Fallen Axe Heads

2 Kings 6:6-7,The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float. ⁷ “Lift it out,” he said. Then the man reached out his hand and took it.

It is my belief that if we want to fix our problems, we need to go back to where the “axe head” fell.

For me, my biggest fallen axe heads were the loss of my two babies.

Statistically one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. There are a lot of books and resources out there that are for mothers who have lost babies, but very little for men.

I thought maybe if I could share my pain at the loss of watching my whole world imploding, I could begin to heal and maybe help other men.

Think about that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. That means that even though millions of men are sucking it up or burying their feelings while their wives are being comforted, there are untold broken hearts out there.

Despite what the media tells us it was not just a fetus that was lost. For me, it was my heart, my life, my future, my desire, my dreams, my legacy, my name sake, the arrows in my quiver, my blessing.

It has been close to 20 years and my heart still gets ripped out when I see a father with his child. Till this day I still cannot go to church on Fathers Day. Almost two decades I have carried this pain and more importantly this anger.

I have such a rage towards God. I am so fucking angry that He did this to me. Why did He put the desire to be a dad within me and than take away my chances to be that. It seems pretty fucking cruel to me.

When I hear people give me the Sunday School answer of “If God gave up his Son…..” I want to throat punch those folks.

To me, that’s weak sauce. None of that mends my devastated heart. My questions hit an iron ceiling or the non listening ears of God.

I think that this loss is really a “double tap” to men. First it is the loss of all I listed above but it is also the devastating belief that if I can’t produce I am worthless. Let’s face it men are programmed to produce (most sales, highest commission, most product made, most cases won, most lives saved, etc.) So the second shot is no baby, no reproduction, you are worthless.

So the baby dies, the wife is comforted and the men cram all those feelings in a box and go back to work because we have to produce. We don’t get a chance to mourn because there is business to attend to, bills need to be paid, and we need to provide for those we are charged to care for.

Back to work, I grieve in the backroom, and try to wipe away my tears and get it together before going out front again. For months this is how I live and then just when my heart isn’t bleeding every minute, in walks a customer who asks, “Hey how’s the wife, that baby should be here soon huh ?” I run to the back as my world falls apart again.

Of course no one has any answers not the doctors, not the minister, not family or friends but most importantly not God. He has decided to remain silent on the issue.

So my wife and I tried to console and bring healing to our own two very broken hearts.

We were comforted by the fact that although we were in our late thirties we could still try again. I learned a very valuable lesson. Never again would I put the whole world on blast when we found out we were expecting. I did that the first time because my life long dream was about to come true, so I had to tell everyone. They say never tell anyone until after the tenth week in case something goes wrong. I vowed I would never allow my heart to be ripped out by a well-meaning person ignorant of the facts.

Before long my wife came to me again with the most amazing news. She was pregnant again. My heart was filled with such joy. Not long after, I got to hear the baby’s heart beat and I think I cried. What a life changing sound!

The risk of a miscarriage after a fetal heartbeat is detected is only around 4%, dropping to 1.5% after eight weeks and 0.9% by nine weeks according to the experts. That means there is over a 96% chance the baby will be born after a heart beat is heard.

Here it was! Our hopes, dreams, future, legacy. The first arrow in our quiver, my name sake, everything I ever wanted!

Ten weeks!!!!! It was time to tell the world. I think if I had had the money I would have put up a billboard or hired a sky writer.

I was in a dead end job living in a tiny apartment, but I didn’t care because I felt like the most fortunate man on the planet I was going to get to be a dad!

As I did food prep every morning, I imagined about what it would be like to watch my child grow up. First steps, first words, first day of school.

My mind would race across the decades each day I was joyful in how amazing all that was coming was going to be.

My “bucket list” even though at the time that term wasn’t being used, was very full. There was so much I wanted to do and experience with my child. I couldn’t wait to get started.

I don’t remember the exact time when I found out there was something wrong. Betty was sick so she went to her obstetrician/ gynecologist and he leveled her with the bad news. They couldn’t hear the heartbeat anymore.

Her call to me was unhinged and rightly so. I called the doctor.

I remember sitting at a crappy little desk in the back of the store talking on a land line phone. Cell phones were for emergencies, and while this constituted an emergency, there were very few towers in the downtown area. There was no public wifi so the land line was all I had.

It is funny but that crappy desk held so many great memories for Betty and I. She used to drop me off in the morning before she had to be in her classroom (only one car) and we would sit at the desk as we discussed how amazing our coming days would be. We were newlyweds and life was amazing. Hours we spent at that desk sharing, laughing, joking, and dreaming.

Now all of that was about to end, as I dialed the doctor’s number. Even today looking back it seems like an almost out of body experience. Like a third person video game, where you are one step removed from all that is happening and almost hovering above it.

The doctor said the baby had died, no more heart beat and the fetus (my love, life, hopes, and dreams) would have to be surgically removed because for it to remain would be harmful to Betty.

I kept asking, “Are you sure? Could you be mistaken?” Begging him “Please is there any chance?” But all he replied was “No and I’m sorry”. I told him to schedule the surgery and I would bring Betty in. This was by far the most helpless I hav ever felt. I hung up the phone and sat there feeling the biggest gut punch of my life. I don’t know how long I sat there “frozen…. having absolutely no reason to move in any direction” (Kurt Vonnegut Mother Night). Being that it was a coffee shop, I am pretty sure I didn’t sit there very long. I mean the lunch rush was about to start and lawyers and office workers who had children and babies had to buy their caffeine fix or an over priced lunch.

I took my wife in for the procedure and they removed the fetus. I think I had half a day to mourn and it was now time to suck it up again and go back to work. How did this happen twice? This was so fucking unfair! Horrible people throw children and babies in the trash every day and here we were just a nice newly married couple who so desperately wanted to bring a new life into this world. This injustice made no sense to me. I was dying inside but I put on a happy face and as they say “rub some dirt on it, there’s nothing wrong with you”. So I sat in the back of the coffee shop and cried and my wife cried at home hugging our puppy Gutherie and bawling her eyes out until she was drained.

Those were agonizing days, but there was that small hope that maybe we could try again. I mean God could not be so cruel as to kill my dream a third time. But as the months wore on and Betty had more issues, it became apparent that they would have to do a hysterectomy on her. Even as they wheeled her towards the operating room I remember thinking are we really doing this, no more chances after this. As I prayed for her, held her hand and kissed the top of her head and told her I loved her. It was then I realized the dream was over. Looking back, I understand that this was the last time I dreamed of the future. My “bucket list” ceased to exist that day. There was nothing to look forward to. No first steps, first words, first day of school, no first date, first broken heart, no being the father of the bride or groom but mostly no chance to pour life and love into our child.

I was broken but more than that I was furious. I had every right to be. This shouldn’t have happened. Remember The risk of a miscarriage after a fetal heartbeat is detected is only around 4%, dropping to 1.5% after eight weeks and 0.9% by nine weeks That means at the worst the odds are 96% against a miscarriage. I don’t know a bookie on the planet that wouldn’t take those odds.

Speaking of odds my wife and I unfortunately find ourselves in a fairly exclusive club. Only two to five percent of couples experience two miscarriages.

That is why I was and still am furious at God.

Of course each time you hit this point in your life all of the wise ones and helpful ones come out of the wood work with things that made Job’s friends look quiet. Honestly the Jewish people have it right, Shiva, sit with people but keep your damn mouth shut. You don’t know how they feel so just STFU.

Then starts the talk of adoption as the answer, which we were not opposed to but let me tell you it is much easier to get pregnant and have a baby (well for most people) than to adopt. Its way more costly and there are no guarantees that in the state’s eyes you would make a good parent.

Mothers Day and Fathers Day were agony for Betty and me. This was especially true in the setting of our home church. On each of those days, the minister would ask the mothers or fathers to stand, depending on whose day it was so they could be recognized by the church. Twenty years later and you still wont find me in church on Mothers Day or Fathers Day just in case they want to participate in this outdated ritual.

I even remember being in a Sunday School class where it seemed like every other week a new couple was making an announcement that they were expecting. After a year, I finally told Betty that hearing that every week was just ripping open my heart each time. I couldn’t take it any more, so we left the class that we had been a part of for several years. We couldn’t just leave with no explanation, so before we left we sent an open letter to everyone in the class as to why we had to leave. We poured our hearts out how the continuing reminders of new life was opening up too many old wounds, so despite our love for the people we had to leave.

Oddly enough, the only people that even reached out to us was a couple that weren’t able to have children and adopted some little girls from overseas. Everyone else was radio silent, like we never existed.

Whether it is self imposed or it’s actually true, I believe there is a stigma associated with a married man with no children.

Men are wired by God to find their reason for being and their self worth in two things: What we do (job, practice, vocation) and what we are able to produce. Don’t believe me, the first question most men will ask a man they have never met before is “what do you do for a living”? It’s also the subject men are the most comfortable talking about.

But I find myself giving more credence to a man who has children then I allow for myself. Now in some ways this is true. I will never understand what the daily struggles are for a father, having never experienced them, but to see myself as less mature than someone half my age is because of that stigma or belief.

Then there is a very convenient, built in excuse why your parents visit your siblings more than they do you. I learned early on this is directly tied to the lack of grandchildren for them to visit and spoil.

To this day, twenty plus years later, after the death of the promise, it still hurts when I see a father and his children, and it can be in the simplest of contexts that just rips me back to a twenty-year-old agony and loss.

As of late I have begun to feel this same way when I see couples my age with their adult children and their grand-child. It makes me think how this could have been me, if only God wasn’t so cruel and unfeeling.

My dad, who is one of wisest men I know shared with me a devastatingly hard truth. “As a believer we must come to understand that on any given day what ever we are going through is the best that God has for us that day.

Oh man, I want to cuss out God over this! “Really letting my baby die was the best fucking thing you could come up with that day?” I could have come up with a hundred better scenarios for that day that didn’t end with my heart ripped out and my spirit curled up in a little ball in the corner wanting to die.

So much emptiness in my heart and my home when we lost those babies! But more so when we realized we were out of opportunities to try again.

But to understand all this you need some background, for this was a very long journey.

Even now, I stare at the golden wedding ring on my hand adorned with four sapphires and as I twist it and examine it, only one word comes to mind, presumption. I feel like God is calling me out on the house of cards that has become my life.

So I wonder, is presumption a sin? Maybe all of that presumption was part of my idol worship. A ring with four stones, sapphire because I love the blue color and it was part of the precious stones and gold jewelry we had at our disposal when I designed both of mine and Betty’s rings. Hers was a diamond and ruby turtle, a reminder of what God promised her about me. Mine had four stones to symbolize what I believed that God owed me. Four stones: two for the happy couple and two for the happy couple’s children. Of course in my mind, one of each: a boy and a girl. Because this was the finale of a long hard fight, I had to memorialize my presumption, so that every time I looked at my finger I was reminded of the promise.

I didn’t care where I lived or worked, I was going to have what I was owed : a beautiful loving wife and two healthy loving children. I had worked hard for this! I deserved it and God owed it to me! You may wonder how I got to this point.

At sixty I stare at this ring and it screams at me with mocking laughter, reminding me what a fool I had been and still am.

So where do I go from here? There is no promise, no progeny, no legacy, no name sake It’s the end of the Sagan family line.

What is the purpose for all that I have walked and struggled through? What is the purpose of me? I have spent so long in preparing for my part in the promise that I don’t know what to do or where to go. What purpose does my life serve now that the promise is dead?

I guess I have to come to the point where I can admit and acknowledge that the promise, like my two children, are dead.

Admitting that may be harder than the pain from the loss of the two miscarriages. After each miscarriage there was always the hope we could try again and for a short while there were thoughts of adoption.

But now there is nothing. Its just empty cold and lonely. Like wandering lost in the snow covered wilderness.

I am beginning to think the pain I am trying to cover through various destructive pursuits was at one time the loss of things I loved. But now it’s the loss of the promise and all that held for me.

Beyond that, it’s the loss of what I thought was my relationship with the Lord. For surely this was built on false premises, twisted ideas, and incorrect doctrine.

Somewhere deep inside of me though, something has to be real. Somewhere the Spirit must still reside, though I am not sure where.

It is sad when I think about how much I have wasted over the years. As I look at the time, energy, and the portions of my soul, psyche, integrity, and principles I have given away, as I sit in this pain, I can only think of one thing, What a big fucking waste.

Honestly, is there anything left?

It’s here that I once again come up against the unarguable truth, as long as I care that I don’t care there is still hope for me.

Somewhere at one time this must have been real. If not, why would I have stayed with it for so long?

The promise is gone and it has been for almost two decades, but I am still here so there has to be something there. At one time this had to be real.

No one endures this much pain and loss and continues to fight if its not real.