When Your Wife Says Her Womb Is A Tomb
In the short walk from the kitchen to the living room, my phone rang.
You know that sinking feeling you get when you lose sight of your kid for a few seconds too long in the grocery store? Or the bloodletting dread as your child sprints toward a busy street? Or that instantaneous nausea when your child leans over a 3rd floor balcony railing? Not yet known to me was that in mere milliseconds, those feelings would slide into my life as my finger slid the answer button across the phone screen. I answered my wife's call.
Like an accidentally snapped photo when you open the camera app on your phone, seared into my memory is the exact moment I answered. Vivid in my mind is the arrangement of the furniture in the living room. The muffled background voices of the ultrasound tech and doctor were in my left ear, as the laughter of our three boys playing down the hall entered my right ear. They were so graciously unaware of the trauma our family was about to endure again. The crushing sobs of my wife as she wailed the words through the phone, "Charlotte's dead! She doesn't have a heartbeat!"
Only 5 months removed from our first miscarriage, still licking our wounds, we were there again. We believed it was a miracle that Whitney was pregnant again so quickly. This time it was the second trimester. We thought we were in the clear. This time we knew the baby was a girl, an amazing punctuation mark to her three older brothers. This time the baby had a name, Charlotte Mae. This time the grief had more roots to unearth.
THE STATEMENT
One evening a few days later, in the midst of our shared tears, Whitney whispered to me, "I feel like my womb is a tomb."
As a husband, what can you even say to that dark, and astonishingly real, statement? Our lives were a blur. That sinking feeling I described earlier didn’t end when I hit the red button on the phone screen. Like an IMAX movie screen, even the periphery of our vision contained the picture of death. Her pregnant belly a constant visual and tangible reminder. Eventually I whispered back something like, "Yeah." or "That is profound." But silence and tears ruled the conversation, while the restlessness, fear, and loss swirled inside my mind.
Our first miscarriage in October 2025 was a medieval and bloody affair early on in the pregnancy. Our second miscarriage in February 2026 was a clinical and bureaucratic endeavor later on in the pregnancy. Each one brought a unique flavor of agony.
Every woman and couple that has experienced miscarriage has their own version of events, similar in some ways and different in others. But all of them have one thing in common, the very place where life should be, there is death. Growth reverses into decomposition. Vitality gives way to decay. The womb becomes a tomb.
Some might say that description is too strong or too dark. But grief does not need soft or gentle language, it begs for honest language. Death exists. Miscarriage exists. Wombs can, and do, sometimes become tombs.
THE IMMATERIAL
Her womb, now a tomb, did not solely reflect the physical death we were now grieving. Our dreams, and the dreams of our three young boys died that day. Daddy and daughter date nights, dead. Oliver, Dietrich, and Charles protecting and leading their little sister, dead. Wondering where all the time had gone during a late night Walgreens run because Charlotte ran out tampons or pads, dead. Walking Charlotte down the aisle at her wedding, dead. The girl-mom version of my wife that I would get to love and interact with, dead before it ever began.
Gone is the girl-dad version of me that Whitney always hoped to see. The personalities and quirks of our three beautiful boys that Charlotte Mae would have exposed were now a vapor. Her strength and grace in handling three older brothers. Her sassy personality that would have had me wrapped around her finger. A spitting image of her mom, maybe even with my sideways grin...all of it...dead.
C.S. Lewis, in the opening chapter of his book A Grief Observed, discusses his moments of agony and wallowing while remembering his wife. He realized he was misrepresenting his wife in those moments. He had "substituted for the real woman a mere doll to be blubbered over." He then thanks God for the real memories he does have and reflects on those.
As a father of a miscarried child, I am troubled. All I have is the "mere doll." No real memories to ground me. The "A" in the title A Grief Observed is aptly placed. I was jealous that her first breath was with her Heavenly Father, not her earthly one. The only time I will ever interact with my daughter on this side of eternity is when we scatter her ashes. All 590 grams of them. My grief is different, unique in its own way.
We not only grieve the physical reality of death, but we also grieve the immaterial death of our dreams. What could be will, all at once, never come to pass.
THE REFRAME
So many in our world see the trouble and respond to the evil they observe with, "How can there be a God?" An acquaintance once told me something close to, "If there is a god, then miscarriage is proof that God approves of abortion. Because if he does exist, then he is the greatest offender, the greatest abortionist. So many pregnancies end in miscarriage." It is effectively the same question from before, "I see this evil. How can God exist?"
But that wasn’t the question I asked. Nor was the age old question, “Why God?” Those questions didn’t get to the heart of the matter. Dismissing or blaming God felt an easy diversion or a suppression of a deeper question. Both the Christian and non-Christian alike still experience darkness, evil, trouble, and death regardless of if God exists or why things happen.
In the battle through the grief of our second miscarriage, other questions came to me, "Death exists in the place where life should be. My wife's womb became a tomb. Is there anything that redeems this? Will anything make this make any sense?”
Baked into that question, I realized, is two things. First, the answer must address death itself. The answer must directly take on death, even in utero death, and not shy away. The answer cannot avoid it.
Furthermore, we have heard our whole lives that death is a natural part of life, but it doesn't feel natural. Nothing about it fits. It is not the way things should be. We have this same gut feeling about what ought to be when we see someone, especially children, hurting. Or when we notice a leader doing something horrific. Or when abuse and violence are present in someone's home. Or when we are disturbed by someone’s addiction or disease.
We all know these things don't fit. They aren't right. So maybe the answer is similarly "unnatural". Meaning the answer to the unnatural might (at first glance) appear strange, abnormal, or counterintuitive to our usual expectations. To describe this differently, maybe the answer to the thing we know is wrong, to the thing that feels "other" to us, must come from outside of us too.
Second, the answer must address my heart underneath the question. Something aching deep within my chest...will the answer to my question make me okay again? Will the answer bring comfort and resolution?
The wrongness of miscarriage must have an answer that is so wholly satisfactory, that the wrongness is itself reversed. The wrongness of death must have an answer that is so powerfully real, that the wrongness of death itself ceases to exist. I must be convinced and comforted. Is there an answer that ends evil? That solves the problem of death? Is there an answer which reverses the reality of my wife's womb becoming a tomb?
THE BRIDGE
During the second miscarriage, my wife had two surgeries. After the first miscarriage surgery (and before the second emergency surgery Whitney needed over a week later), I was on the preaching rotation at my church and tasked with preaching Daniel chapter 8. That chapter lands in the second half of the book of Daniel which contains apocalyptic visions and dreams. It is confusing stuff. Full of unimaginable oppression and violence. Darkness abounds. Daniel is overwhelmed by the visions he is receiving.
Through that text, God met me in my weakened state. The very last verse of Daniel 8 says the following: "And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it."
The realization dawned on me that in that last verse, Daniel is showing us what faith really is. Sometimes, faith is simply rising and going about your daily tasks. Daniel has faith that the God who had been faithful before would be faithful again. So he rises, and takes a step. He rose and went about the king's business despite his fear. Fear is what if, faith is even if. Daniel had faith. It wasn't idle. It was active.
That final verse of Daniel 8 comforted me during these darkest weeks of my existence. It convinced me, a problem solver, that it is okay to sit in the tension of not understanding everything my wife and I were experiencing. It also helped me to extend trust and relinquish control to God. Give the unnatural things to the one who is over and beyond all that is natural. It also helped me notice that even if God explained the "why" behind losing Charlotte Mae, I would probably still not quite get it. If Daniel didn't understand the visions from God, even after having angels explain them to him, would I really fair any better?
But...that doesn't answer the questions I posed, "Death exists. What will make me okay? How do we make sense of it all?" Faith is certainly part of the answer. It's the appetizer. Faith is the acknowledgement that there might actually be a bridge to the answer. A bridge that gives access to the unknown. A bridge that traverses the chasm of death itself to the place of life. To wholeness. To comfort. To reversing death.
THE ANSWER
When I realized I had to be like Daniel and have faith that the faithful God would be faithful still, I'll be honest...I was not satisfied with that answer. In fact, I was annoyed. To pour salt on a wound, "faithful" was the word that Whitney and I chose to add to our family values in 2026. The irony had a very real sting. I would sing in my mind, "Oh death, I still feel your sting." I needed a reversal of all that was wrong. The comfort and convincing I desperately craved proved elusive.
Am I just going to tell my beautiful, hurting bride that faith in God is the answer? "Just go have more faith, Sweetheart!" I am all for truth and honesty, but what an anemic answer, devoid of compassion, in the midst of trauma. I wanted to give her more than my prayers and presence, but what else was there? Then it clicked.
There is a God who loves us so much that he built a bridge to us so that we could find Him. There is a God who entered the human experience. There is a God who did not stay far away in the clouds, but came near to us. There is a God who knows the depths of the pain and anguish my wife has physically experienced. There is a God who shed actual tears, like I have.
There is a God who loved me and my wife so very much that he fully entered this world, even submitted himself to the very end of the human experience, death itself. He felt all of it just to be close to us and to draw us near to Him. There is a God who did not have to experience death, but chose to anyway.
There is even a God who knows what Charlotte Mae experienced, a mother's womb.
His name is Jesus.
Jesus, God incarnate, came as a baby in his mother's womb. Lived a human life and died a human death. He didn’t avoid death. He intimately knows every part of our existence. He is a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.
But he pulled the great reversal. Jesus did not stay dead. He beat it.
Jesus submitted himself to the full onslaught of our human plight, then rose out of the darkness. Jesus's death on the cross and resurrection from the dead prove that God's purposes cannot be stopped by death. The empty tomb proves God will defeat darkness. Death is not the end of the journey, but it is now the vessel through which all who believe in Jesus now pass to enter eternity.
Jesus traversed the chasm of death so that tombs do not end with death, but tombs are transformed into the wombs of eternal life.
Jesus turned tombs into wombs.
That is the great reversal.
THE NOW
There is a deeply rooted comfort in that understanding. While Whitney and I may never know why, we do get to rest in the reality that death itself has been redeemed. The pain isn’t gone, but the comfort is there. Graciously, I finally understand what Paul meant when he writes, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
The living part is the hard part. We must, like Christ, submit ourselves to every ache and every pleasure of this human life. We still must encounter death. My wife and I will still remember every passing year the losses of our two children during each October and each February. But because we know that Christ resurrected from the dead, death is not the end. Because of Christ, tombs are the passage from this life to the next. Death itself has been reversed.
The gain is not that I will one day twirl Charlotte Mae around and finally have that daddy-daughter dance. It is not that I will get to meet our unnamed child, being rocked in heaven’s nursery by a dear friend of mine, named Steve, who died that same year. The gain is that the pain of death will be over. The gain is that God will make right everything that was completely wrong. The gain is that both my wife and I will be perfectly comforted, resting in the arms of our Savior. The gain is that good really is ahead. The great reversal that began with Christ's incarnation and resurrection will finally be completed. Tombs are now wombs. What could be will, all at once, be redeemed.
