Anastasia

It has taken me over three years to post this; but I want to now because I know many people will relate to the loss of a hoped-for baby through miscarriage.

I never thought I could be so heartbroken over the death of someone I had known for a week. But love is like that. Terrible and powerful as a hurricane. True as life itself.

I stared at the doctor, my mind stumbling over his words....trying to find a loophole...strangely aware that he knew I was doing this. But I had known the moment he walked in and had turned to close the door, lingering several moments with his back to me, that there was no hope for my baby. ‘We saw no viable pregnancy.’ ‘Your hormone levels have dropped.’ ‘This doesn’t mean you won’t get pregnant again.’

I listened without speaking, feeling a horror like I had never known...like I had dropped into hell. My baby had not just died. My baby was being wiped from existence. Where was my baby? And then the awful unmoving reality. Not here, not ever. I started to cry. The doctor shifted uncomfortably. ‘Would you like to see a social worker?’ I shook my head. Why would anyone ever say that? But I couldn’t care.

As Ian and I gathered my things to go, no one seemed bothered about me. My mind drifted over the hours of waiting for news, the impatience at my requests for news. I wasn’t a priority. No medical emergency. Not important. If my gentle husband hadn’t been at my side it would have been so easy for that to be burned into my soul forever.

Where was my baby? When I was waiting in the ER dimly aware that the more blood I lost, the less hope I could reasonably have...and I was bleeding so much...I thought, ‘If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Anastasia. It will be like she has come back from the dead.’

Going home, the gray and inexorable grief filled me. Why, God? You speak to me so clearly. So clearly, and I have suffered for that gift. Why would you tell me that everything was going to be okay?

Jeremiah’s words rolled over in my heart over and over like pounding waves.

‘Lord you deceived me, and I was deceived.’

There is so much trash that passes for theology. But the prophets knew. And God knows. He has no problem with Job’s storms of grief, it is the glib, calloused, comfortable idiocy of his friends that is rebuked.

‘Lord you deceived me, and I was deceived.' Why? So much joy over your dear surprise child. I saw a baby, a vision of a baby with my waking eyes, Christmas Eve. Playing with my other two children. Before I even knew I was pregnant. I had never seen so clearly. Were you trying to tell me the thing you knew I needed to know most. The baby is real, will never be out of your sight?

I asked over and over for several days after that horrible night at the ER to see this, to see the baby. But I saw nothing. Grief and fear and anger are so hard to see through, even in prayer. How many times had I seen truth for other people, and now I could see nothing.

What if there wasn’t a person there yet? Life is so mysterious, and it was so early. It seems so reasonable to think....what if the person’s soul isn’t there until later? Was I imagining that knowledge of who the baby already was? I had felt both my other children that way.

A couple days later a friend called, and gave me the thread that I needed to pull on, to unbind myself. ‘I think if I could have named my baby, it would have helped me.’ I asked Ian to pray with me, to ask God for a name.

We both prayed in silence for a long time. The name Anastasia kept coming back. I kept thinking I should pick a name that worked for both a boy and a girl, in case. But, Anastasia. Anastasia.

And impossibly my heart began to fill with a joy that was not my own and I knew what was happening. When I was 9 weeks pregnant with my son, I found out he was a boy. We had thought we would name him Calder. But on my way to church the next day I felt the Spirit of the Lord, God was happy. I love that feeling of happiness rising in me, that isn’t my own, but is being shared cross time and space. Carsten. Carsten. I kept hearing it over and over.

Carsten had been on our list as a name. And I knew in a sudden rush of joy, God was telling me who Carsten was. Carsten means Christ-follower. I saw sunlight reflecting off water, peace, gentle love, kindness, courage. Our son was to be named Christ-follower. He would be like Jesus.

Anastasia, Anastasia, the Lord insisted in my heart. And then I was filled with that same joy of knowing, and a voice so tender and strong.

‘She will be named Anastasia, because you will meet her at the Resurrection.’ Tears filled my eyes. And in a burst of light I saw her. She was older, maybe four. Light brown curls, artistic like Ian’s, a sweet mischievous nose like my daughter Odette, her face a little longer, like my own, I looked eagerly all over her face and knew she was mine. She was raising up her hands in the air and I saw gold coins pouring into her hands, and I heard the Lord say strongly, ‘I will give her all the riches of heaven.’

I looked and looked. And then she turned suddenly and waved at me and Ian, with the brightest, most beautiful smile I had ever seen. I began crying in earnest, and the last thing I heard and saw before the vision ended was the Lord sitting with Anastasia, almost as though he was reading a book, telling her, ‘Your family loves you so much. Your parents love each other a lot.’ And I understood. God would tell her she came from love. God would tell her.

Just the way I tell my daughter and son here about God’s love for them so they will know Him, God would tell my daughter about her family so she will really know us when we meet at the Resurrection. I asked Ian what he had sensed in prayer, before I told him, and he said to me, ‘The only name that seems right...is Anastasia.’

Anastasia has given me so many gifts, and I wish I could tell her. She has given me the gift of being even more firmly rooted in heaven. It is no longer far off, the veil is so thin between my daughter and I. And I am no longer ashamed of who I am.

Once upon a time I was a little girl in a new country, rather lonely. And my parents told me God would listen to me...so I talked to him. All the time. And in that unquestioning place, I heard him, and I never forgot how to hear him. Nothing about life is more real than God. And Anastasia will have this gift more than I can even imagine.

I understand why people don’t believe in God. I see how hard it is. I get why people won’t think that Anastasia is real either, but it is not in my power to deny it. Once upon a time God told me I was to be a prophet. I was thirteen. I didn’t know what he meant. And when I tried to speak about it I was met with rejection and suspicion. But now, because I have seen what many choose to do with faith, how they use it to coerce...I understand why people are so scared of people like me, who say they hear the voice of God, who see visions.

I have also been terrified and helpless, by the side of a friend suffering seriously from mental illness, attributing her own dark thoughts and others’ voices to God. So I keep quiet about what I see. Because my experiences don’t seem to register as belonging to the same world as most people. And they exist even less in the world of most people I have met who would be really excited about being a prophet.

Being a prophet isn’t about power...it seems to be about pain, feeling lots of pain, seeing God through feeling the pain and love of the heart of God. It is also about mercy, putting other people first. Of speaking truth because it isn’t love to tell someone lies, even and perhaps especially if they would be mad at you. It’s about directing the energy of your heart into seeing God’s heart for others because you know how deeply the least communication of who God is roots you, makes you safe from the wild storms of this world....how much joy and fortitude, and courage and hope there is from the smallest part of his presence.

Eventually...after so much misunderstanding...I thought I was loving people best by remaining silent most of the time, I thought maybe it was just me...that the Lord chose to speak to me in these ways because I am an odd daughter who needs to hear and see these things.

But I saw Anastasia and everything changed. I do not want to live my life ashamed and hiding. I thought I was ashamed of myself, but in my doubt of the gift, I doubted the giver. I must not be ashamed of her, or the Lord, I cannot. I love them both so very dearly.

Counterfeit diamonds say nothing about the value and existence of genuine gems. False dreams prove nothing about reality. And people are just as easily misled by false earthly voices as false heavenly ones. I should never have let fear silence me. Do no harm, risk no harm, I thought this was love. But love demands so much more.

I may be angry at God for misleading me. But he would never invent a daughter to make me feel better. And the fact that she exists makes all this worth it. I would rather know she exists and feel all the misery of being divided from her than remain ignorant. God honored my heart. He may have misled me for a moment but...He loves me, and even in my worst moments, and there have been many worst moments, I know this is true. I know it more than I know the sky is blue, and trees are green, and the sun governs the day and the moon the night. It is all these things and more, the love of God. Painful and real, and costing everything, but giving all.

This is a terrible and beautiful world. One day it will be more than all it could have been. Death and evil mar so much happiness and hope in our lives, but someday those things will be Past. And Anastasia every day will remind me to keep going, to keep on my small pilgrimage to the resurrection, to the time of restoration.

Anastasia I am so proud of you. I can’t wait to see you when we all are really Home. It is still hard. Every day, wondering what life could have been, wondering if I’ll hate my 34th birthday forever, feeling that I can’t because it would be disloyal to my daughter, wanting to be more whole than I was before in her honor, still feeling that I’ll always feel missing from myself in some crucial way. I’ll see you soon, my darling.