I don’t know what to say. I know that this post is separated from your pain by the distance of time. I also know from experiencing this loss ourselves twice that this pain never really goes away.

I am so impressed and comforted by the loving supportive words shared here. I am grateful that you have shared this pain with us and hopefully allowed us to carry just a little of it for you.

With warm hugs for yourself, your wife and all your children.

Shasta

Thank you so much for sharing this in a public forum. My heart most certainly goes out to you and your family. I just had a miscarriage myself this past weekend and found your blog while trying to avoid sleeping and looking for comfort out there somewhere in the middle of the night. I’m not a practicing Christian, but I love that you shared Romans 12:15. I’d not heard that before but have been working with how to practice that. Not easy at all, no, but so worth our deepest efforts ~ always.

And I have to thank David Congdon for pointing out that when we share our joy at an early stage, we join in community. I did that too – against all the popular advice, and while sharing the sad news has been very painful, it has showed me how lucky I am to have a loving and supportive circle to lean on when I fall down. Your community seems like a lovely and supportive one. Bless all of you. And bless your Mizuko (Japanese Buddhist word for our miscarried babies). I will keep them in my prayers along with my own Mizuko and so many others.
Yours,
Mia

God is good, all the time, but it doens’t make any of this easy as we all too well know in our family. God bless you both and cole and Mason. hugs, mom

Amy and I are deeply saddened by this news, and your family is in our prayers. We are especially saddened by the fact that we will be away from The Well this next month. Thankfully, the body of Christ extends beyond our physical location.

When I first saw the church email about this, I was first reminded of a comment I’ve heard repeated many times that basically says to not share one’s pregnancy publicly until later on when the possibility of a miscarriage has diminished. And I thought about how such a view lacks any sense of a community. I thought about how blessed we are to be part of a community in which pregnancies and miscarriages (among other things) do not have to be handled alone, but can be shared with others. This is really the beauty of the body of Christ at work. If living missionally means anything, it should mean this.

Today, Amy and I got in the car and turned on NPR. Incredibly, there was an interview with a woman who had multiple miscarriages and she was sharing from her memoir about her own life-journey of trying to become a mother. It was so appropriate, so timely. One of the things she said was that the Christian tradition does not have any liturgical way of dealing with miscarriages, whereas Buddhism has an entire ritual for such an event. I was struck by this. I’ll have to keep thinking about it.

At the very least, I hope that you will experience the peace of the Lord in these upcoming weeks and months. I pray that the embrace of the community and the comfort of the Holy Spirit will be a kind of liturgy for you as you process where God is leading you.