March Guest Writer:
Rachel Lohman
We've gathered 12 guest writers to add HOPE to your inbox in 2021! We're honored to have Rachel Lohman, founder of Hope Again Collective, as our featured writer this month.
The Garden of Gethsemane scene in the Bible had been a familiar scene to me, having spent in seminary and working as a pastor. But on Memorial Day weekend of 2017, this story was no longer just a distant scene to imagine – I received a personal invitation into my own garden of pain and suffering. Though I certainly didn’t feel it at the time, Jesus was already in this garden. And though I didn’t understand at the time, He was also more familiar with pain than I realized.
It is within this very Garden we witness one of Jesus’ most sorrowful episodes. With all of His humanity showing, His suffering becomes unbearable, and He pleads with God to remove the pain he faces:
“Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”
Other translations read Jesus’ soul was “crushed with grief to the point of death” (NLV) and “plunged into an agonizing sorrow…crushing my life out” (MSG). Does this describe your miscarriage experience, too?
Luke’s Gospel provides further detail:
“And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. ”
That Memorial Day weekend, I saw drops of my own blood, and I saw much more. I saw my heart become crushed outside of my body, my hope deflated like a balloon meeting a sharp pin.
I was faced with an invitation to a place I never wanted to travel – in my own Garden of Grief, where like Jesus, I pleaded and pleaded with God to take this all away. When faced with your worst nightmare – your baby dying from within you – you enter a place like this. There is no other place like it, as you know. None of us want to be in this Garden, just as I suppose Jesus felt over two-thousand years ago. Yet, still, we were invited here.
And what can be found? Eventually, as the seasons change and the plant life cycles, gardens bear witness to new life springing up from ashes. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In this moment of fresh miscarriage grief, we find Jesus there. Waiting for us. Suffering with us. Sharing in our pain, experiencing firsthand his soul being crushed with grief to the point of death. Does any phrase more accurately describes the pain of losing your baby?
Friend, I recognize that maybe nothing is comforting enough for your pain. But my prayer for you is that perhaps your soul can cling to this truth until you feel comfort and hope again: there is a suffering servant, side by side in your pain, holding your tears as He holds your hand. Even if you don’t feel His presence, His comfort, or any form of hope and peace, the reality of His nearness to you is beyond what your emotions may be experiencing. It’s an undeniable fact of who God is: Jesus, Immanuel - God with us, God with you, right now.
Questions for further reflection:
When you think about Jesus suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, what emotions or thoughts do you have?
What feels like the biggest block to knowing Jesus is with you in your current pain?
What dreams, desires, or hopes have been lost along with your miscarriage?
Imagine Jesus right beside you. What do you want from Him?
Rachel Lohman is the founder of Hope Again Collective, which started as an outlet for the anxiety she carried while being pregnant, after the loss of her first child. Hope Again Collective is where beautiful handmade earrings tell the stories of brave women who have walked through miscarriage or infant loss. A percentage of each pair purchased is donated to give women experiencing miscarriage practical resources in their grief journey.