Valley of Tears
A prayer said a hundred times can lose its depth. It can roll off the tongue without churning in our hearts, a mindless effort, like an exhale. Sometimes, it isn’t until I’ve been rattled that I realize what I’m praying, or even who I’m praying to.
When my fingers tread my rosary beads, sometimes I am the salt that has lost its flavor. My mind wanders to what meal to make, what I need from the store, anything but the mystery my mouth is professing. Then when I say the Hail Holy Queen, I try harder to focus, but a prayer said a hundred times can lose its depth. Mine lost its depths, maybe I never even had the fervor or the urgency to understand what I was seeking until I found myself in the Valley of Tears.
It was a foggy day when the first drops of blood changed my life forever. I told myself, there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear. I had four babies here with me and one in paradise, but I had had an early miscarriage with her. Nothing could be wrong. I was three days shy of the second trimester. I was past the danger zone, wasn’t I?
I kissed my husband goodbye. It was a Saturday, so just to ease my mind and have everything looked over, I went to the hospital. Alone. The fog curled against my car. It shrouded the trees along the freeway until they looked more like ghosts than the beginning of forests. And my heart sunk, what if…what if? No, everything would be fine. It had to be! Three days from the second trimester. I thought I had already felt quickening. I was showing. Nothing could be wrong.
My vitals were great. The pelvic exam showed nothing of concern. In fact, the doctor said, “At this point, we would not expect a miscarriage.” Her words should have eased the dread creeping along the edges of my heart like the fog outside, but I still could not relax. Blood was drawn, just to make sure, and an ultrasound was ordered.
I read the book I brought to pass the time and try to shake off the uneasiness I felt so deeply. Could I be feeling my mother's intuition or was I just unnecessarily apprehensive? I rubbed my belly instinctively, murmuring to my growing baby, “Everything is going to be alright.” I walked back to the ultrasound room. I took a shaky breath as I got comfortable on the seat. I was more excited to see my little jumping bean than I was anxious. I smiled as she put the goo on the piece that would stroll across my belly and show me the miracle I’d been carrying for almost an entire trimester.
The picture that filled the screen sucked the life right out of me.
The darkness in the room enveloped me, closed in on me. It was nothing like the darkness of my big open womb and the teeny tiny lifeless baby curled up on the bottom of the screen.. I knew I was looking at death and death was glaring back at me, but in a small voice, I still managed to ask, “Is there a heartbeat?”
“I’m so sorry, no.”
And in that darkness, I thought I would sink into the chair and be swallowed up. I thought I would never stand again because my heart was shattered. Not just shattered, but broken from a lance. I was alone. Alone with the technician and my little, perfect baby who I would never hold. My womb was a tomb. I was broken. Completely broken. Empty with emptiness itself. I was in the Valley of Tears.
I felt for the first time, a sting like that Our Lady must have felt when she was bringing her baby to the Temple and Simeon told her the prophecy. Told her all. When she looked at His little, perfect head and foresaw that the sign which would be contradicted was the cross, was His death. She held death in her heart that day, like I held it in mine. I didn’t need to say anything. I couldn’t say anything, but I pictured her and we wept together.
When I called my husband, I choked on the words, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord forever.”
As I walked numbly through the Valley of Tears, the only one who brought me comfort was Mary. Only she knew, as a Mother who lost her Child, what I was feeling.
All of a sudden, I was no longer salt that lost its flavor. Maybe my grief was like being trampled under foot, as the verse goes, but I was ignited with fervor again. I was seeking the only thing that brings healing–Divine Love–and Our Lady brought me to Him.
I poured all of my sorrows into each of her Seven Sorrows.
In the flight of Egypt, she mourned for the Holy Innocents and for the mothers whose babies' lives were ripped from them, and now she mourned for me.
In the loss of the child Jesus in the Temple, she looked and looked for Him while I searched and searched for where He could be–it seemed He was absent from my grief–but like Mary, I found Him in His Father’s House.
When Jesus met His Mother on the way of the Cross–a look no art can render or words can speak passed between them. I too met Him on the way of my cross and then I realized it was not mine, but His Cross which He already carried for me–for me and my baby.
He was nailed to the cross, pierced through with suffering and I knew, as I meditated, that He was never absent from my grief, but pierced through from my pain, as if He was nailed again to the Cross.
He hung in agony for three hours before giving up His Spirit. As Mary stood by Him, she heard Him say to the sinner, “On this day you will be with me in paradise!” And it was like I could hear him say that to my sweet baby.
His Body was taken from the Cross and given to Mary… my child’s body came forth from my womb, not alive but already in Eternal Life.
In the last of the Seven Sorrows, Mary had to leave Him in the tomb. I have to leave my little one on this side of Heaven, but like Mary knew, Jesus opened the gates of Heaven for us. He rose from the dead. Death is no more, because of Jesus and His plans for us in Heaven.
Grief can break us. It forever changes us. But like carbon when under extreme pressure and heat becomes a diamond, grief has the power to change our souls so that they would shine with resplendent light like diamonds.
Suffering is a mystery we will not have the answers to on this side of Heaven.
But when we surrender to God in this mystery and pain, we can peel back the veil of His mysteries a little bit in order to heal in their redemptive quality. “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)