March of Dimes reports that 10-20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, with some research suggesting the statistic is closer to 30%. That’s roughly one in three women who face the tragic loss of life in their womb.

I was told by multiple obstetricians that, given my medical history, it would likely take time to conceive. Thus, I thought my uphill battle was simply getting pregnant. Given my family’s history of healthy pregnancies and the nearly perfect pregnancy I experienced while carrying my first baby, I didn’t anticipate being part of the miscarriage statistic.

I wasn’t prepared to be a woman whose body betrayed itself, who watched life leave her being. I didn’t want to be a mother left with nothing but self-made memories of a future their little one would never have. I wasn’t supposed to forever wonder if it was a girl or a boy, if he or she would’ve grown up to like music, take ballet, join the military, or cure cancer.

I wasn’t ready to face the sort of loss that leaves a woman wondering if God’s goodness left her heart just as her baby left her body.

But last summer, I faced such loss, such a challenge to my faith.

Hope Despite Loss

My mind made my second baby a little girl with chestnut-brown hair and pigtails, to be exact. My brain has never let me see her face, though, only the back of her little body as it runs and plays outside, picks daffodils, and makes her brothers bend to her princess needs.

I love this baby. Oh, how I love her. And I’ve had to recognize that truly loving her looks less like being bitter with God that she’s not here and more like praising him that all she will ever know is being wildly loved by me, her father, her brother, and her Maker.

She will never know heartache or betrayal. She won’t ever face a cruel world. And as her mother, I can be at peace with that.

I can find hope in such loss.

Rainbows After Storms

And perhaps that hope, though it still questions God’s goodness, is why God gave my body a third baby just two months later. Now, eight months pregnant, we are preparing for our son, James Harrison, to make his debut.

I’ve heard it said that there’s a unique, beautiful, heavy, joyful weight in first holding a rainbow baby, the one that gave us another chance to love and hope and choose faith after the storm of a miscarriage. Oh, how I look forward to such a wrinkly, crying, messy, exhausted embrace.

If you’re like me, sweet mama, and know the heartache of miscarriage, yet your heart, mind, and body are preparing for a rainbow baby, I’d love for you to consider these six beautiful biblical baby names that point to God’s restoration and rejoicing over us:
Photo credit: ©GettyImages/Nikola Stojadinovic