Carried to Castles of Gold

In two days it will have been one year since we finally lost our first child to miscarriage. I say "finally" because this was the point at which we decided with the doctors that my body was not going to expel the baby on its own, and surgery was necessary. We discovered later that surgery had been the only real option because of abnormalities of the placenta, but we didn't know that at the time. We only knew that it had been nearly 3 weeks since the baby had stopped growing, and that my body had yet to let go. That child, though tests revealed it to be imperfect, was wanted, and its loss was heartbreaking. According to what we know of genetics, this particular child could never have lived (indeed it had stopped living by the time of our first ultrasound), but that didn't matter to us one bit. It would have been about five months old today, and as the anniversary of its loss draws near, it's hard not to mourn all of the losses that attend a miscarriage -- the dreams, the expectations, the hopes -- all over again.

Months later, I remember waiting with Daniel at my gynecologist's office in a hallway, pregnant for the second time, and desperate for good news in the first ultrasound that we awaited in just a few minutes. I saw two young women come down the hallway within a few minutes of each other: each admitted for "post-surgery" consults. (The nurses were not as discrete as they may have been, I think.) Both girls were pretty, carefree, and looked to be about 20, maybe, and they both had come in alone. It suddenly occurred to me that they had probably had elective abortions, and as quickly as the thought crossed my mind, I felt as if every emotion I was capable of experiencing had welled up and threatened to choke me. Here I was, desperately wanting a child I couldn't have, while other people choose to destroy children who would, in all likelihood, be healthy, perfect children that someone would love dearly even if their mothers' lives didn't have room for them.

This isn't to say I don't understand what moves others to make that choice. When our culture is two-faced about the unborn, it's easy enough to choose whichever belief system suits your circumstances, especially if you have not been given reason to believe that some things are more important than others. I mean, a fetus of the same gestational age is a "baby" to a woman who wants it, and "product of conception" to a woman who doesn't. If you think this confusion doesn't make miscarriage rather more difficult to experience honestly, then try talking through tears to the distantly nonchalant medical professional who, for the sake of his or her own conscience, must think and speak in latter terms and, when it is your baby unmoving on the black screen, reverts to talk of embryos and fetuses with studied medical detachment.

Our culture as a whole simply does not value life that hasn't started breathing air rather than amniotic fluid, and so it sets up this dilemma of "rights" that seems somehow compelling in an arena from which certain realities and viewpoints are barred. In truth, I have a great deal of compassion for the women who find themselves in the position of feeling they must make the choice that our culture offers them. I mourn, however, the fact that our culture is so duplicitous as to make that choice seem to be without consequence or importance beyond that of one person's right to order her life as she wishes without the intrusion of what amounts, by this way of thinking, to a tumor.


Something I read recently in Sigrid Undset's Gunnar's Daughter - a saga in Icelandic style but written by a Catholic woman in 1909 - dealt with a strikingly similar issue of life, in the context historic clash between Christianity and paganism in Scandinavia. It's not a new question, really, this question of life. It comes down to worldview. This story that Undset shares makes it plain just how radical Christianity with its respect for vulnerable life must have seemed to the Viking world.

I wish to share and episode from the book here, condensed. Let me preface it only by saying that it was apparently quite common to "expose" unwanted children to the elements to let them die after birth. While the fact that the children in question have been born alive may push the argument to another level even in our cultural framework, if, as most Christians believe, life is sacred from conception, then the problem is really the same at any stage.

A Christian priest named Eirik tells the story of a woman, Tora, who was seduced and bore a child, and "to hide her misfortune she cast the child into the sea." She later married, had children and lived a respectable life until she became deathly ill. She believed herself to be dead, though only in a swoon, and she could hear her children crying for her. All she wanted was to be allowed to return to her crying children. Instead, a man in a black cloak led her towards a castle of gold through a dark valley that, at first glance, looked to be full of little lambs:

"But when she came nearer she saw they were little children; there many thousands of them; they were quite naked and newly born, but their faces were old, and some were bloody and horribly mangled, and some were wet. They tried to climb out of the valley on both sides, but they rolled back again at once, for they were so small and weak. This seemed to Tora such a sorry sight that she began to weep; she asked him in the cloak what it was and how the poor little things had come there. 'Their parents have left them here,' said the man. 'They willed it so.' 'I can never believe it,' said Tora."

Tora ripped her own clothing to cover as many of the children as she could, until she was quite naked herself, while the children swarmed around her and asked her to carry them out of the valley so they could see the world. Tora explained, tearfully, that she simply wanted to return to her own children and she pressed on.

She reached the water in the valley, in which children were shivering neck-high. Moved with compassion, she gathered as many of them as she could, until she could carry no more. She could not make it out of the valley herself, let alone carry the children with her. Her knight offered a solution: he would carry her or the children, and he asked her whom she would have him take first. There were thousands of children, and more arrived every moment, so if he were to take them, she may be left to wait a very long time indeed, but she told him to take the children from their suffering, and she would wait as long as she needed to wait for him to return to the cold, desolate place for her. He then revealed to her:

“'It is your eldest son, Tora, who is now lying next against your breast--all these are children who have been robbed of life before they could live in the world or learn the way to my house.'
“Tora fell on her knees and asked in terror: 'Who are you, chieftain, and what is your name?"
“'Christ is my name,' said the King. And now a radiance went out from him, as though a sun had risen upon the valley, warming all the children. But Tora had to shut her eyes before the glory of it. And when she opened them she was at home, lying in her bed.”

When she awoke, she confessed her history, causing such anger in her husband that he threw her out of the house in the middle of the night. She ran to the shore, thinking that her sin was so great that she didn’t deserve to live. Once there, she was drawn by the cries of a tiny abandoned male infant, which she nursed and fostered.

From that moment, she dedicated her life and what riches were hers to taking in and caring for any child that was unwanted, and she lived simply off the earth. When Christians came to evangelize the area, they were surprised to find that she already knew the Lord by name and worshiped Him. She and the children were baptized, and when she died, she was called holy.


I thank God today that he does not abandon the little ones, but carries them to Himself and, in this parable, His castle of gold. I am also grateful for his mercy and forgiveness and power to save in the face of even the most grievous of sins. Even so, I cannot help but mourn all of the little lives that are lost, whether by the wise hand of God or by human hands that know not what they do. Most of all, I praise God that, to the best of our knowledge, this child now in my womb is healthy and continues to grow. As He well knows, if this child is not destined for this earth, it will not be because we chose it to be so.