Crying Just A Little

My eyes fail from weeping . . . my heart is poured out on the ground.

—Lamentations 2:11

Today all I can think about is what might have been. Today would have been my due date, had my pregnancy been a healthy one. Someday we might have another child. But we’ll never have a child born on January 31, 2009. That baby will never be. And it seems worth stopping for today, just for a moment.

Of course I knew women who had miscarried. But when it happens to you it’s like waking up to a conversation you’ve heard before and only now grasp, and you realize what they were trying to find the words to describe.

It was deeply moving to me that my body nurtured and nourished Henry, delivering him safely into the world, and this miscarriage has forced me to ask some questions: Did my body fail me? Did I somehow fail it? We’ve had a tenuous relationship in the past, my body and I; was this a breach of trust?

On most days, it’s all right. I understand that God is sovereign, that bodies are fragile and fallible, that grief mellows over time, and that guarantees aren’t part of human life. But on this day, I’m crying just a little for what might have been.