But I've had a lot of the emotional stuff hitting me.
It's absolutely nothing I'll understand this side of heaven.
We've had a total of 10 miscarriages during our marriage. That's not the whole story. That's the story of the past 16 years. That's hard enough to say. But the whole story is a lot more difficult to admit.
A few months before I started dating my husband, I dated an older, engaged man. So if I'm being brutally honest, it wasn't dating so much as just sex. Because of my abuse, sex didn't mean anything to me. My virginity was long gone and my moral compass was non existent. I also was naive enough that I believed the lies about leaving his fiancé.
Long story short, despite my best efforts to prevent it, I got pregnant. I was probably no more than 12 weeks when I had a miscarriage.
Sadly, that's still not as far back as the story goes.
What I'm about to share is incredibly hard. I hold so much shame over this, shame over my niavity and fear I'll be seen as the whore my dad claimed I was. I've never shared this with anyone besides a counselor and my husband.
From the time I was 8 and up, my dad sold us into prostitution. My earliest memory of being raped at home was first grade. My body never had a chance to be normal. Physically, I matured far faster than everyone else. I was literally a rag doll with no control or understanding of what was happening.
There were things that happened to my body that I didn't understand. Had I been allowed in the sex ed classes at school, I might have understood. It sounds funny, but it's true, I was 18 before I knew how babies were made. I'll spare you the details, but my more mature, adult mind now understands that I had many pregnancies as a child.
The sad reality is that they could have been from my dad, the banker, the neighbor, a teacher, the mailman, my brother, a cop, or who knows. (I'd like to add that I'm incredibly thankful that a wise person pushed me to be checked and cleared of all STDs a few years ago.)
I don't think I ever realized what was happening. My dad knew. Again, I'll spare you the details but I believe my dad knew exactly what kind of torture it took to cause a miscarriage.
It took a lot of counseling for me to reconcile my feelings about this. To want a child as an adult and try to understand loss from so long ago, it's not an easy combo. Don't get me wrong, the shame is still there. I don't feel released from that yet. I do fear those who read this and know me personally will think differently of me.
I think the shame comes mostly through my relief. I'm relieved I didn't have a child at 10. I'm glad a child was never born from a rape by a family member.
There's more to the story still, more that's just too graphic and too hard to share. It also keeps me bound by shame. This has been hard and scary enough to share. I will say that there is guilt over what's still hidden.
Making a decision to give up on having a child has made me question this part of the past.
I don't get it. I can't find a way, 20-30 years later, to glorify God. I can't see how God has used this in my life. I can't see how God has redeemed and restored this. I think I'm probably more confused. I can't see the lesson or where God was.
What was done to me, completely outside of my control, is exactly why I'm prone to miscarriage. Those things that happened is why our dreams have to be abandoned. I don't get it. I don't get why so much was stolen from me.
I hope once I get to heaven, I no longer need an explanation. I hope heaven is so overwhelmingly wonderful that I forget the past. I hope that we are truly made clean and the pain of the past stays firmly in this broken world once we enter into our eternal life.
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