Hope Remains

I’ve never really talked openly about this before, but in January of 2016, my wife Sarah and I lost our third child in the second trimester of a pregnancy. Because of how far along we were, this horror completely blindsided us, and the process was especially painful. We were dragged through a very slow time of grieving, and it was a loss unlike anything I’ve ever had to experience.

Now I would never dare to compare our situation to anyone who has lost a child years into their life. In spite of what we endured, that is a level of pain and loss I would never dare to compare to, and I pray to God that no one ever experiences. Still, through our personal loss we have come to know what it is like to feel a lack of wholeness, as if through this type of pain a piece of us was taken forever. The remaining fragments are still being put back together today, slowly and over time.

The emotional healing that a parent goes through during something like this is truly touch and go. Some parts of the pain heal quickly (the death of someone), while other parts become scars and stay with you (the loss of someone). The distinct pain around both is similar and often blurred, but the ability to move forward is directly correlated within the distinction between them.

The support that our families gave us in this season of grief was simply remarkable. Both Sarah’s mom and my mom drove from Ohio to Illinois in less than a day to be with us. It wasn’t even a question or hesitation. They willingly stepped into the pain with us and came to be with us and grieve in the muck, as did some very dear friends of ours. There is a real and strange beauty in shared grief, when family and friends embrace the pain you feel and endure it with you. It was a communal support system that can only come in the midst of tragedy. But it came also with immense healing.

The part of me that has taken the longest to recover has been my understanding of purpose and plan. While I know and have always believed that God can redeem tragedy, I often wrestle with the question of why He allows it to occur in the first place. Let me interject at this moment that I completely despise and reject the notion that “everything happens for a reason.” That is one of the most irresponsible phrases ever concocted among humans seeking answers, and often the first people to use it are well-meaning folks in the Church.

Everything does NOT happen for a reason. There was no reason for the Holocaust, the Apartheid, slavery in America, the killing fields in Cambodia, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and all the other countless atrocities that have existed over the course of our human history. God did not orchestrate these tragedies. God did not sit on a cloud and direct world atrocities for His own amusement. How much more should we in our personal tragedies recognize that God is not actively shooting potholes into our life’s path?

Nevertheless, God and I have had a rough few years together since we experienced this miscarriage. At a time when I needed to feel divine comfort and peace, there was little to be found. Sure, I can point to the support of our families, friends, and Church community and say that God was “in those things.” But the peace that passes all understanding had in many ways, as far as I knew, passed me by.

There is no manual for how to find or feel God’s goodness and peace in the midst of deep pain. Many claim to have experienced it, but I would petition that this is not the normal. In the midst of deep pain, hopelessness is raw and real. Despair is a forefront sentiment. Loneliness and abandonment are legitimate feelings. Sadness and overwhelming grief are the default emotions. God doesn’t come alongside you and make you smile and giggle when you’re burying your child in your backyard. And the truth is, He isn’t supposed to.

I never realized God’s place in this more than on the night we delivered our baby after we had lost him. Most families go through the painful and exhaustive process of labor in the hospital with a sense that there is hope and life at the end of the struggle. For us, in the late hours of that January evening in the hospital, the pain itself was the finish line. I remember the moment it was over, Sarah and I began to weep uncontrollably, completely unashamed and disregarding of the doctor and nurses that surrounded us. It was the most honest, raw pain I have ever expressed publicly; the way an innocent child shares his emotions in the middle of a public place, or the way a baby screams when it breathes its first breath outside of the womb.

As we wept and held each other in the rubble and ashes, I remember looking up, wiping the glassy haze of tears from my eyes. To my amazement, the nurses around us were also weeping profoundly and expressing the same display of pain and loss that Sarah and I had been experiencing. It was as if the grief itself was contagious. It was painful. It was comforting. It was horrible, and it was beautiful.

Recently my pastor, Marco Ambriz, gave a sermon about when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin into the world along with all death, pain, loss, grief, and despair. God could have just said, “Get out of My Garden!” and just closed the door of Eden behind them. He could have decided on a do-over and just snapped His fingers and started from scratch. Instead, God said, “We all have to go.” Adam and Eve had disobeyed and brought about darkness into the world, and yet God said to them, “I’m coming too.” God went with Adam and Eve into the unknown of a world now broken, leaving behind paradise.

God comes with us into the mess. It’s not as simple as “everything happens for a reason.” God intends for good. God desires us to have good things. God offers us His blessings and goodness. But He also lets us choose. He gives us free will. This is also because He loves us.

Because we live in a world of death and despair, bad things will happen. God’s perfect plan will sometimes be replaced with the darkness of man, which includes pain and tragedy. But God goes with us. He stays with us. He cries tears right beside us while He holds us in His arms. Not everything is His plan. And not every bad thing outside of His plan is redeemed. Sometimes, this world hands out suffering with no chance for redemption.

But God still sees us. He is with us. He is experiencing the same pain and anguish. And because He has given His life to save us from this world, redemption is still possible.

Before our son passed away, we had planned to give him the name Leonard. There was no real story behind this name. We liked it. After he had passed, we decided to name him Hope instead. We choose to believe that even in the midst of the pain we endured and still feel from time to time, there is a hope we cannot see. I’m still waiting to see the good from this. Maybe there never will be.

But God goes with us still, through all of it. And because of that truth, hope remains.