Lesson One: A New Perspective

Hi, there! Since this is my first blog entry, I’ll start off by introducing myself. My name is Bridget and I’m 24 years old. I’ve been happily married since 2011 and am excited to celebrate our second anniversary this September. I love Jesus and the life with which He has blessed me. My husband, Francis, and I are hoping to add a little one to our family sometime in the near future, and this blog will hopefully (if I remain faithful!) act as a journal/place to document our journey and the lessons learned along the way.

We have been trying for a baby since October 2011. In November 2012, we miscarried our first baby at six weeks. Though she (my husband felt strongly that it was a little girl, and we named her Hope) was not with us long, we still loved her immensely. Sometime in the next couple of days I will post the narrative I wrote as a memorial to Hope, and to give you a little insight into our journey up to this point, but for today I’m just going to jump right into it!

When a woman decides she’s ready for a baby, even a day is too long to wait. A year and half? That’s crazy talk! ..but that’s where we’re at, and I’m okay with that. Through this experience I have been blessed with some pretty wonderful friendships with women who have been waiting a LOT longer for their little miracles. I consider this time a gift. This is time with my husband that I will never get back. Time with myself as I am today, and time with my God—and He definitely isn’t wasting any time. I’ve already learned and grown so much. I would love to share every lesson I’ve endured (yes, endured) to get to where I am today, but there just isn’t enough room or time! So, I’m going to start with the lesson I’ve been learning this week:

 Lesson 1: From the “Job Perspective” –Learning to look at my suffering from a new perspective.

Every now and then I will go through a phase in which I get pretty sick of my current music collection and I’ll download a couple of podcasts to listen to while driving. This week has been one of those phases, and my podcast of choice?—“Questions of Suffering” by Timothy Keller.

When tragedy strikes, a person’s first reaction is usually, “WHY ME?!” …I’m totally guilty of this. It took us over a year to conceive Hope and we lost her two weeks after learning about her. “Why me?” definitely crossed my lips in a few prayers of desperation. Suffering would be just a little bit easier to handle if we knew why we had to go through it, wouldn’t it? The truth is that most of the time we aren’t privy to this information. The best we can do is to make a few measly attempts at figuring out what God is really up to, OR we can embrace the thought of living life without ever knowing and we can move on. If we choose the former, we’ll probably obsess over the issue and live a life full of anxiety and fear, but if we choose the latter, we’re free. Easier said than done.

So, in Tim’s sermon he used the beginning of the book of Job. Job is a pretty popular guy in Christian culture, but if you haven’t heard of him here is a brief summary: Job was a man who loved God and was loved by God. He lost EVERYTHING, I mean every.thing. In the face of suffering and loss, he continued to praise God.

In the book of Job, Satan approaches God after going to and fro about the earth and God says, “Have you seen my servant, Job? He’s an upright man who loves God.” Satan scoffs at this and writes off Job’s love of God merely to his love of the things God has given him. In order to prove this, Satan wants to take it all away. God allows it. It was Satan’s idea, but ultimately God is in control. He allows Satan to induce Job’s suffering. Why? Because God knew that the result would be the opposite of what Satan anticipated. Satan meant to crush Job, but God meant this for good. God will only allow something in your life that He KNOWS you can handle. And He will never take you anywhere that He won’t  protect you. Satan meant to make a fool of God, but God risked his name on his servant, Job.

Before I miscarried, I was a lot like the Israelites that fled Egypt. I was wishy-washy and in an on-again, off-again relationship with God. I doubted His will for my life many times. Now, I see that my miscarriage was a very pivotal point in my life and my relationship with Christ. In that moment (which seemed to last years) I knew that things could never go back to how they were before. Through that experience God revealed so much of Himself to me that I can never doubt again. There is no going back.

Satan took one look at my life prior to that moment and said, “Let’s give her the thing she most desires in the entire world—a baby. Let’s give her enough time to fall in love, and then let’s rip it away from her. She’s blamed and left You for much less.”

God said, “I’ll allow it, but you’re wrong about her.”

I’m so thankful for a Father who loves me enough to risk his name on me.