E22 Faith After Miscarriage: Finding God in the Grief with Rosalynn Lasley | Healing and Hope After Loss

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:57)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Into the Depths podcast. I’m excited because I have my beautiful friend Roslyn with us again today. And so as we talk about just different things with regards to the journey of healing and freedom, I wanted to give Roslyn a chance to tell her story, talk about just, you know, give her a chance to go below the surface and what she’s learned in her life. welcome Roslyn, thanks for coming back.

Rosalynn Lasley (01:05)
Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jen Cudmore (01:25)
So to open up our show, I just want to ask a couple of questions to get you thinking before I give her a chance to dive in. How does a person even embrace a journey of healing and freedom? What is that supposed to look like? I believe everybody’s path looks a little bit different, but ultimately I believe that God invites all of us to seek wholeness.

⁓ And so how do we figure that out? How do we find that? How do we know when he’s inviting us and what we need to work on and those kinds of things? So ⁓ that’s something to be thinking about as we move on with this episode. So Roslyn, go ahead, tell us, where did it start for you?

Rosalynn Lasley (02:03)
So I feel like ⁓ I have always kind of struggled with being critical of myself. ⁓ I feel like I’ve always been my own worst enemy. And there’s some people where you have these, there’s like critical spirits of others and that’s coming from a place of internal turmoil. But for me, I’m not outwardly critical, I’m always inwardly critical. And so then when life gets difficult, I feel like ⁓ those wounds of…

criticism of myself and feeling inadequate and just any of those things, those ones are ripped wide open because how can I navigate a difficult situation when my day to day is challenging? When I find it hard to just be gracious to myself over small things, how in the world can I be gracious with myself through the big things? so, you know, my story starts, I don’t know, probably almost 11 years ago now. And I wouldn’t say that’s like the start of my story, but it’s kind of like a defining moment in my story.

About two years prior to that, my husband and I had been discussing whether or not to expand our family. We had two kids at that time and I was, for a little while I was like, yeah, we’re definitely done having kids. And then when I started getting rid of the baby clothes, I sat in a pile of clothes and started crying like, I don’t think I’m done. You I thought it was done until I wasn’t. And ⁓ so I’d asked him about it and he was very content with our family the way that it was. Our oldest was…

I don’t know, seven or eight maybe, and just a fun age and, you know, seemingly independent as much as a seven or eight year old could be. And then our youngest was two or three, I think, when we started having the conversation. And so, you know, we are in the throes of the three-nager behavior where the meltdowns are great, but they’re also really funny and it’s fun to just experience the way that they experience the world. And so he was very, very content and I wasn’t. And so then I struggled with like,

Jen Cudmore (03:50)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:00)
why am I not content with a life the way that it is? Why do I still have this strong desire for something more? Why can’t I just be thankful for what I have? ⁓ And so for a while I kept asking my husband, like, have you thought about it? Have you thought about it? And he was just very much, I’m done. I’m happy with the way our life is. And ⁓ I wasn’t. And so I started praying and I would ask him, like, have you prayed about it? And he said, no. And I said, well, I have. So like, God’s gonna answer one of our prayers.

⁓ But I started praying, like, Lord, if it’s not your plan for our family, you’d need to change my heart about it because it’s breaking my heart to have this desire and for us to not be on the same page. And truly, like, I’m not going to force my husband to have another child just because I want to, because that’s just going to create conflict within our family. Like, if he’s absolutely done, then it’s unfair of me to keep pushing for something that he is not comfortable with.

Jen Cudmore (04:35)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:55)
I continued to pray about it and know and like, Lord, if it’s not your will, change my heart. And instead he changed my husband’s heart. And so finally, after about two years of praying about it and talking about it, he said, okay, we can have another baby. And so ⁓ at that time, my sister, her husband and children were transitioning out of the military and were moving back to Alaska. And so our life was just kind of in a transitional season. My brother-in-law,

My husband’s brother had lived with us for a while and had just kind of moved out around that time. And then my sister and her family were moving in. And then we’re talking about expanding our family. And so life was just very different for us at that time. ⁓ But I had gotten pregnant fairly quickly after he finally changed his mind or God changed his heart or however you look at that. ⁓ my sister, was the night before, and it’s actually now that I think about that, ⁓ July 1st was the day that I found out I was pregnant.

Jen Cudmore (05:40)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (05:48)
because July 2nd was my 30th birthday. And so I had taken a test at like 10 or 11 at night on July 1st, because I was like, the last moment of my 20s, I’m going to know one way or another if I’m having another baby. And so like, what a wonderful way to close this chapter of my 20s and go into my 30s. And so I found out I was pregnant and told my sister and she was downstairs because they were staying in the basement at our house. And she came up and she gave me a big hug and she’s like, you’re shaking.

Jen Cudmore (05:59)
Yeah.

Sure.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:17)
And I just said, I’m scared. And it was weird because I had never felt that way with the other kids. When I found out I was pregnant with the older two, I was ecstatic. Like with the oldest, I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep. My husband’s like zonked out on the couch. So I had called my best friend and I was like, I’m pregnant. And we just, I had just bought a car the same week. So we’re like driving around being all excited and my husband zonked out. So I’m like, somebody’s got to be excited with me. And then with our middle one, I was so excited when I found out I literally like jumped up and down because I was so happy about it.

Jen Cudmore (06:47)
haha

Rosalynn Lasley (06:47)
but with

the third baby, just, I don’t know, I was afraid. Like something in my spirit did not feel peace about it. Like I felt like something was wrong and it was a weird feeling. And so, you know, obviously I was praying about it I was excited, but I felt just this weird, unsettling feeling. And so we spent the whole day on my 30th birthday celebrating being pregnant and having my birthday. And we were telling everyone, I had bought my husband a shirt in advance of finally when he’d said, okay, let’s have a baby.

I, it’s like two thumbs on a t-shirt that says this guy’s gonna be a dad again. And so like he wore it to church. So then all of sudden people were like, my gosh, what? You know, so was just super exciting time. But that like nagging feeling that something was wrong never really went away. And I felt like, am I quote unquote jinxing myself by having these like negative anxious thoughts about it? But ⁓ I started kind of having like cramping feeling, but I also had that with my second.

child so that wasn’t totally unusual but I’d called and asked for an appointment sooner than they normally schedule them so they typically wait until about eight weeks ⁓ and their perspective is if something’s gonna go wrong it’ll go wrong before then and so it’s like what’s the point of wasting an appointment on somebody that’s just gonna lose a baby anyway which is a horrible way to think about things and they don’t say it exactly like that but that’s implied that well we’re not gonna see you before then because if you’re gonna lose your baby then we’re not gonna worry about it.

Jen Cudmore (08:12)
Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (08:16)
And there’s nothing we can do to help you anyway, which is also not true. ⁓ But so they did end up seeing me early and everything looked fine on ultrasound initially. They just kind of told me to take it easy a little bit. ⁓ And then they had done some labs and my progesterone levels were low. ⁓ And so they started supplementing my progesterone, which is also another good reason to see people early because if your progesterone is low, you can supplement that and that can prevent a miscarriage.

But a lot of times they don’t. They just want quote unquote nature to take its course ⁓ when that is absolutely devastating for people, especially in hindsight knowing that there could have been something done and maybe not. mean, God’s plan is God’s plan regardless of how you get involved in it. But are people losing babies unnecessarily when they could have intervened and helped medically? you we’d started supplementing and testing my HCG levels. They’re supposed to double.

Jen Cudmore (08:50)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (09:14)
every 48 hours at that point. And I’m trying to remember how it all went, because it’s been a little while now, but I know I had two ultrasounds. In the first ultrasound, the baby had a heartbeat, and so our baby was very much alive. The second ultrasound, the baby still had a heartbeat, but the gestational sac wasn’t as big as it was supposed to be, but the baby was measuring fine. And the ultrasound technician had said, you know, everything looks okay. The baby’s growing, the heart rate’s great.

Jen Cudmore (09:38)
Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (09:44)
Those are all the things that we’re looking for, but they didn’t tell me that they were concerned about the size of the gestational sac. And when the nurse practitioner called me to give me the results of the ultrasound, she didn’t either. She just said, you know, we’re just kind of holding our breath for now and hoping that everything works out and we’re doing everything that we can. You know, we’re supplementing and that sort of thing. We’re just gonna have to wait and see. And then I don’t remember what day of week that was, but I remember it was on a…

Saturday, my husband was helping a friend that had just started a small business at the air show. And so he was away working and we lived really close to the military base. So traffic in front of our house is just horrible. You can’t come or go at all because everyone’s blocking it trying to go to air show. And I’d started bleeding really heavily. And so I had called my, the on-call number for my doctor’s office and my OB had called back and she said, well, we kind of knew this was going to happen. And

⁓ I was like, what? What do you mean by that? You know, she just basically resolved that I was losing my baby, but that’s what they were expecting, which is not at all what was communicated to me at my appointments before that. ⁓ So based on my HCG levels, they hadn’t doubled. They’d increased slightly, but they hadn’t doubled. The gestational sac was small, and then I had been spotting in in-between, which is what also led to them supplementing my progesterone because it was low.

Jen Cudmore (10:52)
okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:09)
they knew on their end that it didn’t look good, but they didn’t tell me that. So I just felt completely blindsided. And in that little gap between like confirming for sure that my baby’s heart had stopped, but in the midst of this like bleeding and waiting for the doctor’s office to open and tell me one way or another, I remember like getting on my knees in the shower and just praying like, God, whatever your plan is, whether you…

Jen Cudmore (11:15)
man.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:36)
Your answer is no for sparing my baby’s life. And I remember praying like, I’m begging you, please just spare my baby. But if your answer is no, I’m going to love you and praise you and serve you no matter what. And I meant it. It was like one of those prayers where it’s like from the depths of your soul, where I meant every word of it, but it was so hard to find that desire in myself to like, is my faith real? Do I really trust the Lord?

Jen Cudmore (11:47)
Wow.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:03)
this thing that I’ve been praying about for two years, this desire that continued to grow the more I prayed instead of going away. This baby that was so desperately wanted, if this baby only lived in my womb for 27 days, you know, do I still love the Lord the way I said I did before? And so then they were able to see me the following Tuesday, so I started bleeding pretty heavily on that Saturday and then on Tuesdays when I went in and…

Jen Cudmore (12:22)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:31)
They did an ultrasound and confirmed that the baby’s heart had stopped. And ⁓ my husband was able to go with me to that appointment, but he wasn’t able to go the ones before. And I remember they like kind of quickly ushered us off into this little side, not even like a normal room. It almost felt like we’re gonna put you in the broom closet so nobody has to see you cry. ⁓ And he just would not stop talking. And like his heart and mind and brain were busy that he just had to like fill the silence. And I’m like,

inside because I’m dying on the inside and absolutely shattered. And I just think like, I wish he would just stop talking. But like he needed to process the way that he needed to process. And I needed to process the way that I needed to process. And we were on two different pages on what that looked like. ⁓ But before losing my own baby, it never occurred to me what happens in that situation. Like I’d known women that have had miscarriages, but I never understood the impact or the physical things that take place. had no idea that your baby still has to come out of your body.

Jen Cudmore (13:14)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:30)
your baby will still be born one way or another, whether it’s surgically or naturally. And so after losing your baby, you’re faced with, well, now what? Like I have this unliving baby inside of my womb, but it’s not meant to stay there. And so now what do we do? And so then you’re faced with all of these options that none of them sound good. Like this is not how a baby is supposed to come into this world. ⁓ And so…

Jen Cudmore (13:54)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:56)
That was awful, like having to decide, I want my baby removed from my body surgically and just dispose with all of the medical waste? Do I want to give birth at home and have to decide what to do with my baby’s body? Do I want to just wait it out and then hope that my body eventually realizes that my baby has died and I go into labor on my own? And so I opted for medication to help induce labor at home on my own. But even that felt awful, because I’m thinking.

Jen Cudmore (14:24)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (14:25)
I’m going to the pharmacy and they’re going to see that I’m filling this prescription for medication that they give to women who choose to have an abortion, not knowing that I wanted my baby. And thank the Lord, the pharmacist did not look at me any kind of way. I was just like in my mind, I just wanted to scream over the counter like I wanted this baby because I was so afraid that they thought that I was just another woman that decided that this baby was inconvenient. ⁓ And thankfully they didn’t say anything, they treated it.

you know, as if I was picking up Tylenol, like it wasn’t any, and maybe they weren’t paying any attention to what medication I was picking up, and you know, and then you’re like sobbing your eyes out trying to go to the pharmacy to have to walk through this awful time in your life. And you know, when you’re, was in my hometown, so you’re like, I just really hope I don’t run into anybody that I know while I’m sobbing my eyes out trying to decide how I want this baby to be born.

And so I did the medication at home and it didn’t work. Nothing happened. And so I had called my doctor’s office and they said, okay, well we’ll prescribe another dose of it. And if that doesn’t cause the baby to be born, then we’ll have to do surgery. And so, but I couldn’t bring myself to have to go back to the pharmacy again. Like, how do you make that decision twice? Like, and I know that I had to, like it wasn’t as if I was in this.

Jen Cudmore (15:27)
Okay.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (15:49)
fine line of do I want to have a baby or don’t I like the baby was no longer alive so I had to decide what I wanted to do but I couldn’t bring myself to decide a second time and so a friend from church had reached out to me in the midst of all of this because she had walked through this before and I didn’t actually really know her well and she wasn’t a good friend at the time but she was somebody I knew of but I didn’t know well and she’d reached out and was like do you need anything and I was like will you please go pick up my medicine because I couldn’t bring myself to go back. ⁓

And so thankfully she did. And ⁓ thankfully at that time it did help. like my baby was born in the bathroom when I was all alone. ⁓ And then, you know, knowing that the baby was born and you’re like, what do you do? Like, do I pull the baby out of the toilet and hold it? Cause this is the only chance I’m ever going to get. ⁓ Do I just close the lid and flush and try to forget about it? Like.

Jen Cudmore (16:30)
Sounds awful. ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (16:46)
there’s no peace in any of those answers. ⁓ so like as I was laboring and I felt like it was about time, ⁓ once I did give birth, the baby sank down too far where I couldn’t see anything. And so I felt like the Lord made that decision for me that that wouldn’t be the last thing I remember seeing. ⁓ But I just sat on the floor of the bathroom in front of the toilet staring into the water for a very, very long time trying to decide like, do I try and reach my hand in there and see if I can find her or do I just let her go?

Jen Cudmore (16:48)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (17:14)
And so ultimately I flushed and just trusted that God had spared me from that for whatever reason. it’s also this like, is the only time I’m ever gonna get to hold her. And like that’s not how it’s meant to be. And my husband had said, I’m so glad I didn’t have to, I don’t remember how he phrased it. At the time it was very hurtful and I was super offended, but that wasn’t a fair reaction for me. Like his heart could not handle.

seeing our baby not alive. And so he felt thankful that he was spared from that. And he very much would have been in there with me if I had asked him to, but I didn’t. Like I almost felt like I needed to be alone. It was a weird, very, ⁓ just unsettling. I can’t think of any other way to describe it, but ⁓ he was spared from all of it I wasn’t. know, like I endured it all. And it’s not because he didn’t want to be a part of things.

Jen Cudmore (17:45)
Right.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:10)
⁓ He’d said something about like, with people that give birth or still birth to a full term baby. And he’s like, I can’t imagine what that would be like. I can’t imagine having to look at your baby after they’re no longer alive and having to hold them. And I just thought, I wish I would have had the opportunity to hold her at least once, you know? And so I just, for a little while, I resented him. I resented him for not.

Jen Cudmore (18:28)
Sure. Mm-hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:36)
experiencing it with me, even though that wasn’t his choice. If I would have woken him up and said, feel like it’s about time, like he would have been there with me. There’s no doubt in my mind. ⁓ So it wasn’t like he made a choice to lead me to go through this alone. ⁓ But it was like the days that I was really sad and he seemed like he was fine. I resented him for not being sad too. I’m like, I’m sad. Why aren’t you sad? You know, and then the days that I was like laughing and happy, that felt.

Jen Cudmore (18:45)
Yeah, he would have.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:03)
awful too. Like I just, my baby just died. How in the world am I laughing right now? How am I finding joy in life again? How am I not still sad? And then I’m like, I am happy. Why is he sad? And then what’s wrong with me that I’m all of a sudden I’m fine and I’m not still grieving even though I was. And so there was just like, that season just felt so confusing and hard. anyone that I had known that had gone through it before me, I think they dealt with it so privately that I had no idea that this was what it was like for so many people.

Jen Cudmore (19:33)
Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:33)
I didn’t

know that you had to make a decision. of course, like in hindsight, of course you have to decide how your baby’s coming out of your body. For me, I just thought, well, they just, like your body just absorbs them. I don’t know, like, it never even crossed my mind. And I had no idea how people would navigate being on different pages with their spouse, but it was so unfair of me to have expectations of how he should feel when I didn’t know moment by moment, let alone day to day, how I was going to feel. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (20:00)
Well, don’t you think

that ⁓ I feel like this is a topic that’s so heavy and so ⁓ sad that it’s, I mean, for the longest time, nobody talked about it. I feel like in the last 10, 20 years, it’s becoming more socially acceptable, I guess, to be able to talk about some of these things. another example being, you

Rosalynn Lasley (20:03)
⁓

Jen Cudmore (20:22)
I was very open about how hard it was when my son left home and went to the military. Like I missed him so much and I didn’t hear any moms talking about that and I had to get into the right circles. So I think there’s so many things that so many terrible things that happened to us that we don’t know how to talk about and we don’t know how to do it in front of others. And I think like for you, you said you didn’t have anybody to really talk to or walk you through it or what to expect or like all these things you didn’t know if you had to do it yourself. So

Rosalynn Lasley (20:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (20:51)
Yeah, I wish there was more talking about it.

Rosalynn Lasley (20:52)
And then I did have women

who came kind of, I would say out of the woodwork and that’s not, I feel like that’s more derogatory than what it was. It was just kind of like, they quietly appeared in my life and started to share their stories of loss, but they did not communicate that openly. And so it’s like, I was actually surrounded by a large group of women that had experienced it as well, but they felt like they couldn’t tell anyone. You know, I have.

Jen Cudmore (21:09)
Okay.

Okay.

you think

they felt that way? Like what do you think was the logic or the reasoning? Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (21:22)
I think some of it was generational. So like it’s

some women that were like a little bit older than me and their mentors. ⁓ And so that was something that wasn’t discussed. And so if people had a stillbirth because they were very obviously further along in their pregnancy and there wasn’t any hiding it, those people had shared their stories somewhat, but those that have like first or second trimester loss didn’t. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (21:40)
Uh-huh.

Rosalynn Lasley (21:48)
There was one friend where when she had gotten pregnant, she wasn’t happy about it because it just wasn’t a good time in her life that she felt like she could, they just weren’t ready for a baby. They weren’t sure that they wanted children. And so then when she miscarried, she felt horrible because it’s like, I, maybe if I just wanted this baby, maybe if I just love this baby more, God wouldn’t have taken it away. ⁓ And so there’s, think a little bit of those, both of those sorts of things that, ⁓ but for me, there was also, I’ve…

Jen Cudmore (21:48)
Okay.

⁓ yeah.

Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:16)
was very open about it and shared about it right away, because I had shared my pregnancy right away. And so there was also shame that came with saying, actually, I’m not pregnant anymore, because I felt like I had done something to undo this. So I’m openly excited and happy about being pregnant and then having to recant my, like, I’m not actually pregnant anymore. And I don’t regret it. I don’t regret sharing openly, because if I hadn’t, then I really would have walked through it alone.

Jen Cudmore (22:28)
Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:44)
It wouldn’t have been the women that were quietly supportive of me. It would have been completely alone. And I don’t think I would have been able to handle it if I didn’t have the support of the people that I did. ⁓ But then there was people in my life, and there still are, that are extremely uncomfortable hearing me talk about it. And we decided to name our baby. Her name is Ruby. We don’t know if our baby was a boy or a girl, but I feel like it doesn’t really matter. ⁓ Our baby was worthy of a name.

even if we have a little boy and have a name Ruby, then so be it. You we don’t know and that’s okay. Like when we get to the other side and we get to meet our baby face to face, it won’t matter anymore. ⁓ But I didn’t want to refer to our baby as an experience or a moment in time. Our baby was a real live living being, ⁓ even if its heart was only beating for, you know, a couple of weeks at most.

Jen Cudmore (23:15)
you

Yep.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:39)
⁓ But people still, like, they treated that weird. felt almost like a leper. Like, people didn’t want to be around you because your sadness was uncomfortable, your story was uncomfortable, you’re grieving an imaginary friend almost because they couldn’t see your baby so it wasn’t real to them. ⁓ And so then there was people that were very, very close to me that pulled very back. They didn’t want to be around me. They’d ask everyone, smile like, hey, how are you doing? And then if I was honest, because I thought our relationship

Jen Cudmore (23:43)
⁓

Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:06)
was to that level they would be like, have you considered therapy? Like, no, like I’m just grieving in a normal way. It wasn’t so, I mean, my grief was heavy. Like that was probably the heaviest, hardest thing I’ve ever walked through, but it wasn’t abnormal to feel that sad. ⁓ But people made me feel like it was, cause you know, all these other women I know that had lost babies, they just carried on.

Jen Cudmore (24:16)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:35)
on the surface, they were carrying on as if life didn’t stop. And I felt like it’s, when it’s in a movie, your life is literally standing still and everything is rushing by with no care in the world that you’re dying on the inside. you’re, and I was telling one of our mutual friends that it felt like when you’re in the ocean and you’re standing there and the waves recede and the ground pulls out from under you and you lose your balance and then a wave is toppling you over.

Jen Cudmore (24:47)
No.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:02)
Like no matter how hard you try to get your footing, can’t, but you don’t even know what to expect. You don’t know if you’re gonna get knocked over forward or if the ground’s gonna come out from underneath you, but either way you’re just kind of tossed around while everyone else is enjoying the water and the life that they have.

Jen Cudmore (25:16)
Yeah,

that’s a great picture. That’s a really great picture. Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:19)
Yeah, and I had seen

this quote on Pinterest and for me my emotions felt so ⁓ chaotic almost like I couldn’t even put a name to how I felt that it was hard to understand and wrap my mind around how I felt and so I found a lot of comfort in like blogs and different stories of other women that experienced it because they could put words to how I felt. ⁓ But I saw this quote that said, I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the rock of ages.

Jen Cudmore (25:30)
Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:48)
And that’s exactly how I felt like I’m in this ocean where the ground is coming out from underneath me and the waves are toppling over me and I feel like I’m drowning and no one’s even noticing that I’m struggling. But if these waves are slamming me into the rock of ages, then I’ll accept it. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (26:05)
That’s so good. I love that quote. That’s amazing.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:07)
Yeah, and so in the midst

of the physical process of ⁓ miscarrying, we had this big camping trip planned with our life group and my husband needed to be busy and around other people and I definitely did not. I didn’t get out of bed for probably a week. I just needed to be in my safe, comfortable place. So I alternated between getting in the shower, because just standing in the hot water was comforting, and being in bed.

Jen Cudmore (26:32)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:33)
And so sometimes people will come by and check on us or bring by dinner and you know, several friends, they just came and got right in bed with me because I’m like, I’m not getting up. They can come in here, but I just don’t have it in me to be social. If they want to be social in my bed, that’s fine. So I ate dinner in bed for a week, you know, that sort of thing. But ⁓ he really wanted to go on that camping trip because he just needed to do something other than sit in bed and cry. And so I told him to go. was like, you know.

Jen Cudmore (26:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (27:01)
I’ll be okay by myself, like I really will be okay. And my brother and sister-in-law, or my sister and brother-in-law were at my house, like off and on, I think. I don’t remember what all was going on, but I was like, I’ll be fine. And then when my family packed up and left, I was like, I’m not fine. Like home is fine because my family’s here. ⁓ So then I was like, well, I guess I’m going camping.

So, you I packed up my stuff. I found like the biggest adult diapers that I could, because I was still physically going through the process of miscarrying. ⁓ I found like all the wet wipe packs I could take because I didn’t know. And I’m thinking, I don’t want to be dealing with this in the middle of the woods, you know. But I just, couldn’t be alone with my thoughts, even though I thought I would be fine, because I wasn’t. And so it was about a two hour drive to be where they were. And as I’m driving, I was listening to praise and worship music and ⁓

singing at the top of my lungs and crying and praying. And I remember at one point I just, and it was like internally, I wasn’t audibly asking, but I just asked the Lord, like, does it break your heart when our hearts are broken? Because like I can think of many times in my life where I had caused the circumstances that broke my own heart. ⁓ You know, I’ve made a bad choice or I’ve…

and got involved with wrong people or any of those things. Like my circumstances were a result of my decisions, but this was not one of those times and this is the most I’ve ever been broken. And like, Lord, do you even care? Like, does it grieve you? Does it hurt you that I’m hurting? Cause you know, as a mom or even I’m empathetic for other people, if I see somebody that’s absolutely devastated, like if they’re crying, I’m crying and I’m like, why are we crying? I don’t know, they’re crying, so I’m crying.

Jen Cudmore (28:44)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (28:44)
You know, like, so if I

feel that way, I’m like, does the Lord care that I’m sad? Like, does he hurt for me? And I felt like he was silent in that moment, but a little while later I was sitting downstairs and I was making some greeting cards, because when my mind is busy, it helps if my hands are busy for whatever reason. It kind of helps me work through what I’m thinking. And ⁓ there’s the song called The Stand that came on the, like my iTunes or whatever.

The lyric is, I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned in awe of the one who gave it all. And it was like this aha moment for me. Like the Lord not only is heartbroken that I’m heartbroken, he understands this pain as my peer, not as my heavenly father and not as a parent that’s comforting me as a child, but as a parent who has lost a child. He understands what it’s like to go through the sorrow and the grief of losing a child because he did that for me. And so that was like,

Jen Cudmore (29:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (29:41)
defining moment in my faith of God understands what this pain is like and I was never meant to feel this but my faith is so much more real and my salvation is so much more real because I understand the gravity of what was done on the cross for me. There’s no way in the world I would have given up my baby for anybody like and for the worst of the worst like absolutely not. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (29:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, me neither.

for people that don’t

even care about your sacrifice and never, or yeah, it’s crazy to think he did that. Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (30:08)
No, like there’s no way I would have done that. And so

like, I mean, I still to this day, if you gave me a choice between losing my baby or growing my faith, I would choose my baby. ⁓ But I’m so thankful that God allowed my faith to grow in spite of being absolutely devastated. ⁓ And for us walking through miscarriage, our kids were little still. And so,

Jen Cudmore (30:21)
you

Rosalynn Lasley (30:34)
it was really hard to know. Obviously they’re gonna know that there’s no baby eventually. And so do you allow them to see the really, really messy parts of your grief where you are just in your own head and you’re crying and you’re praying and they see dad and I on our knees by our bed crying out to God? Or do we shield them from that because it’s hard and they’re uncomfortable with seeing their parents so sad. But I feel like we would have done them a disservice by not allowing them to see our faith be real when our life was devastating.

⁓ Because they’re going to leave our home someday and we have a house full of daughters, are they going to someday walk through loss themselves or walk through it with friends or family and not know what to do because it’s unfamiliar? I would so much rather them say, I’m not sure what to do, but my mom does. My mom knows and let’s talk to her. I’m not sure how this feels for you, but I watched my parents walk through it. And so I can understand how hurtful this is. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (31:04)
Mm-hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (31:33)
It was a couple years later and our oldest daughter didn’t really ever talk about our loss. ⁓ She’s one that doesn’t really share her feelings a whole lot, but her teacher was talking about a different family at our church that had lost a little boy when he was a couple weeks old. just, they shared their story and how that impacted their faith. And she came home from school that day and was telling me about that. And then she said, mom, I watched God grow your faith when Ruby died. And I can’t think of a more…

important thing that they could have ever experienced through all of that. And we would have done such a disservice to them to not be real and vulnerable and raw in the midst of it, because they’re going leave our house and think, well, real life is hard. But I had no idea because my parents never let me see us walk through it before. it still makes me tear up when I think that, like, Mom, I watched God grow your faith. so I’m thankful. And I still wouldn’t choose it.

Jen Cudmore (32:04)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:31)
none of us would choose to go through the hard things that we do in life, but I’m thankful that God allowed it to happen and that he used it for his glory and that ⁓ my but if not from the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when I was in that fiery furnace and I had that but if not prayer like God if your answer is no I’m going to love you and I’m going to serve you and I meant it. ⁓ He never left my side. He was that one in the fire with me and

Jen Cudmore (32:35)
Yeah.

Yep.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:00)
And there’s so much more to that story. We then went through, I had that accident where I broke my back. That was all in the same year that I lost the baby.

Jen Cudmore (33:09)
Yeah, I was going to ask

you about that next. I just wanted to make sure you were finished talking about the miscarriage first.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:14)
Yeah, think so. I

I struggled with some health stuff after losing the baby and I kept telling my doctor something doesn’t seem right. And she just kind of was dismissive. And so I started pursuing another provider. And when that provider requested my medical records, my doctor called me and asked what was going on and why I was changing providers. And I’m like, I’m still having problems and you’re not listening to me. And so they’d done an ultrasound.

Jen Cudmore (33:36)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:39)
And so I miscarried in July and they confirmed afterwards that the baby was no longer in my body. They let my uterus was empty. ⁓ but then I was still having a lot of trouble with bleeding. And when they did the ultrasound, they saw a polyp in my uterus. So like, okay, well maybe that’s the cause of the bleeding. And so they did a DNC where they go in and remove the tissue within the uterus. And when they did that, they realized I had what’s called retained products of conception.

And so even though the baby was no longer in my body, there was still like amniotic tissue and placental tissue and stuff in my body. And that was in October. So I lost the baby in July and it was October of that year that they finally listened to me that something was wrong. So it was like, it just kept going. Like this loss wasn’t just this week, two week long process. It lasted for months. And then I went through this season of, ⁓ it was just hard, but then we can talk into my… ⁓

Jen Cudmore (34:12)
dear.

Yeah, oh, that sounds awful.

Rosalynn Lasley (34:33)
accident too unless you have questions about this.

Jen Cudmore (34:35)
I

do. was thinking this would be a good spot to sort of wrap up and we’ll do like a part one and a part two, because I knew you just had so much to share and how God has really stretched you and grown you. let’s just sort of wrap this up by saying, you know, we all have brokenness in our lives. We have things that we do to ourselves, like you were saying, but then we all definitely we have trauma that happens to us, like a miscarriage or

Rosalynn Lasley (34:41)
Yeah.

Okay.

Jen Cudmore (35:00)
You know, there’s just so many different things like we live in a world that’s broken a world full of sin and so, ⁓ you know Jesus even said himself in the gospels that in this world we’re gonna have trouble The thing is he also added to that take heart because he’s overcome the world and so we can walk through those things with him He will heal us and that’s definitely what

Rosalynn Lasley (35:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (35:22)
a journey of freedom is all about. So ⁓ we’ll wrap up this segment for now and then we’ll come back to we’ll do part two and Rosalyn will share more of her story. So thanks everybody for joining us for today and we’ll see you back next week.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:36)
Thanks guys!