Tea & A Good Book Brewing- Installment 12, Light My Candle

There are many things in life that, given the choice, I would much rather not know too much about, intimately.

Miscarriage is one of them.

And yet, it is not always ours to choose every fork in the road, and when suffering or loss lies in our path, we choose not our circumstances, but our responses...

In the grief and emptiness that followed on the heals of my second miscarriage, I did a lot of crying out against the pain of my loss.

I asked "Why?"

I felt sure that God had all the babies He needed in Heaven and that mine belonged with me.

It was during that time that I bought a book on the subject of miscarriage at our little local bookstore that became a very special source of healing for me.

The book was, Light My Candle, Prayers in the Darkness of Miscarriage, by Stephanie J. Leinbach, and the poetry within it's pages gave voice to my grief in a way that I was unable to.

Stephanie wrote these heartfelt prayers as her own personal response to loss, and they are organized under 8 titles: A Cry to the Creator, Letters to Heaven, New Life, The Thing Which I Greatly Feared, Till Death Do Us Part, A Community of Shared Pain, Have Compassion and Help Us, and Mourning All Day Long. She also includes some notes on her own experiences with miscarriage and motherhood, which help to explain the chronology of the different sections.

When I first bought the book, I was unsure if it would be a good fit for me or not. I love poetry, but it has to be the right sort to strike the right chord.

Incredibly, I found that poem after poem "struck the right chord" and was just what I needed. In a very powerful way, they gave voice to my heartache, my fears, my questionings and, yes, my anger.

Ultimately, they helped set my feet on a path toward healing and hope. And the Giver of both.

I will always be so grateful to Stephanie for allowing her prayers to become mine, too.

One of the poems that became a special favorite of mine is this one:

                                                                   

A Letter to Heaven

Dear Baby,

     child of mine,

you may not know me,

                  but I am your mother.

I carried you within me,

                             nourished you

                       cherished you,            

                             anticipated you,

              but God had other plans.

Oh,

        sweet little one,

     you go to God

                   untouched,

                                unscarred

        by this cruel world.

You will never know

                            of pain,

             or crying,

                       or loss.

You will only know eternal love

                         within your Father's care.

You go with no regrets,

        and, oh, so brief a history,

               a story barely told.

My baby

        my little stranger,

                I will never know you.

You lived and played

       and cried and laughed,

                       but only in my dreams.

Although you dwelt beneath my heart,

              you were never in my arms.

How can I miss you?

              You were barely here.

How can I wish you to return?

      You're so happy over there.

You stole into my life so softly,

                 taking up residence there,

  and slipped away as softly,

     leaving in your wake

             blood,

                         pain,

                                     tears.

I miss you.

               I wish you were here.

But seeing as there is no way

        to bring you back from where you are

                                   into my arms,

               baby of mine,

someday I'm coming home

                to see you.

Child of mine, today I am remembering your tiny, but significant, life...

Someday, however, it's going to be more than that!

So much more.