July 9, 2019 – 11:40 a.m.
The doctor searches for a heartbeat but can’t find one. Instead, silence.

We sit in the delivery room. We can’t manage to speak. Silence.

July 10, 2019 – 5:42 a.m.
I feel Miriam’s head. I push. The nurse lays her on my chest. Silence.

We hold her and take pictures. We stare at her beautiful face. Her eyes stay shut; her mouth doesn’t move. Silence.

We drive home. There’s no baby in the backseat. Silence.

We step into her nursery. Silence.

We fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night; we are desperate to discover this was all a nightmare. I wrap my hands around my belly. I wait for a kick. There’s nothing. Nothing but silence.

The silence is deafening.

I cannot explain what it is like to experience such silence. The first few days that we spent in our house tormented me. One night, I laid face down on the carpet in Miriam’s room. I cried so long and so hard that there were no tears left. And that’s when I noticed the silence. Or…I guess I should say, that’s when I noticed the opportunity that the silence brought.

For days, I had been filling my time with noise. I was so averse to silence and to the reality that my baby was dead, I couldn’t handle being alone with my thoughts. I was afraid of the dark places they would take me. I was afraid of the guilt, and the shame, and the pain they would cause.

I laid on the floor with nothing to distract me. And the thoughts began to come. The thoughts I had pushed down. The thoughts that were secretly eating away at me. The thoughts that were keeping me from opening up about my grief.

But, all of the sudden, I wasn’t alone. My thoughts were being interrupted by the Word of God.

“Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. – Psalm 62:5-6

In that moment, I realized my enemy was not in the silence. Just the opposite. My enemy was in the noise, and the distractions, and the fear of sharing my grief. God was in the silence.

“My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me. O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge.” – Psalm 62:7-8

All that time, the enemy wanted me to believe that I had to avoid the silence. That I needed to stay busy and distracted. He made me believe that my refuge came from the things of this world.

When I began writing this blog, I discovered another passage in the book of Psalms that really spoke to me.

“Unless the Lord helped me, I would soon have settled in the silence of the grave. I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me. When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.” – Psalm 94:17-19

Oh, how good our God is to support us and give us comfort and hope when doubts fill our minds. All we have to do is be silent in His presence and allow His word to speak truth into our life.