A Miscarriage of Faith, by Kathleen Miles

I will never forget the day I realized that I was having a miscarriage. It was my second pregnancy. We had just moved back to Florida from Minnesota and we were thrilled about the new baby. When I started spotting at 10 weeks, my first thoughts were: why? And, what have I done?

Back then I was still very entrenched in Word of Faith teaching; the name it and claim it, prosperity, you can have what you say type stuff. I believed back then that everything revolved around the strength of my faith. If I had enough faith, all would go well. I would never be sick. I would have all of the things I ever wanted. All of my relationships would go well. My children would be protected from all harm, and I had authority over the devil as long as I knew my place; my “faith” place. I was assured that this baby I was carrying would not miscarry as long as I had enough faith to keep it from happening; I was determined to do just that.

To have faith meant that I, first, went to my pastor and asked him to pray over me. Once he prayed over me, I was given the answer. In this particular situation, the answer was that this baby would live and nothing could keep that from happening because all of God’s promises are yes…but, only as long as I forgave everyone everything, had no hidden motives except to glorify God, and did not doubt, then and only then would it be done (ref. Mk. 11:23-25). The only thing that could keep it from happening was me. I could not speak about my present circumstances because although I was miscarrying, according to the Bible, I was healed (ref. Is. 53:6). If I spoke about the miscarriage, my faith would be destroyed and the baby could die.

Second, I had to read scriptures every day about healing to keep my faith in healing built up (ref. Prov. 18:21). I not only had to read them, but I had to speak them out loud.

Third, I needed to pray in tongues consistently to assure that my faith was strong and could withstand the fact the devil wanted to steal my child (ref. Jude 1:20 and John 10:10); it was up to me to keep him from doing that.

One of the hardest parts of all was that I couldn’t tell anyone what I was actually going through. I couldn’t talk about anything except the result I was looking too. I had to “speak those things that be not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). I couldn’t tell my own husband that the bleeding was getting worse; I couldn’t confide in my friends that I was afraid; worst of all, I couldn’t confess to my God that I needed help. If I did any one of those things, if I ever let slip from my lips the smallest shred of doubt, I was showing fear and fear was the opposite of faith; without faith I couldn’t please God and if God wasn’t pleased with my faith, my baby would die.

My baby did die and part of me died too.

I’ll never forget the day I finally relented to the urging of my husband and let him take me to see my doctor; until that very moment, I would NOT believe it. It had been 8 long weeks since the miscarrying began. My doctor was so kind to me. I’m sure he thought I was crazy because he knew I had lost the baby, but I begged him to send me for an ultrasound just to be sure, and he did. Of course the ultrasound showed no life. I was devastated. According to what I had been taught and what I believed, I had lost the baby because my faith was not strong enough to appease God. It wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t pure enough. It wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t protect my own baby. I was a failure.

Years have passed since I lost my baby, but I will never forget it. I will never forget the day she was supposed to be born. I will never forget who I was, what I thought, what I believed and the confusion and deception of it all. It was terrible; yet God, in His tender merciful way, used it all to reveal the lies that I believed: the lies about Him, the lies about faith, and the lies about the gospel.

And what lies they are. These lies come in all different shapes and sizes. They tell us that it’s all about what we do and that God responds to us according to our own works of obedience and righteousness. They tell us that God loves us and blesses us when we deserve it. They tell us that what Jesus did was not enough and that God’s approval and love is dependent on our Christian walk and on what we do. They deny the power of the cross. They deny the power of His blood. They deny the power of His finished work. They deny the power of His grace; His beautiful, undeserved, unconditional, amazing, scandalous, overabundant, marvelous, perfect, wondrous, forgiving grace.

Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be…

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