“There is no great loss without some small gain.” Little House on the Prairie

Ethan’s Mom: I wrote this quote down after listening to Little House on the Prairie on audiobook with my kids. At the very end of the book, the Ingalls family is forced to leave their homestead after they had worked so hard to build and furnish their house, to set up their farm, and to invest in their future. Pa had bought potatoes to use as seeds to grow a potato crop the next year, but they could not take them in their wagon to the next destination. So, they ate the potatoes in one great feast. Laura describes how delicious those potatoes were in great detail, and then Pa says, “There is no great loss without some small gain.” My eyes were filling with tears as I drove home from ballet lessons, listening to the last chapters where they say their final goodbyes to the little house. It seemed so unfair, and I couldn’t believe Pa would be grateful for the potatoes. It literally was “small potatoes” compared to the difficulty he was facing with his family (terrible pun, I know).

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately (as you could have probably guessed from my last post on lessons I learned from Ruth). I have been reading a book called, Empty Cradle, Broken Heart. It is kind of a What to Expect When You are Expecting for infant loss. This is not written from a Christian worldview, so it has some sections that have been difficult to read. However, it mostly has been validating to read about commonalities across parents who have endured similar tragedies. I came across this passage the other day:

“After your baby dies, recognizing something positive is a way to make meaning out of enduring this tragedy. At first, you may be too distraught or too angry to even consider anything positive. But when you can try to assess the salvage from the wreckage… people might get philosophical, offering that ‘things happen for a reason’ or ‘whatever happens is for your higher good.’ But finding the positives and applying philosophies are tasks that only you can undertake, when you are ready, and not when you’re in shock, infuriated, or in the depths of despair. Plus these sayings are more easily applied to trials such as taking two years to find a job, when, in the end, you land the perfect position. But a long job hunt is not a traumatic bereavement. There is just no comparison.”

Amen and amen.

Later that night, I read that day’s entry (November 4th) in Streams in the Desert. The devotional used the experience of being in captivity as an analogy for an exceptionally difficult circumstance you cannot control or escape. That immediately resonated with me. I remember telling Ethan’s dad on several occasions during the early days that I felt like I had been sentenced to a lifetime in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. There is no end and no escape. I do, in fact, feel like a captive.

The entry goes on to say:

“In order to receive any benefit from our captivity, we must accept the situation and be determined to make the best of it. Worrying over what we have lost or what has been taken from us will not make things better but will only prevent us from improving what remains. We will only serve to make the rope around us tighter if we rebel against it.”

Those words still sting, 20 months later. Any mention of acceptance will bring a physical reaction from deep within my gut. I don’t want to accept this. As many times as I have read that accepting the death doesn’t mean condoning or agreeing with it, I still don’t want to accept that my baby died because that feels like I admitting that I am OK with it. I will never, ever be OK with it.

Even so, I am trying to work on finding the small gain within my great loss. I wrote about my desire for redemption, and how God impressed on my heart that redeeming this situation is not my job. I wanted to share these words with those are walking through grief with friends or family members — You can’t redeem this situation either.

The entry ends with these words, “Make this story your own, dear captive, and God will give you ‘songs of the night’ (Job 35:10) and will turn your ‘blackness into dawn’ (Amos 5:8).” All of the parents in this horrible “club” have to find a way to make this story their own, and as much as you would like to help hurry the process along for your grieving loved one, you really cannot make it go any faster.

If you find yourself now sitting beside someone grieving a child, take care not to step into the role of finding a silver lining or interpreting what God means to do in and through their situation. It certainly is not as easy as finding the magic Bible verse or suggesting that “everything happens for a reason.” Doing that is a defense mechanism for you, not encouragement for the mourner. I know it takes courage to sit with me in my grief. I know that you would rather think that everything happens for a reason because somehow that means there is a reason it won’t happen to you. Just like me, my loss forces you to acknowledge some uncomfortable truths about life and God.

If you have the courage, walk alongside as they find their way. Pray for them and for the discernment to know how to encourage them. Help with surviving children or errands or whatever you can do to allow your loved one to do their “grief work” as counselors like to call it. Remind them, as often as possible, that you love them. Love is, after all, the greatest thing we can give.

“And now there remain: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13, Amplified Version).