As much as you may feel like it is your fault, it is NOT. There is nothing that could have been done to change the will of God for your life and for the life of your child. This miscarriage is not a fault of you, it is a fact of the world and a fault of sin. The world is a place full of sin and the death of your child is a result of sin, not a direct result of anything in your life. So how do we process this pain? I can only speak from the point of a mother but the pain of a miscarriage runs deep and often feels lonely. Even when we are in our most lonely moments, and our feelings drive us to despair, God’s promises still are true, and God’s goodness is still real.

*Trigger Warning This post Talks about Miscarriage
There is something about being a mom that I never fully grasped until I was well, a mom. That was the idea of having joy and pain at the same time. I had often heard of this concept but never truly experienced it. The first time I experienced joy and pain was the moment after our first daughter was born. There was such joy in holding our slippery bundle of joy that we had prayed and waited for so long. And yet, among the joy was the physical pain from giving birth. I think this is a feeling that all mothers can understand—the feeling of joy and physical pain. The combination of joy and physical pain happens often throughout motherhood. Joy may come from seeing your child shaking a toy, and the pain comes when you get smacked in the face by said toy. Joy may come from hearing your child speaking, and the pain then comes when your child screams in your ear. I could go on and on with stories of experiencing one or the other of joy and physical pain as a mother. But what about experiencing the feelings of joy and the feeling of pain at the same time?
The Unspoken Pain Mothers Carry
This pain is carried by many mothers and is carried silently. There are many reasons why mothers feel this dichotomy of joy and pain at the same time. It could be the joy created from the laughter of a toddler, while in pain from their new diagnosis. It could be the joy of seeing your child creating community while bearing the silent pain of knowing you will be moving and those friendships being made today won’t last long beyond tomorrow. There are seasons of difficulty that augment the joy and pain we carry as mothers. The times when you are grieving the loss of a loved one while still experiencing the joy that comes with motherhood. Or the even more silent pain, the pain of a miscarriage. A miscarriage that might have been acknowledged by others, or a miscarriage that might only be known by yourself. No matter the stage of the pregnancy or the amount of people who know, the pain of miscarriage is difficult and different from other pains that we experience as mothers.
Processing a Miscarriage
First, I need to start this section by stating that your baby no matter how small is a baby. Your pregnancy changed you. You became a mother even before the moment you saw the positive on that pregnancy test. The hopes, the dreams, the pregnancy sickness, the sadness, it was all real and all valid. You are allowed to say you lost a child. We have lost 2. When you read our bio you will see that we say we have 6 children and only 4 living children. This is how we open the conversation and share with others that we have lost babies in the womb.
Second, as much as you may feel like it is your fault, it is NOT.
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Chao is mostly remembered for his role in RFT, which, in the words of Bruce P. Baugus, editor of China’s Reforming Churches: Mission, Polity, and Ministry in the Next Christendom,  “helped form a new generation of Reformed leadership within China and throughout the global Chinese church.”

From the earliest days of Protestant missions, foreign missionaries understood the need of training local pastors. The priorities given to this task varied. In many cases, circumstances helped to hasten the process.
This is what happened in Manchuria, a historical region of northeast China, in 1941, when the government forced all religious schools to close. This Yinkguo Bible Institute, which had become an isle of orthodoxy in a country where the siren of religious liberalism was attracting many.
The school’s president was J. G. Vos, son of the renowned Princeton professor Geerhardus. Before leaving for the States, Vos asked his friend, assistant, and former student Charles H. Chao (Chao Chung-Hui) to be the school’s caretaker, hoping that the situation would soon change.
Translator and Pastor
Born on August 2, 1916, Chao was raised a Christian by his mother, who had encountered Christianity in her youth. Of all her children, only Charles shared her faith. In 1935, Charles attended the first Manchurian Christian conference at the Yinkguo Bible Institute and was so impressed by the teachings of the main speaker, Wang Mingdao,[1] that he applied to become a student at the institute and dedicated his life to serving Christ.
By then, Chao was already married. As it was customary, his marriage had been arranged by his mother. Because of the uncertain times, the ceremony took place when Chao was only sixteen. His bride, Li Yu Chen Chao (Pearl), was not a Christian but Charles’s mother sent her to a nearby Bible institute where she learned about Christianity and was baptized. Their first son, Theodore, was born in 1936.
After an internship in Northern Manchuria, Chao returned to the seminary on the invitation of J. G. Vos, who was looking for an assistant. Vos introduced him to the writings of Loraine Boettner, lighting in Chao’s heart a desire to translate them into Chinese. Following Boettner’s advice, he started with The Inspiration of Scriptures. This was just the first of Chao’s numerous translations.
After Vos’s departure, Chao took care of the school’s grounds for fourteen months, until the government claimed them. He then moved to Tashihchiao, where the local pastor needed an assistant. He stayed there until 1945, when the Japanese surrendered. The people of Manchuria rejoiced to see the Japanese leave their country. But their joy didn’t last long, because Russian troops soon replaced them.
Out of the Tiger’s Mouth
This began the long struggle between the Soviet army and the Chinese Nationalist movement. It was a harrowing time for the population, who was forced to submit to the Russians’ demands for food, services, and women. In his autobiography, Out of the Tiger’s Mouth, Chao remembers one time when the Russians asked him to find them some women. He had heard of locals who had been killed for refusing to comply. Thankfully, some unexpected circumstances forced the Russians to let him go unharmed.
Another time, right after the birth of his seventh son, William, a group of Chinese communists abducted Charles from his house and brought him to their headquarters where he and other Chinese captives were forcefully enlisted to march before their troops as a human shield. Taking advantage of a moment of confusion, Charles managed to escape.
Clearly alarmed, the Chaos decided to move to Mukden, which was under Nationalist control. There, Charles worked as an interpreter for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), shipping American relief supplies to Chinese distribution centers. It was a demanding and stressful job. Longing to put his pastoral training to practice, he was glad when opportunities arose to teach English first in a local school and later at the Mukden YMCA, where he was also able to introduce young Chinese to Christ.
During this time, he corresponded with Vos and Boettner, who encouraged him to continue his studies in the States. In fact, they had procured for him a scholarship at Faith Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), in Tacoma, Washington, and had helped him to get a visa.
What’s more, Boettner was able to arrange for Chao a plane ride from Mukden to Shanghai on a Lutheran “mercy plane,” which was meant to transport refugees out of China. The door seemed wide open and Chao interpreted it as a confirmation that God wanted him in the States.
Crisis of Conscience
His conscience, however, kept bothering him. Could he really leave his wife and seven children in a country where the Communist forces were advancing rapidly and often violently? He had been encouraged to go by his father-in-law, where Pearl and the children were staying, but doubts kept resurfacing.
He was fully aware of Pearl’s challenges. In her own words, from the time Charles had left, their family had been suffering “separation, anxiety, and all the daily inconveniences and perils of life in the middle of a civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists.”[2]
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When we come before God, what bragging rights do we have? The person with the highest IQ in the world and the infant born yesterday are on a level playing field compared to what God knows. But this is more than acknowledging the distance between Creator and creation. We do not have to rely on our intelligence and abilities to save or give us significance. We do not have to know all there is to know because we are known and belong to a God who does.

Adam and Eve were tempted to believe, “You will be like God,” and that lie has been deceiving us ever since. We may not self-identify as deities demanding sacrifices and overt worship, but we may fall for subtler versions. One variation combines ideas that are very common today:

I have no limits.
I am sufficient on my own.
My worth depends on achieving the above.

Motivational merchandise tells us, “Wish it. Dream it. Do it!,” which sounds remarkably like the prosperity gospel. But wishes and dreams require resources that can run out. Aspirations demand skill and talent that may never be ours. We live in time and space with bodies and minds that are finite.
We have also inherited the cultural myth of the self-made man or woman. A rags-to-riches tale of success where it is possible to make it on our own without owing anything to anyone else. This teaches us that dependence is weakness and a source of shame. But total self-sufficiency is physically impossible for human beings. A baby is born helpless. Aging can return us to a needy condition. And regardless of age, what do we have that we have not received?[1]
God is the only being sufficient in himself. God is omniscient, knowing all things because he is their creator and source. We were meant to live in happy dependence upon him for every aspect of our lives – material and immaterial. Therefore, it should be no surprise that falling for the lie of no limits and no dependence is exhausting. Just look at the different sectors of society where people of all ages are experiencing burn out because of the pressure to live up to impossible ideals. We cannot do it all. We cannot know it all.
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