My Body Did Not Get the News

She came home from the hospital with a bag and a folder and a small box, and on the fourth day her milk came in.

Nobody had told her that would happen. Somebody may have said something, in the way things get said in those days, and none of it stayed. So it arrived on a Thursday morning in an ordinary bedroom, and her body, which had been getting ready for months with enormous competence, went on getting ready.

For about a week.

She has never described that week to anybody. Not to her mother, who was in the house. Not to her husband, who was in the room. Not at the group she went to twice and did not go back to, where everybody was kind and where she could not make the sentence come out.

Because there is no way to say it that does not sound like a complaint against her own body, and her body did nothing wrong. It did exactly what it was built to do, faithfully, for somebody who was not coming.

Her name was chosen. That is the other thing she does not say. The name was chosen at about twenty-two weeks and it was used, out loud, in that house, for months.

That is you, and it is nearly two years and nobody has ever asked you about the fourth day.

Nothing here is going to explain this

I want to say what this page will not do, because you have probably had some of it done to you by people who loved you and had nothing to reach for. This rests on Scripture in Isaiah 49:15, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

I am not going to find a reason. There may not be one available to anybody on this side, and Scripture is entirely willing to sit inside a loss and never explain it. There is a psalm that ends on the word darkness with nothing resolved, and nobody edited it out and nobody put a lesson at the bottom of it.

I am not going to tell you she is in a better place as though that answered what happened in your body on a Thursday. You know what you believe. That is a different question from this one.

I am not going to say anything about what you can still have, or about time, or about anything that starts with the word at least.

And I am not going to suggest that anything you did or did not do caused this. Nothing you ate, lifted, worried about, felt, or failed to pray. Anybody who has implied otherwise, however gently, was speaking outside Scripture and outside their authority, and you may put whatever they said down and leave it exactly where they left it.

You are not under a judgement. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it attaches no explanation and no condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that into a bedroom on a Thursday morning.

The verse God reaches for

There is a line in Isaiah where God is trying to describe how impossible it is that He would forget His people, and the comparison He reaches for is the one nearest to you.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Isaiah 49:15

Look at what He does there.

He picks a nursing mother as the strongest image of not-forgetting that exists in human experience. That is the standard He measures Himself against, and He picks it because everybody knows it is the most unbreakable bond there is.

And then He says something almost startling: yea, they may forget. He allows that human beings, even at that intensity, are capable of failing. He does not pretend otherwise.

And then: yet will I not forget thee.

So the very thing your body was doing in that week, the thing that has felt like a cruel machine running on with nobody to feed, is the thing God chose as the picture of His own faithfulness. Not because your grief is an illustration. Because that bond is real enough to be the measure, and He knows exactly what it is.

You are not carrying something God finds unintelligible. Scripture says can a woman forget her sucking child, Isaiah 49:15, and He chose that comparison Himself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a verse like that into a room where it might otherwise be unbearable.

Your body was not cruel to you

Here is what I most want to put down in front of you, because I think you have half held it against yourself and half held it against your own body. Scripture already said it in Isaiah 49:15, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

That week was not a malfunction and it was not a punishment.

Your body did the most loving thing it knows how to do. It prepared, completely, for a daughter, and it went on preparing after the world had changed because bodies do not receive news, they receive time. It was not mocking you. It was, in the only language it has, still expecting her.

There is something almost unbearable in that and there is also something true. For that week, one part of you was still in the room where she was alive, and it was doing its work, and it was not wrong to.

You are not at war with your own body over this. Scripture says I am fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelous are thy works, Psalm 139:14, and it does not withdraw that sentence when the wonderful thing is grieving, and the Holy Spirit does not require a woman to be reconciled to her own body before He will comfort her in it.

Say her name

Here is the one practical thing on this page.

Say her name out loud to somebody who knew about her.

Not the whole account, and not the fourth day unless you want to. Just the name, in a sentence, to one human being: I was thinking about her this week.

Because here is what has almost certainly happened. Everybody around you stopped using it, quickly, and they did it out of kindness, out of a fear of making you cry, and the effect has been that a name which was used out loud in that house for months has not been said by anybody in nearly two years.

That is a second loss and nobody intended it and you may end it.

You are allowed to keep her named. Scripture is full of names kept for people who did not live long, and God Himself says He gives an everlasting name that shall not be cut off, Isaiah 56:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it possible to say a name out loud without the room breaking.

And the fourth day, when you are ready, and only if you want to. One person. It does not have to be soon.