Replacing Hesitation with Preparation
I remember very distinctly the car drive home from the doctor’s office after my 20 week scan when I was pregnant with my Rainbow Baby.
Justin had taken pictures and videos of the ultrasound screen during my appointment, and my OB had given me a handful of printouts as well. I snapped pictures of several of them and sent them off to friends and family, and then we each called our moms.
I chatted happily with my mom, telling her how amazing it was to see our baby moving all around, barely holding still long enough for the doctor to grab the pictures she needed (not much has changed!). I told her that the doctor said everything looked perfect and the baby was measuring right on track. My mom echoed my pleasure to hear that everything was wonderful with this little miracle baby and then she ended the phone call by asking, “Can we finally start buying things?”
This question succinctly summed up the first half of my pregnancy. I was always cautiously optimistic after my second round of blood work; the first round confirmed that my embryo transfer had stuck, but it was that second round that I had crippling anxiety over. The second round was where I officially learned I was miscarrying my first pregnancy. But after my second round with Rainbow Baby came back with more-than-doubling hormone levels, I breathed a little sigh of relief. With each next step, I felt some anxiety heading into the appointment, but nothing like the wait for the second blood test to come back. Then I would relax until the build-up to the next one.
And so that underlying anxiety, no matter how mild, always kept me in a place of hesitation. I wasn’t quite ready to tell a bunch of people, I wasn’t quite ready to talk about names, I wasn’t quite ready to buy things for the nursery or clothes for the baby. Because there was always that whisper in my mind: What if something happens? What if that next step reveals bad news? How will I recover?
Here’s the funny thing about pregnancy loss: it doesn’t matter how long or short your pregnancy was, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you prepare for that baby- you will feel devastation over the end of that life no matter what. We somehow think that by avoiding the preparation, we will protect ourselves from the worst of the pain. But I was 5 weeks pregnant when I miscarried my first baby. I knew about the pregnancy for exactly 7 days. Other than taking my first “bump” picture, I had done exactly zero preparation for that baby. And I was utterly devastated when I lost them anyway.
For most of us, when that test reads positive, we immediately start planning. Even if we don’t buy a onesie or talk about a name, we are planning in our minds: what our dream nursery looks like, what we’ll dress the baby in to come home from the hospital, what the theme of our baby shower will be. We imagine sending them off to kindergarten, we wonder how we’ll save for college, we hope they will be happy and successful as adults. We imagine a whole life in a matter of moments, so if that pregnancy ends, that whole life goes with it. So whether or not we’ve done any literal preparation matters very little- our mother’s heart will be crushed either way.
Yet, these questions that whispered in my mind for the first half of my pregnancy are so common in pregnancy after loss. We delay the preparations as a form of protection, as a way to not get our hopes up only to be let down again. But this hesitation only leads to more anxiety; we dwell on worst-case scenarios and freeze when God is calling us to move forward.
I was surprised to discover that the first time “prepare” shows up in the Bible is not a command, directing man to get prepared in some way for something that God will do. Instead, it shows up in a song sung by Moses and the Israelites in response to the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea.
In the opening of this song, the Israelites call God their strength, their defense, and their salvation. Then they sing, “He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him” (Exodus 15:2c NIV, emphasis mine). The King James Version translates “I will praise him” as “I will prepare him a habitation.”
The Hebrew word used here means “beautify, adorn, dwell, abide, keep at home, rest, celebrate with praises, be satiated” among other definitions.
Woah.
What a picture of what it means to prepare. This first image isn’t about gathering supplies, stockpiling food, or making ready sacrifices (though this use of the word “prepare” shows up a lot in the Old Testament). It’s about making our hearts ready for God to dwell within us. It’s about giving our souls rest to abide in Him. It’s about beautifying Him with praise! After all that He has carried us through, after the figurative Egypts He has rescued us from, He wants us to be satisfied in the miracles He’s done so that we can be at home with Him,
Now, it doesn’t take God long after this to give the Israelites a command to “prepare.” In the very next chapter, as the Israelites are setting out from the banks of the Red Sea, they almost immediately forget the miracle that has just happened and begin complaining to Moses that he has brought them out of Egypt to starve to death. They reminisce about all the food they had in Egypt, conveniently leaving out that whole “enslaved” part of the story. This right here indicates why it’s so important that the first use of “preparation” was about preparing our hearts. If we neglect that phase, we will end up like the Israelites, almost instantly forgetting the miracles God has done for us when we’re faced with a new challenge.
In response to their complaints, God tells Moses he will make bread rain down from heaven and that He’ll provide instructions for the people on how to handle this in order to see whether or not they will obey him. He follows this up with, “On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days” (Exodus 16:5 NIV).
God goes back and clarifies this command. When the morning dew fell each morning, it would bring with it flakes. The Israelites were to gather what they needed (verse 16), and they were not to keep any over for the next day. Of course, there were people who didn’t follow this instruction and tried to keep some overnight, but they discovered that it spoiled and filled with maggots by the morning.
God also directed them to gather twice the amount on the sixth day because they were not to work on the Sabbath. They would need to gather and prepare two days worth on the sixth day in order to have enough to eat, and they were not to gather on the Sabbath. On this day they found that everything they kept overnight did not spoil and was good to eat the next day. But those who attempted to gather against God’s commands found that no flakes fell with the dew on the morning of the Sabbath.
Each time the Israelites failed to follow one of these commands from God, Moses grew angry with them. For me, their failure to prepare in the way God instructed goes back to the heart issue. If the Israelites neglected the preparation of their hearts through praising God for His miracles, not only did they easily forget those miracles, but they also fell back into old habits of not trusting God’s word. He promised they would have what they needed- not wanted- each day, and yet they tried to hoard the manna, indicating a fear that they would not be provided for again tomorrow. He promised the food would keep overnight for the Sabbath so they could focus on resting with Him, and yet the people felt the need to continue to gather despite God’s command to rest.
So it goes with us. God has brought us out of our slavery to loss and infertility, He has given us the miracle of our awaited rainbow, and while we should be preparing our hearts for the journey to motherhood by praising Him for His blessing, we neglect this command because we’d feel safer being quietly optimistic. Then we question whether the provision will hold up until tomorrow. Instead of stepping out in preparation- a sign of trust- we hold back “just in case.” Before we know it, we’re half way through our pregnancy with a gun-shy heart and an empty nursery.
The good news is, God doesn’t ask us to prepare our hearts and our homes by ourselves. Just like the Israelites, we’re not really capable of doing it alone anyway. Psalm 10:17 says, “You Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry…” (NIV). The KJV translates “you encourage them” to “thou wilt prepare their hearts.” When we take the step of faith to praise God for the miracle He’s done for us, He will prepare our hearts. That makes the definition of the Hebrew word used in this passage- and in Exodus 16:5- that much more powerful. Some of my favorites are, “be firm, stable, established; secure; enduring; directed aright; steadfast; provide; direct towards; restored.”
God will help us to feel stable and secure in our rainbow pregnancies, He will direct us in the right way to go towards preparing for our babies, He will make us steadfast with His provisions in this season. And the beauty of this promise is that it carries right into motherhood. The preparation of our hearts in pregnancy makes us ready to parent our little ones in the faith, and each time we praise Him, He works this promise again and again, continuing to prepare us with what we need for that next step, that next season.
When we praise God’s miracle, when we trust Him enough to take those steps of preparation, we release our hesitation and allow ourselves to move into the joy of starting a new chapter, making our hearts ready for all that God has in store for us. He will guide us and equip us for all that pregnancy and motherhood after loss and infertility have to throw at us.
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