Trying: 6 Ways To Comfort Someone Who Had a Miscarriage
Becoming a mom has always been Lauren’s dream. “I want to grow my family, raise little ones, teach them right from wrong, help them to be who God created them to be. … Only problem is, God never promised me children.”
To her profound grief, Lauren ranks among the one in five women struggling with infertility. She and her husband expected happy news in quick succession when they began trying to conceive: “How hard could it be?”
After three years, they have yet to receive one positive pregnancy test. That’s 36 months of emotions cyclically yanked toward hope, grief, anger, and futility.
As friends announced their own pregnancies, “I had to work through thoughts that that person’s life should be mine. I felt like I was constantly repenting, constantly surrendering my dreams and desires to the Lord.”
Even among childbearing women, one study indicates 43% have experienced miscarriage, and one in 17 women have had three or more. In fact, it’s estimated that 10-26% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
The couples they leave behind are, at times, nothing short of bereft—and often, silent and isolated in this intimate struggle.
When infertility incriminates God
Biblical women like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, David’s wife Michal, the Shunammite woman, and Elizabeth knew well the internalized shame of infertility and possibly miscarriage. Bathsheba, too, knew the grief of a child dying soon after birth.
In fact, the Old Testament Hebrew word interpreted as “barren” calls to mind a thirsty, empty desert. A land of loneliness.
But people of faith might not just feel alienated from their bodies and their communities. Since God declares Himself as the One who opens the womb (Genesis 30:22, Psalm 113:9, 127:3; 1 Samuel 1:5; Isaiah 66:9), their anger, hurt, and sadness may threaten to estrange them from Him too.
One sufferer, Tiffany, recalls, “I leaned hard into God at first. Reading His Word brought me comfort; worship music soothed my soul. But then a cousin had a baby, my sister-in-law, my sister, a friend, another friend had twins, and all in the same time frame Jeff and I lost three babies. I grew extremely bitter and unloving towards everyone around me. I could feel Jesus there with me, wanting to take my bitterness and pain, but I held onto it like a power over people. Especially any woman with a baby or toddler. I grew ugly inside. Honestly, I hated the inner monster I had become.”
Lisa, a licensed counselor, needed those closest to her to be comfortable with her tears and big emotions.“I remember talking to my closest friend during one of my darkest periods of infertility loss. I asked, ‘What good is it being a Christian anyway? What good has it done me? Maybe I’m going to give up my faith!’”
After a minute, her friend softly said, “I hear how desperate you feel, Lisa. I don’t have any answers for you. God’s not threatened by your anger or your heartache. Neither am I. He’s big enough for you to not want to talk to Him right now too.”
Another woman, Maria, confesses what she learned about herself. “I did think I deserved children. I did rest a lot of my value and worth as a woman in my ability to bear children. I had to decide if I truly believed that He was a good God no matter what. I loved the Scripture from Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I serve Him’ [13:15]. And He has shown me time and time again His goodness and His love throughout all these extremely painful experiences.”
6 Ways to comfort someone who had a miscarriage–or a friend struggling with infertility
What could it look like to comfort someone who had a miscarriage or a friend struggling with infertility? How can you ferry them toward God in a season dark with loss?
1. Be an emotionally safe refuge.
Still dealing with prying questions and unsolicited opinions on how they could get pregnant, Lauren and her husband realized protecting their story wasn’t working.
“That secret had become a cage, isolating us,” she said. “It was time to start telling just those that we trusted to join us in prayer. And just like that, we felt a little less alone.”
Lisa reflects, too, that friends helped her see her husband’s grief when she’d previously been consumed by her own.
Of course, Lauren relates, “We’ve had times where friends reach out every week and times where we hear nothing when we need it most. We’ve had beautiful moments of the Lord speaking encouragement through our people and times of incredible pain as someone has said something hurtful or dismissive.”
Still, imperfect comfort felt far more meaningful to her than walking alone. “This community has pointed me to God when all I’ve wanted to do is run away.”
For more ideas to help a friend struggling with infertility, don’t miss How Can I Be a Safe Place for Someone Who’s Hurting or Vulnerable?
2. Create an empathetic, low-pressure zone that doesn’t add drama.
Victoria wrestled with 14 years of infertility before cancer required a hysterectomy. She recalls needing to tell a coworker about her miscarriage. “I remember consoling her; she was so devastated [about my miscarriage] she was bawling. I felt so disappointed that I disappointed her.”
Though Victoria appreciated her friend’s degree of empathy, she advises the more helpful encouragement of sharing an infertile friend’s dreams and lifting their self-inflicted pressure (as opposed to adding to it). “[Tell them,] ‘Enjoy your spouse, get to know them, and don’t make [sex] a chore or a thing that has to get done for the end product.’”
Every person I talked to suggested that to comfort someone who had a miscarriage, creating the space to listen is one of the best offerings a friend can give, followed by asking what they need for their unique struggle.
“Be there to cry with them when they get another negative test or compulsively send pictures of tests asking if you see anything. Tell them when they need to put the tests down and wait a few days,” Maria suggests. “Be there when, after they’ve had a positive test, they start spotting and are told they are losing the child they’ve waited for. Be there to bring snacks and watch their favorite show with them when another month passes by with no child.”
3. Guide their focus to what God has promised.
Lauren reflects, “He has promised to redeem my struggles and pain. While I may have to let this dream go, He has promised to work for my good. And as hard as that is to believe when all hope is lost and all I’m left with are words of anger and lament, He’s never let me down.”
For a friend struggling with infertility, it’s helpful to avoid platitudes–even spiritual ones, like “God works all things together for good!” The pain of plug-and-play statements can lie in what they’re truly communicating: I didn’t hear your heart and what you truly needed, but I would like to fix it. Instead, Lisa found comfort in verses like Lamentations 3:33: “…for [God] does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.”
Galatians reminds us to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). Jesus’ life and death showed that burden-bearing is messy, self-sacrificial, involved, and decidedly unformulaic. So often, to comfort someone who had a miscarriage is simply to be a safe place where someone will un-praise what has happened–like Jesus weeping at Lazarus’ tomb: This is not how God intended this world to be.
4. Grant permission for all the feels.
Carl, Lisa’s husband, recalls breakfast with a friend who said, “You have grieved with Lisa and been so focused on her pain that you’ve not grieved your pain. But you had a loss too. I’m grieving that for you.”
Carl explains, “A floodgate broke. I wept profusely over the impact infertility had on me … for my own loss.” His friend then moved to the other side of the booth to just sit next to him, “so I would not have to be alone.”
Grief speaks to the value of what’s lost: the possibility of a new life in our homes. The beauty of parenthood. Unity with a spouse. A love life untouched by anxiety or crushing desire.
And we bring all of ourselves into the sanctuary in hopes of loving God with our hearts, souls, and minds.
In Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero writes, “When we do not process before God the very feelings that make us human, such as fear or sadness or anger, we leak. Our churches are filled with ‘leaking’ Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue.”
Christian joy isn’t some version of Barbie, with her affixed eternal smile: “Well, God said to rejoice! Have a cookie.” It acknowledges, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). It says, I have deep, abiding joy in God wrapping me in hope and peace and belief, even when I can’t see through my tears.
5. Encourage them to pray through their questions.
Western Christians haven’t always preached the value of spiritual lament. But often, this pattern we’re granted in the Psalms and from Jesus on the cross is what our souls need. It first invokes the character of God, then offers a complaint, makes a request, and finally expresses trust in who God is. Even writing and reading a lament out loud, as David did, may catalyze relief.
Michael Card proposes churches can seem “embarrassed, almost panicky, that there are situations to which they have no answer. We want to present Jesus as the answer man, and we don’t want Jesus to look bad. And if that’s your theology, Jesus can look very bad at funerals.”
Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb knew the outcome, the triumph. Yet He did not call bad good, did not work three verses on hope into the conversation (other than to point to Himself as hope [John 11:25]). He took the time to mourn and be angry about a tragedy.
And perhaps as we comfort someone who had a miscarriage, we follow how our Comforter, the Holy Spirit, works: not simply by making us feel better or whisking away pain or desire. Instead, He helps us gather our pain into an offering, connecting with God there.
6. Be present in a way that matters.
As a therapist, Lisa points out, “Some of my quieter clients who suffer from infertility tell me no one asks. Some describe feeling invisible. Some are private and don’t want to talk. They need to process in their own way.
If you hope to comfort someone who had a miscarriage, she says, “Presence is huge. If you know a woman well—having her trust—I’d suggest strategic ‘drop bys’ with a cup of coffee or tea, maybe a meaningful token of care. Acknowledge you see her pain and desire to honor her but don’t want her to have to bear up on her own.”
When the story’s end remains untold
Lisa presses into the pain of other women, especially her high volume of clients with infertility and miscarriage struggles. Clients “report relief at not having to walk on eggshells around fragile egos or faith. I get the bold, raw, vulnerable pain.”
It’s why she counsels couples to include at least one person who’s shared a similar experience in their support network. Lisa began praying for one client who’d experienced multiple miscarriages and failed in vitro fertilization; a specialist had told her she’d never carry a child to term.
“She had two more miscarriages and a failed adoption,” she says. “We grieved together, and I prayed; she could not. She kept borrowing my faith. Her trust in the Lover of her soul grew, though it was tenuous. Gradually, she laid down her fear and her dreams. She opened her hands in relinquishment, not resignation. At 41 years old, the Great Physician spoke. Nine months later, she delivered a precious, healthy little one.”
Not all stories—or even most—wrap up neatly. Yet Lisa affirms that this journeying comfort, prayer, and trust are “the work we as the mature bride of Christ get to do on behalf of our friends suffering from infertility and miscarriage.”
It is a holy work indeed.
Copyright © 2024 Janel Breitenstein. All rights reserved.
Janel Breitenstein is an author, freelance writer, speaker, and frequent contributor for FamilyLife, including Passport2Identity®, Art of Parenting®, and regular articles. After five and a half years in East Africa, her family of six returned to Colorado, where they continue to work on behalf of the poor with Engineering Ministries International. Her book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House), empowers parents to creatively engage kids in vibrant spirituality. You can find her—“The Awkward Mom”—having uncomfortable, important conversations at JanelBreitenstein.com, and on Instagram @janelbreit.