I sat in the office of a maternal fetal medicine specialist to discuss the possibility of becoming pregnant again.
I’d had a stillbirth earlier that year. And prior to that, an ectopic pregnancy.
While I had a healthy little girl at home and knew from experience that a successful pregnancy was possible, after two losses I’d nearly resigned myself to the idea that I would never bring another baby home.
For months, I’d been stalled on the side of the road with grief consuming every ounce of energy.
Despair shoved hope into the backseat before silencing it in the confines of the trunk. I watched woman after woman pass me by, happiness emanating from their entire beings with joy-filled pregnancies and healthy newborn babies.
And I was fairly certain I’d never experience those things again.
But hope drove me to the appointment that day. Despite feeling like my life was at a standstill, hope cautiously took the wheel and landed me face-to-face with quite possibly the world’s most compassionate doctor.
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t try again,” she said. “No reason that you can’t have a successful pregnancy.”
And while she could guarantee nothing, her words steadied and strengthened those hands of hope, which steered me towards my rainbow pregnancy two months later.
The road of pregnancy after loss wasn’t an easy one.
It was fraught with potholes and detours and fog. The darkness of grief and anxiety, fear and uncertainty, was paralyzing.
The direction my pregnancy would take was unclear.
Life or loss?
It felt like the longest journey of my life.
But less than a year after that appointment, my rainbow baby was born. Alive.
Because of God, of course. But also because of that speck of hope that was a driving force behind my subsequent pregnancy. Because without that, I never would have considered that maybe, just maybe, God might redeem the heartache of loss by filling my arms with life.
We talk about rainbows being signs of hope—which they are.
But hope must also come before the rainbow.
Because how do we walk toward that distant and not-yet-seen rainbow without it?
Your story might not look like mine.
It might not include a rainbow baby, though if you’re a loss mom, I hope and pray it will.
But if it doesn’t, I have no doubt there is a rainbow of some sort in the distance, waiting to be celebrated.
I have no doubt there is beauty beyond the storm you are facing.
I have no doubt that you will again see evidence of God’s faithfulness and promises.
I have no doubt that there is a miracle in store for you.
I have no doubt that your story of sorrow will become one of redemption.
Nothing on this earth is guaranteed, but it’s hope that inches us forward in the face of uncertainty.
So go ahead, pull that hope from the trunk and allow it to steer you down whatever road you’re on, toward whatever rainbow that lies ahead.
And if that rainbow you’re after just happens to be in the form of a baby, know that I’m especially praying you find it.
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