousand photos grasping like a madwoman to record the crushing beauty of it all. (So many times I cried tears fueled by a heart overwhelmed – have you glimpsed a beauty that just seems “too much”? Perhaps it was conceived there in Tuscany.)

And I probably don’t know much but I have come to absolutely know this: heartache and agony don’t have to erase beauty and grace; they will amplify it if we are willing to see. My nightmare ending in Italy doesn’t render the dreamy beginning exempt. I suppose one makes the other a little more complete, though I swallow hard to admit that.

I’d give anything to be able to delete and rewrite this latest dark turn of my story. But since I can’t, I instead choose to offer it to the One who keeps promising to author my life – the One Who Holds All Things Together. (Yes, even my broken heart. Amen.)

Friends, I’ve shattered all the blogging rules with this long and rambling stream-of-consciousness unpolished, uncensored post. (No doubt I’ve written more for myself than for you; I think I had to – and you get that, right?) But I’ve learned by now that if life is not shared it’s not lived so I share mine with you in hopes it helps us both to be a little more alive.

(Besides, I can’t do brokenness alone.)

Losing a child is excruciating but not shameful and I have nothing to hide as I pour my blood and guts onto the screen and maybe even into your heart. I’m not brave, I’m desperate, and I write candidly while still very much navigating the waves of grief because I wish more people understood that miscarriage (and stillbirth) is more than just “pregnancy loss” or a “failed pregnancy.” Miscarriage is the loss of a child, a future, a dream. There are too many here in the sisterhood of the bereaved – too many mothers and mothers-in-waiting with empty arms and broken hearts. There are too many fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents and lonely souls grieving the loss of what was meant to be. (Don’t you dare tell me these children weren’t meant to be.) We need our people to rally and to try and understand how much it hurts, maybe even to the extent that they have the courage to enter into the pain along with us and sit beside us there for a while.

We need our stories to count for something. Because together we heal each other through the fellowship of suffering and the offering of vulnerability and the gift of a Hope that never, ever fails. (Right? He never fails, right? Remind me again as I remind myself and remind you and remind him. . . please don’t fail us, Jesus.)

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. –Isaiah 54:10

Grief is unsettling and too often swept under the rug for lack of cultural protocol to help us in knowing how to respond. (If you want to help a family grieving the loss of a baby, I’ve written some ideas here. Though not an exhaustive list, it may help trigger your heart and hands into compassionate action that could help make the difference between a friend grieving with hope, or grieving quietly without. And oh friends – how vast the difference! Grief without hope just might bury you alive.) But as I write openly, please let this chapter of my story serve as a siren call to remember and proclaim that these children – though not born into life as we know it – they matter, they lived, they nestled quickly right into the depths of our hearts and took residence there, even as they now take residence in the arms of Jesus.

 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
 all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. –Psalm 139:15-16

Assuming you made it through these several thousand (*gulp*) words, I realize your first instinct after reading a post like this is to bring offerings of condolence and solidarity and prayer. I sincerely appreciate those precious gifts (yes! write them!) and speak from experience when I say I will read and re-read every comforting word you leave in the comments or send in an email a hundred times in the days to come. But may you also be compelled to examine the way you think about life and death and friendship and community and suffering and rejoicing and the heart of God himself. May you think about your faith (and your humanity) and the way it defines your response to heartache – your own, and (maybe more importantly) the heartache of others.

We need each other. We belong to each other. And you know I write this with love,

Adriel x

 

Fields of Gold by Sting

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold
Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley?
We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold
See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear in the days still left
We’ll walk in fields of gold
We’ll walk in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold

p.s. All these pretty little phone pics (and so many more) can be found on instagram under the hashtag #tuscanywritersretreat. They tell the story of a small group of writer-pilgrims lost and found and feasting on cheese.