Part 1: How to deal with miscarriage God’s way?

Indeed, besides heaven, there is no place like home. The moments we share with our loved ones is a yeast that makes our lives tick.

I remember one good morning, 21 August 2021 to be specific, when I was playing chess with our firstborn son; my wife came down from upstairs wearing a smile I cannot forget. She had a gift bag she gave me to open after stopping our chess game and sitting me on a single couch. And guess what? After taking out many pieces of paper, having no idea what the present was all about, I finally got to the bottom of the gift bag, and boom, I saw a pregnancy test, and it was positive – meaning we were expecting our fourth child.  

The thought of having our fourth child was out of this world, joy unspeakable but short-lived; our pregnancy only lasted for six weeks. On the 16^th of September 2021, we had a miscarriage; it was a sad day, our family experiencing the reality of death, closer to home and our hearts. In life, there is no small death; death is death, whether of a fetus, a stillborn, or whatever age.

The big question I want to answer in this article is, how to deal with miscarriage God’s way?

The Game-Changer

The Word of God, the Bible, is always the game-changer. Sharing our own experiences only draws us either to despair, leading to depression and all sorts of foolishness, such as pride in how bright we are compared to others. But when the Bible speaks, we come to see our struggles and ourselves as we truly are in any subject matter. Yes, when God speaks, through His revealed Word, the Bible, we are set free from all our fears and slavery of all kinds of sin.

The Apostle John wrote, in John 8:31-32, 36, quoting the words of Jesus Christ, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free… So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Yes, the secret of dealing with life issues God’s way is to, first of all, be in a saving or permanent relationship with Jesus Christ (Cf. John 15:5), and to continue to feed on his words, the Bible (Cf. John 5:39).

The game-changing truth in dealing with all of life under the sun is to feast and feed on God’s Word for our spiritual growth (Cf. 1 Peter 2:2). True freedom from all fears of life and slavery to sin is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is when Christ dwells in us richly that we become more like Jesus Christ in responding to all our life’s struggles, temptations, and sins (Cf. Colossians 3:16). We are set free when we allow God’s Word to permeate all areas of our lives. That’s the only hope we had as we were dealing with our miscarriage – i.e., growing in the knowledge of the truth as a spiritual discipline (Cf. 1 Timothy 2:4, 4:8).

Addressing ourselves: The Word of God helped us to deal with our own hearts and struggles and those around us. Instead of drowning in despair and depression, our heads were above waters of overwhelming sadness, hopeless grief, loneliness, and the loss of our fourth child. We grieved hopefully (1 Thessalonians 4:13), and through God’s grace, we were also able to use the comfort we received from God’s Word to comfort others. Second Corinthians became a living reality for us, where the Apostle Paul wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Addressing our kids: The Word of God also helped us to tell our kids what has happened. We couldn’t hide it from them because we had already told them we were expecting a child, and our daughter had already started complaining saying the child must be a girl so that she could have someone to play with since she is the only girl out of three.

A special night was set when my wife and I were ready to tell the kids what had happened without crushing their hearts. I had two passages of Scripture to help us communicate the loss to our children, especially Emmanuel (10 years) and Eternity (6 years). Ezra (2 years, nine months) was tagging along without knowing what was happening.

The first Scripture was Psalm 139:13-16, in which King David, the Psalmist, argues that worship is consciously living all of life in the presence of God, who is indeed omniscient, i.e., knowing everything. The faces of our two older children shone brightly, and their eyes sparkling as we were taking them through Psalm 139:13-15 in which King David wrote,

¹³    For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. ¹⁵  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”

Our children didn’t know that verse 16 was coming to introduce sad news to them.

¹⁶      Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Note how verse 16 is recorded in the New Living Translation:

¹⁶ You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

After reading, explaining verse 16 and telling the children that we have lost our fourth child, they received the sad news like an adult. It was so because the joy of seeing and hearing about God, who is omnipresent and omniscient, overwhelmed and overshadowed their tender emotions and vulnerability. The truthfulness of God’s Word in the preceding verses (Psalm 139:13-15) comforted them enough to hold the punch of the fear of death that scares everyone living under the sun (Cf. Hebrews 2:14-15).

Addressing Other Christians

Next to our children, the people we were thinking about the most was our spiritual family, Muledane Baptist Church, where I’m a teaching pastor. How did we address them? On a Sunday, during announcements’ time, I told the Church about the miscarriage, and the refreshing and comforting part was when we read the same passages of Scripture we read and studied with our children.

After reading and giving the context, meaning, and application to the two passages of Scripture (Psalm 139:13-16 and Hebrews 2:14-15), I asked one of the Church members to pray for us as a family, and as he was praying, I, personally, was comforted beyond measure. On the same Sunday after the Church service and during the week, my wife and I received comforting words from members of Muledane Baptist Church. It is refreshing receiving encouragement from the people to whom you minister the Word of God, especially during the mourning and grief we were going through after miscarriage. The joy of Christian fellowship is priceless as we experienced “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

In the next article (part 2), we will be learning, from God’s Word, how the Bible addresses a husband and wife struggling with the reality of miscarriage.