Thursday, July 12, 2007

My Broken Rosary

I've been talking about plans, and in doing so, I was reminded of this piece that I wrote several years ago for New Covenant magazine. This was after our fifth miscarriage, and before we had Ramona (the four-year old mentioned here is Betsy.) It's a piece about dashed plans and a broken dream. But, it is also about renewed hope and strengthened faith, and I offer it today to anyone who has ever lost a baby.

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My Broken Rosary

It was November, just before Thanksgiving and I was at the doctor’s office. I was pregnant, and cautiously hoping I would carry this baby to term. Though we have two beautiful children, after multiple miscarriages I take nothing for granted. The image on the ultrasound screen was not what it should have been.

“I’m concerned it may be ectopic,” said my obstetrician, “but this early, an ultrasound can fool us.” He told me to come back in five days, as “a few days can make a huge difference in what we see.” He did his best to assure me that all would be well.

I left the office feeling frightened and terribly sad. I was seven weeks along. We should have seen a heartbeat. The possibility that "all was well" seemed remote. I prayed. I hoped. But I feared.

Five days later, the picture did look different. There was no sign of trouble in the fallopian tube, and the baby was indeed in the womb. Still, we could not detect a heartbeat. My doctor wanted to try one more ultrasound in a few more days -- couldn’t we have miscalculated the date of conception, he wondered? Not likely, I said, for a couple who knows the finer points of Natural Family Planning as well as we do. And, given my history, I feared the worst.

I reported the news to my closest friends with great sadness. “No heartbeat,” was all I could manage to say. My friends offered me prayers, comfort and shoulders to cry on.

But I had one friend who remained upbeat. “Hang on until the next ultrasound,” she urged. “We have no idea what God has in store for your little one. Pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the protector of the unborn.”

Of course! Our Lady of Guadalupe! And so began the rosaries, asking for her intercession. A few days later, out of the blue, I received a beautiful rosary in the mail -- it was a gift from a pro-life organization to which we had donated, and it bore the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. My heart jumped, and I dared to hope this was a sign of an impending miracle.

The next day, on our way out of the house to go to the doctor’s office, my four year old begged to hold the pretty rosary. I handed it to her, and we drove to the home of a friend who'd offered to watch the kids while I went to the doctor. When we arrived at my friend’s house, the rosary was in pieces. “I’m sorry, Mama,” my little girl said with sad eyes. “It broke.” Indeed, beads and links were scattered everywhere.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “Things break. You didn’t mean to.”

But inside, I feared that my “sign” had broken too. I had been hoping and trusting in my prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe and now the rosary, that unexpected gift that prompted me to hope for a miracle, was in pieces.

Later, at the doctor’s office, the final news came. No growth... no heartbeat... no sign of life. Blood tests over the next week confirmed that my levels of pregnancy hormone had dropped; the baby had died.

In my grief, I forgot for a time about my broken rosary, but then a strange thing happened.

Though I mourned our lost child, circumstances surrounding the miscarriage led to amazing resolution regarding an old and painful emotional wound. In other words, had I not miscarried, I would not have been healed of this old wound. What an amazing grace, I thought, and I thanked God for what He had done for me through the short life and the death of my child.

It was then that I remembered the rosary. As I pieced it back together, I saw that I had nearly all of it. One decade was missing two beads, and my tinkering with the links left it looking a bit crooked here and there, but it was repaired.

Gazing at it, I was struck by the incongruity. This once-perfect thing was now bent, crooked and imperfect, yet still beautiful. It was like us -- like our lives. Though we were made in the perfect image of God, we are bent and crooked with original sin; even after baptism we are still crippled by its after-effects. We stumble through this life tarnishing the perfect image while our Lord repeatedly tinkers with us, repairs us, and heals us.

I remembered the sinking feeling I got when I saw that the rosary had been broken, how I felt all my hopes instantly dashed. I had imagined that the gift of the rosary meant that I would receive the gift of my baby. What I received instead -- the healing I received -- was a great gift that I could not have predicted.

I couldn’t have known how beautifully the Lord would use my child to heal me; I couldn’t have known how this unexpected rosary would become the symbol of God’s work in a broken part of my life. Now, when I pray with my broken rosary, I think of my baby and I know that my friend was right -- we had no idea what God had in store for my little one.

He is always, ineffably, and so unexpectedly, making crooked ways straight.

(This post also appears on the Catholic Exchange blog.)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Karen.

KC said...

That was beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing such an intimate part of your life with us, Karen. One of the blessings of never having experienced pregnancy is not having to know what it is like to lose a child in the womb. I'm glad God was able to make good out of the darkness, and bring you healing and peace. Fondly, Heidi

Lillian said...

What a beautiful reflection. Thank you!

xxxxxx said...

What a cross, miscarrying a baby. There are no words of comfort for that. You have my sympathy. I am glad god found a way to heal you. Only He can.

sarah said...

I've always loved this post.

Anonymous said...

A great story that shows how all things. . .even the little ones. . .connect us all in this much greater plan. . . how a child's action is connected to an unborn sibling, how something that came in the mail. . .God uses all of it and all of us to bring what is necessary.

Thanks for sharing this.

Karen Edmisten said...

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Rosary said...

This is a very heartfelt post, Karen. The Lord has His way of showing light even through the darkest times.

Anonymous said...

Karen, I'm so sorry for your loss.

I lost my mom to complications from her breast cancer, diabetes, and renal failure. But just before she died, like maybe a day or two, as I was rushing to grab a rosary to pray with that was hanging on a handle knob of the dresser (the whole rosary was off the knob, and in my hand... i was holding it by the loop), the crucifix and the first 5 beads somehow became detached from the centerpiece (which shows the image of The Virgin Mary) and fell to the floor. As far as I knew, nthing tugged at it... it wasn't snagged or anything.

When it happened, my heart just instantly sank. It was as if it was a sign that I was indeed going to lose my mom; that we both have to let go of each other... so that she can finally be with God in Heaven, and that I can and should finally get on with my life; to grow up and to be my own man.

She died just last month (Aug 2011), and not a day goes by without me thinking about that powerful, resonating image, the circumstance in which it happened, the realizations I had, and how utterly powerless, helpless, and frozen I felt... and quite frankly, how I still feel.

(Since then, I've carefully mended the metal link on the rosary and I still pray with it.)

Karen Edmisten said...

I'm so very sorry for your loss, too. May our Lord comfort you, and thank you for taking the time to comment.