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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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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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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.