On Water

I was tired and weak, and thought for sure if I took a shower that would make me feel better. In the past, while pregnant or miscarrying, showers have made me feel lightheaded, so I told my beloved where I would be in the event that something happened. I walked into the coastal themed bathroom of a condo on the beach in New Jersey where we were vacationing with my beloved’s family for a few days, and ran the water. Hot water to wash it all away.

I stepped into the shower and dipped my head to wet my hair. When I looked down, the tub was an ocean of blood. Too much blood. Way too much blood. Blood covering my ankles. The sight of it made me faint, so I shut off that hot water, stepped out onto a towel, and lay my shaking body down on the cool tile. I called to my beloved.

He walked in and was obviously shaken by the sight of me lying on the floor in a room that looked like a slaughterhouse. He ran to get me a glass of cool water, and told his family what was going on. He helped me dress, and laid me down on a bed, then went in to clean up the mess.

I heard him bawling, and soon he was bawling in my arms, his beautiful salt and pepper hair on my neck, his wet tears on my chest. “I felt like I was washing my baby off the floor.”

This was our third lost pregnancy. It was no longer a shock to me. But I think each one hit my beloved harder than the last one. This one, especially, he believed would be successful since we had medical assistance.

I wasn’t as convinced that the synthetic progesterone would hold this baby in my womb, but now that it hadn’t, I thought for sure I knew the future. Just the day before, I had passed a six week baby in the upstairs yellow bathroom of my inlaws house. A week prior, I had found out through an ultrasound that my uterus was measuring eight weeks, but the baby’s heart had stopped beating somewhere around six. So now I knew what to expect. The hard part was over. Now I’d just bleed.

Isn’t it funny how we start to think we know what to expect. How silly of us. Instead of my plan, I spent the rest of that day in a foreign hospital on the Jersey shore, which turned into my insurance company fighting the claim that I was hemorrhaging, and for six months I had an $8,500 medical bill hanging over my head. Until one day, it vanished like water down a drain.

And the day that it vanished was the day I finally gave in and said, Yes. Yes, ok, I will write this all down. I will remember these moments that hurt so very much to recount. Because Your ways are higher than my ways.

Hear my plea, oh Yahweh, do not let Your rain return to heaven without watering the earth.

Maranatha. Maranatha. Maranatha.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

Isaiah 55:8-11

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