My Great Awakening

[Christine]

This is an amazing thread! I have especially been impressed with the compassion and respect that I feel from those with differing beliefs towards each other. If only everyone in the world could treat differences of opinion and belief with respect and not condemnation.

I am a life long Christian, with deep faith in Jesus Christ, and have been confronted with the question how I can have faith in God when there seems to be so much bad that happens in this world, and I can only answer with my own feelings based on life experiences.

Two years ago this March our new born granddaughter died just a few minutes after her birth. To say it was heartbreaking is a tremendous understatement. At my daughter-in-law's 20 week ultrasound we discovered that Alyssa had CDH - a congenital diaphramic hernia, and after weeks of visits and scans and tests we learned that she would not live after her birth. So we had twenty weeks to grieve all that we would lose, while still trying to feel joy as she grew and we prepared to say hello and goodbye all at once. After her birth and death I found a website for grieving parents/grandparents, and one young grieving mother posted a question about how she could hold on to her faith with the death of her own baby. Most of the others posted that they lost their faith because they could not reconcile their tragedy with a kind loving God. I felt the need to respond honestly, and sincerely, and this thread here reminded me what I wrote then. I hope it is okay to post my response:

"Your sincere question about how I make spiritual peace with a fatal diagnosis, how I fit God into that has really caused me to think deeply. I understand the shock, horror, grief that is attached to that day the doctors say there is really nothing they can do for our babies, that their condition is incompatible with life outside the womb. How is it possible that this infant, who seems so strong and kicks so powerfully and consistently, who makes her presence known so often, will die when the connecting link between mom and baby is lost at birth? There are no words for that grief. My son and daughter-in-law decided early that if the only time they had with Alyssa was these few months they would try to frame each experience, each kick, each hiccup with the lense of faith and love. But of course even with their and our faith we cried every day. Every night was long and painful and dark, filled with tears and little sleep. And that was even with our deep faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and their love for us and our baby. I cannot even begin to understand the depth of pain for those who do not have that faith. My heart hurts.

To even begin to explain how I make spiritual peace with God in this I have to first explain a little bit about our faith. We believe that our life did not begin with our conception or birth - that we lived as a spirit child of God in heaven before we received a physical body, and that our life does not end after death, that our spiritual body will return to God and our family who have passed away to wait for a future day when our spirit and body will be reunited as a resurrected being and we will live together in eternity with our family. That faith sustains us in the partings, with the hope that it will be for a brief time, and that our baby is with her great grandparents, her uncle and aunt, and others who know her and love her. We believe that every life, however long or short, however imperfect the body, is sacred. We believe that families can be united forever because of and through Jesus Christ.

We believe in a Heavenly Father who loves all of his children. Who created the earth as a place where we could come to receive bodies, live together in families, and hopefully choose righteousness, and bless the lives of those around us. While some see God as the source of their pain and hurt - as the reason for wars, and disease, storms and hate, I see God as the source of love, strength in the disease, peace, and hope. I believe that wars and hate are when we choose not to follow God. And that disease and death is a natural part of life in this imperfect world, not as a punishment for sin. One of the stories in the New Testament that teaches me that God is a God of love and compassion is when Lazarus died, and Jesus Christ, knowing he had the power to raise him from the dead, seeing the pain of Martha and Mary - Lazarus' sisters, wept. Imagine that - the God of the heavens and earth wept for their pain! His compassion and his love for their loss has spiritually strengthened me. I know he wept for our family. I know he wept for your family.

I do not know the reason some babies are saved. I do not know the reason some babies are not. I do not know the reason some miracles come and some do not. The experience of her birth and death is a hard hard hard thing for us, even with our faith, but our peace is in the little miracles we witnessed during the pregnancy and after, and the hope we will see her again. In fact, her middle name is Ki' i mana, which is Tongan for little miracle. I make peace with Heavenly Father when I acknowledge those little miracles in our life with Alyssa. The greatest miracle is that she was born alive at full term so that her mom and dad could hold her and kiss her and tell her how much they loved her as she quietly and peacefully slipped away. I saw God in the people who enveloped our son and daughter-in-law with love in those dark dark days: the nurse at the doctor's office who, every single appointment, would wrap my daughter-in-law in a deep hug and whisper in her ear that she was an amazing mom and was carrying an amazing baby. The dear friend who handcrafted a beautiful hand carved little casket - with the initials of each of the children and the words that families are forever to hold our baby until that day of resurrection. The doctors who cried with them. The neighbors who brought meals, and hugs, and tears, and love. The unknown person (perhaps the woodworker friend?) who anonymously left a hand carved Noah's ark and animals, with the reminder of what the rainbow stands for. The college students in their town, who, upon learning about their baby tried to brighten their Christmas by donating gifts for the other children. I saw God in the funeral home workers who lovingly cared for her sweet body who do not ever charge for baby funerals, and in dozens of other people and their love and light and compassion.

But even with those reminders I have had some honest hard talks with Him. I have ranted, I have raged, I have cried, I have pleaded, I have begged, and I have sometimes ignored and given Him the silent treatment. Because I learned in my experience that faith and doubt can sometimes live together. What I found is that He is strong enough for my grief, and that in my sorrow and in my grief, in my hurt and in my sadness, even when I do not always feel His presence, I know that because I felt it before I will feel it again. And in that I find spiritual peace and hope. Even in a fatal diagnosis. Fatal, but not hopeless."