Prayer After a Miscarriage

God, I lost the baby. My body was supposed to protect this child and it didn't. And I know that's not how it works.

I know the doctors would say it's not my fault. But my body was the only home this baby ever had. And I couldn't keep it safe.

People have said kind things. And I know they mean well. But some of their words land like erasing.

It was early. At least you can try again. You're young.

As if the length of a pregnancy determines the weight of the loss. As if this baby was a rough draft. I had already started imagining.

Due dates. Names. The room.

Little details I hadn't told anyone because it was too early to tell people. And now it's too late. I carried hope quietly and now I carry grief quietly because the world does not know how to hold a loss it never saw.

There is no funeral for this. No flowers. No meal train.

Just blood and silence and a body that still thinks it's pregnant. The hormones haven't caught up. My breasts are sore for a baby that isn't coming.

And I'm supposed to go back to work on Monday. I feel sadness and anger and confusion and numbness all in one day. I feel guilty for the moments I laughed this week.

I feel guilty for the moments I didn't cry. Grief keeps changing shape and I don't know how to do it right. Psalm 139 says you knit this child together in my womb.

That you knew life in secret places. That matters to me now. Because this baby was hidden from almost everyone.

But never hidden from you. You knew this child, Lord. Even if the world didn't.

"Thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." Covered.

Even in that hidden, secret place this child was known. Was covered. Was yours.

I want to stop apologizing for this grief. I want to stop minimizing it because other people had it worse. I want to stop saying I'm fine when someone asks how the pregnancy is going and I have to decide in half a second whether to tell the truth or protect them from my answer.

My body is grieving in ways my mind hasn't caught up to. I'm tired in a way sleep doesn't fix. I wake up with my hand on my stomach out of habit.

And then I remember. Lord, hold this baby. I never got to.

Not the way I wanted. Not in a blanket. Not in a rocking chair.

But you hold what I couldn't. And I need to believe that's true because it's the only thing keeping me upright. Teach me to grieve without shame.

Teach me to speak of this baby without apology. Teach me to answer the question how many kids do you have without my throat closing. Because the answer is complicated now.

And it will be complicated forever. I am not the same person I was before this. Something fundamental shifted.

I joined a club I never wanted to be in and the membership is permanent. But so is the love. The love didn't end when the heartbeat did.

You knew this child. You know me. Hold us both tonight.

Amen.