[Music] hi I'm Steven M Miller I write books about the Bible I make videos from time to time to help people better understand the Bible this is a bit different many years ago now my wife miscarried what would have been our second child I wrote about it when it happened because I'm a writer and that's what writers do but I've never tried to outloud tell the story of what it's like for a husband watching from the sidelines this was way back when ultrasound monitors showed the pictures in black and white we were in the emergency room I leaned close to the image on the screen I couldn't see any sign of life the hazy sonogram of our eight week old child still a fetus showed no throbbing that would suggest a heartbeat my wife Linda is a nurse and I asked her as this is still picture she said no and she continued to study the tiny figure on the monitor the technician silently moved the scanner over Linda's abdomen to bounce the sound waves off the fetus and captured the shadows on film within a few minutes she produced several photographs from the emergency room doctor hours before that I had brushed fear aside light bleeding early in pregnancy is common I had reminded myself Linda encountered the same problem with Rebecca our one-year-old after the doctor reviewed the photos and the results of several tests he came into the treatment room where Linda and I had spent nearly the first half of this Sunday my 34th birthday the doctor said Linda I'm going to order a couple of hormone shots hope surged inside me I thought surely he wouldn't have done this had the new life already died by 2:30 in the afternoon we were back home the two hours after that Linda started to complain of abdominal cramps and before long she was gripping her stomach as the pain began to roll in on powerful waves 30 seconds of intense inner squeezing would rise to a peak and fall followed by 30 seconds of relief neither of us admitted it out loud but we both knew this was labor the final stages of a miscarriage that would deliver a fetus that could not possibly survive Linda's doctor said he would meet us at emergency and that he would admit my wife into the hospital a reflex response was discovered things and asked our neighbors to watch little Rebecca but when our minds caught up with our reflexes then two fell into my arms and sobbed she said I didn't want this to happen I held my wife I stood there wondering what I could possibly say Rebecca was sitting at our feet looking up and smiling curiously as if mommy and daddy were teaching her a new game it's okay I finally whispered it wasn't at the hospital I stood with the doctor and the busy lobby just outside the waiting room doorway he spoke in a voice that seemed to carry naturally people all around watched and listened he said your wife is in the process of miscarrying we're getting her ready for a DNC we'll do it as soon as the surgical team arrives I said nothing my sad stone face I looked into his eyes he was searching me I could tell he said you can go into the room with your wife it will be a few minutes before the others get here Linda was lying on the examination bed waiting for me she said did he tell you I'm outed I wanted to say I'm so sorry I love you but I was engulfed in grief and I knew that the words would only begin before they would dissolve I didn't want to Linda leaving for surgery after they had the morning we wait so I sat on a stool at the foot of the bed and when I did talk it was about sedate things like blood tests and pain medication for most of that time though I sat quietly as my eyes recorded the images around me patches of veiled red on the sheets that covered my wife a 3-foot swath of bright crimson streaking the floor between the bed and the trash container it was a long flowing with bloody tissues and open packages that once held sterile medical supplies and on the shelf beside the sink a quarter-inch ball of flesh and tuned in a clear plastic cup with a snap-on lid and a saw me looking at it and said the doctor thinks it's part of the gestational sac he's sending it to pathology I looked silently at the cup and from the raw instincts of life there arose in me and almost overpowering a desire to touch the cup a draw it close to me and I sat motionless in that instant there was a quiet explosion within because I knew this was as near as I would get to our child there would be no small soft body to hold in my arms and mourn over oh baby to bury no stone on which to engrave a name no name when a pair of nurses took Linda to surgery they directed me to a large and lovely waiting room there were eight couches 18 chairs 13 tables and me no one will be a mute television played at scenes while easy music fell from the ceiling like a gentleman evening shower I forced those distractions on myself then I couldn't keep my mind there for long soon enough I was thinking about life in miniature little arms and legs of hands feet eyes nose and mouth even at eight weeks the life had all of these maybe I wouldn't have found myself swirling and this torrent of emotion had had not been for my little daughter without her I wouldn't have known all that an eight-week-old life could become the creation that was dying on a day I should have been celebrating life was just a fetus and untouchable something I couldn't see or hold a future event that wasn't yet real so why did I feel such loss I paced the waiting room and listened to the imagined sounds of a tiny life being drawn into a high-powered vacuum tube the width of a large straw I knew that's what was going on right then as I stood there back home there's a little girl with a tutu smile she passed me on the back as a rocker in the early evening hours as she drifts off she coos singing herself to sleep and the solitude of that waiting room my sad stone face melted the life that could have been was gone I'm more not only for myself and my wife but for a life that would never breathe late that night I drove home I picked up my sleepy daughter the neighbors stood on their porch and watched as I begin the dark walk home once I passed the road of cottonwoods but shielded me from their view I stopped in the shadows and buried my head into the tiny Shore the next morning began the condolences God knows what he's doing said some of my Christian friends I accepted their genuine effort to console me but in silence I wondered why they thought God was responsible should we blame him if the egg implanted itself on scar tissue from my wife's previous c-section and was unable to draw the nutrients that needed would it have been his fault if a carrier of German measles came into contact with linden caused fetal damage that induced the miscarriage no doubt God could have been directly involved in ending this life he is God no one better than him knows how the pieces of life and death had together to create an eternal portrait but to me the heartache of it all seems so out of character for the God I've come to know I think it's in his character to mercifully allow a body to release the life that would have endured just a few painful weeks or months perhaps and that isn't his character to transform someone who is hurting into someone who helps heal another three days after Linda returned to the medical surgical floor on which she worked she came face-to-face with the family of a 50 year old woman who had died two weeks after she was diagnosed as having cancer the son-in-law of told Linda I appreciate your empathy it has really helped I think I know where some of that empathy came from and I believe it's in God's character or bring about something that happened the night of the miscarriage that evening Linda slept the kind of sleep you get from a medication more powerful than grief in the early morning hours of a new day she had a dream through a rippling haze the texture of a reflection in a pond Linda saw the image of a little boy for a moment the two looked at one another in metal endo whispered the name we would have given our son Jason and the baby smiled Malinda reached out together him into her arms he disappeared It was as though the dream was God's Way of letting us know that our baby is safe and happy I believe in an afterlife not only because of what the Bible says about it or what science reports about near-death experiences of people who are brought back to life but because of an innate sense of immortality within me I feel it there I've never been certain however about the immortality of the unborn many folks would disagree with me but I don't think the Bible is clear about this and science doesn't help me either but on those nights long ago when I sat with my daughter and held her as she sang herself to sleep I found myself wondering something could there not be in this very hour in the most beautiful garden of heaven an angel rocking a little boy named Jason I think it would be like God to arrange this perhaps the answer is one we have to trust two creations first father there's one thing I know for certain when Linda told me she could never name another son of ours Jason I understood why hey thanks for watching peace to you [Music]