My friend has had a miscarriage. Does God care?

[fabergeegg]

We're both practising Christians and there isn't anger against God. My friend is clinging fiercely to the belief that all things work together for good. This isn't her first miscarriage. How does one reconcile heaven's silence with the concept of a loving God? Why does God consider these children are better in heaven than with their loving parents? Why is he allowing so much suffering to happen to such good people?

These are all questions I've asked before in response to life's moments of sorrow. They all have theoretical answers that seem sufficient until painful personal experience comes along! At that point, all the clever thoughts end with 'yes, but WHY?'.

I feel rather hypocritical because I always knew that suffering was going on in the world, regardless of if I was observing it on my doorstep. Even now, I'm happy to think that all these questions have answers that I've carefully worked out in the past - and now is not the moment to reevaluate them.

But what do I say to my friend, who is determined not to lose hope or faith - but is deep down concerned that 'the enemy has triumphed' over her baby because she didn't do enough spiritually? What do I say to her when she happens to say the phrase 'If God can hear me,' when talking about her prayers?

And why does God seem to make himself so difficult to love?

I'm very sorry for your friend. I don't have any definite answers (of course) but I do know that it's not possible to have love without suffering. If you love someone or something then part of that is fear of losing them. The depth of our sorrow when losing someone is a reflection of how much we love them.

It's also impossible for us to tell why things happen, although the answer may be very clear to God.

Ultimately, if God is who he says he is, then ultimately everything will be made right.

Perhaps you could read 'The Problem of Pain' by C S Lewis. I haven't read it myself but it's on my list and I believe he talks about this sort of thing a lot in it. The film 'Shadowlands' quotes from it and is also a very good film.

If you are going to read Lewis, then try 'A Grief Observed' instead -- it's about his wife's death and is closer to the bone than The Problem of Pain.

I'm really sorry to hear of your friend's miscarriage. It is a really painful thing to live through. I don't think myself it is either helpful or right to think that God thinks an unborn child is better with him than with loving parents. Why does suffering happen, and why doesn't God stop it? Well, I don't think God intervenes on a day to day level if he did, he would have to stop every bad thing in the whole world, famines and miscarriages and domestic violence and slavery and tuberculosis and ingrown toenails and wormy apples. It would be a very different world than it is now. But the truth is that he doesn't intervene on that level, and we do live in a world where there is grief and suffering.

God shows his love not by stopping our suffering altogether (which would mean removing our free will, and stopping the world being the kind of world it is) but by sharing it, by willingly subjecting himself to the same kind of senseless, undeserved pain and grief that we suffer. When we cry, he cries with us; when we call out in the bitterness and loneliness of grief, he is there by our side. And we can have hope that somewhere, somehow, someday all will be mended and made right because of him, and that our pain and suffering will be comforted, and that our tears will be wiped away. It doesn't change that we go through terrible things now (although going through them with someone by your side is better than going through them alone), but it gives us hope that all will be redeemed and mended.

This is where I struggle. If there is a God, why does He allow anything bad to happen to good people?
On a scientific level though, a miscarriage often happens because the baby is not viable (has not formed properly). God can't get everything right.
Not much consolation for someone who has had more than one mc I know. I had just one, and know how heartbreaking it can be. But I'm sure your friend will go on to have lots of healthy lovely babies. x

"God shows his love not by stopping our suffering altogether (which would mean removing our free will,"

But a m/c isn't the result of free will. It just happens.

I eventually found some comfort for my early m/cs when I decided it was just one of those things. As with planting seeds in the same pot - some will grow and some will not.

If your friend believes in god then I think the best that can be offered is that god sees the whole picture and we don't so while he might be a comfort while she is going through this awful time, he won't do anything to prevent it as it's part of "His Plan" that we can't see or understand.

On a more practical level perhaps put her in touch with The Miscarriage Association which might help her not to feel alone in her loss.

^ it would help if you quoted the whole sentence and not just a bit of it, so that it doesn't make sense, and appears to mean the opposite of what I actually said. I didn't say that a miscarriage is the result of free will.

I agree that The Miscarriage Association could be a good source of help for your friend. I always think the line that 'you will go on to have lots of lovely babies/some seeds will grow' is cruel optimism. For some people that will happen, and for some won't.

I'm so sorry to hear about your friend's loss. I think it's really important to remember that miscarriages can feel like they come out of the blue, with no sense or reason, but they have practical causes. Of course they feel dreadfully nonsensical and intangible, but in reality they're part of the workings of the human body and not some kind of divine lightning strike handed down by God. Our bodies are not perfect, and sometimes things go wrong.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that a miscarriage is a result of free will - rather, that God doesn't control everything because, if he did, that would also result in a loss of free will. I think perhaps this is something for your friend to figure out in her own time, and if she wants to be angry with God right now, then that's her prerogative.

Thanks people.

It's a hard one isn't it. I've ordered a couple of books:
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0664235204/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1577490339/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1.

One day, all these things and more will be explained... I really do believe that.

I'm so sorry your friend lost her baby.

I think niminy put it beautifully. Having faith in God does not give us some kind of golden ticket exempting us from suffering. We all live in a world which is fallen and skewed, where suffering happens to good and to bad. It can be so difficult to reconcile a loving God with such things, especially in our own lives. I've lived with chronic disease all my life and people have asked me how I can retain faith in a God who would let me suffer in this way on a prolonged basis. I do not have a straightforward answer; I suspect no one has. But what I do know is that God walks with me in the pain, and that God sent Jesus so the pain of being separated from God can be healed. And that Jesus suffered, took on being human and understands. God does not take away the suffering but understands and is in it.

God does care, very, very much. I think God cries with your friend.

Thank you madhairday. That's exactly how I'd have liked to put it.x

Jesus, to be truly human experienced tremendous suffering - rejection, abandonment, betrayal, false accusations, lies, humiliation, whippings, beatings, being beaten around the head, mockery, torture, dragging the means of his own death up a hill, the weight of which he fell under three times, nailed through the flesh to a cross, then executed with criminals when he was innocent. God has experienced the apparent senselessness of our human condition and is not far apart from us looking down from a cloud. Every moment of our existence comes from God and with the suffering comes also the incredible grace, beauty and goodness of the world despite all the mess and pain.

There aren't "reasons" in a human sense for our suffering. It is a key component of being human. Both my parents died when I was a teenager, my fourth pregnancy also ended in miscarriage. Yet it's God's love that has transformed my life. I don't think any of us can explain suffering, but it can be what makes us realize our vulnerability and dependence on an everyday goodness that we take for granted. Only when something causes us pain do we realize how blessed we are for the majority of the time. Suffering also can help us turn to others and also see their suffering with new eyes.

I have had five miscarriages and, tbh, have not found a satisfactory answer to the problem of theodicy. It being part of a Plan, or sufferings to be endured until eventually, hopefully, all are comforted, doesn't cut it for me. There seems to me to be no proper answer to the quandary of an all-loving and all-powerful God, whose action is supposed to be found and felt in our day-to-day lives, allowing all the terrible things to happen that do happen in our world. I'm honestly not sure that I can believe that God 'cares' about my miscarriages, tbh.

I think if God is anywhere in suffering, it is in the love and care humans are moved to show to one another, and that that can be our only real role as Christians. God hears us when those around us are moved to hear us and be with us. The best way you can manifest God's love to your friend is to allow her to grieve, don't expect her to have 'moved on' after a certain time, let her be how and what she needs to be, and acknowledge that she has in fact suffered a loss. I speak as someone who has been through the miserable experience repeatedly and knows only too well the pressure put on us to pull ourselves together and get on with it.

Surprisingly for a hardened sceptic with a faith bordering on agnostic at times, I have found great comfort in my last miscarriage in the image of the 'valley of the shadow of death'. That is what we are walking through. It is not 'the enemy', but the very human experience of death that has touched her baby. And through that psalm I feel I can at least hope to not be alone. Great religious music too - Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, which tells of another grieving mother.

I heard Pergolesi's Stabat Mater unexpectedly on the radio at a time of intense suffering (re my children) and it was unbearable. So I'd say be careful what music you listen to when you are grieving.

I'm so sorry your friend has had a miscarriage. I was also so saddened to read she is deep down concerned that 'the enemy has triumphed' over her baby because she didn't do enough spiritually . I actually gasped when I read that - how to rub salt in a wound eh? However, these erroneous beliefs can crowd in at times of extreme sorrow - hopefully, she will come through to a more balanced place. She is saved by grace, not by works.

I'm not quite sure how to say this but my experience in life has been predominantly suffering. I have, of course, wondered very much about this - is it me? Am I doing/not doing something that is causing this? I don't now think it has anything to do with me, though it's been a long road to get to that. I have no idea why it has been such a gruelling ride but I accept it. Now. It's taken a long time. I also have not had the 'love and care of humans' you mention Picardy. So where does that put me? Or, rather, where does that put God? It puts God very close.

imo it is a miracle if we aren't suffering, why aren't more people suffering? - but I would say that, because of my experiences of suffering. So to me it is the norm. 'If I go to the depths of hell, you are there' - and I have found that to be true. It has been a considerable blessing to stop kicking against suffering (life?) and lie still in the pit (life?). I wouldn't have volunteered for it but here it is and God is here.

That's not to say I'm passive about it - far from it - but I don't believe I'm in control. It's good to give up control, to be forced by circumstance to give it up. I suppose I no longer take it personally: I've suffered, plenty do - an awful lot through no fault of their own.

My experience of a miscarriage was that in my grief I took the instinctive decision to hold my head high and skate through it, eager to get out the other side: bad enough that it happened, let's get on. A colleague said something desperately cruel to me and my glass house shattered. I was consumed by grief, unable to help myself. Now, 26 years later, I'm glad that colleague was cruel, because I grieved properly, which is what I needed to do to come out the other side. Left to myself, I wouldn't have done that.

I should qualify re my miscarriage that I thought I had already grieved and my decision to 'dust myself off' and step forward 'in faith' (groan) was probably grief and shock. I also can't say I am glad glad that my colleague was a cow, but I am 'glad' that her vile comment cut to the core of my grief, which I was determined to cover up, probably 'in faith' (groan). I am glad for the result: that I grieved properly. Do I think that God was behind her foul comment? No. But he used it for my good.

faberge, I wonder about your grief at your friend's miscarriage? Sometimes we can be so caught up with another's pain that we neglect our own.

As far as your actions are concerned, I would listen, rather than worry what to say. The more you try to love her and hold her in the light, the closer you are likely to get to acting in a way that will help her. Your poor friend.

I have always explained things to my children by saying I love them, care for them and will be there to help, defend and support them through anything tough but I cannot protect them from everything bad and God is the same to us.

Either God doesn't care or god can't help.

That's constructive then You

Sorry. Either he doesn't care, negligible, powerless, doesn't exist, enjoys causing pain, or not the god that governs this planet.
My advise would be to focus on what is real to you and your friend. Be there for her