These words should never go together. I lost a baby last year. I'm working at Children's hospital this month, reading EEGs, including at least one that I dictated as "electro-cerebral silence". ECS. Brain death. And today, we will go to a funeral for a 36-week-gestation baby whose heart stopped while he was still hiding, waiting to show his face to his expectant parents. My eyes fill with tears at the thought of them, a family of five that is now a family of four. I ache for them. I ask why.
God just doesn't tell us why, though. I know there is an answer to the question, and the challenge to me is to believe that the answer is good enough. That in the end, all is as it should be.
The author of Hebrews refers to an earlier Biblical story about a man who was about to lose his only son at the command of a God he didn't understand but was willing to trust. God never told Abraham what would happen after he sacrificed Isaac, and I've wondered what made it possible for him to trust God through such a huge thing when I can barely trust God over mundane, trivial things. Hebrews says this: " Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death".
Abraham knew that God was good, and so he came up with his own version of the story.
In the end, that wasn't actually what happened. Abraham got the story wrong. God never had to raise Isaac from the dead because he was never in danger after all. But Abraham needed something to hold on to, a story that had some hope, and so he created one in his head based upon the God he knew. And while the story he dreamed up didn't get the details right, it did get the gist of it.
The ironic thing is that if Abraham had been "realistic", then he really would have gotten the story wrong. His imagined good was more accurate that what seemed realistic, what seemed obvious and imminent.
Today, I am letting myself create good stories about what seems to be a realistically, obviously, purely bad story. I know the God who is writing it, and I trust Him, and therefore maybe the truer thing is that these children are now cosmic superheroes who are giggling and running along beautiful heavenly beaches. Maybe this is not tragedy, but ultimate victory. Maybe it's a little bit of both.
1 comment:
Death, especially of a child, is one of life's hardest trials. God never promised us an easy road, but He does walk all of our rocky roads with us. The days I miss my sweet boy the most I still rejoice, for I know it is selfish of me to wish him with me when he is in The Perfect Place. There are no answers for the pain on this side of Heaven, but we know God is good all the time and His ways are higher than ours. Thanks again for sharing your heart. You're awesome.
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