Author: sarahswandell

writer, reader, songwriter, pastor, newlywed

oops…I did it again

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Being pregnant so quickly after a miscarriage does not remove the pain of said miscarriage. I cried on Mother’s Day, in D.C. on our babymoon. We had scheduled the trip when we were expecting our first. We decided to keep the train tickets even after the loss, and here we were, expecting again. It could have been worse — I could have not been pregnant — but still I cried in the church around the corner while the choir sang “The King of Love My Shepherd Is.”

I was supposed to be 23 weeks along, in the peach glow of the second trimester, ballooning with joy and turning heads. Instead I was 11 weeks along, falling into bed every afternoon while it rained outside our rented basement flat. Walking through museums exhausted me, and all our dinner dates — Thai larb, Indian paneer, thick foot-long doughy pizzas — weren’t enough to encourage my appetite. We finally rented city scooters, and as we bumped along the sidewalks, I wondered if I would lose this baby too.

Will the remembrance of miscarriage always make tears coat my eyes? I imagine so. I’ve been keeping track of when and why I cry about the miscarriage — each instance since January. The most recent was August 5. I ought to average them out.

I am excited with each baby kick from “Little Swan,” as we’re calling this one, and I’ve recorded the rapid-hoof heartbeat from the doctor’s Doppler. But when the heartbeat sounded through the exam room, I couldn’t help my first thought, of the baby before: I never got to hear his heart.

 

 

a liturgy for husband & wife at close of day

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Happy two-year anniversary to my dear husband. Here’s a beautiful liturgy we prayed last night:

___________

Husband: At death we will part.

Wife: Therefore let us not take the blessing of our life together for granted.

 

Silence is kept as both spouses consider for a moment the gravity of this truth.

 

Husband: May our hearts be ever drawn towards You, O Lord

In whose three-personed perfection of love

Burns the fire that would kindle also our two-personed imperfection

Into a oneness that is warmed and forged of your holy flames,

Wife: A thing that is both an echo and seed and a play upon a stage

Portraying the promise of union with Christ that is to come.

 

Together: We are unworthy players, O Lord, unworthy to portray your glory.

We are weak. We are jealous. We are easily wounded.

We are petty. We are embittered. We store up remembrances of wounds.

We are insecure.

We hurt one another.

We do not deal with our conflicts well.

We fail to love as you have loved.

Forgive us even the failures of this day.

 

Silence is kept. If either husband or wife has need to make amends, they may do so now.

 

Husband: I am not strong enough in my own strength to be husband to you.

Wife: And I am not strong enough in my own strength to be wife to you.

Together: Let us turn to God together then, asking the strength that we need.

 

Husband and wife take hands.

 

Together: Give us therefore the strength that comes from the grace that flows from your heart alone, O God, that we might live and move and breathe in air of that grace, receiving it in ourselves, and then offering it daily to one another. Without grace, our marriage will wither as a vine unrooted. But sustained by your grace, it will ever flourish and bloom and flower and fruit.

 

Husband: Forgive us our failures and our sins against one another and against our marriage, O God,

And restore now our hearts to you and to one another.

Wife: Repair the damages of our selfishness, our thoughtlessness, our inconsistencies.

Draw us again together at the close of this day, in love, and forgiveness, and fellowship and peace.

 

Together: May we sleep this night side by side in unity of heart and mind and purpose.

May we wake in the morning in solidarity and delight,

Thankful for the sharing of this life, for the companion who journeys beside us,

For hands to hold and arms to embrace, and lips to kiss at the close of day.

 

Husband: May we love one another more at the end of this day

Than we did at its beginning.

Wife: May we treasure one another more at the end of this week

Than we did at its start.

Husband: May we hold one another as more precious, more respected, more dear

At the shuttering of this month, than we did at its opening.

Wife: May we delight in our companionship and take heart in the sharing of our burdens more at the close of this year, than we did as it opened

Husband: May we reflect your glory far more fully in the beauty of our shared relationship

At the hour we are parted by death than we did even in the hour of our wedding.

 

Together: Bless our marriage. Kindle our desire. Teach us to be friends and lovers and companions.

And may this our marriage exist not only for our benefit,

But may the bond between us grow to be a shelter and a blessing for others as well.

 

Husband: We ask these things in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Wife: Amen.

 

Together: And now, with joined hearts, together we bring to you these burdens of our day.

 

Husband and wife may now freely petition their heavenly Father with all worries, burdens and concerns.

 

Copyright 2016 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey. All Rights Reserved.

“How should Christians have sex?”

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That is the question in a New York Times article from last week. As someone who grew up in the purity culture of 1990s Christianity, both benefiting from it and being stunted by it, I found this article helpful:

I am grateful for my upbringing, but it fell far short of the ideal way to teach teens and young adults about sex. I wish there was a perfect way to handle these imperfect, mysterious things.

Everything Happens for a Reason (again)

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Last week, I came into church and was immediately hugged by a woman who’d just heard of our miscarriage.

“I know you know this,” she said, “but, God has a reason. We just don’t always know what it is.”

It was, of course, her way of trying to offer comfort. It was her way of making sense of the senseless. It was her single lifeline, and as a wise pediatric oncologist once said, “Don’t take away someone’s lifeline.”

So I didn’t say, “No, I don’t ‘know’ that. I don’t believe that. In fact, I have preached against that. Or were you not here that Sunday?”

Instead I said, “Thank you,” and meant it. Because her hug was the more important thing. Her broken heart, displayed on her face, was the real comfort. And we all just take our lifelines where we can.

currently reading: What Was Lost

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What Was Lost

On questioning what happens to your baby when you miscarry:

We can say, then, that an unborn child is a person, not based on biological development, but because we believe that he is loved by the ground of all reality, the Being whose love creates being and grants it to others. Your lost little one was indeed a person, known intimately, loved deeply by our personal God. It doesn’t matter how early or how late we die:

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
For to this end Christ died and lived again,
so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Romans 14:8-9

At a funeral, a community of believers gathers to remember a life, to mourn its close, and to proclaim their common hope and trust that whatever life looks like on the other side of that deep river separating life from death, it is life lived in the presence of God. This is the posture we take toward those we have lost early to miscarriage. We remember their lives, our hopes and dreams for them, the ways in which their short existence changed us. We mourn their deaths, the deaths that happened in secret places, in the dark of our wombs. And we proclaim our common hope and trust that although we can’t wrap our imaginations around the details, the God who holds the span of life and death in God’s very hands and even in God’s very body, the God who stands beyond the edges of the universe and who dwells within the heart of the atom — this God holds even tiny lost lives in the hollow of the divine hand, calling them by name, knowing them intimately, making them whole and lovely at last.

pp. 63-64

“If you just trust God…”

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trust

“If you just trust God, everything will work out.”

Is that true?

            Earlier this year, we learned we were expecting our first child. I floated around the house singing “I Get to Be the One.” We thanked God for the new life we got to nurture, and I trusted everything would work out. In fact, I just “knew” it would.

Only a few weeks later I sat bleeding in the ER, as a dear brother in Christ (and doctor) sat beside me, looked at me with sadness, and said, “You may be losing this baby.”

…But I had trusted God!

___________

            All my life I wanted to get married and live happily ever after. The years ticked by, with no relationship The One. Age 27, 28, then 29 – it sounds young, but when you come from Christian circles where everyone’s committed to abstinence until marriage, that’s old! Pastors and friends told me God would give me my heart’s desire – that this romance would happen for me someday.

     But part of me stopped believing it would. I could no longer “know” for sure.

            Then one summer, at a community garden workday, I met a man who thoroughly impressed me: When we met, he stood to shake my hand. (Thank you, U.S. military, for teaching your service members signs of respect.) This man became more than I could have asked for, calling me to be better, calling me to be humbler – and holding me when life brought us pain that couldn’t find words.

…But I hadn’t trusted God!

___________

Trusting God and having things “work out” is not a guarantee. There is no formula.

What I’m trying to trust, instead, is: God is here. I hope all of us can take comfort in a God who is present in any season, both the ones we couldn’t have wished for, and the ones we wouldn’t wish on anyone.