We found out we were pregnant again right after Thanksgiving. We were hopeful but also terrified. In the year that we had been trying to get pregnant we had already had two miscarriages. We are now 17 weeks pregnant and each week has been a walk of faith. Each week my heart has become more open to the fact that this pregnancy is healthy but I still have a silent screaming fear in the back of my heart that it all might slip away like it has before. Each doctor's appointment, each person we tell the good news to, each milestone we hit feels like a tiny weight off my shoulders.
If you have had a miscarriage, I am sure you can relate. I was so scared to tell anyone that we were pregnant. It took me several weeks to call my OBGYN to set up an appointment. When I finally did I demanded that I receive an ultrasound right away and not wait the usual 8-10 weeks. I had my first ultrasound at 6 weeks and the doctor was optimistic but requested that I come in again in a week and a half. The second ultrasound looked good and she had no worries, but I did.
We finally told our parents at Christmas by giving them each a little gift with an ultrasound picture inside. It was so uplifting to finally share the news and be able to do it in such a joyful way. We had not been able to do that for our other pregnancies. I had a glimmer of hope but I was still paralyzed by fear. We waited several more weeks before we told our best friends. Beyond that small group of people I didn't want to tell anyone else. My fear was that the more people I told the more hope I would have and the greater disappointment I would have if something went wrong. I would fall asleep every night begging God not to take the baby away. I told him my heart couldn't take another loss, it just couldn't.
God knew my broken heart and he started to gently mend it unbeknownst to me. At the beginning of December I started an advent devotional and God used it to speak directly to my heart. The devotional spoke of the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. They had waited their entire lives for a child and were unable to have one. They were old and had more than likely given up the hope of ever having a child. I felt like them, even though I had only been waiting a year, my heart had been so battered and bruised by loss that I had given up hope. However, God was not blind to their desires and heartbreak, nor was he blind to mine.
God's had a great plan for the son he would finally give Elizabeth and Zechariah: to proclaim the coming of Christ--but he was working on his timeline and not theirs. When an angel appeared to Zechariah and told him that his wife would soon conceive and have a son Zechariah questioned God and the consequence was that he was unable to speak until the birth of his son.
I think it was natural that Zechariah's heart questioned if this news could be true. He had waited so long, and he knew his wife was barren. However, I don't think God used the period of causing Zechariah to be mute as a punishment for his questioning. I think God used that time to heal and speak to Zechariah's heart because he knew it was an area that perhaps Zechariah had not fully trusted God with. There were many times this past year that I felt that I was in a period of silence--not physical silence like Zechariah, but emotional and spiritual silence. I felt alone and hopeless, I felt like I had no control. I think God used this past year to speak to my heart, to show me areas in my life where I had been not letting go and trusting him. He revealed that I have a heart that craves control. I foolishly thought I was the one who had control of how and when I would conceive a child. However, God used this past year to show me that he is ultimately in control and I am not. Much like God took away Zechariah’s voice to bring Zechariah closer to himself, God took away my feelings of control to bring me closer to him.
The first words out of Zechariah's mouth, after his son was born and he could finally speak again, were words of praise. Zechariah had allowed God to work on his heart during his period of silence and that heart change burst forth! My heart still holds fear, but God spoke to so tenderly and gently to my heart through the story of Zechariah that I am learning to let go of that fear little by little and replace it with hope and praise. I am leaning into God and allowing myself to get excited and talk about a future with our baby; to plan a nursery; to tell more friends; to believe that God is faithful and I don't have to hold it all together. Little by little I am learning and God continues to heal my heart.
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