I’ve never felt a more desperate, sick feeling in my heart than did when the nurse came in so late that night and said that we needed to go down to the NICU right away to be with my daughter. Babies born after 32 weeks almost always survive and she had been doing so well!
Labor had been hard. I couldn’t walk yet, and as they pushed my wheelchair down that long hospital hall my heart cried out to God as it never had before, “No God, please save her little life!!”
I hadn’t gotten to hold her yet. They put her dainty little body in my arms and suddenly I felt so weak. Her face was perfectly sweet, her curly red hair was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. She was suffering and I could do nothing at all. I longed to die for her but I had no power to do that. I was helpless.
Did she even know I was her mommy? Did she know all of the aching love that filled our hearts that night as we watched her slip away? Did I really have to go back to my hospital room that night and listen to the baby in the next room cry? I prayed in the dark all throughout the night for a miracle, but none came.
I’d never been brought so low. Going home and looking at the future stretching out before me without her… I couldn’t imagine enduring such an awful thing. All my heart could do inside me was throb with the horrible realization that cried out in me “she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.” It felt like someone was taking a baseball bat and slamming it into my chest. I wanted to run away, I wanted to somehow ball up and escape the pain, to be rescued from it, but I knew I couldn’t be. With each blow it was as though I was bursting and ripping apart with pain that no heart, no matter how strong, could contain. And there was something else, something I hadn’t expected, something that seemed to suck away all my energy and leave me weak and trembling. It was fear. I was afraid of facing the future without her, afraid as I thought of the long, long years that I would have to miss her. I ached for my little boy, afraid that he would grow up lonely without a little buddy to play with. I was afraid that my body couldn’t protect my babies, but would only leave my children vulnerable no matter how much I wanted to keep them safe. (Ethan had been premature, and then Ada was significantly more premature, and as a result was born weak and unable to fight off whatever it was that caused her death. How was I supposed to face it if things continued on the way they had been?) Then there was the fear that I could never feel happy again… Not really. My feelings told me that nothing could really bring me comfort or happiness except having her in my arms again, and that was something I could not hope for in this lifetime. It didn’t really matter if these fears may have been unreasonable. They were relentlessly real to me.
In that place, God met me. When I did not have the strength to lift up my head, He came near just like He promised He would. In that storm of awful pain that no one else could quite understand, He did. He had had to watch his son die too. He tenderly reminded my heart that He had not rescued His son because He had wanted me to have hope now for the little daughter that I had been unable to rescue. He had wanted me to see that there was victory over death, even my baby’s death. He wanted me to know and trust that He can comfort, and that when death defeats us and robs us of hope, He defeats death and gives hope back to us.
I remember one night that was especially hard, I prayed to Him and said “God, it seems like you’re cruel to let this happen when I begged You not to. Please show me that you’re not.”
He met me with love. He met me with understanding. He met me and made me know that I didn’t have to have “holy feelings” right now. He met me and didn’t make me feel like I had to rise above my circumstances in a spiritual façade. He met me and let me be honest and bare with Him. He met me each day with His precious word like a lifeline for my soul. He met me with the assurance that He is always good. He met me and reminded me that He hates sin, because sin has broken our world and causes horrible things like this to be possible. He met me and reminded me that this is not how He created things to be, that His work is to heal what is broken. He met me and reminded me that when I feel like what I hope for is gone (like the disciples on the road to Emmaus), that even then my Hope is walking with me.
He met me in tenderness. I knew it was tenderness because I knew that He had suffered unspeakably too.
He met me practically to care for my needs. Wonderful friends and loved ones brought food, sent gifts, and showed so much tenderness, concern and love (even after the shock faded away). He gave me a husband who would not leave me alone to suffer, no matter how long the healing took. He rallied tenderness around me in my family. He reminded me that my arms were not empty and there was a little boy needing love and care.
He helped me to see that even when He doesn’t rescue in the way I ask Him to, He still rescues. He convinced my heart again and again that He was good.
Why not in the way I asked? That might be something I’ll never know until heaven, but I think maybe He has given little pieces of understanding.
The first is that Christians are not immune to the brokenness of a sin-broken world just because we’re Christians. It will affect us. There is a part of me that is glad for this. What if that wasn’t the case? How could I ever share hope with someone who was suffering if I had been rescued from every suffering? It would be foolishness in their ears.
The second is the simple passage that says “but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth or rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” My heart has a new cord that draws me heavenward. My little treasure there is untouched now by the harm that always threatens here, and I am given both comfort and hope. I am given a constant reminder of the beautiful incorruptibility of heavenly treasures. It makes me long that all of my greatest treasures here will also be there one day and I pray for that often when I think of my son. If only his little soul could be drawn to the eternal hope that God offers to him… that hope that is incorruptible and free of harm. This is what I want to invest my heart in for his sake.
Last, suffering this has made one thing so real to me, it is my own weakness. All that I ever do, all that I muster, all that I work at, all the greatest advancements that I can reach, all of my power and strength come to an abrupt end in the face of death. It is so with all of us. You’ve probably heard the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In my case that was utter nonsense. What didn’t kill me made me realize that I am weak and I have no power in the face of death. I need Someone stronger than me in that place or I cannot face it. When that Someone is found, and when He shows me victory over death I can hope and rest safely again because not only do I discovered that there is such a One, but I discover that He is good. When my strength is spent He cares about me and He is the One who is able to carry me through.
Psalm 9:13 “Have mercy on me, O Lord! Consider my trouble from those who hate me, You who lift me up from the gates of death.”
Psalm 27:13-14 “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!”