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All right, so we're gonna go
ahead and and get started here. This morning, we're going to
kind of continue on the topic that Pastor Dean and Brenda have
been talking about. And this morning, we're going
to talk about the issues of miscarriage and infant loss. And so for those
of you who don't know us, I'm Pastor Caleb, the other one,
Pastor Frisky, and this is my wife, Lauren. And we'll get into
our story with infant loss a little bit later. But I just wanted
to start out with, well actually, let's start out with prayer and
then I'll read our opening quote and all that. So let's go ahead
and pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day and for
this time together just to discuss issues that are current in our
world and just pray that you would guide us, help us to learn
and to apply to our lives what we will be here today. In your
name we pray, amen. So, this is a quote from one
of our counseling resources. It says this, death itself is
already difficult to deal with as it is our sharp reminder of
lost innocence, sin, and sin's punishment. It is so much harder
when a dear loved one passes away. Harder still it seems when
that loved one is your child. Crises reveal what a person genuinely
believes. While many people unfortunately
turn away from God because of their crises, God often uses
these difficult situations to draw us closer to him. Today
we would like to address the very sensitive topic of pregnancy
and infant or child loss and how God in his comfort can heal
and provide tremendous hope in such deep grief. Go ahead. So in your notes you'll see there
we kind of wanted to start off with an overview of what falls
under this category of pregnancy and infant loss because either
sometimes we can try and put all of these different situations
under one label when really this topic expands much further than
that. And even in this already kind
of long list, you can break those down even further into the situations
that different people deal with. What we wanted to accomplish
with providing these is to kind of give you a tool to help you
understand what these different scenarios can look like. Not
in an attempt to compare, and we'll get into that. We don't
want to compare situations. We don't want to minimize people's
grief just because they went through something different than
maybe you've gone through. definitions, though scientific and sometimes
a little cold, they can help us see where a person is at,
what they've dealt with, maybe where they are physically and
mentally, emotionally, spiritually. So this is just an explanation
of Yeah, just to kind of help you understand, okay, here's
what this person is dealing with, what their husband is dealing
with, what the wife is dealing with, physically where they were
at in their pregnancy, even the state of the baby. All of those
things play a different part in how trauma and grief, all
of that affects the scenario. And then there's also a little
chart there. I don't know that it has a specific
name, but it's a spectrum that kind of helps you understand
crisis severity. So in addition to the different
types of losses that you see there, there's also that expectancy
factor. So was this an expected death?
Was this very sudden? Was this kind of somewhere in
between where maybe you got a bad prognosis but you just didn't
know what the doctors would be able to do versus what they couldn't
do? In any kind of a trial or any
type of crisis, this expectancy factor plays a role. Because
again, if it's completely unexpected, that's going to add a level of
grief that you're not prepared to deal with. This certainly
doesn't change. the severity or level of grief
that someone experiences. Someone who's expecting the loss
of their child still has a deep grief versus somebody who completely
unexpectedly lost their child. So this is not, again, something
to minimize what a person is going through, but to help you
understand, okay, where is this trauma level at? What kind of
level of grief are we dealing with? Were they mentally prepared
for this or not? And that can just kind of help
you evaluate where a person is and how you can reach out to
help them. Yeah, and so there are those different types of
pregnancy and infant loss that you can see in your handout.
You have miscarriage, which is the very early loss of a baby
in their development, sometime before 20 weeks. whether that's
early, so before 12 weeks, or late, between 12 and 20 weeks.
One of the difficult things with miscarriage, maybe some of you
have experienced it or been with someone who has, one of the difficult
aspects of it is that sometimes it can be missed, right? Sometimes it might be, oh, it's
just a delayed heavy period, right, that's it. And then it
wasn't, there was something more to it. And sometimes that can
be another factor that can impact the grief that one might feel.
There's stillbirth, so the loss of a baby in the womb after 20
weeks. This is when they're more developed.
Typically this can be harder sometimes as maybe you've had
more time to to start to look forward to your child. You've picked out the names,
maybe you've already set up the nursery, and then here's this
massive loss. There's also infant loss, so
the loss of baby after birth and before one year is old. And
then child loss, which is the loss of a child after they turn
one. Infant loss is something that
Lauren and I went through last year, two years ago? Time is
hard to keep track of. But we went through that in 2023. We had a beautiful baby boy,
Christopher Joseph Friske. If you all want pictures later,
please ask. I would argue he's the cutest
baby ever, but maybe that's just because I'm his parent. But we
had him at 37 weeks, something like that. And then 12 days later,
he had succumbed to some congenitive heart defects that he had developed
during the course of our pregnancy. Our situation was a little interesting. It wasn't completely unexpected.
And so if you look at the crisis severity chart, it's a little
bit more on the expected kind of the lower end of the crisis
zone. When we were at our 20-week appointments,
We had the anatomy scan, you know, excited to see if it was
a boy or a girl and all of that. And that's when we first discovered
that something wasn't quite right. And that led to a series of weekly,
sometimes biweekly appointments to the doctor to get scans, to
do all of that fun stuff, right? And so we had a long time of
that. And then we gave birth. I mean, he was healthy. And then
12 days later, he he had succumbed to to his illness. And, you know,
in a lot of senses, it was kind of a constant roller coaster.
There were some good appointments. There were some bad appointments.
One of the very early appointments that we got as with scans and
all of that, they had noticed some buildup of liquid, which,
of course, is not a good thing. And so even early on, it was
kind of uncertain how long he would make it. And even if he
would make it to term. And so one of the roller coasters
was whether or not he was going to get born or not. And so that
was something that definitely impacted kind of our experience
in that crisis and with infant loss. Another aspect with infants and
pregnancy loss that's pretty difficult is the aftermath. Right. What comes after, you know, whether
that's the decision to have a memorial service, a funeral, deciding,
you know, for future children. I mean, there are so many things
that that impact that aftermath. We personally had a lot of decisions
to make, obviously, throughout our pregnancy, but after he was
born and into when he did pass away. And I mean, there are so
many different things we could talk about. I don't know if we'll
have time for all of that here. But one of the things that was
extremely helpful for us were mentors and counselors helping
us make those decisions that we weren't trying to do it all
on our own. Especially when you are dealing
with heavy grief, that does affect you mentally. You can't think
clearly, and even physically, it impacts your brain. And the
Kurtzes are in this room, but they were actually very vital
in helping us make a lot of the decisions that we made, including
our service and how to do that and how to take care of things. afterward. And... Like Pastor Caleb said, we dealt
with infant loss, but this is gonna look different for somebody
who's had a miscarriage or a stillbirth, especially the earlier that it
happens. And so these decisions are gonna
look different for each scenario, each situation. And it can cause
a lot of anxiety. It can be very difficult to make
these situations, to know, am I doing what's best? Am I glorifying
God in these decisions? Yeah, there's a lot of different
things there. But the most important thing
to remember when it comes to these different types of loss
is that each one represents a life that God created, that God gave
to those parents. And whenever you have somebody
dealing, even if it's yourself with those situations, remembering
that God loves that child and God loves those parents and he
wants to comfort them and give them his grace no matter what
it is that they've gone through. We obviously had that preparedness. We knew that things were pretty
bad and that we probably wouldn't get to take our son home, but
our knowledge didn't detract from the grief that we felt and
it didn't lessen the severity of the situation that we went
through. God was gracious in allowing us time to prepare for
what was going to happen, and that did in the long run help
with the grieving process. But even if it's a completely
unexpected situation, God's grace can still help a person, and
his comfort still reaches them even in the greatest depths of
loss. And a really vital, important,
but difficult truth to grasp throughout the entirety of a
pregnancy or an infant loss. And it's a very cliched thing
to say, you know, they're in a better place, but as we consider,
you know, like Lauren was saying, as we consider that these are
lives that God deeply cares for, this is a life that God created,
right? This is, so for example, with
the life of our son, with Christopher, we pretty early on decided to
focus on the fact that even though he is not healed and in our arms,
he is perfectly healed. And so he will never have to
face a heart transplant. He will never have to go through
the pain and suffering that all of us face, right? And it's difficult
to think and to consider and to accept, but when we remember
that God is He is the ultimate healer. He
is the one that can bring that healing and that comfort even
in these difficult situations. Kind of focusing on God and remembering
who He is and what He's done for us just brings a level of
comfort that really can't get otherwise. And so with that,
we're going to go ahead and talk through a couple of helpful principles
that were beneficial to us as we've gone through infant loss,
as well as beneficial to others that we know. The first one is
that the best time to prepare for a crisis is before a crisis. I mean, you don't go training
for a marathon the day of a marathon. You know, die most likely. As people, all of us are either
in a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or going into a crisis, right? We're in this kind of constant
cycle of suffering as a result of the sinful world that we live
in, right? And so it's not kind of an if
we need to prepare, it's a fact that we need to prepare for when
something is going to happen. Especially when it comes to your
relationship with the Lord, if you are a Christian, you know
the truth and you want to have that foundation. Because, like
we said when we opened, so many times crisis situations or trials
can push people farther away from the Lord. And it is a huge
blessing when trials bring people to God, but you can't necessarily
guarantee that that'll happen. And as Christians, if we don't
have that strong foundation, if we aren't growing in the Lord
and we aren't memorizing His word, or constantly in His word,
when difficult situations come, there is that temptation to be
angry at God or to turn away from Him. So it's so important
to prepare for the crisis beforehand and to be in His Word and have
that foundation. Because, especially in these
situations, even if a pregnancy is completely normal and the
birth, no complications at all, All of you moms in this room
know there are a lot of things physically that you deal with
after birth and your brain isn't always with you. There's a lot
of hormone issues going on and dad do you understand this too?
You've got the stress of taking care of your family and this
newborn in the house and even if everything were to be perfect
you still have those mental, physical, emotional things going
on mentally and you probably won't have the bandwidth you
used to have before. So if you don't have God's word
in your heart, if you don't have God's word in your mind to continually
think about and meditate on, when you don't have the time
to sit down and read that you used to have before, having that
foundation is really important, especially beforehand. Yes, yeah. One of the things that was really
beneficial to me The year before we had Christopher,
I was still in college, so it was a stressful time in general,
but one of the great things that I had the privilege of going
through were some counseling classes. One of the things that
we put together is just a list of like verses and stuff that
can help with like different situations, different issues,
and I took the time, I forget how long it took, but I took
the time to put it in some of my Bibles. And so like this little
thing, just having it with us in the hospital, even if we didn't
have the brain power to like pull up memorized passages, or
like go and study on our own, having a set list of passages
that I knew I could turn to for comfort, that I knew that I had
gone to in the past, was just incredibly helpful. Even afterwards,
like Lauren mentioned, I mean, you're gonna be out of bandwidth
for a while, right? You're not gonna be able to think.
To be quite frank, even till today, sometimes it's hard to
crack open God's Word and to really study in depth like maybe
we used to. But having that past knowledge,
having that past study, was just so incredibly helpful for us.
Another one, a big helpful principle, is to weep with those who weep
and rejoice with those who rejoice. Of course, that's a principle.
That's a passage we see in Romans. And it's just incredibly important
as you're as maybe you yourself are going through something or
as you are walking with someone else who is is first of all to
give yourself permission to weep. Right. God has given us emotions. He himself has emotions. You know, he he mourns. Right. We have the freedom to to to
feel right. give yourself permission to weep,
but also give yourself permission to rejoice. Like I said before, it was hard, but we tried to
focus on that good, on the fact that God had perfectly healed
our son, even though he wasn't with us, right? And so we rejoiced
in that. And then even as you're ministering
to other people around you, Weep with those who are weeping, right?
That might even just mean, you know, going over to their house
and sitting with them and just spending time as they mourn.
But that might also mean helping them to rejoice. Helping them
to see the good. Helping them to focus on God
and on his word. And not trying to force them
into one side or the other, right? Not taking someone who is rejoicing
for what God has done and making them weep because you know that's
what you would be doing. Or not taking someone who's weeping
and being like, ah, get over it. It's fine, right? That's,
that's not good either. So finding that balance, listening
to the spirit as he guides you through that too. Yeah, and with
that to kind of leads into the next point about seeking understanding. Personally, I struggled with
a lot of different thoughts and feelings. and struggled with
reconciling what I was thinking and what I was feeling because
of this loss that we were going through with the truth of God's
word. And even though I knew the right
answers, my grief would get in the way of that. So trying to
go to the Lord with my grief. But sometimes when a person is
in a crisis, what they're thinking and feeling might be shocking
and uncomfortable. And when they try to express
that to you, people can get uncomfortable really quickly. And while that's
understandable, don't shut them down, because that'll give you
an idea of where they're at. Let the Spirit help you figure
out what truth they need. When they open up to you, even
if it is uncomfortable, let them share with you. Let them share
what's on their heart and what's on their mind and take them to
God's Word and say, I'm so sorry that's what you're dealing with,
but God has truth for you. God has comfort for you. And
especially if it is a Christian, and if they know the truth, if
they have a strong relationship with the Lord, they just need
that help in processing what they're thinking. They know the
truth, but they need help remembering it, I guess. So seek to understand
where they're at. Don't force them in one side
or the other. Don't put them in a box. Don't put God in a
box. Just let the Spirit lead and
seek to understand where they're at. Another important thing is
to attempt to minister to all those involved in a crisis, especially
something like pregnancy and infant loss. Then when I think
back to kind of our personal experience through that, There
were many, many people who were affected, right? Of course we
were, but then our family, right? Our parents. Christopher was
the first grandparent, or grandbaby on both sides. And so that was
especially tough for our parents who had been looking forward
to having a grandkid and so it was certainly difficult for them.
Our siblings as well, they certainly had a hard time with it. Our
grandparents were looking forward to a great grandbaby or another
great grandbaby and so that was difficult for them. Even for
some of our close friends and family. I remember Pastor Dean
sharing with me one time about how even their experience, it
was a roller coaster, because we would come back one week with
one set of news of, oh, things are looking great. Things are
doing good. And then next week, you would be, ah. he's has long,
or he has liquid around his lungs, you know, and even after the
birth of, oh, he's doing great. And then one weekend, there's
a massive crash. And so even for really close
friends, it can be really difficult to see that. And I'm sure many
of you have experienced that as well. Another Maybe this is
a bit selfish, but another people group to administer to especially
is the dads. There are a lot of really amazing
resources for women who have gone through pregnancy and infant
loss, and we thank God for all of the amazing resources there.
But there's not the same wealth of things available for the dads.
And so that can be a very difficult thing I know personally for me.
It was challenging sometimes to get five things a week in
the mail for Lauren, and then here I am sitting mourning the
loss of my son, like, ah. I'm nothing right. It can be
a very challenging thing. Even in the marriage relationship.
I know there were some times where I even struggled with bitterness,
because hey, here's my wife getting poured into and What am I? And unfortunately, as I'm sure
many of you know, in marriage, when that happens, when there's
something external that's affecting you, often it comes out at your
spouse. And that's always good. But that was definitely a challenging
aspect. And I mean, there are so many
people who suffer with something like this. And we just need to
be kind and gracious and loving to everyone, no matter how close
they are to it or far away they are from it. Just love others,
I guess, is the way to sum up that point. So Caleb talked about
it, but I was the one who actually put it in our notes about ministering
to dad specifically because I saw how much that hurt him. And even
though he dealt with it a lot internally, it was really hard
for me when I would get flooded with people and they would constantly
ask me how I'm doing, knowing that my husband is struggling
just as much as I am. So when somebody was very intentional
about reaching out to him also, it was encouraging to me because
You know, even though dads don't go through the physical aspects
of pregnancy and birth, there's still so much going on mentally
and emotionally for them too. They're just as invested in that
child's life. And a loss of their child is
just as deep as it is for the mom. It's like two sides of the
same coin, even though they're dealing with different things
physically, it's still the same deep heavy loss for them. So
remembering dads specifically when you have somebody who's
going through these types of situations is really good to
keep in mind. Another important principle is
to never assume. Even if you have been through
a similar situation, kind of like we started out with, there
are so many different variables that can affect people. I mean,
one that we didn't even discuss is whether it is an expected
pregnancy or not, whether, you know, Whether you're looking
forward to another child, whether you already have some at home,
whether you have been maybe trying for a
long time and now finally here is this child, there are just
so many different variables. And it's kind of easy to assume,
and there is some merit to remembering, hey, I've been through this.
I need to be gracious and loving to this person. But just make
sure that, just because you have been through some painful experiences,
don't assume something on their part. You know, we had plenty
of people come up and say, we know it's hard, and we're like,
oh, well, yes and no, right? I mean, hard is hard, but there
are different types of hard. And so, yeah, there's a lot more
that we could discuss in this, but just try not to assume. And this is where comparing,
I mean, we should never compare situations ever, but part of
why we wanted to include all those different things is so
that we realize every situation is unique and different. And
so even if maybe two people fit in that same category, they're
dealing with completely different things. And so it was really
hard for us when people would come up to us and say, well,
I've gone through this, or I've gone through this. And it just kind
of felt like they were minimizing our situation. So being careful
to not compare your circumstance with another person's circumstance,
because that misses the point. The point is sharing God's truth
and God's comfort. And God may have comforted you
in a particular trial so that you can now share comfort with
them. But you don't want to do it in a comparing sort of a way.
And yeah, so not assuming where somebody is at to either minimize
or maximize their grief. Another important one is to not
be a burden and to not make others feel like a burden. This one
is interesting and kind of subtle. It's the text coming that says, hey,
what can I do for you? That is helpful, that is beneficial,
but sometimes that can become a burden on someone that might
be suffering. Because now, not only do they
perhaps feel like a burden, But now they have the burden of,
OK, what's something that I can ask them to do? What's a list
of groceries that I can come up with and give to them? Some
stuff like that. And so just kind of on the practical
side of that one, Just as you are going about your
life, think of things that you can offer, right? I'm going to
the grocery store, what can I, or maybe I'm gonna be picking
up dinner, can I grab this and this for you and bring it by?
Something simple, something that's not going to weigh on their minds
or perhaps burden them with a certain responsibility or something.
Yeah, and giving people in crisis a sense of normalcy, too. A lot
of times, especially serious situations like this, can feel
like an identification on a person. So now they're walking around
feeling like, everybody now knows me as the mom whose child died.
So this is already very aware in their own mind. And when people
start to treat them differently because of a situation they've
gone through, whether good or bad, it can be very difficult
because they now feel like they're burdening other people with their
grief. And so, reaching out to them, making them feel like a
normal person and letting them have that space to grieve with
you or they know that you're a source of comfort or that their
grief isn't a burden to you, just giving people a sense of
normalcy, not treating them differently just because of what they've
gone through. Another important thing is to be authentic as you
experience grief and loss. Like I mentioned earlier, I mean,
scripture is very real with the reality of life. I mean, just
read through Psalms, you know, over a third of them are Psalms
of lament. Psalms that largely talk about
grief and sorrow. And I forget which one it is,
but Psalm 82. I forget the exact reference.
But one of those psalms of lament, I mean, there's just no hope.
It's just bleh. It's just grief. It's just nothingness,
right? Scripture gives you permission
to be authentic, right? Things that's most influenced
the way that I've looked at life is my study through the Hebrew
books of, or the books of Hebrew wisdom poetry. So Proverbs, Job,
Ecclesiastes. They kind of present this complete
understanding of life, right? With Proverbs, you have like
the optimist's view of everything, right? God will punish the wicked,
the wise will be good. With Ecclesiastes, you have like
the pessimist's view of life. I mean, just everything is awful.
Everyone's gonna die, all of that. And then you have Job,
where it's kind of that more realistic picture, where, okay,
here's a righteous man, and he's suffering. that sort of thing
happens, right? And of course, throughout Job,
you have all of his friends helping as they try to apply Proverbs
blindly to his life and all of that. We're free to experience
life as it hits us, whether that is a time of weeping or a time
of rejoicing. There's space to do both, right? Yeah, and pairing the truth of
scripture with what you're feeling. Because it would be wrong for
us to have our deep emotions and then get angry at God. So
that's not the approach that we obviously want to have. We
are allowed to have these deep feelings, but we need to take
them to the Lord and ask him for his help with them. And his
comfort is found all throughout the Bible, even in some of the
most random situations. One of the passages we'll talk
about in a little bit that was actually a comfort to us was
David when he lost his son. Even though that resulted because
of David's direct sin, David knew that his son was with the
Lord, and that he would see his son again. So even in a passage
where so much evil was going on, we found comfort because
of God's promises in that scripture. So just these deep emotions,
the complex emotions, being real with ourselves of where we're
at and taking that to the Lord and asking him for his help.
Another one is just be careful about saying something like I
completely understand, I fully understand. Maybe say something
like I understand your pain or I feel your pain. Part of going through a crisis like this
or helping someone else through a crisis is learning to be careful
with your wording, you know. Some words might just, you know,
hit like a knife to the heart. Others might actually supply
comfort and genuine help in a situation. You know, chances are, with this
one in particular, you might not fully and specifically understand
what's going on in their hearts and minds. Crises, miscarriage,
infant loss, it's as unique as the people who have experienced
it. Yeah, we kind of touched on this
a little bit already. But just being very intentional
with what you say to someone who's gone through a deep loss.
Because we, I mean, I could give you a list of all the things
I remember people saying to me that I knew that they were trying
to be helpful. And so I, you know, it was, I
was very gracious, but it hurt because there was just very trite
words or things that didn't make any sense or it was just a wrong
understanding of God and who he is and why he had us walk
through this trial. So just remembering that you
don't necessarily know what someone's thinking or feeling, but you
can always share God's truth. And sharing God's truth is always
gonna be better than trying to come up with something yourself.
Yes. Another important thing is to
let the spirit work in or through yourself or someone else in a
situation. Sometimes you really just need
to take a step back and let the spirit work in someone, right,
or in us. God is let us get indwelled by
the Spirit. And so, you know, we should listen
to God the Holy Spirit sometimes just as he works in us, as he
helps us to learn and to grow, as he provides comfort to, or
even as he gives permission to grieve, you know, just in so
many areas. Another important thing is to
always look for God's guidance. that might be directly from his
word, right? As kind of we already touched
on how there are certain passages that were just incredibly helpful
as they guided us through our loss. It might be through that, it
might be through circumstances. It was really encouraging for
us as we went through our experience where we could point at specific
things that were very clearly God's moving in our lives. Whether
that was early on when we, our hospital got changed from Milwaukee
to Madison, right? So, I mean, it was the same drive
length. It wasn't an actual problem,
but there was some confusion with the insurance, but we could
point to that as an example of how God worked in our lives. I mean, we met incredible medical
staff and people there that just were so helpful in our experience. Or even a couple of different
things where, you know, we would get this really bad piece of
news and God would just work in us, and all credit goes to
Him, but He would work in us and we would come to the same
conclusion without having talked about it. And just there were
so many times where that happened, and just every time the new trial
or issue came up, we could look back to God working in our lives
just a couple days ago, or a couple weeks ago, and we could have
hope that God would continue to do that. He would continue
to work in us. He would continue to guide us
through circumstances, through the wisdom and advice of other
people. And he would just, he would guide us. We could know
that because we had seen it in his word and we had experienced
it in our lives. In also being submitted to God's
will and praying for that no matter what it is Because of
course we were praying for the healing of our son that there
might be some Surgery or her transplant or something medically
that could be done But at the same time we needed to be prepared
to surrender to the reality that God would take him home instead
and one of the very clear instances, just to get a little real for
a moment, but I think it was a day or two before Christopher
passed away, he had gone through a procedure, and that procedure
did not go well, and so he was really struggling from it, and
when doctors ask to sit down with you, and they're crying,
and they can't even hardly tell you, that there's nothing more
that they can do. That's a very sobering reality
to be in. And after that meeting, Caleb
and I stayed in that room, or maybe we walked down to a different
one, I don't even remember. We just cried and we prayed,
but we very specifically prayed that God would make it very clear
for us one way or another. Is our child going to be okay
or is he going to go home to heaven? I just remember this
so vividly in my mind. We prayed specifically for God
to comfort us in the event of his passing. We, I mean, we felt
God's presence in that room with us more than, you know, God's
always with us, but feeling God right there with us was just
an experience I can't explain, but God very clearly answered
our prayer. And even though it was a no,
he's not going to be healed on earth, there was so much of God's
love and his guidance in that answer, and we were just thankful
for that. Yeah, oh, sorry, can I do that? Yeah, go ahead. And with that,
on the back of the handout, there's a list of a lot of specific scripture
passages or principles. We won't talk through every single
one, but we wanted to share this with you all so that you have
a list that you can directly go to. We talked about the lament
psalms. These are so powerful to help
us understand emotions and grief. We can find our own thoughts
echoed throughout the psalms sometimes, and then God gives
us, in his word, the very words for our grief, and he lovingly
shows us how to reorient our thoughts and our emotions. Trust
psalms, the same idea. In 1 Samuel, there's Hannah's
testimony, and Hannah's testimony, God used that specifically for
me in our hospital days. She had desperately desired her
child, and she had prayed for her son. And while Samuel lived
a full life, Hannah didn't get to raise him all the way into
adulthood. She gave him back to the Lord, and he went to serve
with Eli, and they experienced significant separation through
that, but she trusted the Lord with her son, and that was encouraging
for me. Similar idea with Abraham and Isaac, where God asked Abraham
to trust him with his son. And lots of verses in there,
too, about God caring our sorrow and understanding our grief,
and that Christ also understands grief and pain. Psalm 139, just
so many tremendous truths there about God's love and care for
us, especially babies in the womb. No matter the situation,
a life is a life, and humans have been wonderfully and beautifully
made in God's image. And then the book of Job, we
already mentioned, but the whole book just talks about a righteous
man going through trial. And even though he never got
an answer for why he went through what he did, he continued to
trust the Lord throughout his whole life. But even Job expresses
deep grief and deep emotions And God helps him through that.
So that final principle is just to be patient and gracious with
yourself. Maybe a more theologically accurate
way to say it is to accept the grace that God extends to us.
learn to accept that grace, right, in every situation, especially
through something like this. Of course, a crisis, a miscarriage,
an infant loss, any situation is never a license to sin, but
God has offered us his grace, recognize and accept that, that
God himself is gracious and merciful. And Being patient and gracious
with myself was really something that God had to get a hold of
me in regards to. Just a little bit of my personal
experience. We lost Christopher in June,
the beginning of June. And then at the beginning of
July, I started as an intern over at Calvary Baptist Church.
And just for the first couple months, rough, slow going. I just, I
felt like I couldn't think and process and, you know, whatever
work I did have assigned to me, it took longer than it normally
would have. And over the course of the first
couple months, I started to learn about the effect that trauma
has on a brain. And, you know, no matter how
well you process it or handle it, holding your dying son in
your arms is trauma. It just is. And, I mean, the
effects of the trauma on your brain, I mean, it's effectively
bruising your brain. It will heal, but it will take
time. So you need to be patient and
gracious. And even to this day there, there are some days where
I'm just like, just, just out I just can't think can't process,
and I just need to be like okay God. I'll do what I can today. Just give me the patience and
the grace to work through it. And there are so many other effects,
too, that happen with something like this. But just learn to
accept God's grace. Learn to be patient with yourself.
Learn to be patient with others. Weep when you're weeping. Rejoice
when you're rejoicing. All of that good stuff. And so we hope that this has
been helpful to you. If statistics are true, I mean,
most couples, most women will experience a miscarriage or an
infant loss of some kind. Most couples will. And so you
may experience it in your future. You may have already experienced
it. Most likely, someone around you will go through it. And so
hopefully, these principles, these ideas can maybe help you
as you Maybe seek to grow yourself or seek to minister to someone
around you. And of course, we're here to walk with you in your
grief, to rejoice with you, to weep with you. If you've got
any questions, any comments, concerns, night remarks, all
of that fun stuff, just let us know. We really are here to help
and to talk and to pray with you. And don't hesitate to reach
out, I guess. I'll go ahead and close this
out a couple minutes early. I'll go ahead and close this
out in prayer and then we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for this day and for this time. Just to consider
your words and principles from it and how they apply to the
situation of miscarriage and infant loss. I pray for those
who are in here, God. So many of us have already experienced
this and so many of us will or will know those who do. And I
pray that you would just help us to to lean on you for your
strength, for your wisdom in situations like that. Help us
to love those around us and to be patient with ourselves as
we suffer through issues like this. Just pray that you would
bless us as we go from here. In your name we pray, amen.
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Series First 10: Biblical Foundations
| Sermon ID | 117241428431518 |
| Duration | 45:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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