Monica Klepac served with WMF in Romania from 2000 to 2009. Her article appeared in The Cry, vol. 8, no. 2 (Summer 2002).
The sun warmed my face and I frowned. I didn’t want it to be this nice, to be the kind of weather you enjoy. The May sunshine and breeze were abrasive to my grief. I was mourning the loss of my son, Lazarus, and I wanted the whole world, even the sun, to be as dark as I felt. I was returning to work at the community center a week after the miscarriage, figuring out how to look normal when I felt so broken. As I sat on the bench, Maggie came to me.
Maggie has raven black hair that always needs to be brushed and olive skin that wears the lines of pain and abuse. Though she doesn’t come regularly to the center, we had developed a tender friendship. Like Elisabeth and Mary, Maggie and I shared the joy of motherhood. Shortly after I found out I was pregnant, she told me that she too was carrying a child. We rejoiced together in the blessing of new life and dreamed together about our children. Our dreams were much the same, though our situations so different. Joel and I rejoiced together in our child’s life, while the father of Maggie’s lived on the street, and her own home was full of abuse.
That day Maggie had heard about the miscarriage. Together on the bench, she shared the condolences for Lazarus’ death that all the children at the center gave with such tenderness and love. I replied with the words I felt I was supposed to say and we sat quietly under the sun. I didn’t really want to ask about her baby, to hear that he was kicking. I just wanted to keep my pain from welling up and not to cry.
With a blunt gentleness, Maggie told me she had also lost her baby. I asked some more questions and eventually she told me she had an abortion. I stepped outside of myself and told myself to not feel this, to not take it in. I already had so many questions about God’s love in the wake of my grief, I dared not ask about the injustice of her abortion. For a few minutes, I just let her tell me why, trying to communicate love through my pain. I sat and tried not to comprehend the irony, the horrible tragedy of our children. The sun seemed to glare even more.
As the months passed, I saw Maggie a few more times. Each time her stomach had grown and in January, she gave birth to a little boy. I added the months and concluded that she must have lied to me about the abortion that day on the bench. I pondered why she would want to lie, why she would want me to think she had aborted her child.
I think Maggie saw me in my grief, saw my inability to relate to her, and tried in her own broken way to meet me in my pain. Maggie has had several pregnancies. At least one has ended in abortion and her other children have been given to an orphanage because of her alcoholic father. Maggie could not tell me she knew the pain of a miscarriage, and an abortion was the closest thing she could think of. So she made up an abortion to give me someone to cry with, walk with, and mourn with. Maggie accompanied me as best as she knew how.
Even as I write this, I see the absurdity of comparing a miscarriage and an abortion. The differences are immense. But many times I have been the one making ludicrous comparisons. I flippantly say I will “bear my cross,” or “ die to myself.” Usually this means giving up of things I really want, without any real physical pain or death. When I look at the cross Jesus bore, the crucifixion he endured and the death he succumbed to, I see the scandal of using these terms in my life of comfort and pleasure. The amazing thing is that Jesus lets us feebly attempt to understand his suffering with these clichés.
Maggie and I are both victims. For some unknown reason, death stole Lazarus from Joel and me. Maggie has also been robbed, but the villains’ faces are more visible. Alcoholism, sexual abuse, codependency, male oppression, and poverty, are just a few of the faces of injustice that have violated Maggie’s dignity. After the miscarriage, I replayed many moments of my pregnancy, wondering if I did anything wrong. Maybe Maggie does the same, trying to see how she could have saved herself and her children from the spiral of pain and death. I think we both come away without answers.
Maggie still comes to the center from time to time, usually when she has run away and is seeking a warm meal. We embrace and hold hands each time, knowing we share a common pain and a mutual love. Her hair is always matted, and her eyes look wearier each time. Though I may look a little cleaner, neither of us can really hide our brokenness from the other. But there is a God who embraces us as we are and we are warmed by such love.