Blessings & Healing

The song “Blessings” by Laura Story has touched my heart since the first time I heard it played on the radio.  This morning, however, it opened a deeper awakening within me.

As you likely know by now, our biggest surprise, my pregnancy, has ended.  The entire experience was an eleven-week roller coaster ride that started with painful lows, moved into uncertain loops, soared to incredible highs, and came crashing down into devastation.  It has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced before -- both wonderful and horrible wrapped up into one.  It was a blessing that has touched me like no other blessing ever has. 

Since the beginning of my miscarriage I’ve tried multiple times to put my experience into words, writing for what seemed like hours, only to delete all of my thoughts and start over.  I simply couldn’t express the peace surrounding me with enough emphasis.  Something was missing…that is…until this morning.  As I lay in bed reflecting, the song “Blessings” came on the radio.  I’ve heard the song at least one hundred times, but today, when she came to the end of the song:

“What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?”

I had a revelation…THAT’S IT…PERFECTLY!  This is exactly what I’ve been feeling but couldn’t express!  Losing Gus (the nickname our baby was tagged with from the first day of our announcement) was a huge disappointment. It was the biggest heartache of my life because not only was I filled with grief, but I watched helplessly as my husband and daughters openly grieved too.  A day that should have been filled with excitement became instead a day of mourning. 

But grief is a funny thing, and in this case, it re-awakened my senses to my greater thirst…Heaven.  You see, although I have relied on my faith and my relationship with Jesus for nearly my entire life, in all of the recent busy-ness of our family life, Heaven had been pushed back into the recesses of my mind, locked away for reflection at a later, less-busy time.  It took our family’s great loss, and the ensuing “waiting” period, a time of intentional, un-plugged quiet, to focus on this one crucial aspect of my longing, reviving my thirst. 

What if the trials of this life are His mercies in disguise?  Our loss was certainly Gus’s gain.  None of us can know the challenges that might have awaited him in this world, and as Brian pointed out very soon after confirmation of our loss, God sees the bigger picture that we can’t possibly know.  It is His infinite wisdom and mercy that sometimes saves us before a greater heartache is revealed.

So here we are, approaching the other side of this journey, and though I can’t yet look back on the fullness of it, I can honestly say I already count myself richer and more joyful because of it.  I’ve learned so many things about myself and my family along the way.  I have absolutely no idea what God has in store for us now, but I know we are bonded in a way that we’ve never been before.  Our future cannot be controlled by us.  It is God’s.  Whatever He has in store, I am willing.

Life is not without heartache, and thankfully, it is certainly not without blessings…each, in its own way, a surprise much like the kind I’ve always resisted in the past.  Through this one particular surprise, and its ensuing heartache, I have come to realize that my journey will be filled with countless surprises, several heartaches, but all blessings in disguise. And I’m okay with that.