I am so thrilled to welcome Lizzie Lowrie to our new series of blogs on marriage, which we started to celebrate the launch of Grace-Filled Marriage in order to continue the conversations about those aspects of marriage that don’t often get talked about. Lizzie and her husband have learned, through great personal loss and deep pain, that accepting you are not enough for one another will help to save your marriage when it hits difficulties. Here she shares some of their story, but do check out the details of her book Salt Water & Honey in the bio below.

We all build our understanding of life and faith and relationships around the world we’ve experienced and the story we’re living. Life feels safe in those boundaries, marriage feels safe in those boundaries. That is, until at some point, and Jesus promises this, we hit a season of pain, a dark night of the soul, a loss, a betrayal or a diagnosis and suddenly everything looks different and we’re completely and utterly lost. 

I remember the moment it happened to me. I was alone on a train when the world I knew and trusted began to fall apart. My husband Dave, scooped me up at the station and drove me to the hospital where the doctor confirmed my miscarriage. We drove home in silence, ate cheese on toast and went back to work the next day. We were disorientated but hopeful until I had another miscarriage, and another, and another…and two more after that. Six unexplained losses and life and faith had become unintelligible. 

DEALING WITH THE DISORIENTATION

Mingled in amongst our disappointment with God and the isolation of a grief that keeps on giving, there also emerged this deep feeling of shame; that somehow we should know what to do. But here’s the thing; no one knows what to do when you’re thrown into a season of struggle. I think that’s why it’s so painful, because you’re left without a plan and no matter how hard you try your heart won’t heal as quickly as you want it to. But rather than confess we weren’t coping, we faked our way into playing the roles we thought were expected of us and the roles we thought the other needed. Dave fulfilled the role of the strong man and he was great at it. Driving me to hospital, holding my hand and staying calm while I focused on doing everything in my power to become a mother. 

NOT ENOUGH

We lost our fourth, fifth and sixth pregnancies while we were living in Cambridge, where Dave was training to be a vicar. Outside of the grief of our losses he was loving the opportunity to study and explore his calling and I wanted to celebrate this with him, but I couldn’t. With every loss, I was being dragged further and further away from the life I longed for. I became increasingly bitter with disappointment as the idol of motherhood consumed more and more of my heart. Meanwhile, Dave worked harder and harder to make up for the huge aching gaps left in our hearts and our home. But no matter how hard he tried to make our life better, he couldn’t. You see, there’s something we both learned in the dark pit of grief; that we weren’t enough for each other. Not only that, we were never meant to be enough for each other. Dave couldn’t heal me just as much as I couldn’t heal him. We needed to stop trying to fix each other, and had to ask for help. Rather than keep hiding and faking it we had to let ourselves be found.

FINDING COMMUNITY

From the Garden of Eden we’ve inherited this tendency to hide when life doesn’t go to plan because we believe the struggle we’re wrestling with declares us inadequate. Rather than acknowledge the impact this fallen and imperfect world has had on our lives and our hearts, we give in to shame. There is so much shame around miscarriage, infertility and childlessness. No matter how much Dave and I loved each other, or how much we prayed, we could not have a child. I could not fulfil a role that our world, and so often our churches, exalts as a definition of what it is to be a woman. Our lives failed to follow in the footsteps of our peers and the longing of our hearts. 

Our search for help was messy, but eventually we found people who had the courage to sit with us in our grief rather than offer clichés. They asked questions instead of pretending they knew what we were going through. They didn’t just drop a meal off and disappear, they remembered our losses one month, six months, a year and many years later. They cried with us, turned up at A&E and attended memorials for our children. They became our community of sufferers. Rather than watch us be changed by our losses, they courageously chose to be changed by our suffering as well. They became advocates for others struggling with miscarriage and infertility. Many of them are church leaders now and they continue to let their experience of walking with us through that season influence the way they serve their communities.

BEING KNOWN

The parts of us that feel most broken and that we keep most hidden are the parts that most desperately need to be known by God so as to be loved and healed. It’s only in those instances where our shamed parts are known that they stand a chance of being redeemed. We can love God, love ourselves or love others only to the degree that we are known by God and known by others.

Jesus says ‘come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28). The moment we are conscious of being vulnerable, we have activated our sense of being alone. But as he did when seeking Adam and Eve, God invites us to live as we were made to live – in relationship, with him and with others, in the state of being known. Dave and I didn’t heal each other, we learnt to talk and listen to each other better, but the healing only began when we realised we couldn’t be each other’s heroes. We needed God and we needed community, for the parts of our lives that are most known by God and others will know the greatest joy in healing as they are known. 

Lizzie is an author, speaker and coffee shop church planter who lives in Liverpool with her vicar-husband Dave and their dog Betsy. She loves talking about the messiness of life and creating safe spaces for people to share their stories. Lizzie writes about miscarriage, infertility, childlessness and faith in her memoir Salt Water & Honey and on www.saltwaterandhoney.org. She is also the co-lead pastor and creative lead of StoryHouse; an independent coffee shop and church she started with her husband and a bunch of friends.