Suffering, Featured, Family, Faith
Courtney Reissig
Sin is Like Cancer

One of the scariest things in the early days of my diagnosis is that the pathology was unclear. Best case scenario, the cancer was contained. Worst case scenario, it had spread beyond what they could imagine. This fear was heightened by the fact that all the normal tests that catch cervical cancer failed to detect mine. I was diagnosed long after they usually diagnose women. And that terrified every medical professional I saw.

Sin is Like Cancer

Suffering

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The White Doves

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The White Doves

One of the hardest parts about moving on from the hospital experience is moving on from the reality that life hung in the balance every single day we were in that hospital. With a placenta abruption time is of the essence, and because I had a partial abruption I was always hovering over the reality of a full abruption happening at any moment. For context, a full abruption means almost certain death for the mother and the baby in a matter of minutes. A full abruption gives no warning until it is too late, and then you are on the clock to save mom and baby. That is where we lived for three weeks, death crouching at our door. Every day we begged God not to let it walk right through to take Ben and me.

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What the Hospital Taught Me About Trying to Do It All

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What the Hospital Taught Me About Trying to Do It All

I joked after my book was finished that now I could go back to doing the work of the home again. I thought finishing the book meant I needed to get back to actually doing the work. I needed the perspective and the headspace to do it. But what I didn’t know is that I needed to experience the work. God wasn’t concerned about me getting back to work. He was concerned about humbling me and making a recipient of the work.

Of all the things I wrote in Glory in the Ordinary, perhaps the hardest thing for me to accept in the book is the fact that I can’t do it all. I wrote it. I’ve spoken about it. But I have a hard time believing it and living it out.

And then I went to the hospital.

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God's Purposes Are Always Personal

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God's Purposes Are Always Personal

The days leading up to Mother’s Day can be hard. Even though I am no longer a barren woman, I still struggle with my own difficulties and guilt as Mother’s Day approaches. For the infertile or the mother struggling with loss, Mother’s Day is acutely difficult. It’s almost as if everything around you is reminding you of what you don’t have—what you long for but can’t have. And it can be painfully isolating.

The barren women of scripture didn’t have a national holiday to remind them of their lack, but they surely had their fill of individuals (Gen. 16:1-5, 1 Sam. 1:4-9). One person’s celebration is often the seat of another’s deep pain. The pages of scripture are filled with women who longed for wombs to bear children, who longed for children to be restored to health and wholeness, of women in deep pain over grief.

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The Fearful Pregnancy

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The Fearful Pregnancy

It’s not the baby that scares me, it’s all that could go wrong. And with my history, I have had enough go wrong to know that even a growing baby and strong heartbeat don't guarantee a positive outcome. Looking down the mountain of pregnancy, I know there is only one way out of this thing. I will deliver this baby either in a rush of exhilarating joy, or a rush of grief. It sounds morbid, but of all the things that I’ve faced in my life, pregnancy is one that has scared me most. I spend the better part of nine (more like ten) months in a moderate state of panic.

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Black History Month and the Women Who Are Nameless (An adapted repost)

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Black History Month and the Women Who Are Nameless (An adapted repost)

When was the last time you went to your doctor? How about your OBGYN? Did you wonder how this specialty of medicine came into existence? I hadn’t given it much thought until I listened to a program on NPR a few weeks ago about the father of modern gynecology—J. Marion Sims.

But I don’t want to talk about him, at least not directly. February is Black History Month (and March is Women's History Month), so I want to talk about the women who made his discoveries possible. The women he practiced on. The women he studied. And more importantly, I want to talk about the women he exploited to find cures to ailments many of us no longer are at risk of facing.

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On Pregnancy and the Incarnation

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On Pregnancy and the Incarnation

Through the years I’ve grown so familiar with the Christmas story that I often miss the wonder that Mary actually carried the Son of God in her womb, in the same way that millions upon millions of women have done before her. The Christmas story is familiar, but the means he came to earth is utterly astounding. 

I’ve been pregnant or nursing during a few Christmases, so when the Christmas season rolls around each year I think about it in a different light than I did the many years before I ever carried a child in my womb. The familiarity of the story coupled with the familiarity of motherhood puts the entire birth narrative in a different light for me. For one, I’m often astounded that the God of the universe, the God who created all things, the God who sustains all things by the word of his power, came to earth in the form of a baby. What’s even more astounding to me is that he went through the entire process of birth in order to come into this world. He lived in a uterus. He came through a birth canal. He nursed at his mother’s breasts. He came in the most vulnerable, humble way, through a broken means of bringing life into the world.

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When Birth Disappoints You

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When Birth Disappoints You

“I’m just so disappointed,” I told Daniel in the weeks following my delivery of Seth. After two miscarriages and a complicated pre-term delivery with the twins, I just wanted some normalcy in my birthing experience. I wanted all the warm fuzzies that come with a screaming, slimy freshly born baby being thrust upon your chest. I wanted the adrenaline rush that propels mothers into the rigors of the newborn days. I wanted calm. I wanted to remember it all. I wanted an experience I could share with my friends when they visited me, and my plump nearly nine pound newborn baby. I wanted an experience of strength, knowing I did something powerful. 

Instead I got twenty six hours of labor, a baby out of position, a dropping heart rate, and a blood sugar crash (I had gestational diabetes). What started with promise ended in a C-section at 3:50 A.M. 

And to this day, I barely remember any of it.

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Job, Jesus, and Unanswered Questions

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Job, Jesus, and Unanswered Questions

“How does God treat his friends?”

This is the question posed by pastor and author, Christopher Ash, in his sermon series on the book of Job. He gets his question from a book of the same name, one that he says is one of the best books on Job out there. 

It’s a startling question, really. It assumes that God has friends. It assumes we can be his friends. It assumes that a benevolent God could (and does) treat his friends like anything less than our definition of friendship. Job is a startling book as well. The suffering experienced by Job, as Ash says, is more than what any human being will likely ever endure all at one time. We all probably know people who have lost children, their livelihood, their property, their relationships, or their health. But few know people who have lost all of these things in rapid succession. To apply this question to Job and his experience asks a very difficult question of God, and forces us to come to terms with the reality of suffering. Job is a book for those who wrestle, and as one who wrestles often, I am thankful for this book.

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Where Were You On September 10?

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Where Were You On September 10?

I remember where I was on September 10, 2001. Do you? 

Of course, I remember where I was on September 11, but September 10 is etched in my mind as clearly as the dark day that followed it. I remember what I wore (black turtleneck sleeveless shirt and jeans). I remember what I did (bowling with friends from work). And I remember the blissful ignorance that characterized my life that I spent the better part of the last fifteen years trying to recreate.

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When the Memory of Grief Lingers

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When the Memory of Grief Lingers

The other day I was trying to remember something that happened a few months ago and the details all seemed a bit fuzzy to me. I have entire blocks of time where I have vague memories of the outline of what happened. I don’t typically struggle with remembering the details of my life (it’s a curse and a blessing), but as I get older there are only so many memories my brain can hold.

Grief, though, lingers in my memory whether I like it or not.

August is a weird month for me. There are many memories of August floating in my brain—memories of sorrow and memories of joy, memories of hope, mixed with memories of fear.