Some friends of ours lost their baby today. She was born early with several physical complications and only lived a few hours.
It’s weird how trauma works. Just the other day a friend was blandly talking about being catheterized once and I was instantly transported to a really tragic moment with Colette. She was septic and on the edge of life, doctors were trying to figure out where the complications were coming from and so they catheterized her to rule out infection. It was terrible and they were having a hard time with the procedure and Colette was screaming and I was helpless. I missed a big portion of the conversation with my friend about her experience because I was nauseous and re-living our pain.
But here I am today, with a friend a few miles away who is kissing her baby girl goodbye. She’s holding her closely and doing her best to remember each curve and color of her face before they take her away. She’s feeling her scar heal across her belly from the life that was taken from her. She’s feeling her milk come in because her body is telling her - this isn’t right, we have a job to do.
And yet, the baby is gone. There is nothing we can do. Our friends will go home to an empty house with an empty nursery. They’ll go back to work. Life will go back to normal but it will never be the same.
I was never good at grieving well, I never allowed friends and family, or much less God, into my darkness. I had to live it alone.
And yet I pray. I pray that in God’s mercy He would grant them peace that I cannot understand. I pray that they find comfort in the great sustainer of life. I pray they find hope even while living an experience that mocks our very faith.
Life should not be this way, All-Mighty God where are you?
I don’t placate them, there is nothing to say to fix this. There is no solution for feeling pain and grief.
But what I would say, is I hope our Lord cuts through all their black-out pain and consumes them with grace. I hope when they’re heaving with sobs they take a breath and feel God in it.
I hope they hear him say - I’m so sorry, it shouldn’t be this way. It won’t always be this way.
I’m not living in my trauma today even though this hits close to home. I’m not living there because I didn’t live this, I know the fear of loss but I don’t know the true loss.
It’s a tragedy I was spared from knowing, and one my friends now know intimately.
It’s never fair. I cannot believe this is God’s will. But with all my heart I’ve chosen to believe he’ll be present with them through the pain and that ultimately in life, and even more in death, that we are his.
That is the hope today.
That is the hope of the world.