Chapter five- in which God says, "Be still" and I finally say nothing

On the night before my D&C, right after I had told God to leave me alone, I had a dream. (Now, I'm not one of those freaky-deaky people that have visions. I'm not a weirdo. I promise.) But this was a very real and very vivid dream- one that God would use to get my attention because I wouldn't listen any other way.


I was sitting by a river. I felt the cool mist rising from the water and hitting my face, hear the water as it gently licked the smooth river rocks, and smell the crisp morning air. I felt comfortable and safe. Something was compelling me to dip my feet into the water, but I pushed the feeling aside, and told myself that I just wanted to watch for a while. After a few minutes, a man appeared, wading up to his knees in the river. It was as if he knew this stream would take him to his destination, but he was still enjoying every step of his journey as he looked down and watched the clear water pass over his toes. He slowly turned his head, just as content to look at me as the water. He smiled, and said with kind eyes, "Megan, what makes you glad?"

"Well, a lot of things make me happy," I said. "I love my husband, and my family. My friends, my talents, my house. My sisters, my education...." and I talked and talked and talked, listing everything in my life that had blessed me.

"Megan," He said patiently, "If you put your happiness in people and circumstances, when they change, you're not going to be happy anymore."

"Well," I said indignantly, "What am I supposed to be happy about?"

He smiled and in a voice that sounded like it was both spoken and whispered at the same time said, ""The character of God. Because it never changes."


I woke up from the dream the second after those chilling words were uttered. I was angry. "God, I told you I didn't want to talk to you anymore." He must of smiled at me. He patiently waited until I was ready to speak to me again.

I tried and tried and tried to forget about the dream, attempting to shove in into the corners of my mind where I couldn't recall every last detail. But it wouldn't go away. Over and over the word that kept repeating itself was the word, "Glad." Why did He use that word, I thought. "Megan, what makes you glad?" he said. Why not "happy"? Why not "feel blessed"? Or "what do you love?" What was it about that one word that was unsettling? "Go away, thoughts," I said. "It doesn't matter. It was just a stupid dream."

Finally, feeling so overcome by wanting so badly to learn why this may have happened to me once again, wanting a reason, an explanation, I gave in. I went to my Bible. Before my dream, I told God I wasn't going to read it ever again. He must have smiled. He knew exactly what He was doing.

I went to the back of my Bible- the concordance -and found the word "glad." The first verse that was listed was Psalm 46:4. It reads,

"There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the place where the most high dwells."

(Are you getting God-bumps yet? Because I totally did when I read the verse.) The footnotes in my study Bible said that the river represents innumerable blessings that God allows in your life.

It made me think about the word glad and what it means. When used in context, it means "to be happy now for something that happened in the past." As in: "I'm glad you came. I'm glad you said that, etc." And it hit me. There would come a day when I would be glad that this happened to me. It wasn't going to be anytime in the near future, I knew that. But one day, I was going to look back at my life and be glad that I lost this baby. God was going to use it somehow to bring glory to Himself. I didn't know how. And I thought, "Maybe this baby would not have lived, and God knew that I wouldn't have been able to lose it later." And I was thankful for what God may have saved me from. And then I thought, "The children that I will have later will only be here because this one child isn't." And then I was thankful for what God saved me for. And then I said to God, "Thank you for loving me, for knowing what is best. If you choose not to bless me with children, I'm glad that atleast I know that I am your child." And then I was thankful that God saved me at all.

Gladness: Being thankful for what God saved you from.

Hope: Being thankful for what God saved you for.

Peace: Being thankful that God saved you at all.

We found out that we had lost a little girl. We named her Maggie which means "a pearl." She was our pearl of great price. The one who gave her life so that others could live. I can't wait to meet her. She has blond hair and blue eyes. I know that because I had a dream that she was playing and picking flowers with birds flying overhead

near a river.