In Honor Of...

...the women with arms aching to hold a child.

...the men who haven't yet born the title of "Daddy".

...the children who weren't for this world.

...the victims who received that heart-stopping diagnosis.

I think it is fascinating that Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is observed in October, at the same time as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Both miscarriage and breast cancer can leave a woman feeling deeply violated, less "feminine", and more vulnerable.  They attack the parts of our bodies that identify us as female: our wombs and our breasts.  There is a great deal more to being women than bras and babies, of course, but in the simplest sense, these two tragedies strike at the very heart of femininity.  I know that men can be and are affected by breast cancer and pregnancy loss as well, but on the whole, these are women's struggles with their own bodies.

When I suffered my miscarriages, I felt deeply betrayed by my body.  Biologically speaking, an adult female's body is meant largely to nurture its young.  Three times, my body proved that it was incapable of doing so.  Three times, the test was positive, and three ultrasounds later confirmed that our babies had died within the very cocoon that was meant to sustain them.  

Pregnancy Loss Awareness ribbon
 image from camolove.com

Although I have never been diagnosed with breast cancer, my friends who have say it's rather a whirlwind experience.  One day, things are fine, and the next, you think there might be a lump.  I can't imagine the excruciating frustration and fear that comes with waiting for test results.  Trying to decide how to tell loved ones.  Preparing for surgery, radiation, more tests.  Losing hair.  Losing weight.  Losing strength.  Losing hope.

Ah, hope.  Emily Dickinson called it "that thing with feathers" that keeps us going through stormy seas, that endlessly supplies is with optimism and faith for our future.  It's the one thing that cannot be taken from us, regardless of health, finances, religion, relationships.  It seems sometimes like a fickle thing that threatens for leave us whenever the doctor brings bad news, or the bills keep piling up on the kitchen table.  But real hope can not be lost, only thrown away.  Faith and hope, in Christ, are interlocked.  You cannot separate them, for they feed each other.  An archaic use of the term "hope" is "to place trust in".  Biblically, the term did not mean "a desire for something to come to pass" but instead was almost synonymous with "belief".


So this I say to the victims out there.  You women whose bodies seem to betray you.  Hold fast to hope.  It cannot leave you, though diagnosis or doubt may seem to shoo it away.  You cannot lose it, for it finds its way in in the dark with the light of God's love.  

Only you can let go of it.  


Don't.