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Two Years

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“There isn’t any good way to start writing about this. My son is dead. I can write that as a definitive statement but it doesn’t feel like that. It really feels like he is just staying somewhere else for a moment and we will go pick him up. But, of course, we would never do that with a two-month old. We would keep him close; watch his every move; hold him over and over. And then there is the fact that I saw him on that table in the hospital laying still. And then I saw him in that tiny coffin at the funeral home. Those are images I am certain I will never forget.

“….

“This was the worst day of my life. It will always be the worst day of my life. I will never forget it. I will never be whole from it. I will never understand it. My baby, my little caboose, my Ethan, is gone. And my single hope is that one day I will see him again. I will live the rest of my years waiting for that day.”

Ethan’s Dad: Those were the first and last paragraphs of my first written expression about Ethan that I wrote two years ago, soon after he died.  I will not share the rest of that writing because it is too personal, too raw — too much even for this space. But for me those first and last paragraphs are fitting on this day — this day that marks two years from the moment Ethan left us. They are fitting because no matter how much has changed over the past two years, those thoughts remain the same.

Much has changed. I no longer always feel cold or desolate or listless. I now see Ethan’s mom smile when his twin brother does something amusing. I still sit beside his grave, but not with the feeling that the whole world could be rushing past and I won’t care because there is nothing else of importance to do. That dagger in my heart pokes intermittently rather than slicing with incessant fury.

And yet . . . and yet every now and then it still seems to me as if Ethan is just staying somewhere else overnight and we will wake up and see him in the morning. I still long to hold him. I still remember him lying on that metal table, unmoving.  I still remember the awful coffin and a quiet that shattered our world. I still know it to be the absolute worst day of my life, even amidst the experiences of other days of profound fear and heaviness.

This is not a day of celebration. It is not a day of fond farewells and whimsical dreams. It is a day of darkness, a day of mourning, a day of counting an immeasurable loss. It is a day I would never wish upon anyone in all the world, no matter how otherwise evil a person may be, and yet I know all too well it is unfortunately shared by many who also have lost a child, perhaps by some reading these very words.

To you all I can say is that I also still have that single hope — actually stronger now than when I wrote those words two years ago — a hope that I will see Ethan again because of the One seated on the throne who says “Behold, I make all things new!” (Revelation 21:5)

I will not pretend that this hope makes it all better here and now. It does not. This day is still excruciating. This is a loss I still cannot fully fathom. My life, my entire family’s life, will always be different — be less — than what it was to be with Ethan among us. I cannot comprehend how God will rectify such an absence. All I know is that He promises that He will.  This is why Jesus came:

“To proclaim freedom for the captives,
to release prisoners from the darkness,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God.

To comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

“To bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.

“They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)

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The Silence of God

GethsemaneEthan’s Dad: “Silence is golden.” Except when it’s not. You might think that when there are four children 8 years of age and under running around you, you have more than enough noise, and you long for quiet. But when you know there is a voice missing, jabbering from another two year-old that you should be hearing in the din, the chaos isn’t enough. Instead what you hear is a sound of silence that pierces your soul.

As Ethan’s mom hinted at in her last post, lately I also have been thinking about another kind of silence: the silence of God.

“It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God.”

-Andrew Peterson (The Silence of God)

There seems to be an impression among some Christians that God is only silent when we are distant from Him. That is to say, the only times we don’t hear from God are when we are enmeshed in deliberate sin or when we don’t like the answer we are getting about a request we have made to God. But this is, at best, only a half-truth.

To begin with, unless you are so distant from God that your conscience is dulled, the fact is that a Christian does hear from God quite loudly in the midst of deliberate sin. God lets us know in no uncertain terms that what we are doing is wrong. That’s why it is a deliberate sin. And if we don’t like what God is telling us when we ask for something, then He isn’t actually being silent, is He?

But I think in a way what these Christians are really saying is that God is never actually silent; we are just turning a deaf ear to Him. Now, this might sound like good theology to you, but as well-meaning as it may be, it is flat wrong. The silence of God is a very a real and agonizing experience for believers the world over.

“It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God.”

Moreover, the Bible does not shy away from this fact.

Job suffered with excruciating pain and loss for a stretch of time before God spoke to Him, and even when God broke the silence He did not fully explain to Job all of the reasons for his suffering. (See Job 38-41).  When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were sentenced to die in the fiery furnace, Scripture records that the three of them stated that “even if [God] does not [save us from the blazing furnace], we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (Daniel 3:18). The clear implication is that the three men were not told by God beforehand what would happen to them when they were thrown into the fire. In the period of time between the Old and New Testaments, the people of Israel lived for over 400 years without any revelation from God about their salvation through a Messiah. John the Baptist passed time in prison under Herod without hearing anything from God as to whether his ministry had made any real difference. Finally John — in apparent desperation — sent some of his followers to Jesus to ask Him whether He really was the Messiah. (See Matthew 11:2). The Disciples spent the Saturday after Jesus’ death in despondency and silence (a period worth pondering in a future post).

Are we to write off all of these people’s recorded experiences as false impressions about God? If those examples are not enough, how about Jesus himself, who exclaimed from the cross: “My God my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

“Oh,” you say, “that was different because Jesus was taking on the sin of the world in that moment. God had to turn away. The same is not true for us.” But I think Jesus’ question was expressing the culmination of His entire experience during the crucifixion. It’s likely that God’s silence started the moment Jesus was led away from the Garden of Gethsemane by the Sanhedrin’s guards. Jesus came to earth and experienced what we experience. Did He bear more pain that we ever will or could during the crucifixion? Absolutely. But Jesus’ experience with the silence of God — perhaps more than anything else could — reflected His humanity.

“And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God.”

In asking this question — “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” — Jesus echoed the words of David as recorded in Psalm 22. So David too experienced this silence. And, in fact, the Psalms are full of reflections on the silence of God. For instance, David in Psalm 13 inquires:

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

“Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.”

Psalm 42, the beginning of which is often (and I believe wrongly) quoted in a happy fashion, says:

“As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
‘Where is your God?'”

Psalm 77, which to me is one of the best passages in all of Scripture, pulls no punches:

“I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

“I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.
You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.
I thought about the former days,
the years of long ago;
I remembered my songs in the night.
My heart meditated and my spirit asked:

“‘Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?'”

And then there is Psalm 88, which is perhaps the most depressing expression of God’s silence in all of Scripture. It contains lines such as:

“You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

“….

“I call to you, Lord, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
“Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

“But I cry to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Why, Lord, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?”

Why would God include these expressions of anguish in Scripture if the experiences were not real, and, perhaps more importantly, appropriate? God does not shy away from His silence, so why should we? The expressions of silence are there often enough that we are almost forced to face the prospect that the silence is purposeful. So why would God sometimes choose to be silent in our most painful moments, the very moments when you would think we need Him the most?

When we ask the question “why did this happen?” what we really mean is: Why weren’t You there, God? Why didn’t You stop it? Isn’t that, in part, what is behind Jesus’ haunting question: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Yet, so often when we ask that question, what follows is silence. In our case, we screamed the question, over and over: Why did Ethan die? Why did you not tell us earlier that he wasn’t breathing? Why didn’t you stop this? Why couldn’t the paramedics save him? Why didn’t you bring Ethan back, like you did the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17-7-24), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:40-42, 49-56), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). We received no answer, no comfort, no reassurance. Just cold, dark, silence.

It has taken me a while to realize, as I indicated above, that perhaps this silence was intentional. In fact, I think the “Why” questions might be important not so much because of answers you hope to receive, but instead precisely because they are accompanied by silence. It does not seem so at the time, but if God is not going to supernaturally intervene, then silence is really the only appropriate response in a horrific moment like that because there is no answer that will satisfy other than “I will give you your son back.” Yet God has already chosen, for whatever reason, not to provide the satisfying answer. And He is no fool. God knows that when that is the case, the response from His child will be anger, disappointment, confusion, and despair. The truth is, in that God-forsaken moment — and for a while afterward — if His answer was not “I will save Ethan,” I did not want to hear from God and He knew it.

I think that the silence occurs because the answer to “Why?” will not satisfy if it does not include an immediate fix to the brokenness. And when you sit in the silence what you start to realize is that God is not who you thought He was. This may sound like a negative thing, but that is only the case if you think you have God figured out. And if you think that, then your God is too small because He fits into your finite mind. He stretches far beyond that.

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’
declares the Lord.
“‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.'” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The unvarnished truth is that God is a lot more concerned with how we answer the “Who” questions of life than He is with answering our “Why” questions. For one inquiring mind, Jesus answered the question: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29-37). The answer is: everyone. On another occasion, Jesus asked His Disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” And Jesus approved Peter’s answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:15-17).

And in the silence of God, this last question is the most important question of all: when your world comes crashing down around you, when the unthinkable tragedy is your reality, when you weep until you have no strength to weep anymore (1 Samuel 30:4), who do you say Jesus is? If He is just some friend or spiritual mentor or great teacher, He is useless in that moment. But if He is who Peter said He was, then He makes all the difference in the world.

Because that person, that Savior, cares for you beyond all measure and He proved it by dying for you. He didn’t just tell us He loves us, He demonstrated it in the most agonizing way conceivable to our finite minds, by dying on an instrument of torture. And beyond that, if He is who Peter said He was, then Jesus isn’t even just some martyr who died a horrible death in our place. He is alive, meaning He overcame death, and He is capable of extending, and eager to offer, that same gift to us — and to our little ones whose lives were so tragically cut short.

This is what real faith is about: it is about foregoing the “Why” based on the “Who.” If we can accept that, then we can keep on living — if not in complete peace — then at least in genuine hope. “And this hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who God has given to us.” (Romans 5:5).

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Weep Until You Have No Strength to Weep

Ethan’s Mom: This week was pretty weird in our BSF study of People of the Promised Land. The assigned chapters in 1 Samuel included Saul meeting with a medium (1 Sam. 28:3-25) (that is a whole other post for a different day, and probably not one written by me) and the study questions included one about experiencing the silence of God (also a tender subject with my husband and I). Ethan’s dad had an intense conversation in his small group for that portion of his discussion last night, speaking up about how the silence cannot always be explained by unrepentant sin driving a wedge between you and God. My group did not take that direction in answering that question, but I had my own moment of “is this really how we are going to answer this question?” a little later on in our discussion.

Here’s the background (1 Sam. 30): David and his men were between a rock and a hard place – they had been living in Philistia, hiding from Saul and deceiving the Philistine king Achish into thinking they were allies against Israel. For a minute, it seems David is going to be conscripted into fighting against Israel, but God mercifully provides away out of the bed that David has made before he has to lie in it. His men return to their home base at Ziklag to find that an enemy clan has burned it to the ground and kidnapped the wives and children of all the soldiers, including David. Verse 4 says, “So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep.” That verse is what I wrote down to answer the first question on that section: “Describe the scene at Ziklag. How did David and his men respond?”

No one immediately jumped to field that question, and my group leader tried rephrasing it. “What was the first thing David does when he returns to this scene?” she asks. I replied, “wept until he had no strength to weep.” She seemed a little surprised and said, “Well, yes, but… what was next? What did he do? In verse 6?” Someone else provided the answer she was looking for, that David found strength in the Lord. She follows up with “Then in verse 9?” Someone else answers, “David inquired of God.”

First of all, if someone “does something next” that is not, by definition, the thing that he does first. But I was taken aback by more than mere semantics. Glossing over the fact that David’s initial reaction was to weep until he had no strength left to weep totally discounts his grief over losing his family. Yes, they were kidnapped and eventually rescued, but initially David didn’t know their fate. For all he knows, he will never see his family again, and he is leading hundreds of men who will never see their families again.

Let’s allow them to weep before we are demanding that they find strength in God, shall we?

I firmly believe after my experience, watching my husband grieve, and reading several books/memoirs by fellow mourners, that the tears must come first, then the strength in the Lord, and then the inquiring of God.

In the lecture that followed, the teaching leader made a statement that struck me as she was summarizing the divergent paths of Saul and David. “No one drifts toward God.” While we do not earn God’s mercy or grace towards us, faith does require a conscious choice to seek God. This has never before been so clear to me. Sometimes I feel like not only am I not drifting to Him, I am fighting against a strong current of pain and doubt as I struggle to swim towards Him. But in those initial months of shock, confusion, and disbelief, I could do nothing but be tossed by the waves. I could not even ask why or articulate to God that I was angry or sad or anything.  It was a terrible place to be, but I couldn’t just sit up and say, “let me go and find strength in God.”

Choosing to trust God and find strength in him requires more effort than I had for quite some time.  But eventually, I could.  I think I am just now maybe beginning to move to the inquiring of God stage — to trust that He will not only keep me from drowning in a pit of despair (finding strength in Him) but also guide me into an abundant life as I inquire of Him what to do next (wow, that was even just hard to type, I am definitely just beginning to move into that stage!)

So I want to encourage you, whoever you are, that if you are faced with a devastating loss, it is OK to weep until you have no strength left to weep.  Don’t let anyone rush you through this — the time frame that is right for you is known only by you and the Lord.  You do not have to find strength in God or have stalwart trust that He has a plan for you in the midst of this tragedy.  There will come a time when you will have to look to someone or something for strength to resume your life, and at that point, you will have to make a conscious choice to find your strength in God.  He will strengthen you and eventually you will then be able to inquire of God — looking for redemption in the midst of your tragedy and discerning “what is His good, pleasant, and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2) for your life, including your life after loss.

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When Love Refrains: What Else the Story of Lazarus Tells us about God

Lazarus 1Ethan’s Dad: My wife has mentioned in this space before that sitting in church can be a trying experience for us. We never know when a song, a prayer, or a statement made in Sunday School banter might open the floodgates of sadness that reside within us from losing Ethan. Of course, this is also true in everyday encounters, but we have found that the likelihood of it occurring is magnified in church because mortality and miracles are topics of discussion in church much more often than in everyday life.

One of those occasions occurred this past Sunday when our pastor was giving a sermon titled “Who is Jesus.” It was part of a series he has been doing in which he has listed three descriptions of Jesus in each sermon and expounded upon them. The first of those descriptions this past Sunday was that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.” This is a description Jesus gave about himself that is recorded in the book of John, chapter 11, that tells the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  In one part of the story, Jesus has a captivating conversation with Martha, the brother of Lazarus.  Just after Martha informed Jesus that Lazarus has died, Jesus said:

“Your brother will rise again.”

“Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He would believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’

“‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, who was to come into the world.’” (John 11:23-27)

Our pastor was, of course, right that Jesus’s pronouncement about himself in this passage is foundational to the Christian life because it revealed to Martha (and all who would later read those words) who Jesus was in the grandest eternal sense and what they must do to inherit eternal life, which was simply to believe in who He really was. My problem was not with the pastor’s reference to this exchange or to the story of Lazarus in general. My issue was with the pastor’s use of something Martha said right before this part of their conversation.

When Martha first heard that Jesus had arrived in Bethany — the town where she, her sister Mary, and Lazarus had lived — she said to him, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (v. 21). To fully understand this comment, you have to know that several days earlier Martha and Mary had sent Jesus a message informing Him that Lazarus was sick, and they no doubt had expected Jesus to come quickly to Lazarus’s aid.  Instead, Jesus arrived in Bethany four days after Lazarus had died.  Jesus’s delay piled confusion on top of the crushing grief Martha was feeling because of her brother’s death.

Our pastor chose to focus on those two little words near the beginning of Martha’s statement: “if only.” The pastor did a riff on how we all have “if only” times in our lives, i.e, times when we believe that things could have been different if only God had acted or if only we had made a different choice. He made some statement about how, in thinking this way, we are often more focused on temporal things while God is concerned with eternal matters. Again, that is a true statement in itself (to a degree). And I believe the pastor’s point was that whatever those “if only” moments might be in our lives, Jesus is the ultimate answer to them because He is the resurrection and the life.

Now, as I have said, I had no theological problem with any of this in the abstract. My issue was that as soon as the pastor started talking about “if only” moments, my mind (and my wife’s) immediately veered to March 10, 2017, and that horrific period when we literally screamed for God to save our precious Ethan. We begged; we pleaded; we cried oceans of tears. . . . And nothing happened.

So, here is the thing about Martha’s statement that the pastor chose to gloss over: she was right. If Jesus had been there before Lazarus had died, He could have saved Lazarus from death. Indeed, in all likelihood Martha had seen Jesus do it before for total strangers. All she was wondering was: why didn’t Jesus come earlier and save His friend Lazarus? And is that really such a bad thing to wonder about?

I don’t think so. For one thing, Jesus did not rebuke Martha in any way for her implied question. In fact, if she had not wondered about it, I think it would mean that Martha did not really believe that Jesus was who He said He was. But we know this isn’t true because Martha gave not one, but two great statements of faith. Right after Martha made her “if only” statement, she said: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” (v. 22). And then when Jesus asks her if she believes that He is the resurrection and the life, Martha responds unequivocally: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who was to come into the world.” (v. 27).

As one who has been where Martha was, in the throes somber grief, I have to say that this is a wonderful testimony on her part. The Holy Spirit must have encouraged her, but it is truly admirable that Martha did not let her deep sorrow swallow her faith in Jesus at that moment. The sincerity of Martha’s faith practically explodes off the page because of the palpably desperate moment in which she expresses those statements. It is not unlike that moment when a thief hanging on a cross, in the midst of excruciating agony, expressed his faith in Jesus even as Jesus was on a cross right beside him (Luke 23:40-43), or when Stephen asked the Lord to forgive his executioners as they stone him and he proclaimed that he saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand in heaven. (Acts 7:54-60).  To proclaim Jesus as Lord when doubt has enveloped the heart and darkness is one’s sole companion: those are the testimonies that speak most to me because I know first-hand how difficult it becomes in that lonely place to cling to this truth.

But as commendable as Martha’s faith is, do not lose sight of the fact that, at the same time, she questioned Jesus’s timing. For faith and questions are not incompatible; they are, in a sense, inseparable. We do not continue to learn about who Jesus is if we do not keep wondering about why things must be the way they are. For Jesus is “the author and perfecter of our faith,” (Hebrews 12:2), where “perfect” really means “finish” or “complete.” Our faith must mature, and it only does so when we probe and ask Jesus to show us who He is, just as Martha did. And I think the answer she received stretched beyond her imagination, because how could one really conceive that Jesus was going to call Lazarus forth out of that tomb, and that Lazarus would actually walk out of it as if nothing at all had happened to him?

So as I sat there in the pew now only half listening to the rest of the sermon, I kept poring over this story about Lazarus, a story like the widow of Zarephath, which inevitably causes a believer who loses someone close to him or her to wonder, just as Martha did: Why didn’t you save him, Lord? And I am not afraid to confess that I did not receive an answer. But what I did see was something I had never noticed before in all my years of being told about and then reading this story. It was this: Doing this was really hard for Jesus.

I don’t mean the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Indeed, the remarkable thing is that that was the easy part for Jesus. For Jesus, raising Lazarus was no different than restoring a blind man’s sight or causing a lame man to walk or walking on water. Certainly, it seemed different to everyone else, but for the One “through whom all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,” resurrection is not difficult. (Colossians 1:16; see also John 1:3).

No, what was really difficult for Jesus was not saving Lazarus before he died. Go back to when Martha and Mary first sent their message to Jesus telling Him that Lazarus was sick. John 11:3 says: “So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’” Martha and Mary knew Jesus would understand that they were talking about Lazarus, which tells us that Jesus and Lazarus must have been extremely close friends. Jesus responded to this message by saying: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (v. 4). This response, though somewhat cryptic at this point in the story, tells us that something bigger was going on than anyone could really understand.

But then John decides to give the reader an interesting side note.

“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet, when He heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where He was two more days.” (vv. 5-6).

This note drives home the point that Jesus loved all three of these people very much, and yet He did not do what everyone would think He would do and rush to see Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. No, instead, Jesus essentially decided to kill time with his Disciples while Martha and Mary watched their brother suffer and die. Despite appearances, this isn’t callousness; it is the exact opposite: it is unfathomable love. John is telling us that Jesus really wanted to rush to Lazarus’s side, but that for the sake of something greater, He had to wait.

This point is reinforced again when Jesus said to his Disciples: “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (vv. 14-15). Jesus says He is glad for their sakes, not His own, because if this was just about His personal feelings, He would not have allowed Lazarus to die. Jesus was also acknowledging here that if He had been there, He would have healed Lazarus rather than letting him die. Think about it: where in the Gospels is there a time when Jesus refused an in-person request for healing? He certainly would not have refused to heal if He was standing before his dear friends watching Lazarus suffer. So, Jesus did not go right away because He knew what had to happen — Lazarus dying — and that it would not have happened if He had gone to them sooner.

John decides to make very sure the reader does not miss how difficult this was for Jesus by noting that when Jesus saw Mary and her friends weeping near Lazarus’s tomb, “He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” (v. 33). And then he observes that “Jesus wept” when He saw Lazarus’s tomb. (v. 35). The word “troubled” that is used in verse 33 is the same root word Jesus later used in the Garden of Gesthsemane to describe His spirit in its agony before the crucifixion. And yet again, just before Jesus raises Lazarus, John notes that “Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.” (v. 38).

John (God, really) is practically begging his readers recognize that Lazarus’s death precipitated intense pain for Jesus. Jesus understood that allowing Lazarus to die had caused great pain and grief for people He loved very much. Jesus weeps for the real anguish that is present even though He is about to remove the reason for it by raising Lazarus from the dead.

In the same way, I believe that God weeps for us in our sorrow for Ethan’s loss. God knows that Ethan is with Him and that He will raise Ethan again for us to see one day, but He also knows that there is real and genuine suffering caused right now by Ethan’s absence. He knows that torment because Jesus lived it. The fact that Jesus is the resurrection and the life gives us incredible hope for eternity, but it does not erase our reality of agonizing loss in the here and now. God does not ask us to ignore or diminish that reality because He has shared it.

So God wants us to know that He truly understands our pain and grief. But in this incarnation story, God tells us more than just that He felt as we feel. He tells us that there are times when, in His love, He refrains from acting to save even though it deeply wounds Him to stay His healing hand. In the immediate sense it is not what He wants: God does not enjoy seeing our suffering, and it hurts Him even beyond what we can imagine because He knows that He can help us. But sometimes God chooses “to stay away from Bethany for a couple of days” even as He hears our cries. I do not pretend to know why He makes this choice at some times while at others He rushes to save one in need.

Certainly the answer comes easier in the Lazarus story, for Jesus delayed coming so that He could demonstrate that His power extends even over death itself. Further, Jesus’s raising of Lazarus started to bring the conspiracy against Jesus to a head because the miracle caused a great many more people to believe in Him, and, in turn, the religious leaders resolved that Jesus must be stopped at all cost. So His raising of Lazarus became a part of the chain of events that led to the crucifixion, which caused His death, which precipitates His resurrection, and leads to our redemption.

God’s choice to refrain from acting in our circumstances does not portend such heady consequences — at least so far as I can see. I believe that at least in part the answer to why He sometimes stays His healing hand lies in the fact that this world is corrupted by evil, and in many cases God must let the consequences of that evil play out; otherwise, love and choice do not exist. And part of the answer lies in how suffering occasions examples like Martha who proclaim their belief in Jesus even as they drown in sorrow, and by so doing they embolden others to believe likewise. But those are only partial answers. Right now we know in part, but there will be a time when we will know in full. (See 1 Corinthians 13:12).

Yet, as much as I wonder about a complete answer to the why question, even a full answer would not bring Ethan back. Consequently, for me what is more important is the knowledge that God’s failure to act does not equate to a failure to care. God can simultaneously allow and yet participate in our suffering. In fact, this also happens when people sin. Sin hurts the sinner and often those around him or her. But it also grieves God to see His children participate in evil. Thus, whether the suffering is caused by the world’s brokenness or by human rebellion, God permits pain knowing that it will cause Him intense pain as well, all because of His greater purposes.

In the story of Lazarus Jesus tells us that greater purpose is “God’s glory,” (v. 4) and our eternal lives (v. 25). The stories of our earthly lives take places within that context, and so ultimately we can take lasting comfort in the assurance that the tragedies which befall us — tragedies seen by a God who hurts with us as we experience them — will one day be made right again. One day He will call Ethan forth and we will see him again because Jesus truly is the resurrection and the life.

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You Can’t Move Me Beyond This, but You Can Sit Beside Me Through It

“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).

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Some Lessons from the Book of Ruth

Ethan’s Mom: Confession – two weeks ago when I saw that our next Bible Study Fellowship unit was on Ruth, I was not super excited. Great, I thought. This is just a love story where everything works out for everyone, nothing like my life. Turns out, I had a lot to learn from this not-so-easy love story. So much, in fact, that not only was it the focus of BSF, it was also a focal point of a book I was reading with a small group of intergenerational ladies at church. It seems God really wanted me to pay attention to these folks, and I think I can see why.

For starters, let’s all take a moment to acknowledge that Naomi is not just a supporting actress in this drama. There is so much that Ruth’s mother-in-law and their relationship can teach us. I had not really paid close attention to her before, but then again, I had never identified with her grief before March 2017. First, she went to a foreign land with her husband and sons. Then her husband dies, and years later both boys marry and then they die as well. I think in order to familiarize modern readers with the cultural challenges that Naomi faced, the message that comes through most loudly is that Naomi was in a pickle because she had no income or that she was in despair because she was going to go hungry. No doubt the financial woes and uncertainty were a huge stresser, but that is not the whole story. She is grieving the loss of THREE people in her immediate family. The only three people in her immediate family. For the sake of argument, let’s assume she and Elimelech had an arranged marriage and maybe his death didn’t break her heart. Maybe she was so mad at him for moving the family to Moab that she felt like she lost her meal ticket but not her happiness. You can’t tell me, though, that she wasn’t torn to pieces over losing her sons. One of the sweetest relationships that has developed since our loss is my friendship with an older lady at church whose adult son died unexpectedly. The loss of an adult child may be different in some ways than losing an infant, but there is deep, unrelenting grief in both situations. That makes me feel like I can identify with Naomi in a way I never really identified with Ruth.

For instance, it may sound a little melodramatic when Naomi arrives back in Israel and demands that people call her “Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” (Rule 1:20).  Here she is, rolling back into her old neighborhood, seeing people she hasn’t seen in more than 10 years. There was no post office, much less Instagram. I’m thinking no one knows what has befallen her. She is likely telling the story over and over as she sees more and more people who inquire after her family or want to be introduced to this foreign woman she has with her. She is likely finding out that some of her old friends have bucket loads of grandchildren and are totally set for life. She has made a long, arduous journey with plenty of time to reflect on her situation and wishes that her husband or sons were travelling with her. I don’t blame her a bit for saying “I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty.” This is not a suck-it-up-buttercup kind of a moment; this is understandable anguish.

Do you know what is missing after this little pity party? A rebuke. Thanks to my husband for pointing that out to me. Naomi may not be theologically on target, but she’s being honest. This says to me that God can handle honest, even bitter honest, maybe even especially bitter honest. The important thing is not what she said when overwhelmed with sorrow when her arrival caused a “stirring” among the women in her old neighborhood. The important thing is that she had made the decision in Ruth 1:7 to “set out on the road that would take (her) back to the land of Judah.” She made the decision to move towards God in the midst of her fear and depression. It didn’t erase her pain immediately, but she was moving, one step at a time, toward the one who could bring redemption to her terrible circumstances.

Redemption. It’s a huge theme in the book of Ruth. It’s a huge theme in our lives walking in the shadowlands. Aside from the foreshadowing of Jesus as our kinsman-redeemer and all the beauty that entails, the story has moments where the tragic circumstances of Naomi and Ruth are redeemed by Boaz’s actions.

If there is one thing that parents whose babies have died want, it is for their loss to be redeemed in some way. There are bereaved mothers who have launched non-profits, written books, organized fundraisers or remembrance walks, etc., etc. We desperately want something good to come out of this because ultimately that gives us a way to share our little one’s life and legacy with others.

Side note: This is NOT the same as finding a reason for the tragedy – do not tell me that Ethan died so that this or that would happen. He is not just a pawn in God’s big chess game, and all the promises in the Bible that I can claim apply to him, too. That’s a whole other post, one that is probably better suited for my husband to analyze in this space.

Anyway, I have struggled with this thought since a few months after Ethan’s death. I have had ideas on how I can honor his memory, but nothing seems big or important enough to qualify as redemption, except things that seem impossible. I felt like God was saying to me through the study of Ruth that it is not up to me to do the redeeming. That’s His job.

Ruth has left her homeland and her family of origin after losing her husband. She lost so much. There is no reason to believe that she and Naomi were walking up the incline to Bethlehem talking about how great they were going to have it once they arrived. I’m quite sure they weren’t discussing how they might fit into the lineage of the Messiah. They were just doing what they felt was right in going back to the Promised Land and to the one true God. When they arrive, Ruth says she will go out and work for their food, and that’s just what she did. She went out and gleaned in Boaz’s field. Nothing glamorous, but she worked so hard on the task at hand that Boaz took notice of her work ethic and her devotion to Naomi.

God took her day-in-and-day-out obedience in the most mundane task, and out of that He brought redemption to Ruth’s life, Naomi’s life, the nation of Israel, and ultimately all humanity. I felt like He was pressing upon my heart that He wants my day-in-day-out obedience in the mundane tasks of mothering my four children on earth, loving my husband, and pouring into relationships with friends and family. Out of that work I have set before me, He will set into motion a plan to bring redemption in this lifetime to our loss, our pain, and our grief.

The story ends with Ruth and Boaz’s son, Obed, sitting in Naomi’s lap. Don’t you know that woman loved her grandson something fierce? I just imagine them having the sweetest relationship. She and Ruth must have just stared into his squishy baby face and delighted in counting his fingers and toes. They must have marveled at their miracle baby as he learned to talk and walk. That would have been such a blessing on its own, but then we find out that Obed has a son named Jesse. Jesse has a son named David, who becomes the king of Israel and a man after God’s own heart. From David, the lineage goes straight down to Jesus. There is so much more redemption coming than Ruth or Naomi could ever have imagined, and they don’t even see it in their lifetimes. Even the possibility that God can do more with our situation than we could plan, even more than we can imagine, gives me such hope. Now I am going to bed in preparation for another day of gleaning tomorrow, and I will rest in the freedom that the rest of our story is in much better hands than mine.

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Over and Underneath

Ethan’s Mom: This past weekend, I attended the (in)complete Retreat for moms who have experienced stillbirth and infant loss. The weekend consisted of group sessions with a certified counselor and Bible study with a leader who had attended the first of these retreats, held in 2016. My hope in attending was to connect with other women who know the pain of this loss firsthand, and I did, in fact, develop relationships which I think will last many years. But I was surprised to find out what a milestone this retreat would become on my journey.

I really didn’t realize how tired I had become – tired of pretending, tired of avoiding, tired of trying so hard to figure it out. The best picture I can give you of the change in my soul is an overtired child. When I arrived home Sunday, I was putting an overtired, no-nap 20 month old to sleep. This is not pretty, in fact, it is nearly impossible. No amount of rocking or shushing or calm reassurances of my love or his need for sleep made any difference. Eventually, into the bed he went, still wailing at maximum volume. After 30 minutes of throwing down in his crib, I went back in and asked if I could try rocking him again. This time, he did not fight me, and his anxiety lifted as I rocked. He stilled to my voice and seemed to accept that what he needed was to sleep. I didn’t put him in the bed as soon as he stopped gasping for breath between sobs. I held him until he was relaxed and ready to accept going to sleep. My love did not change one bit, and my actions were pretty similar both times I tried to put him to bed. He wasn’t able to accept my love in the same way he typically does at bedtime because his body and mind were so incredibly tired that it was affecting him deeply. Eventually, he hit bottom and looked to the person who had been there trying to help all along.

I have been an overtired toddler in the arms of God for many months now. Perhaps those of you who interact with me are surprised by this, but that is the best description for the angst that has built up inside of me, maybe mostly since the anniversary of Ethan’s death. It has felt like people have moved so far beyond this tragedy that anytime I tried to talk about Ethan or my grief, I felt like people became very uncomfortable. Well, if there is one thing I try to avoid, it is rocking the boat. Taking responsibility for how people reacted to my life and my loss was putting a tremendous strain on me. I was overwhelmed by the darkness — fighting and punching at air, trying to wrestle with what happened to my sweet baby, my family, and my faith — but I didn’t want any help. I didn’t want to invite anyone into the darkness with me.

There were many holy moments throughout the weekend, and some I will ponder in my own heart instead of sharing them on this blog. But I want to share a message I believe I received from God the Father through his Holy Spirit and the wise counsel of the retreat staff.

The Bible study leader and I were cut from the same perfectionistic cloth. Her journey contained battles with many of the things I had been struggling with. She encouraged us that we can stop wrestling with ourselves and start wrestling with God, inviting Him into our darkness. The enemy would have us fighting within ourselves instead of going to God with questions and doubts and turmoil. If he can keep us from bringing Him the negative feelings that are so hard to feel and harder still to express to other people, even the closest of friends or family, He can keep us away from the source of healing.

It sounds easy to bring everything to God, but it isn’t, at least for me. In the first few months after Ethan died, I remember telling Greg that people needed to stop telling me about the loving arms of Jesus. I did not feel surrounded by the loving arms of Jesus. I felt like I was in a choke-hold and that Jesus, if he was even really real, was a million miles away, coolly detached from my misery.

What I didn’t realize until this weekend is that I was stuck there. I have returned to church and Bible study, and I have watched as my husband’s cracked faith seemed to cement back into place. I have a completely new and deep gratefulness and longing for the return of Christ and the redemption of the world, but for the here and now, He seemed so far away. One day He will be my hero, defeat death, and restore me to Ethan, but until then, I’m just on my own down here in this crazy messed up world, fighting all the battles that wage inside of me. Grief has been the loneliest experience of my life.

Maybe it is easy to read that and think, “Oh, how misguided. What weak faith. Of course, God is always with us, He says so.” Beggin’ your pardon, but if you have never buried a child, you have no idea what it takes to choose every moment of every day to keep trusting in a loving God who could have saved your baby in a hundred different ways but did not.

That is the paradox. My really thoughtful and deep husband addressed this in a blog post already. I guess this is my version of coming to terms with this, a little later on.

The Bible study leader encouraged us to lean into the paradox, to wrestle with God, to “pour out your heart like water before the Lord’s presence” (Lamentations 2:19). And throughout the rest of my messy, tearful, heart wrenching prayers during the weekend, I started to lean in. He spoke to my heart in a non-saccharine, non-loving-arms-of-Jesus way that He was here, and even though I couldn’t even see or acknowledge Him, that He has been here all along. He told me that it was time to stop flailing and fighting His love, that it is real and near even though it hasn’t felt like that at all.

And in that revelation, I rested. My soul rested, just like my overtired bundle of sweat and tears fell asleep in my arms as I rocked and sang over him.

I do not mean to imply that I was “fixed” this weekend or that I don’t have sadness and doubt, longing and heartbreak, and all the other emotions that can weigh so heavily on those of us who walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But I do know in a way I didn’t before, that He is with me in the valley. His rod and staff comfort me. I believe He will give me provisional grace for this messy life and have decided to trust it from here on.

I want to share the lyrics to a song that describes what I am trying to express in this post.  Jesus loves you, always, and I am praying that you can rest in this truth today.

I hear You say
“My love is over, it’s underneath
It’s inside, it’s in between
The times you doubt me
When you can’t feel
The times that you question
“Is this for real?”
The times you’re broken
The times that you mend
The times you hate me
And the times that you bend
Well my love is over, it’s underneath
It’s inside, it’s in between
These times that you’re healing
And when your heart breaks
The times that you feel like you’ve fallen from grace
The times you’re hurting
The times that you heal
The times you go hungry and are tempted to steal
In times of confusion
In chaos and pain
I’m there in your sorrow under the weight of your shame
I’m there through your heartache
I’m there in the storm
My love I will keep you by my power alone
I don’t care where you’ve fallen or where you have been
I’ll never forsake you
My love never ends
It never ends.”

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Visiting with a Shadow

Ethan’s Dad: I still visit regularly, usually three days a week. For the first full year, I visited nearly every single day. I know some people think it is strange that I would go to Ethan’s grave so often. I suppose in their minds it seems like it would be too painful to visit such a place over and over again. But it is extremely important to remember, when supporting friends, neighbors, or loved ones who have sustained losses, that people grieve in different ways and they need to be given the space to do so. What I do is no better or worse, no more normal or weirder than how my wife seeks to survive in the midst of her grief. She visits his grave as well, though not as often, but she journals, for instance, much more frequently than I have. We are each dealing with an unexpected absence, a weight that may tug on our hearts more heavily at some times than others, but that always remains with us wherever we go. Yet we are different people and so our methods of carrying the weight correspond with our own personalities. And so it is with all who carry burdens of loss.

At first when I visited, I mostly talked to Ethan. I should clarify in mentioning this that it isn’t that I believe Ethan is there — at least not the part of him that matters most. My wife recently wrote a post about some of the awful day that was Ethan’s funeral. And while there was much that was unspeakably difficult about that particular day, one revelation for me occurred when we saw his little body in the tiny casket. We cried rivers of tears. We read letters to him that we placed in the casket. We hugged a lot. But one thing that was very apparent to me was that Ethan was not really there. His precious, frail body was there . . . but it was cold and impassive. . . the light of life was gone from it.

This is a difficult idea to put into words because it honestly can only be experienced, not exactly described, and yet it is not an experience I would wish for anyone. But in that tragic moment when you see your still baby who was so vibrant only a few days before, there comes this clear sense that something is truly amiss: You come face to face with the truth that a person is much more than just flesh and blood. People have spirits which make them who they truly are. The contrast between our real Ethan and what was left of him in that casket was so stark that this spiritual reality was undeniable. Our Ethan — the curious, quiet, lovable, strong, immaculately precious boy — is with the Lord. He is laughing now, rather than hurting, and waiting for us (though the wait will seem like nothing to him because time is nonexistent in heaven).

Alas, time is all too real to us, and to me it seems to go by much more slowly now than before Ethan’s passing. And so I choose to pass some of that time by sitting next to his grave. It is not the most vital part of him, but it is all we have left here in this in-between place we call the Shadowlands. It is my tangible connection to him. It is a place-holder until the joyous reunion.

Over time, my conversations with Ethan morphed into talking to God more often than talking to Ethan because He is my spiritual connection to Ethan. God is the reason a reunion will happen, made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus said He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” — of all things. (Revelation 22:13). This means He is also the God of this off-kilter in-between time in which we find ourselves.

At times, walking in these shadows, it can seem as if He has abandoned us, left us to our own devices.

“I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.

“When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

“I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.”

(Psalm 77:1-3). In fact, that is one reason that at first I only talked to Ethan: Because I did not feel God there, all I felt was a black hole, a yawning abyss from which no light could emanate or escape.

But in the end, faith is not about feelings, it is about will, submission of the will really, but will nonetheless. And when you press on through the shadows you discover that there is light there after all.  (And how could it be otherwise?  For shadows are only seen because of the light that illuminates reality). The light is not a bolt that thunders, at least not for me, but a flicker that whispers your name and tells you to keep listening. And so the conversations become less and less audible and more and more reflections pouring over the Bible, His words that come alive because of His Spirit communing with our own when we seek Him.

I don’t mean for it to sound like magic. It is not. There is no trick and this is not fantasy land. I do not live in a state of Zen or blessedness or higher consciousness or whatever else some beliefs choose to call their willful blindness toward the tragedies of life. Nor do I mean to sound super-spiritual, for the contemplation is born from desperation, not holiness. I am weak. I am hurt. I still feel out of sorts. I still cry because of this inexplicable loss that neither Ethan nor we deserved to experience.

And so I sit next to the place where Ethan’s little body resides. I sit still in the quiet (there are few places quieter than a large cemetery).  And in that stillness I know that God is there (Psalm 46:10), and I dare to trust that Ethan is with Him, waiting. My heart yearns: Come quickly, Lord Jesus, Come. (Revelation 22:20).

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Carrying a Weight No One Should Have to Bear

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Ethan’s Mom: Jones kid #4 and I started going on walks after school resumed this fall. #3 is off to preschool MWF. The big two are already at school, and it leaves just me and the little bear on our own. These walks have been good for us both, I think. I started walking this summer as a means of burning off anxious energy and getting out of the house after long summer days with everyone at home. We had a super fun summer, but this girl needs a little quiet in her life to function well. So I would strap on the tennis shoes and head out the door as soon as the lights went out. I started using this uninterrupted time to listen to a new podcast, “The Joyful Mourning,” produced by Ashlee Profitt, founder of the Joyful Morning an online community group for Christian women who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. I continue to save it for my walks even after changing to daytime strolls, and I look forward every Wednesday to a new installment. I have listened to Ashlee chat with her husband, her best friend, fellow mommas, and a Biblical counselor about topics with which I am all too familiar. Every episode, I find myself walking along and talking to myself like a crazy woman – “Oh me too. That is totally right. Yes, amen sister.”

Today’s episode dealt with planning a memorial service or funeral for your baby. I almost didn’t listen to it. Wednesday March 15th was the day of Ethan’s funeral. It was bitterly cold for mid-March, but bright and sunny. The days between the 10th and the 15th were full of so, so many horrible moments. No parents should be making the choices we were forced to make, but at the same time, Greg and I wanted to be the ones making them. I am a naturally indecisive person about most things, but every decision made at the funeral home, cemetery, florist, and the meeting with our ministers to plan the service seemed very clear cut to me. I don’t know if I wanted to make them fast just to get them over with, or if I knew somehow (I never would have been able to articulate this at the time) that only a baby’s parents would know him well enough to plan a meaningful send -off and that Ethan deserved our best efforts in caring for him in this way.

I guess maybe I started listening to find out if we did everything “right,” even though I know there is no right and wrong in this. I found myself going through a whole range of memories and emotions as she addressed some of the issues surrounding planning a memorial service: gratefulness for the people that were agents of His grace in the worst of places and family that fully supported us without taking over decisions that needed to be ours, bittersweet memories of the soft polka dotted gown that all of Ethan’s brothers wore before it became his burial clothes, the tension between wanting to look like a woman that Ethan would be proud to call his mother and not caring at all what I wore to the funeral, the relief that we would have a written copy of the beautiful eulogies spoken at the service.

But twice in the podcast, I stopped in my tracks and caught my breath as tears fell suddenly down my cheeks.

The first was when Ashlee said that if you choose to have your child buried, you will need to select pallbearers and what a sacred job this is. When we first met with the funeral director, he said that some fathers in this situation choose to carry the casket to its final resting place. Greg immediately knew this was something he had to do. To be honest, I wasn’t sure about the plan at first. But he was certain – I knew that determined look on his face and knew better than to attempt further discussion.

When that terrible, surreal moment came to transport him to the cemetery, someone had to carry the casket to the hearse. It was too much to ask Greg to carry what had to be the heaviest load of his entire life twice, so we asked his brother to do this for us. When I heard the word “pallbearer” on the podcast, I immediately thought of my brother-in-law carefully carrying that tiny white casket from the dim light of the funeral home into the bright sunlight and brisk air and placing it into the back of the hearse. I have never been able to say thank you. I know you are reading this, J., so please know how much I appreciate you caring for Ethan, your brother, and me in such a personal and powerful way.

I composed myself there in the middle of Park Avenue and continued walking until this:
“My last thought dear friend, is to have someone take photos and video. It may be a long, long time before you look at those, if ever, but one day you might want to remember all those special details you planned. And the pretty new dress you wore. And how handsome and brave and strong your husband looked while reading the letter he wrote to your baby boy. And all the friends and family who came to mourn death and celebrate life with you.”

I couldn’t walk another step. Because my husband did carry Ethan from the hearse to the graveside, just as he said he would. I have never, will never, be more proud of him. I cannot imagine loving him more. In that moment, he was everything, everything that a woman’s heart yearns for in a husband. I could not have lifted that tiny white box to save my life, but he would not let anyone else carry Ethan that very last time. As he laid the casket on the platform so gingerly, I could see the anguish on his face. His heart was shattered, but his hands were steady and his arms were strong.

My brother did take photographs for us, and I am glad this moment is captured for a few other very special people to see as clearly as I will always see it in my mind. When our boys grow up and want to know what it is to be a man, I will show them this picture of their father, literally carrying the weight of the entire world to care for and protect his son and his wife. When my daughter brings home a boyfriend (I can hardly type that sentence), I will measure each suitor against her father and nothing less will be good enough.

He is not going to want to put this on the blog. He does not want your admiration or your praise. But if this blog is about our journey walking through the shadowlands together, this entry belongs on it. Just like any marriage, ours has moments of conflict and miscommunication, possibly even more so as we navigate the stormy waters of grief. There are times when he drives me crazy, but I can assure you the man who carried my sweet Ethan on that cold, sunny March day is the man I will trust and love forever.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Grief is like a Hurricane

Ethan’s Mom: Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the Gulf Coast. I lived in Long Beach, Mississippi, from birth until college. In 2005, I was in my last year of graduate school in Nashville. My parents and grandparents still lived in Long Beach. We all watched the meteorologists as they predicted the path of this monster storm until it became clear she was headed straight for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. By the time I woke up from a fitful night’s sleep on the morning of 8/29/05, the community that I knew and loved had been gutted. I remember vividly being at my internship that afternoon, checking the initial damage reports and reading a single sentence that broke my heart, “First Baptist Church washed away.” I had always daydreamed of being married in the same church where my parents said their vows and where I was baptized. It was gone. Totally and completely leveled, as were the homes of quite a few childhood friends and/or their parents. In less than 24 hours, the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast was demolished, and neighboring New Orleans was underwater.

I was unable to take a day off my internship until October. I flew home to maximize my time there, and I remember watching through tears out the window as the plane landed – so many blue tarps, so many empty lots. The southernmost portions of the town were still barricaded, but my mom, as the church secretary, had a pass to visit the site of the church with me that weekend. Piles of rubble. The beautiful stained glass from the mosaic in the narthex lay mixed in with twisted metal, lots of paper debris, and an overturned piano. Only the cross-shaped steeple lay intact on its side. The church sat at the south end of main street and surrounded by residential areas, but you wouldn’t know it. It literally looked as if a bomb had exploded. Nothing was even recognizable.

My parents moved to Birmingham, very near to us, in 2011. In the times I visited my family between 2005-2011 there was a lot of change. The roofing men were in constant demand. Infrastructure was being rebuilt. FBC bought land further inland and built a large multipurpose sanctuary/gym/education building. The toppled steeple stands out front. Friends and acquaintances bought or built new houses. Progress came, but slowly. Still along the shore, things looked wild and depressing. It was better, for sure. No one needed disaster relief volunteers serving food or water or boxes of sheets and towels for their temporary “Katrina cottage” FEMA shelters. There wasn’t an “emergency” but the community was still in the early stages of healing: cleaning out, taking stock, and beginning to plan what they would do next.

My 20th high school reunion was this summer, and I debated long and hard about going. I had not been to the Coast since 2013. In the end, several people I wanted to see in person were attending, and it was a good chance to take the kids to the beach. So off we went.

We stayed in a little guest cottage off a main thoroughfare in Long Beach, which was so much nicer than a hotel. We had room to spread out with the kids, and it felt more like a visit home by staying in a familiar neighborhood. I enjoyed (much more than the kids did, I’m afraid) sharing stories and memories from my childhood. We drove by my old house and elementary school, both of which survived the storm with relatively little damage. I took them to my favorite po-boy restaurant, which was rebuilt almost exactly the same as it was. We dug in the sand and waded in the water that was part of my history in so many ways.

And yet, there were times when I was completely discombobulated. A beautiful town green sat in the middle of main street where an elementary school had always been. Stores were closed; restaurants had moved. Driving along the beach was still a navigational challenge because landmarks I had depended on for years and years were still gone. In fact, most of the lots closest to the beach are still vacant. They don’t have the wild, grown over look as much but they are still vacant. I would be where I knew I had been many, many times before but have no idea where I was.

It was so familiar and so different at exactly the same time.

On the drive home, it occurred to me – that is a very fitting analogy of my life at this point. In 10 days, we will mark 18 months without our precious Ethan. His death has changed me in a way that nothing else ever has, or maybe ever will. Last spring, our world exploded. Everything was affected – our marriage, children, extended family, friends, community, and even (especially) our faith in God. All at once, NOTHING looked like it did, or even remotely like it should. The wreckage and debris from those early weeks and months can be described as nothing but trauma. It was so overwhelming, I could not even begin to think about rebuilding my life or feeling any joy again. People wanted to share stories of friends who were further post-loss and living productive lives, and I couldn’t even comprehend how that could be. I heard people recommend journaling to begin to process my feelings – that was impossible, I couldn’t even begin to pick up a pen most days. All that I could process was basic survival mode.

Slowly, over the past year, we have begun the process of rebuilding our life and our family. We resumed being the primary caregivers for our surviving children. We returned to church, and eventually I made it to the grocery store and the beauty salon. My husband returned to work full time, and I fill in at the hospital when staffing needs arise. After a few months, I was able to read and pray again, and new infrastructure could be laid. We faced all the “firsts” – holidays, birthdays, family vacations – and found touchpoints of the familiar amongst the grief that continues to be so confusing at times.

The thing about my trip home this summer is that the evidence of Hurricane Katrina and the wreckage she inflicted was still very apparent to me. It is a city with a broken past that endured a difficult season of growth. It is not the Long Beach of my youth, but it is still home. After the devastation of 2005, some places were repaired or rebuilt. Other places I saw on our visit were brand new construction, even some really nice and beautiful places. Still other places were empty and awaiting redemption.

“Awaiting redemption” makes me think of the Friendship Oak. A seedling when Columbus sailed to America, this beautiful, enormous live oak tree used to be the crown jewel of a local college and a favorite place of mine. I wanted to take the kids to see it, but instead we pulled up to a decaying tree surrounded by “Keep Out” tape. There is no way to repair, replace, rebuild, or improve on the Friendship Oak until Jesus restores creation to its full glory, and I know there will be places like that in my life as well. Things that just will not be right until I see Ethan again. But in the beginning, that felt like all there was left to my life. Truthfully, that was how I wanted it. What kind of a mom “heals” from her son? Now, almost 18 months later, I can finally see that I am not healing from Ethan or the experience of being his mother but from the storm surge that made landfall on March 10, 2017 – the tragedy that swept my child away from me and destroyed almost everything I had ever known. Almost.

Some things survived the storm intact, but I couldn’t see them for the wreckage. I am starting to identify some places from my “life before loss” that can be repaired, other things that can eventually be rebuilt in a different location, and still other lots which will be vacant for a long, long time to come. I hope that one day, I can even build some beautiful new spaces in my life, like the town green where my classmates gathered with our families and watched our children play in the splash pad under live oak trees that weathered the storm 13 years ago. I don’t know that I am there yet, but the fact that it is even starting to seem possible is only by the grace of God, the love of my family, and the support of a few close friends. Please don’t stop praying for us, checking in on us, and braving the sorrow with us as you are able. We are still very much under construction.