When God speaks in flowers

A quick note before you read: We welcomed our sweet baby boy into the world in April. We are overjoyed he is here and thriving now. This piece touches on miscarriage, grief, and birth trauma but I wanted you to know he is healthy and I am healing before you read. The full story of his birth is a story I’m holding close for now.

Last year on Good Friday, I miscarried our baby at home. It’s hard to know what to do after an experience like that so I found myself staring at the flowers in my garden beds every day, fascinated on how they just kept blooming anyways. I felt far from God in church but in my garden I felt close to the whisper of His voice when I saw the sun shift through the trees and I watched birds build nests up high—expectant for their babies to come.

It felt like we had just seen the flicker of our baby’s heartbeat on an ultrasound screen when we learned a few weeks later that heartbeat had stopped. Those following weeks were strange and disorienting as grief settled into my body and spirit and the world continued to march on in full bloom turning from Spring to Summer with more sunshine, more color, and more life.

I carried the unbearable grief of loving someone here for a time too brief. I remember sitting on the back deck and opening my Bible because I didn’t know what else to do with all my confusion, anger and loneliness. Sometimes admitting my tangled emotions to God is prayer.

In my Bible I found myself in the story of the Shunammite woman. It was a story I had forgotten about completely or maybe one that I never really knew. I read her story and saw myself in her as she embraced a miraculous gift and devastating loss in just a few verses.

In the middle of my own grief and longing for another child I read the words: “This time next year, when spring is full of new life, you will hold a son of your own in your arms.”

I felt the Spirit of God whisper under the blue sky that this wasn’t just a promise for the Shunammite woman—but a promise of hope he was making to me too. And just like the Shunammite woman, I felt my spirit waver in faith and settle on doubt whispering, “impossible.”

I was tired. Heartbroken. And quietly a bit cynical in the way that suffering often marks us and changes us to believe that worst case scenarios aren’t just possible but they are often possible for us.

This year on Good Friday, I walked barefoot in my backyard letting my feet sink into the soft Spring muddy ground. My round pregnant belly had just hit full term and I watched as irises bloomed in the garden beds as if it happened overnight. Their deep purple petals unfolded in the morning light preaching to me about resurrection while I awaited the birth of my rainbow baby.

I looked up the meaning of the iris flower and found it was named after the Greek word for “rainbow.” It almost felt too poetic to believe it was true. But I have learned that God often speaks to me through the flowers and seasons and things that grow despite being buried in the ground and surrounded by darkness before they ever see light. God has met me with blooms in the exact moment I have needed them, as if he had all of creation on a timer to comfort my weary soul.

About a week later, almost exactly a year after our loss, I stood in the garden holding my newborn son against my chest. The irises stopped blooming during my first few weeks postpartum but peonies were about to burst open next to them.

Throughout my pregnancy with him I carried this deep longing that this story might somehow redeem the last one. At the same time, I knew I would always miss the baby I would never get to hold and I let that sadness stay with me, even when it was uncomfortable.

I prayed his birth story would be untouched by panic, chaos and terror like my first birth. I prayed that it would be peaceful and redemptive. I wanted a story I could retell and neatly wrap up with: Look! God redeemed everything.

Instead, my labor stretched on and on. The story feels blurry and tender and rough around the edges until it comes into vivid clarity when the room was full of fear again and I was suddenly fully aware of the thin place we were in. My body will always remember.

A part of me thought that surviving something terrifying once prepared me somehow.

But this time was much worse.

In some ways, I had just become more fragile and more aware of how quickly an ordinary moment can turn into an emergency. I feel close to the truth that there are no guarantees no matter how much you pray or prepare. Experiencing past trauma didn’t make me fearless. It made me honest.

I still don’t know where God was in the hospital on that day. I didn’t hear him whisper to me any encouragement when I desperately longed for it but after what felt like far too long—I finally heard my baby cry.

I didn’t get the redemptive birth story I hoped for and I haven’t tried to force meaning out of it. Instead, I came home from the hospital after an emergency surgery with unexpected complications and injuries and I walked out to my garden every day anyway, watching for my peonies to bloom.

My body ached and healing felt impossible.

I had the weight of a newborn on my chest and I watched my toddler happily dig in the dirt searching for worms and rocks and talking to tiny living things. Together we watched the peonies burst into their big romantic blooms until they wilted under the weight of the spring rain and we all knew we wouldn’t see them again until next year.

My toddler would ask to check on the peonies every day and I’d explain they were gone now. As Tennessee started to embrace the summer heat and I started to get a few more hours of sleep black-eyed susans opened up, bright and steady. We watched rabbits dart across the yard in the evenings. I felt God’s mercy in creation—in the way it always carries on as if nothing has happened and yet everything has.

I find evidence of God’s kindness in the way flowers stay stubborn and continue to bloom even in the midst of pain. They don’t wait for me to be healed or whole. I keep thinking about how Jesus appeared after resurrection to His doubting disciple with a gentle invitation to touch his scars. He came back to life with proof of his suffering still intact. I don’t think resurrection erases all of our wounds either.

I’m still in pain all day every day and my toddler asks to see my “big band-aid.” I sink my bare feet into the grass by the flower beds and start to nurse the baby. The sprinkler turns on in the background dusting the yard with water. My toddler points to a flower telling me it is orange and asks what it is called. It hasn’t fully opened yet and I can’t tell or remember what was planted.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers so I tell him we will have to wait and see.