“At least you’re pregnant! What a blessing!”
As I chewed on the kind words from my acquaintances, I immediately felt like spitting them out. I had just suffered a miscarriage, and in the midst of this profound personal tragedy, I had been instructed to view the pregnancy and subsequent death of my child as a good thing from God. At that moment, in the midst of my grief, I shuddered to think about it.
Admittedly, in that moment, I couldn’t see my situation as a blessing or a gift. Her child died, her body was broken, and the future she had envisioned with her husband and child disappeared. I wanted the person in front of me to share my overwhelming sadness, but instead I felt like no one saw me and that I had to put on a happy face. Ta.
At the time of his death, I was working at a Jesuit retreat center run by the order of priests founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, so I was familiar with his most famous works. mental exercises, and the practical path of prayer and discernment he created known as Ignatian Spirituality. St. Ignatius’ feast day is his July 31st, but he experienced a powerful conversion after being hit by a cannonball during a battle. As he recovered, he learned to pay attention to God working in his life. A great practice of noticing and responding to God in normal life and in unexpected parts of life (like when you get hit by a shell or hear that your baby has no heartbeat). I was attracted to its nature.
I knew too well personal care, an Ignatian term meaning “consideration of the whole person,” and it resonated deeply with me. I longed to be embraced by God without holding anything back. I longed for the people God had placed in my path to see my whole self, and for me to see their whole self. Ignatian spirituality gave me the words and the path to make that a reality.
The wisdom of 500 years of spiritual practice begins with a prayer known as the “first principle and foundation.” In describing God’s vision and purpose for our lives, St. Ignatius begins with God’s love for us and our response to that love.In the modern translation by Jesuit Father David L. Fleming his that begins
Our goal in life is to live with God forever. God, who loves us, gave us life. Our own loving response allows the life of God to flow into us without limit.
This sentiment is also reflected in the opening sentence of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In his “plan of pure goodness,” God created us to share in his blessings. Starting with God’s goodness and love resonated with me, but it felt more like an intellectual thing than a personal thing, especially after losing a child.
I feel the human tendency to ask, “How does this affect me?” St. Ignatius goes on to say:
Therefore, in daily life, we must keep ourselves balanced before these created gifts… We are in good health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, long life or short life. You should not fix your desires in life. Because everything has the potential to awaken in us a deeper response to our life in God.
This is the part in First Principles and Fundamentals where I heard a record playing in my head. I certainly wanted health and not disease, just as I really wanted my child to live and not die. Unfortunately, we cannot assume that sickness, death, poverty, failure, etc. do not exist.
St. Ignatius does not ask us to ignore the reality of tragic events in order to focus only on the good and happy things in this world; rather, his writings emphasize the joys and tragedies. He asks us to bring both to God. Ignatius invites us to trust that God is in it all and cares for our whole reality and our whole personality, our whole selves.
I don’t have to rejoice over every event in life, but I can trust that I am not alone and that God will be with me no matter what I endure. During the intense grief of miscarriage, God loved me fiercely and walked by my side. And as my grief continues to rise, God continues to walk with me. God is with each of us and will walk with us no matter what we face in life. Tragedy, crisis, and sin exist, but so too does goodness, beauty, and abundance. And God is present in all of it. “Everything has the potential to awaken in us a deeper response to our life in God,” Ignatius promises us.
There was a blessing in my miscarriage, although it took time and kindness to myself to see it. It wasn’t the tragedy itself, but the way God showed up in the tragedy and reminded me, in small or large ways, that I was not alone and loved. But I’m glad God didn’t require me to immediately view my loss as a blessing and a gift. God cares for my pain and gently invites me to see the blessings that come from this devastating loss.
The depth of my heart’s pain was matched by the depth of God’s love and healing. My heart was broken, but it also hurt and increased my ability to fully empathize with the pain of others. God’s care and mercy for me inspires me to offer the same care and compassion to others who are in pain.
When I was going through a time of trial, God taught me to look at the intricacies and intricacies without turning away, pretending they were less than they were, or trying to find a quick fix. It gave me new eyes. As God shares in my own suffering, I am called to share in the suffering of others. Through my broken compassion, God called me to use these gifts in the service of God and others.
In the 10 years since my loss, God has called me to walk with dozens of other people who have lost a child. I was someone people turned to when the world as they knew it stopped. I spoke gently with them about what was to come and reminded them that God saw their pain and was with them in it. I would not have been able to offer this blessing to others if I had not experienced God’s care during my own loss.
The Ignatian spiritual path is about trusting that God cares for my entire being and all that I am, and believing that I am privileged to share that truth with others. It inspires me to live my life sharing everything with God. Because it turns out that St. Ignatius was right. “Everything has the potential to awaken in us a deeper response to our life in God.”
