Miscarriage

Get Ready to GETAWAY!

The Great Getaway is approaching fast, and registration for on-sight attendees is now filled and closed. However, we do have room left for commuting attendees.

Do you crave fellowship with other women who understand what it’s like to be childless or to lose a child? Do you have ethical questions about infertility medicine you’d like to ask a pro-life doctor? Would you enjoy eating decadent desserts prepared by a loving pastor and his wife who just want to spoil you rotten? Do you need a retreat in a beautiful house near a scenic park in historic St. Louis?

Then, you might want to join us this summer for the The Great Getaway on Friday, July 26th through Sunday, July 28th. Retreat details and registration information can be found here.

Children at Birthday Party

Mother’s Day: A Pastoral Plea

MP900341759Thank you, Pastor Schuermann.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. For the barren woman, attending church on this particular Sunday is often an exercise in frustration, woe, even great shame brought on by the absence of longed-for children. Far too often, we pastors help amplify these feelings in her.

This is a pastoral plea. Brothers, I beg you, remember every Sunday your entire flock. But especially this Sunday, remember all the faithful women who Christ has entrusted to your care.

Remember that a part of your flock have received from the Lord the blessed vocation of motherhood, whether their children are biological or adopted. In the prayers of the church rejoice with them, give thanks to God for them, and ask God to help them faithfully raise up these gifts from Him.

But remember, too, that many in your flock – whom you may or may not be aware of – have not received the gift of children from God. And they may be longing for that gift. Please be sensitive to them. Recall that the natural inclination of sinful man towards a theology of glory has resulted in them receiving countless, “helpful” comments and encouragements that are nothing but empty promises and legalistic claptrap. Pray for these women, too, that they would receive what they long for: the gift of a child, biological or adopted. But also do not fail to pray on their behalf that God would give them the faith and trust to contentedly rejoice in what He ultimately does give to them. It may not be a child. In other words, help them to pray, “Nevertheless, Lord, Thy will be done.”

And also remember the sheep of Christ’s flock who are past the time of having any expectation of receiving the gift of a child. Please don’t leave them out. Pray for them, too, that they would recognize in their lives all the good gifts the Lord has given to them. 

Please don’t parade them in front of the congregation in order to offer up prayers on their behalf. Please don’t draw unneeded attention to them by giving flowers or some other admittedly well-intentioned gift only to those in the congregation who have children. Allow the barren to sit and grieve, to receive from their Lord, and to pray along with you. That’s your God-given task in the Divine Service, anyway: to lead them in prayer and to care for them with Christ’s true, comforting Word and Sacrament.

In fact, my encouragement would be, if at all possible, to limit your Mother’s Day references in the service to the prayers. Keep your whole flock focused on Jesus and His forgiveness present there for them today. But in the prayers do indeed pray, praise, and give thanks for the mothers, mothers-to-be, and all those who desire motherhood but have not or will not receive that gift from God.

I think these words, included in this year’s “Let Us Pray” for Easter 7 from the LC-MS, fit the bill nicely:

“Father of glory, Your Son, our Lord Jesus, in His incarnation, took on our created human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. He submitted to His mother, honoring and obeying her, so fulfilling the commandment where we have not. On this Mothers’ Day, graciously accept our thanksgiving for our mothers, whom you have given to us. Teach us to honor them aright — loving, obeying and giving thanks for them, as is fitting in Your sight. Strengthen all women with child and protect them in their deliverance. Comfort all women who long to have children, but cannot, that they may find their consolation in You and Your unfailing love. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.”

Rev. Michael P. Schuermann

Unanswered Prayer

Have you yet to receive a “yes” to your prayer for a child? Does it feel like God leaves your prayer unanswered?

Our Sunday school class has been studying prayer. This past Sunday, Pastor Schuermann drew our attention to this quote from Dr. Martin Luther on the problem of unanswered prayer:

It is not a bad sign, but a very good one, if things seem to turn out contrary to our requests. Just as it is not a good sign if everything turns out favorably for our requests.

The reason is that the excellence of God’s counsel and will are far above our counsel and will, as Isaiah 55:8-9 says:”For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says 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.” And Psalm 94:11: “The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain.” And Psalm 33:10: “The Lord brings the counsels of the nations to nought; He frustrates the plans of the peoples and casts away the counsels of princes.” Hence it results that when we pray to God for something, whatever these things may be, and He hears our prayers and begins to give us what we wish, He gives in such a way that He contravenes all of our conceptions, that is, our ideas, so that He may seem to us to be more offended after our prayers and to do less after we have asked than He did before. And He does all this because it is the nature of God first to destroy and tear down whatever is in us before He gives us His good things, as the Scripture says: “The Lord makes poor and makes rich, He brings down to hell and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:7).

By this His most blessed counsel He renders us capable of receiving His gifts and His works. And we are capable of receiving His works and His counsels only when our own counsels have ceased and our works have stopped and we are made purely passive before God, both with regard to our inner as well as our outward activities. This is what He means when He says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Therefore, when everything is hopeless for us and all things begin to go against our prayers and desires, then those unutterable groans begin. And then “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). For unless the Spirit were helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for. Then the soul is told: “Be strong, wait for the Lord, and let your heart take courage and bear up under God” (Psalm 27:14). And again: “Be subject to the Lord and pray to Him” “and He will act” (Psalm 37:7, 5). (Luther on Romans 8:26, AE 25:364-5)

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Effects of Sin

IMG_0864Sin – all Sin, Adam and Eve’s, yours and mine – leaves our world broken, laboring in pain for the resurrection when all things will be made new. Sin leaves even our children broken, and so we miscarry.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Hear from a grieving mother, your sister in Christ:

Have you ever tried to catch a snowflake, anxious to see its intricacies, only to find that it has melted before your eyes even had a chance to focus? Have you ever seen a flash in the sky and turned around just as the last sparkles of a shooting star vanish, only to realize you missed the show? But then there are other times when you’re walking out of a store, late in the evening, tired from the days events, when suddenly the whole sky lights up right in front of you, right over your head, and the shooting star seems so close you could reach up and touch it…and no one else even gets to see it. It’s like it was only for you, and you didn’t even ask for it.

When I think of the baby that just died in my belly before I was even big enough to change into maternity clothes, I don’t think of the melting snowflake…I think of the shooting star that lit up the sky right in front of my face. I did not deserve Anastasia. My sin and status as a fallen creature is so interwoven into my being that its claws reach not only into my own life…but into the flesh of my children. It is evident in Anastasia’s death. It was not just my sin, but our sin. We all share in the sin that leaves us broken, weeping, alone, sick, and sometimes…in despair. We all share in death because we all share in sin, in our sin.

But there’s something else we all share in…our Savior. Anastasia was bathed in the blood of Christ. Her little ears were covered in God’s Word. And her home, for twelve weeks, was the body of one Baptized into Christ and made a temple of the Holy Spirit by God’s gift of Holy Baptism.

The doctors offered to let me have a D&C the day we found out Anastasia had died. But I couldn’t go. I was so overcome with my sin, with it’s effects, that I needed to grieve and confess. I have never wept so hard or long. Then I called a dear sister in Christ and, when she answered, I burst into tears telling her I didn’t even know why I was calling. We wept together.

And in Anastasia’s death, in my sin, I felt dead with her. But Jesus, He was dead too. Not half dead, not a little bit dead, He was dead. He was dead in our trespasses and sins. Have you ever thought about and wondered what those three days must have been like for His followers? God was dead. They were alone. And to add salt to the wound, they had to carry on in the work and physical labor of burial while grieving. And yet they were still alive. God’s power was enough to sustain His creation even when He was dead.

I carried Anastasia for twelve weeks. And then I carried her, dead, for ten days. One of those days was Ash Wednesday. I will never forget carrying her to the front of the church to receive ashes on my forehead. Presenting my other children for ashes felt like I was handing them over to death as well. Knowing that I infected them with the same sin that poured out death on my sixth child was unbearable. We were all being marked with death…but, it was death in the shape of life, even while I carried death inside of me.

And then I went into labor. I labored for five hours at home. I’ve given birth four times at home to our living children and the pain was no less in duration or strength to birth one so small. When she came I scooped her up and I held my snowflake. Twelve weeks with ten fingers and ten toes, two tiny ears and her mouth open just far enough that I could see her tongue and gums. She is God’s tiny miracle, put right into my hands for me to behold. She might be gone now, as quickly as a shooting star, but she was there, she was mine, and I am overcome with God’s mercy, goodness, and love for us sinners before we yet knew Him. The Lord is merciful. He forgives all. And because we are adopted by His grace, we and our children are adopted into LIFE. Death is not the end of Anastasia’s story, or of my or your stories. Easter is coming. Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Melanie Sorenson

The Answer Is Always “Repent”

“God doesn’t promise to make sense of things but to make good.”

Barren woman, today’s sermon at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church was for you:

Text: Luke 13:1-9

The Lord your God loves you. Have no doubt about this. Did you notice that the sermon hymn began with a quote from Ezekiel, attributed to God Himself? “‘As surely as I live,’ God said, / ‘I would not see the sinner dead.’” Singing those words to one another, we’re telling each other in so many words this simple truth: God loves you. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked…” Believe it. This is the will of your Father for you.

That word from the Lord is the foundational truth of your story. In fact, it’s the chief plot point of the story of the whole world throughout time. If you were to sit down and tell your biography that sentence would underlay every moment recounted.

But our life-stories aren’t all ups, are they? There are many downs, for we indeed bear many crosses. How do we account for them? When faced with suffering, disaster, tragedy, how do we as Children of God respond? When a friend or family member takes his own life, or the doctor comes in with the terminal diagnosis, or a sinkhole swallows someone up, or when tsunamis, earthquakes, gunmen, or terrorists seem to rule the day, how do you, Jesus’ disciple, respond?

The answer is always “Repent.” Always. It never changes. Do you say, “But I don’t deserve this!”? “But there are worse sinners than me. Why must I suffer?” Repent. Can you honestly call yourself anything less than the chief of sinners, deserving the wrath of God? And if you say, “Just look at their sin. This is just God’s punishment,” then repent. Take the log out of your own eye that condemns you.

“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?.. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?” Do you think that the 27 killed in Newtown were greater transgressors? The 3000+ on September 11th? The 3000+ aborted every day?

What is our answer to these questions? The world asks for an answer, doesn’t it? It wants to know, expects to know, in fact demands to know: why does God let these things happen? Why?

We’re tempted to leap in, defend God, justify God to the world. It seems easy to do this, but then we say the wrong thing or make something up about God that sounds nice and fits our own notion of Him but perhaps isn’t really true. This is our temptation. Yet look how God Himself answers: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Not just perish as in a physical death. Perish as in spiritual, eternal, forever death. Unless you repent.

What about this question: Do you think that you are a worse sinner than all the others because you now have terminal cancer, or you miscarried, or you’re barren, or your spouse left you, or your kids have fallen away, or your job is lost? Do you think this?

The beauty of God’s answer is that it’s exactly the same. The answer is always “Repent.”

One simple word: “Repent.” What does it mean? It’s easy to think it means to “change your ways”; to “want to do better”. But God has no intent to cast His Law upon you in your moment of suffering. Repent simply means to “change your mind”; to have a different outlook, a different perspective, to “re-think”. This is what God tells us to do in light of suffering and death: recognize that death isn’t the worst that can happen to you. Jesus died and now lives. The same is true for you, trusting in your child-of-God status. Suffering isn’t your punishment, at least not spiritually from On-High. That was laid upon the suffering servant Jesus Himself, for you.

So repent, that is, “re-think”; cease the questioning of God. Why suffering? Why evil? Why did God let this happen to me? “Repent.” That’s what Jesus answers, always. The questions themselves reveal our lack of trust in God. Let us not call out “The way of the Lord is not just.” God’s response to our judgement of Him is rooted in complete fairness: “I will judge each of you according to his ways.” The worst thing is to die unbelieving, suffer unbelieving, fall asleep staring at ourselves instead of fixing our eyes on Jesus. To be fairly judged by God is the worst thing for us.

Repent. Re-think. The temptation we all face is to think of God as vengeful, of “making a list and checking it twice,” of always being ready to pay you back for your wrongdoing. Put aside the temptation to explain away God in your suffering, and know that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” He does indeed provide the way out. It is to hear His words and believe them.

Repent. Re-think. God does not have your end in mind. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked…” God doesn’t promise to make sense of things, but to make good. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Repent. Re-think. God doesn’t promise to handle the details of each and every disaster that comes along. He is able and willing – He doesn’t leave us in doubt about that. Throughout the Scriptures God is involved in the details. But He rather prefers to make good by sending His Son to become man and handle sin to the point of death, even death on a cross. There on the cross death’s stinger is cut away. There on the cross the grave’s seeming victory is divinely mocked for all eternity.

God’s preference is not to put you in a bubble as you walk through this valley of the shadow of death. Instead he challenges the demonic principalities and powers of this sinful world by adding His word to some water and washing clean your soul and your conscience. God confronts the ongoing accusations that the world, the devil, and even our old sinful flesh lob at Him, each other, and ourselves by speaking the Body and Blood of Jesus in, with, and under the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.

Your Baptism tells you that all the suffering in the world cannot touch you. The Holy Communion fed to you reminds you that Christ’s suffering and death are the victor over anything that will assault you, both in body and soul. In the Word and these Sacraments God provides the way of escape – namely, faith.

God works for good in everything. Faith comes in and believes this. Faith doesn’t say that cancer or a car wreck or your sin is good. Instead, it says “God will work good and has already worked good in the death of Jesus. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This is how God bids us to think. We are all sinners. And the answer to our sin is always the same. “Repent.” Think differently, beloved. Think on Christ, who has sealed you in His promise of forgiveness for all eternity.

Amen.

Rev. Michael P. Schuermann

All Depends on Our Possessing

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When with sorrow I am stricken,
Hope anew my heart will quicken;
All my longing shall be stilled.
To His lovingkindness tender
Soul and body I surrender,
For on God alone I build.

Well He knows what best to grant me;
All the longing hopes that haunt me,
Joy and sorrow, have their day.
I shall doubt His wisdom never;
As God wills, so be it ever;
I commit to Him my way.

If my days on earth He lengthen,
God my weary soul will strengthen;
All my trust in Him I place.
Earthly wealth is not abiding,
Like a stream away is gliding;
Safe I anchor in His grace.

“All Depends on Our Possessing,” Lutheran Service Book, 732 s.4-6

First Officer

Question Submitted: I’ve noticed that several of your hosts have adopted children this year. Does it hurt that you are the only HRTB host not to have been given the gift of a child? 

Don’t gasp, readers. This is not an audacious question. It is an honest one, and, frankly, I get asked it quite often. So, here is my honest answer:

First, from this website’s conception, my goal was never to have only childless hosts. In fact, if you have ever referred to the host page of this site, you already know that Rebecca, Kristi, Melissa, and Sandra have been mothers for years, whether through the gift of conception or adoption. I invited these sage women to cohost this site with me, because I am terribly aware of my own shortcomings. I am not an authority on every topic we cover on this site, and I rely heavily on their experience, wisdom, prudence, and compassion in responding to such issues as miscarriage, secondary infertility, adoption, and other concerns that touch upon the subject of barrenness.

Now, in response to the hurting portion of your question:

It does not hurt that I am the only HRTB host not to have children; it hurts that I don’t have children, period.

Yet.

It is remarkably easy to rejoice with my fellow hosts in the gifts they have been given this year, because I, too, have been given special gifts from God. I have been given the gift of knowledge from God’s Word that children are His gift to give and that He is wise in His giving; I have been given the gift of faith which trusts in the goodness of God’s giving and His not giving; I have been given the gift of fellowship in the Body of Christ, and I get to participate in the joy of my mother-sisters; I have been given the gift of assurance that my own prayers and sorrows are made known to my Father in heaven, because I have a Mediator who always intercedes on my behalf at God’s right hand; I have been given the gift of a Comforter who, through Word and Sacrament, grants me peace that surpasses all understanding; and, last but not least, I have been given a special vocation in the lives of my fellow HRTB hosts: First Officer of the Starship Motherhood.

What, exactly, does the First Officer do?

The First Officer receives stunned, amazed, blessed, joyous, play-by-play texts when Baby Mayes arrives.

The First Officer gets to share meals with Baby DeGroot and Big Boy Ostapowich.

The First Officer gets the privilege of being one of the first people to receive updates and pictures of Baby Leckband in China so that she can post said updates and pictures to Mama Leckband’s website for her while international internet access is limited.

Most importantly, the First Officer receives tender empathy at all times, even from across an ocean in the middle of a sleepless night just after Baby Leckband has been put into the arms of her family for the first time:

“I know there is joy and pain for you personally on this day. Know this, dear sister, you are loved for who you are TODAY. Your worth is found in the shadow of the One who has borne all of our suffering. His gifts are yours each and every day, despite your earthly pains and sorrows. You. Are. Loved!” 

Does it hurt? Not as much as it could, thanks to the compassionate generosity of my fellow hosts who never leave me out but put me right in the middle of the celebration.

I am one blessed, barren woman.

Salute,

First Officer Schuermann

Compelling Distress

“But where there is to be a true prayer, there must be seriousness. People must feel their distress, and such distress presses them and compels them to call and cry out. Then prayer will be made willingly, as it ought to be. People will need no teaching about how to prepare for it and to reach the proper devotion. But the distress that ought to concern most (both for ourselves and everyone), you will find abundantly set forth in the Lord’s Prayer. Therefore, this prayer also serves as a reminder, so that we meditate on it and lay it to heart and do not fail to pray. For we all have enough things that we lack. The great problem is that we do not feel or recognize this. Therefore, God also requires that you weep and ask for such needs and wants, not because He does not know about them [Matthew 6:8], but so that you may kindle your heart to stronger and greater desires and make wide and open your cloak to receive much [Psalm 10:17].” Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, III: 26-27.*

* Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (ed. Paul Timothy McCain; St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 411.

Aftermath

You told me one night.

Though Easter had come and gone, I saw the fast of Lent alive in your eyes. Yes, even now you keep a pious vigil, twenty years of Tenebrae, still afraid of the strepitus.

You all but cover your ears.

“I had a miscarriage in between the boys. They told me the baby was dead, so I went in for a D&C.”

It happened a generation ago, but you still can’t look at me. You shake your head.

“I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I was afraid. What if I had- ”

You stop. You are a grandma, a happy grandma, but your second child’s Good Friday still haunts you. It is not finished for you. Not yet.

“I went to the hospital and made them show me the records.”

I suck in my breath. This is not grief over death as I had thought. This is something different. This is fear. Over murder.

“I had to know that the baby was really dead before, you know…”

I did know, though I had never considered it. Of course. It is the same procedure, the same legal procedure whether dead or alive.

“The records said she was dead before the D&C.”

I feel relief. Then sudden guilt. Then relief again. She miscarried not murdered.

Wait.

I catch myself in the considering, and my anger is immediate. Burning hot.

This is the sick world in which we live: A mother cannot merely grieve the death of her miscarried child. She cannot simply undergo a procedure and trust that it is reserved for mothers who want their babies but have lost them. She now has to question, has to fear the hostile world that willingly, profitably D&Cs babies to death, and wonder whether or not her procedure of healing medicine was really healing or not.

This is a cruel cruelty.

Cherry Blossoms