No Victory Without Cost

I suppose that at the beginning of a new year the thing to do, besides making resolutions, is to reflect back and examine the last trip around the sun. But if you’ve been following this blog, then you pretty much know what our last year has been like. Just in the last half of it, Amy and I have given up our profession and our home, said goodbye to family and friends, moved to another country halfway around the world, and struggled to adjust to a new home, a new job, a new culture, and a new language.

I would be lying if I said that it’s been an absolutely wonderful experience. In all honesty, it’s been the hardest year of my life. Amy and I have been thrown into the deep end of the parenting pool, becoming surrogate parents to 7 teenage girls. We’ve struggled with heat, insects, intestinal parasites, and fungal infections. I’ve witnessed animal sacrifices, experienced a volcanic eruption, and we’ve celebrated with great joy as we learned that Amy was pregnant after more than 2 years of trying to have a child. We are learning to cope with change, loss and loneliness on a scale we never imagined. Little did we know that we were about to endure something much more difficult.

Spending our first holiday season away from home was already proving to be tough, so Amy and I decided to get away to Bali for a few days during Christmas Break in order to relax and take our minds off of home. We arrived on Christmas Day. Almost immediately, Amy began bleeding. This is not the sort of thing you want to happen when you’re in an unfamiliar part of a Third-World country – and you know no one. We got on the phone and called anyone we could think of who could help us figure out what was going on. “This sort of thing isn’t uncommon…it could be a number of things…don’t worry too much…I’m sure the baby is fine… you shouldn’t be walking around…just get lots of rest and stay off your feet.” Day 2: we rested, but periodic bleeding was still occurring. Day 3: even confined to bed, her bleeding was getting worse. I went out to find a pharmacy and get some antibiotics. At this point, we were both beginning to think the worst, but neither of us wanted to say it out loud. Early in the morning on Day 4, she was bleeding badly and uncontrollably. I woke up the resident nurse at the hotel and alerted the manager that we needed help.

Within minutes, Amy was being placed in a wheelchair and rolled out to a waiting ambulance (by “ambulance” I mean an old van that has been gutted and outfitted with a gurney, a small bench and a rusty oxygen tank). With a screaming siren, we blitzed through crowded intersections to the main hospital in Denpasar – cutting the normal one-hour drive in half. On arrival we were placed in a small, minimalist area marked off my curtains. The nurses largely ignored the fact that Amy was bleeding through her clothing and sitting in her own blood. The doctor, who was in his office at the hospital, took an hour and a half to come meet with us. The whole atmosphere was one of a lack of dignity or importance. We continued to hold on to hope, thinking that somehow this would all turn out okay. Then the doctor performed an ultrasound and coldly informed us that there was no longer any baby – pointing out in a text book what a real baby should look like at 11 weeks. Amy had been miscarrying for 4 days. Our child was dead. We were told that Amy’s body had not had a complete abortion, so a procedure was necessary to remove what remained. That’s when the Public Relations Officer came in to inform me of the cost of our visit. In Indonesia, everything must be paid for up front or they will not help you. So, in the middle of our grieving and streams of tears, I was escorted across the street to an ATM where the PR person watched me withdraw cash. In the meantime, Amy continued to pass large amounts of blood and matter. Finally, they had her prepped in a small surgical room. They quickly put Amy to sleep and I was allowed to stand in the open doorway and observe. As I listened to the steady beeping of the heart monitor, I prayed with all my might that God would not allow her to die here as well. At the same time, I cursed the cruelty of the timing and manner in which this was all happening.

Amy came through the procedure without complications. I paid. And after the long taxi ride back to the hotel, I remember walking through the lobby and hearing the lounge singer croon a heavily accented, “Get your kicks on Route 66.” People were talking, laughing, and enjoying brightly-colored tropical drinks with miniature umbrellas. I went from a zombie-like haze to a flash of heated anger. I nearly screamed, “What the hell are you all so happy about! Our baby just died!!” But the world keeps spinning and life goes on. After all, why shouldn’t they be enjoying themselves? They’re on vacation. If things were reversed, I would be having fun too. Instead, we simply sat in our hotel room feeling stunned and numb, as if we had just roused from a vivid, mutual nightmare.

As I think back on what has become collectively our worst Christmas, our worst vacation, and the hardest week of our 6-year marriage; verses from the Book of James come to mind: “When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing…God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him (1: 1-4, 12).”

I admit, I don’t yet know how to rejoice in suffering, nor have I figured out how to endure patiently. I do not have any answers as to why this had to happen, why it happened when it did, or why it happened the way that it did. I don’t like any part of it – it has caused me levels of anger, sadness, and grief that have caught me by surprise. But I also realize that each event I experience is only a single thread in the larger tapestry of my entire life. I cannot see the whole picture; only God can. And the small piece that I can see right now is clouded and distorted by pain. Yet, though I am struck down, I am not destroyed. As long as I remain in God, He can use the worst of circumstances to transform me into the man I need to be. He is a God of redemption and reversal – turning evil into good. One day He will flip this world upside down and restore what has been lost. He will make all things new. So while at the beginning of my pain I may say, “The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss;” with God’s help and grace, I can truthfully say, “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness (Lamentations 3:19-23).”