I found out I was pregnant on Mother’s Day.

I felt terrible. Tired and nauseous. My friend and I were sitting in my backyard chatting when she suggested I take a pregnancy test. I ran into the house, taking the stairs two at a time to grab one and take it. A few minutes later we celebrated together in the yard.

After suffering a miscarriage just 9 months earlier, I made a doctor’s appointment right away. To say I was scared would be an understatement.

My heart had been broken in a million pieces that day nine months ago, and I was terrified to walk the same road again.

I tried to assure myself that there was no way I would miscarry again.

I was convinced it had been enough trauma for one lifetime.

“Hold still. We are having trouble finding the baby.” My doctor’s eyes gave away her intimate understanding of the moment as she searched my womb with the ultrasound wand.

Nooooooo! Every part of my soul cried out. Not again. No, this can’t be happening. Everything is going to be fine. They’ll find her.

They didn’t find her.

Two and a half weeks of repeated ultrasounds and 8 blood tests later, I ended up in the same ER I had visited 9 months earlier. My fears were coming to pass.

This time I was to receive two shots of methotrexate.

The baby had traveled from one fallopian tube to the other and was no longer growing. There was no heartbeat.

My options were surgery, for which I would lose the baby and a fallopian tube, or methotrexate injections to dissolve the fetus.

The latter was obviously less invasive and it was the choice I made. The stabbing pain of the shots in each hip was nothing compared to the excruciating pain in my heart.

As I recovered at home, I remember sitting gingerly on the edge of my bed arguing with God. My body hurt, and my heart ached more.

He told me He would use my experiences of miscarriage and subsequent understanding of the grief process to help heal many women in my future. My pain responded first – I told Him I didn’t want that; I wanted my child back.

I sobbed and sobbed, letting reality wash over me.

I wanted her back.

I didn’t understand. I still don’t.

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Eight years later, I struggle to comprehend how the Father is able to grow beauty from such traumatic experiences. And yet, He does.

Beauty grows from my vulnerability.

Beauty grows when I let others into my pain. Beauty grows when I reach out to a friend who buried her son. Beauty grows when I hold a dear friend in my arms and weep with her.

There is beauty in brokenness.

True beauty flows from the brokenness of the One who cried, IT IS FINISHED!, on that dark day so many years ago. When He took death, pain, and sin upon Himself to save us – to make beauty from our brokenness.

Only He is able to hold us in our heartbreak with complete understanding, to collect each tear that falls as they unite with His own, and to mend our hearts in such a way that they hold the capacity to thrive.

It’s miraculous. Divine.