–– Paul Schlehlein
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Miscarriages worldwide are quite common, occurring in nearly 20% of pregnancies. Most of the countries with the highest miscarriage rates are in Africa, such as Ethiopia, Niger, Mozambique, and Zambia. The majority of us know women who have experienced at least one miscarriage.
A miscarriage, sometimes called a spontaneous abortion, refers to the premature death of the baby in the womb. As opposed to abortion, which actively murders the child in the womb, a miscarriage is the end of a pregnancy before 20 weeks’ gestation. The death of a baby after 20 weeks is called a stillbirth, whereby the family often holds a funeral.
While many miscarriages are undiagnosed, some occur months into the pregnancy and can bring significant physical pain to the mother. Depending on the gestation period of the baby, the mother may endure considerable bleeding and need a surgical procedure to remove the fetus from the uterus. Miscarriages can also be dangerous, as haemorrhaging can be life-threatening.
WHY THE PAIN
Moreover, for the following three reasons, miscarriages can bring emotional trauma far worse than the physical pain. First, in a miscarriage, a human life has ended. Pro-choice advocates claim that a mother carries a mere clump of tissue. But no one mourns deeply over the loss of clustered cells.
Life begins at conception, meaning “it” becomes a “him” or a “her” at the moment of fertilisation. God told the prophet in Jeremiah 1:6, “Before I formed you in the inward-most parts I knew you.” There is no hint of impersonal tissue matter when God says, “Before you came out from the womb, I set you apart.” Miscarriages fill the soul with pain because “the baby is” becomes “the baby was”.
Second, parents often walk this road of grief alone. Unlike an infant’s death, where a funeral, flowers, cards, and well-wishers bring balm to the heart, a child that dies prematurely in the womb often leaves the parents weeping, companionless. They cry with the Psalmist: “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted” (Ps. 25:16).
Third, miscarriages fill parents with unfulfilled hopes. In many ways, losing a baby in the womb is easier than losing a child with whom the parents have developed a relationship. But for similar reasons, miscarriages can sometimes be even more difficult, especially for women who have yet to raise children of their own. Solomon said, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Pr. 13:12). The parents’ hearts grieve because their dreams for a son or daughter never found resolution in the birth of the child. They ponder: “Was it a boy or a girl? What shade were his eyes? What colour was her hair?”
HOW TO COUNSEL
For all these reasons and more, Christians must become doctors, they must be spiritual physicians who stock their satchels with biblical counsel. They must learn to use words that make the heart glad (Pr. 17:22). “A tongue that brings healing is a tree of life” (Pr. 15:4). Consider the following four tablets of timely touch.
First, sympathise with their loss. Sometimes mothers don’t like discussing the matter, but if they do, help carry their burden with words that are sweet to the soul and pleasant as honey (Pr. 16:24). Expressing sorrow for their loss will be like apples of gold in settings of silver (Pr. 25:11).
Second, remind them that believers will see their little one in Heaven one day. At the loss of his child, David knew that he would one day “go to him” in Heaven (2 Samuel 12:23). The kingdom of God will be peopled with little ones that their parents have never seen.
Third, encourage them to find contentment in Christ. Proverbs says there are four things that are never satisfied, one of them being a barren womb (30:16). A miscarriage can leave a mother longing for a child such that nothing else can fulfil her. Though children are a blessing, and a mother’s natural impulse is to bear them, a baby must never become one’s greatest hope. Point the grieving mother to Christ, for in Him alone she must find her greatest gratification. Urge her to pray Psalm 90:14, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
Ann Judson, first wife of Adoniram Judson, learned contentment in Christ upon the death of their second child. She wrote: “Our hearts were bound up in this child; we felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it, that he will stay his hand and say, ‘It is enough.’”
Finally, point them to God’s sovereign control over all things, including the loss of a child. He gives the leopard his spots. He creates the blind and the deaf. As Proverbs 16:4 says, “The LORD has made everything for his own purpose.” We may not see what this is on earth, but we must trust him nonetheless.
Upon the death of the child of his son and daughter-in-law, Charles Spurgeon wrote the following words of comfort: “The Lord Himself comfort you. I want comforting myself. To think of that dear little creature being taken away! It must be right! It must be good! Our Father is never mistaken nor unkind. . . . I feel sure you will both find a secret strength poured into your souls, and in this also faith shall have the victory.”