While I'm Waiting

My girlfriend recently told me about a song called While I'm Waiting. I think we spend more time in waiting than we realize. Waiting to get a boyfriend. Waiting to get engaged. Waiting to get married. Waiting to start a family. Waiting to get pregnant. Waiting for the baby to come. Waiting for the kids to grow up. Waiting to move. Waiting to buy a house. Waiting to get a promotion. Waiting to be healed. There's got to be something on that list for everyone....Here are the song lyrics:

I'm waiting

I'm waiting on You, Lord     

And I am hopeful

I'm waiting on You, Lord

Though it is painful

But patiently, I will wait

I will move ahead, bold and confident

Taking every step in obedience

While I'm waiting

I will serve You

While I'm waiting

I will worship

While I'm waiting

I will not faint

I'll be running the race

Even while I wait

I'm waiting

I'm waiting on You, Lord

And I am peaceful

I'm waiting on You, Lord

Though it's not easy

But faithfully, I will wait

Yes, I will wait

I will serve You while I'm waiting

I will worship while I'm waiting

I will serve You while I'm waiting

I will worship while I'm waiting

I will serve you while I'm waiting

I will worship while I'm waiting on You, Lord

Although this isn't really my type of music, I think the reason this song pierced me so hard is the Biblical accuracy of it. Scriptures kept coming to mind as I listened to the song, so one night I mapped them out to match up with the lyrics of the song. Here is what I came up with:

I'm waiting I'm waiting on You, Lord	The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. (Lamentations 3:25)
And I am hopeful	Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)
I'm waiting on You, Lord	Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)
Though it is painful	Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper! (Psalm 30:10)
But patiently, I will wait	And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:10)
I will move ahead, bold and confident	Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)
Taking every step in obedience	He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them! (Psalm 145:91)
While I'm waiting I will serve You	Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. (1 Peter 4:19)
While I'm waiting I will worship	I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9:1-2)
While I'm waiting I will not faint	But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
I'll be running the race Even while I wait	Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD. (Psalm 27:14)
I'm waiting I'm waiting on You, Lord	Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you. (Psalm 33:20)
And I am peaceful I'm waiting on You, Lord	You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3)
Though it's not easy But faithfully, I will wait	Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. (Isaiah 30:18)
Yes, I will wait	Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

These scriptures barely scratch the surface; the Lord anticipated that His people would spend much time in waiting and has a lot to say about it. In doing this study, I began to realize that waiting doesn't have to be passive. It doesn't have to be the back-up plan. Waiting can be active, and it can joyfully become the anthem for the season of life you are in. We can exchange sad, powerless, and hopeless waiting for courageous, steadfast, and hopeful waiting. This has changed my outlook on this season in our lives, and I'm confident this is one of the many things the Lord has desired to teach me during this struggle of trying to get pregnant again. I'm very grateful, as I would not have been driven to study this topic otherwise...and based on how much waiting is involved in life, I'm thankful to understand this new way to look at it!

False positives and real hope

In response to my miscarriage, many women with good intentions told me about women they knew who got pregnant the month following a miscarriage. While I didn't want those stories to give me hope, they did. Maybe I could be one of those women?! Maybe that could be our story?

And I thought that might finally be our story when I did get a positive pregnancy test this last month. Until that positive test turned out to be a false positive. That's when the test shows up pregnant, but it's an error and you're not actually pregnant. This happens frequently with cheap tests, tests with blue dye, and tests that use the "+" to indicate pregnancy (instead of the two vertical lines). I learned all this after the fact, of course. Because the next morning I tested using a normal, reliable test and it was super negative. Like not a hint-of-hope negative.

And then all of the sudden I was propelled back into that place I found myself after the miscarriage. I began scrambling to make sense of why this had to be part of my story. Why did the false positive need to happen? Why not just a simple round of negative tests? I was coming up empty: no answers.

So there I was, shaking my pathetic, sad little fist at God. In my anger, I told Kyle "I wish I could just 'tell on God' to people. I wish I could tell people what He's doing to me, and that those people could go to him and say 'ok, enough God - you're pushing her too hard. Throw her a bone already. The false positive episode was too soon, and totally unnecessary'."

But God's time is perfect, so it wasn't "too soon". And God is sovereign, so His plan is never "unnecessary". God has already thrown me the merciful bone of salvation, and His sanctification is never "too hard", because He knows the exact amount I can handle. Despite all this, I still so wish I could be the woman who got to skip this part of her sanctification. But it looks like God is showing me I get to be the woman whom He is going to teach much to through this season of waiting. And not just boring old waiting - but painful ups-and-downs waiting. Yet it's precisely the ups and downs that have revealed how unstable certain aspects of my faith can be. And He's going after those parts of my heart relentlessly, not ceasing until every lie I am tempted to believe about Him is replaced by a truth and a faith that cannot be shaken.

I did the math the other day, and we've now spent a cumulative year of our lives trying to get pregnant (first with Drew, and now with this second child). That's a year of my life that God has been walking with me, and us, in the waiting.

So where am I at now? I've been working my way through the New Testament in my reading time, and lately I've just been draggingggg my way through Hebrews. Just one paragraph at a time. I was wondering why (most people like Hebrews), but in hindsight I can see that God landed me exactly where I needed to be in scripture the morning we realized I had gotten a false positive pregnancy test. Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen". I looked this verse up in my ESV study Bible, and it says the word "assurance" also translates to "confidence. The confidence of things hoped for, but not seen.

So what is not seen? Certainly the pregnancy we've hoped for would be seen. Living in our own home would be seen. Finally getting to go on the mission trip I've always wanted to do would be seen. Us being able to afford adoption would be seen. Those are all desires that we have that would be seen, if fulfilled. And to be fair, those are not bad desires. But hope placed solely in those desires is not the product of faith, nor does it produce faith.

So what is not seen? The commentary further explains that faith is not a vague hope grounded in wishful thinking, but that faith is settled confidence that something that is not yet seen but promised by God and will come to pass because God will bring it about (paraphrasing the text).

So then what has been promised by God? God has not promised us another child. He hasn't promised us our own home. And he hasn't promised us infinite resources to travel the world ministering to orphans and adopting children.

But He has promised us our salvation, and our eternity in heaven (Ephesians 1:13, 1 John 2:25). He has promised us that He is all-powerful (Jeremiah 32:17, Revelation 1:8), that He is wise (Isaiah 40:28-29), and and that He is forever trustworthy (Deuteronomy 32:4). He has promised to never leave or forsake his own (Deuteronomy 31:6, Joshua 1:9). These are the promises that can't be seen.

God has been revealing to me that faith is unwavering hope that He will fulfill His promises. And through this waiting He has been refining that faith of mine, and removing any bits of my faith that are placed in things other than His promises. And I don't suspect that on this side of heaven He'll ever be completely done doing that in my life, but I know He's making progress. I also know His desire for my faith is that there will come a day when my ultimate hope cannot be shaken because it rests on His promises, and nothing else.

I wanted to end this post on a positive note, because we have much to rejoice in - and we are! God has been faithful to us - and especially to me, in the cataclysm of emotion that has been present these past few months in particular. I am sharing this story because God is the hero of it, and He'll always be the hero even if our story never includes us having another baby. We are celebrating that!

Raised in Glory

Miscarriage used to be something I couldn't discuss, I was so fearful of it. I couldn't even think about miscarriage because of what it might do to my relationship with God. And then it happened: I suffered a miscarriage last week. And like I feared, I couldn't handle it. I cried until I felt ill. It temporarily shook my relationship with God right down to the core. I felt that I would never be able to reconcile my intense hurt and sadness (and ANGER!) with what I knew to be true about God: that He is always good, and always in control.

I don't know what it was specifically about miscarriage that I was so fearful of, because there are plenty of other events that would be more devastating than miscarriage. But I do know that most people have a similar fear(s) in their life, some area of their heart that they refuse to let God in on.

Kyle and I were on family vacation in Oregon when we found out we were pregnant. We've been trying for another child since March, so this was welcomed and celebrated news! But the pregnancy test wasn't very strong, and I began to doubt. Blood work a few days later revealed that I was no longer pregnant, and was going to experience a miscarriage soon. And that's what happened.

But something else happened, too. Jesus, in his perfect grace, showed up to meet me in the dark place I suddenly found myself. In fact, I'm sure He was there all along, waiting for me. Waiting to tear down this fear in my life that had formed a wedge between us.

When I got the phone call from my OBGYN about my blood work, I burst into tears. Big, messy, heartbroken tears. Kyle and I went back to our room, put Drew down for his nap, and then we just cried. I began formulating endless "why" questions: why would God do this? Why here? Why right now? Why is He making me go through this? We had no answers, we just cried and prayed.

In the midst of the tears and praying, I heard God clearly say to me: I wanted him home with me. I immediately felt a weight was lifted off my aching heart: God wanted our baby home in heaven with Him. How could I argue with that? A joyful laugh even fell out of my mouth. Because after all, as Christians, that's precisely what we want for our children above all else: that they would be spending eternity in heaven.

The Bible says that our bodies are buried in brokenness, but will be raised in glory (1 Cor 15:43), and that's exactly what had happened to our little life. Raised in glory! How could we not rejoice in that?!

Sitting in that room in Cannon Beach, I suddenly felt accomplished: my work for that baby was done. And Jesus' work for that baby was done. He is now in heaven with Jesus experiencing a joy we have yet to know here on earth. I couldn't stop smiling. Yes, my arms ache to not be able to hold that baby, but my heart rejoices knowing Jesus is holding him in heaven.

And I no longer felt angry, I no longer felt fear. I just felt content, and a little homesick for heaven.

That night Kyle and I went to the evening service at the family camp we were at. During the opening worship, they played Blessed Be Your Name. Part of the lyrics read:

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name

I was bawling, and meaning every word I was singing. I was starting to see that in the midst of me shaking my angry fist at God earlier in the day, He met me in that tender place and showed me that I had been grieving as if I had no hope.

But as Christians, we do have hope. Romans 15:13 says "may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." I have hope in the goodness and perfectness of God. I have hope in His tender comforts. I have hope in eternity, because of Jesus. And that's what makes is possible to praise God in the midst of a heartache. That's what makes is possible to still seek God, in the midst of a heartache.

John Piper recently wrote that "God’s design for suffering is that it magnifies Christ’s worth and power. This is grace, because the greatest joy of Christians is to see Christ magnified in our lives." After this experience, I wholeheartedly believe this to be true.

God answered my prayers through this miscarriage. Had that baby lived to be born, we would have prayed endlessly (just as we do with Drew) that he would come to know the Lord and spend eternity in heaven. God has already answered our prayer for that baby.

God also answered another prayer of mine. If you've been reading along, you know that I was doing a little study on 'fear of the Lord' a while ago. That's the only proper fear the Bible instructs us to have; the rest of the time we are instructed to fear not.

The ESV translation of Isaiah 41:10 says:

"fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; 

I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." 

The Message translation reads: 

"Don’t panic. I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you." 

When confronted by my fear of miscarriage as a reality, I had panicked. I had forgotten that God was with me. I feared suffering, because I had forgotten who my God is. He's a God that gives strength. He sends a helper, Jesus. He holds me steady when I'm drowning in my own conceited despair, and the holy spirit keeps a firm grip on my heart despite my doubting thoughts.

Psalm 34:4 says "I prayed to the Lord, and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears." Miscarriage was something I held too close to my heart, and God knew that I needed to be freed from that specific prison of fear. When I found myself praising God in the midst of the miscarriage, I knew with confidence that I no longer feared miscarriage. Do I want it to happen again? Surely not. But do I fear it? Definitely not. That's freedom. 

I shared this because I hope it might be a relief to someone else going through something similar. I've been so comforted by God and the truths of the Bible, and I want that for others who find themselves grieving as I was: falsely without hope. Let it be known: God is good, He is in control. He loves His people. He is faithful, always.

As for what's next: we are waiting patiently on the Lord to see what the future holds for our family, and rejoicing in His goodness!

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My friend sent me this blog that was really helpful for me and may be a comfort for someone else specifically grieving a miscarriage: http://hopeinmiscarriage.blogspot.com.