Lately, I feel like God is my abusive ex-boyfriend. I love him, I need him, I cling to him. But he just ignores me and does whatever the hell he wants.
I'm sure I've got the whole thing wrong. But I find myself -- after decades of sailing serene spiritual waters -- wondering why humans need a concept of God so much. And it's a faulty concept. Even if you think you've got some nuanced, non-gendered, humanistic god, let's be honest. It's a dude. And he's in charge of stuff.
But recently that paternalistic Father-Knows-Best God -- who's looking out for me even when it seems like he's not, his superior logic is hidden inside of the koans of heartache -- has been replaced by a capricious, motorcycle-riding outlaw, who I am this close to jettisoning.
The trouble is I need something to surrender to... I try to live my life by spiritual principles -- honesty, humility, service, acceptance. I pray. I meditate. I eat kale. I have genuflected, danced ecstatically, retreated silently, learned Biblical Hebrew, and read Pema Chodren.
Having examined faith academically and experientially, I have learned that I need to lay my burdens at the feet of someone, some thing. I need divine intervention. I need hope. But I also need a better boyfriend.
This uninvited anti-conversion happened around the time I miscarried for the fifth time. Yep, five miscarriages. My husband and I had a blissful, easy, accidental pregnancy with my daughter, and have had a tough time since then.
Miscarriage is not tragedy. It's not losing a child. It's not life in a war zone. It's not living in poverty. It's not even the worst thing that has happened to me.
But it's loss. And it's an icky, secret, festering loss. Hollow, haunting and acrid. It has specific contours. And in our case, those contours have worn a landscape, a small islet, maybe a few dusty acres in New Mexico.
We weren't trying to get pregnant the last time. We were done. Cashed. Past the expiration date. Instead, we were racing to finish our home study to be eligible for an adoption that was minutes from falling apart. I was supposed to bring the birthmother into my OB on Friday. She never showed. Instead, I was at my doctor's office on Wednesday. Pregnant.
And then, six weeks later, I wasn't.
People say really annoying things to you when you're trying to have a baby and can't. I mean, people say annoying things all the time, but loss just seems to render them puerile. I was doubled over in physical and emotional pain, with the simplest of childish questions... Why would God give this to me when I wasn't asking for it -- this thing that I have wanted for so long -- and then take it away? And a dear, kind friend said in a sage way, "Believe or not, God wants you to have a baby. He's sad too."
Seriously?
So, God is either omnipotent and cruel. Or empathetic and useless.
Given all the suffering in the world, it's pretty obvious that there can't possibly be a loving God looking out for us. There's just no way to square that with a single viewing of the local news. Yeah, yeah... "free will." But it's not just people who mess things up. Straight up God, or Whatever, sucks too. Freak accidents. Natural disasters. Even if you account for global warming being our fault, there were still plenty of tragedies to challenge your belief.
And I just kept coming back to the same basic question... Why bother? If God works for you, great. If not, take comfort in knowing there's no evidence that a deity exists. It's human construct that has morphed over time. At its simplest, faith is an expression of our need to reconcile an erratic world through narrative.
So, who needs it?
Um.
Well...
I do.
Keep persevering and don't give up on God. HE has not given up on you. If only you will......
I know, it's a bit overly-simplistic, but you get the point.
I support a woman's right to her reproductive health. And I also believe that includes the right to stop the life she's created inside her. I call it what it is. No need to sugar-coat it.
While I am happy that conception is not a problem, and we are continuing to try for one more child, it is incredibly sad and frustrating. Certainly a test of faith and sanity.
Makes sense to me.
I dont think God has anything more to do with miscarriage than he does when a 15 year old gets pregnant in the back of a car. It all has to do with a woman's age, her reproductive immune issues (yes there are reproductive immunologists out there that help women with recurrent miscarriages, like myself), her hormonal levels, etc. I found out through testing that I had a small positive ANA that was causing tiny blood clots in the placenta. I was given prednisone, and told to take baby aspirin and I took those medications all the way up until I delivered and I was able to carry to term. Who knew it could have been so easily treated?
I had friends and family say oh there must have been something wrong with the babies etc, no, there wasn't. I had a immune process going on, my cells were attacking the placenta and this happens in many women. The gold standard recurrent miscarriage tests are ANA, ACA, blood clotting factors, and thyroid. Only when I sought help from a specialist was I able to carry to term.
my best friend has a blood clotting disorder and lost two babies at 23 weeks before she was given baby aspirin, terbutaline, and magnesium sulfate- and she now has a healthy baby who was born at 30 weeks. is her daughter less of a child than her two sons were- just because she didn't have the medical diagnosis at the time? of course not!
i guess the thing that offends me most about this blog post is how she says that she did not lose a child and that it wasn't a tragedy. my living daughter who is here with me now was almost miscarried but made it due to medicaiton i took during my pregnancy. if i lost her, it would be a tragedy- and i guess i don't see the distinction- because my babies who were lost are still my children...
I am really glad you came on here because I was about to lose heart over this blog.
Turns out there are many, many gods. I have now found ones I can relate to much better. I pray to them, plead with them, yell at them, etc. and they answer me in their own ways. My new gods, unlike YHWH, feel like family.
Like you I found there are many gods/goddesses and the ones I have a relationship with keep me more in touch with the earth and my relationship to it. My gods don't punish, don't threaten, don't have obscure rules and laws that have nothing to do with my life. And when I lost my first baby when I was 4 1/2 months pregnant, my gods let me yell and rail at them without fear I was commiting blasphemy.
I believe there is a force that created all that there is, but I don't believe one can have any kind of relationship with that force. Instead I chose to have a relationship with gods that are a little bit more local, who don't claim to have some big picture game plan. And when bad things happen, I no longer feel I have to pretend it is all part of some great unknown reason. Bad things happen, and it is okay to be angry and sad and rail at the gods. They get it, are sad for you too, and will help you move through it.
We humans are like the little children. And God is the wise adult. A toddler can't possibly know all all about American foreign policy. Hell, a toddler can't even fully comprehend why mommy is making him eat vegetables.
And yet we sit and try to ponder, gee, why would God allow this? God is beyond us.
Yet, to me, none of this means we can't ponder reality. For myself, our human realities make little sense unless I consider the following. In the womb, we develop physical attributes to help us survive after birth. Once born we develop spiritual attributes that will aid us for eternity. That's it. So, a child swept up by a tsunami and drowned is dead to us. But not to God. It's excruciatingly sad. And we should cry and work to alleviate pain. But to ask God to make everything understandable would be to ask the impossible.
And the fact that we live in a world that allows famines to linger, Holocausts to happen, violent slums to exist. All this says a lot more about humanity than about God.
After my second m/c I was almost numb. From the moment that I saw 2 lines, I was defeated...I did not think that this one would make it either. Even after several optimistic doctor visits...my intuition knew better. As I was entering my second trimester my feelings became a reality. I was no closer to holding my second baby as I was a year prior. My doctor cried with me and shared how he and his wife felt when they had a m/c over thirty years ago. He suggested I have a full work up done, b/c he wanted to rule out any issues that I may have had.
About 3 months later...we found out it was my body fighting the embryo. I was placed on meds, and became pregnant a few months later with twins. Although we loss a twin in utero...we are blessed that we carried full term (not w/o masses amounts of problems).
I had gotten so lost in my own screaming that I couldn't hear my Father trying to comfort me. I cried so loud that I couldn't hear Him crying right beside me. It wasn't until 6 years later, that I was content with sitting quietly to hear my Father speak to me...then i found my joy and my husband.