For the 1 in 4, I am one too
- Jess Welsh
- Oct 1, 2019
- 4 min read
To the woman with the empty womb, I see you. My minivan may be full to the brim with six hooligans I get to call my children, but I know the feeling of empty hands. To the mom staring at an empty ultrasound, I see you. I know the tears, the pain, and even the guilt. While it looks like my home is so full the empty couldn’t reach me—it did. It came in fire and death. The fire was so hot sometimes I thought I couldn’t breathe, and the death was so cold, I wondered if I’d ever come back to life. But sister, God always brings new life through death. And fire he refines into gold.
I became one in four on a family vacation. We welshes were only four then, and our little bean that would make us five was nestled safely inside me. We were all hopes and dreams. Girl or boy? Would they look like Nora or Calvin? Would I finally get an epidural?! Would they grow as best friends?
Then, looking out over the vast glory of Bryce Canyon—I felt it. A sudden wave of pain and blood, heartache and sorrow. Death comes to us this way sometimes, without warning or cause. A thief in the night that steals away more than the life, but the hope, and the joy that came with it. I sat in a car, half dressed, a witness to the pain of Genesis 3. Eve’s curse had come to me in a way all its own.[1]
I felt the pain of childbirth, not in the life giving way of it, but in the life ending way. There was no hiding from this part of brokenness. There was no escape from it. Paul says that sin came into the world through one man, and death with it, and death spread to all mankind.[2]I felt this truth down into my bones, and yes…my womb.
There looking out at a canyon in Utah I couldn’t hide from the reality of it. This world needs rescuing. My body needs rescuing. My very soul needs rescuing. Sometimes I forget my own neediness. My kids finally master some training we’ve been struggling through for months. Potty training success hits its stride. Routines help me control our own chaos. I am consistent to pull my Bible out each morning. I stop saying those hushed curses when once before, I might have yelled them, and then— I forget. Slowly and without realizing it I forget that I am not the master of my fate. I am not the captain of my soul.[3]Even when I feel I am holding all things together—Christ pulls me closer, sometimes through death and fire to whisper that he alone holds all things together.[4]
Miscarriage reveals this truth with acute pain and heartache. We are not creators. We are limited in power and control. We are needy. Our bodies aren’t our own. This world and everything in it needs a rescue. Where the world would hail mothers as the makers of their babies— miscarriage tells us otherwise. We are humble, broken vessels of a truth that is woven into our very souls. Creation power belongs to one, and one alone. No cycle tracking, period planning, birth control using method can thwart the plans of God. No prenatal vitamin, exercise routine, or special tea can contain the ways of the Lord. God doesn’t bow to my cycle, family planning, birth control, or prevention.
What we do with this truth makes all the difference. Do we empty our hands and hearts before our maker? Do we believe that the God who creates, will redeem what sin seeks to destroy? Will we bow in our grief and neediness, to the one who lifts our gaze? Sister, offer your tears to the one who bottles them and counts your sorrows.[5]And when the words don’t come easily, trust the spirit who intercedes for you in your weakness.[6]He is there. In the darkness the light of Christ glows softer still. When the path seems hidden, the spirit tugs you onward, one clumsy step at a time.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”[7]
The resurrection power of Christ lives in our broken bodies sisters. It lives there, and where death would seek to kill, Jesus seeks to save. We carry around the death of Jesus, and it takes the sorrow of physical death, the pain of childbirth, the heartbreak, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested. He makes it matter. It is not in vain. Death is at work—but life overcomes, in Christ and for Christ alone. This is the hope: that the third day, Jesus was raised, defeating sin and death forevermore. This resurrection of Christ he gives by faith to his people, that he called unto himself. Death no longer holds him, and it will not hold us.
Jesus feels your brokenness. In the garden Jesus cried out to our father, with tears and blood. This pain is not foreign to Him. Where Satan creates chaos and destruction, Jesus redeems and makes straight. Even if we don't see the end of our path, we know it always leads to him. His life, your treasure—Gold forged in fire. His death—your life eternal.
[1]3:16
[2]Romans 5:12-13
[3]Invictus: William Henley
[4]Colossians 1:15-17
[5]Psalm 56:8
[6]Romans 8:26
[7]2 Cor. 4:7-12
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