"Hills and Valleys": Thoughts on Miscarriage and Faith

Back in September, I had the privilege of speaking to the congregation at the local church Hubster and I attend. Our pastor, Ian, has been an incredible support and encouragement to Hubs and I as we've walked through our fertility journey, as have many individuals in our church family.

Ian had been preaching a series called "Hills and Valleys," focused on the way that the Lord guarantees that He will be with us through the ups and downs of life. And those ups and downs, by the way, are also guaranteed. 

When Ian first started the series, he played a song at the closing of the first week's message, called "Hills and Valleys" by a Christian artist named Tauren Wells. It's such a beautiful song, with a melody and lyrics that cut right to my soul every time. 

If you have a minute, listen up:  

Beautiful, right? 

I love these lines in particular: "On the mountain I will bow my life to one who set me there, and in the valley I will lift my eyes to one who sees me there." The first line strikes me hard because it's so difficult to remember to bow our lives to the Lord when everything is going well--I know I get lulled pretty quickly into a sense of control and stability. And it's hard to lift your eyes to Him when things are dark too, because we're so quick to blame God or get angry at him about the valley we are walking through. 

But this song spoke to me, because this fertility journey that I've been on has caused me to really take a look at myself and my faith. 

So I want to share here what I spoke about at church, because the difficulties of the past few years have been some of the most influential of my entire adult life. 

In January of 2012, if someone had said, “You’ll be married by the end of the year,” I would have laughed (politely, I’m sure) in their face. At the time, I wasn’t walking with the Lord, and the thought of something like happening in my life was absurd.

But around the 1st of February that year, I had what I call a divine appointment that changed

my life. I walked back to the Lord. ON the 10th, I met my future husband, and God set me on a mountaintop higher than I’d ever imagined for myself. Jon and I married in October of 2012, a hilltop moment for sure. But it wasn’t long into married life before we found ourselves trudging into a valley--a valley we would walk from the end of 2013 to the end of 2016.

I was definitely diagnosed with a gynecological disease called Endometriosis, which has all kinds of implications for my overall health. The most significant of which is potential fertility. Endo doesn’t always cause infertility, but in our case, it sure appeared to. As we began trying to have a baby, the valley seemed to get darker, and darker, and longer, and longer.

Soon, I felt as though God had abandoned me. I resonated with David in Psalm 13--”Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”--and even though I knew the truth of the end of the Psalm--“I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me”--I couldn’t seem to find a way to feel it.

Then, in April of 2016, Jon and I experienced an early miscarriage. Our first sweet baby, whom we named Asa Raye, went home to be with Jesus. It was so early that we don’t even know if Asa was a boy or girl; that’s something we won’t know this side of heaven, though we’ll get to know one day. The miscarriage crushed me, utterly. I couldn’t understand how God could let this happen to us. Never before in my life had I experienced a valley this dark, and I’ll be honest--I wasn’t handling this well. I was angry and confused and felt so isolated.

But then, in December, I had another one of those divine appointments. It was right about the time our sweet Asa Raye would have been due. God met me in a big way, and there in that moment, I face what the whole valley had been about. You see, I had been thinking all along that it was about getting pregnant. But the reality was that the journey was really about my faith.

And the key question was: would I continue to let my faith be overtaken by my fear? Fear and anxiety have been companion for many years, and through the valley, I realized my fear had grown so much stronger than my faith. But in that divine appointment, I realized that it was time to let my fear go. As the David says in another Psalm, “I lift my eyes up unto the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from you, maker of heaven and earth.”

That day, I had to make a choice--faith over fear. And then I had to continue making the choice, each day, until it began to feel like a habit. Until it was a habit. That was when God lead me out of the valley and onto a mountaintop called peace. Peace that passes understanding--literally--because my prayers were often “Lord, I don’t understand, but I trust in you” or even “I don’t like this, but I trust you.”

So I want to make something clear here: this journey hasn’t been about getting pregnant. It’s been about growing my faith. And I say that particularly because I am pregnant--which is the most amazing, surprising, miraculous gift. It’s also a mountaintop, but it’s one that sits a little higher than the one I was already on.

Getting pregnant wasn’t what got me out of the valley. God is what got me out of the valley. The pregnancy is a wonderful gift, but it’s not the answer. And this is important, because I don’t want anyone walking away from this thinking that surrendering to God is some kind of magic answer to getting what you want. It’s not, despite the platitudes we say to one another.

“Give it to God and it will happen.” “Just stop trying and then you’ll get pregnant.” While surrendering to God sometimes yields a result we were hoping for, it really is meant to yield the result He is looking for. And when we trivialize the struggle with platitudes, I think we fail to realize how life changing our walk through the valley can be. How God can use that trial to refine and better us, to grow our faith and make us more fit for the service he intends us for.

So I want to encourage you today to remember that our God is the God of the hills and valleys, and no matter where you are, He wants to do a work in your life. While the valley of infertility has been so dark, it’s also made me better, more, and brought me closer to the Lord.

To end, one last thought. Someone asked me recently why we decided to announce this pregnancy rather early, or at least, before the typical 12 week-ish mark. Why? Because my faith has grown bigger than my fear. Not everyone waits to tell because of fear, but for me, that would have been the case. And no matter what happens with this precious baby, I trust my God, and celebrate this blessing as we stand on the hilltop. And if we find ourselves walking through another valley, then we’ll be sure to keep our eyes, as Tauren Wells so eloquently puts it, on the One who sees us there.