{"id":86270,"date":"2016-01-25T10:03:24","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T15:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=86270"},"modified":"2016-01-25T11:14:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T16:14:58","slug":"we-lost-a-child-and-gained-something-greater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/we-lost-a-child-and-gained-something-greater\/","title":{"rendered":"We lost a child and gained something greater"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Charles Spurgeon once said this about suffering:<\/p>\n

\n

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Those are some of the most sobering words I\u2019ve ever read. A month ago, I could not have known their depth nor their weight. Now I can.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here is the story of how we lost a daughter, and gained so much more.<\/p>\n

The question people love to ask when you tell them (or they see) that the woman you\u2019re with is pregnant is almost universally,\u00a0what are you having?<\/em> It\u2019s a reasonable question, of course, because what you\u2019re having (girl, boy, twins\u00a0or more) affects the trajectory of your life almost as much as the fact you\u2019re having a child to begin with.<\/p>\n

My wife, Jen, and I like to be surprised by what we\u2019re having. It adds a little punch to the birth itself (not that Jen would agree births need any extra \u201cpunch\u201d). It was something we were certainly looking forward to this time around. We already have one boy and one girl so (for me anyway) there wasn\u2019t the twinge of wanting a boy like there was during our first biological birth.<\/p>\n

Both our boy and our girl are special to me in different ways. Boys are tumultuous and uninhibited. Girls are unfailingly sweet and equally dramatic. I love them both deeply. I was simply thrilled about finding out which we were adding to our family of (soon-to-be) five. The closer we got to the due date, the more excited I realized I\u00a0was.<\/p>\n

The last thing I wrote in my journal before our unborn baby died three weeks ago was this:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m getting really excited about baby No. 3. Really excited. I finally read the birth book and I realized how curious I am to find out the gender. I could not be more enthralled with that right now. I\u2019m also hopeful Jen\u2019s labor will be swift and steady.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That was on a Monday morning. Two hours later, Jen told me she hadn\u2019t felt the baby move all morning. She was 36 weeks pregnant.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Our pastor, Matt Chandler,\u00a0always says:\u00a0\u201cYour life can change with one phone call. You\u2019re not exempt.\u201d The problem is that I\u00a0always thought I was. I thought my friends were, too. This is an illusion, of course, and about 100 minutes later\u00a0I got that phone call from my wife, who said the midwife wanted her to get a sonogram because she couldn\u2019t find the baby\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re being honest, we didn\u2019t need the sonogram. It was a formality. We both already knew. We both knew as we drove to the hospital. We both knew as they put her in a wheelchair. We both knew as they went through two sonogram machines thinking one was broken. The doctor didn\u2019t even need to say it, but she did anyway. Two words that change the rest of your life. There might not be two more devastating words.<\/p>\n

No heartbeat.<\/em><\/p>\n

All of the emotions.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Our friends, family, and church were spectacularly gracious in the days that followed. It\u2019s impossible for me to stress that enough. They were unbelievable. The weight was not ours alone to shoulder, which made tasting the unfolding nightmare\u00a0at least palatable.<\/p>\n

John Piper once wrote\u00a0that he \u201cloves the\u00a0ready tears of strong men.\u201d I now have some old T-shirts that would agree with him. My friends came and held me,\u00a0and we wept. Their wives came and held my wife,\u00a0too. It was a spectacular outpouring of God\u2019s grace in giving us deep and enduring friendships.<\/p>\n

These friends with whom we had built up 1,000 or 3,000 common days bore a part of our burden. I\u2019m not sure how we would\u2019ve moved forward without them, and without their prayer. The Lord sustained us throughout. We certainly did not sustain ourselves.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

The morning after we got the news, we sat in our car at the hospital with our friend (and\u00a0labor and delivery nurse)\u00a0Andrea, about to go\u00a0talk to the doctor about how to get our baby out. All three of us wept softly as she prayed over us.<\/p>\n

That day felt like a thousand days condensed into 24 hours. So much of it is blurry, and yet so many moments are etched into a layer of my mind and heart reserved for the handful of days in our lives\u00a0which are not mundane.<\/p>\n

Filling out paperwork in the doctor\u2019s office that felt like taking the SAT. A long walk with a great friend around the medical center. Weeping with our pastors. Lunch with Jen and Andrea (who stayed with us all day) while balancing on the massive\u00a0bouncy birth balls littered about the delivery room.<\/p>\n

The anesthesiologist coming in like Mike from Breaking Bad. No words, just business. Jen asking if she had elephantiasis after getting the epidural. It was the slowest fastest day I\u2019ve ever had.<\/p>\n

It was also the most emotional. Before leaving for the hospital early that morning, Jen said, \u201cGod\u00a0willing, this is the hardest day we\u2019ll ever go through.\u201d You always feel like you\u2019ve emptied yourself of the emotion, and it just keeps coming. It is exhausting.<\/p>\n

Jen was monumental, though. I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention how wonderful she was the entire week. I was (mostly) a disaster. A mess of tears and emotions and intense pain. She was calm and confident. In the Lord. In herself. And in me. Our marriage may have been pronounced five years ago, but it was seared into my heart during this week.<\/p>\n

She eventually gave birth to our not-breathing child. The doctor showed me the gender. I looked down at my wife and told her. We had a girl. We named her Kate Noelle. Jen grabbed her out of the doctor\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my baby, my baby. She\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Stillborn births are not necessarily unique. That doesn\u2019t dull the sting or erase the pain, but it at least reminds you many parents have walked this path. My mom had a stillborn child. Some of our friends\u2019 parents did\u00a0too. One out of every 115 pregnancies ends with a stillborn.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t want to cry out \u201cWhy us?\u201d when this is so common to so many. Instead, we want to say\u00a0\u201cYes, us\u2014and thank you to everyone else before us for walking this path with grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a couple from our church, Ben and Ashley Barr, whose son Thomas died in a similar fashion in the exact same hospital room, just one week before. They had literally walked the path we walked, and\u00a0they walked it<\/em>\u00a0well<\/em>.\u00a0We took great hope in such great faithfulness.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

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Jen asked what my lasting memory from the day of Kate\u2019s birth was. There are many. One that sticks out is walking with Andrea from the delivery room to the hospital waiting room after Kate was born to face our friends, families, and kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou married a great woman,\u201d she said. \u201cI know,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

We walked in silence. A thousand-yard stare and a million-mile walk. We finally rounded the corner. I looked for my kids, but found my parents. The background was a myriad of people and tears. I think I saw our pastor on his knees. \u201cWe had a girl.\u201d I could barely get the words out. \u201cShe\u2019s so pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n

We got to introduce Kate to her brother and sister. We got to read as a family and had Hannah sing our EFGs (in lieu of our ABCs). Hannah and Jude got to pray for baby. We told them baby was going to live with Jesus.<\/p>\n

Hannah could not have been prouder. Jude gave some questionable pat-pats to Kate, as he is prone to do. They loved her as much as they love each other. Of all the griefs we had, the toughest is probably not being able to give them something they had been looking forward to for months.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t understand, but someday they will, and we wanted to have photos and moments to point to to remind them. I told my friend Josh I don\u2019t want to protect my kids from difficult things. I don\u2019t want them to only know good moments. I don\u2019t want them to only see our good side, because they will be mightily disappointed when they leave home. Both in us and by how the world actually works.<\/p>\n

One of our greatest joys the entire week was sharing these fleeting minutes with our momentary family of five.<\/p>\n

Jen and I also got to spend a night in the hospital with our child. The juxtaposition of desperately needing to sleep and not wanting to waste the minutes you have left before you never see your kid again is a strong one. I slept fitfully. Everyone in hospitals does. I held Kate close while her mom rested. It was a good time. One I\u2019m thankful we had.<\/p>\n

It was also a bittersweet night, knowing we\u2019d never physically lay eyes on our daughter again. But Psalm 139:16<\/a> says the Lord has already numbered all our days.<\/p>\n

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve received about 11,500 of them thus far. Kate only received about 250. That seems unfair. But the Lord wasn\u2019t surprised when she passed away, and we take comfort in knowing that.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

As we prepared to go home the next day, more friends visited and held our girl. More tears. But also a joyful farewell knowing we would see her again someday.<\/p>\n

I asked Andrea to come back\u00a0to the hospital. I\u2019ve known Andrea off and on since we were in elementary school. She is a terrific friend. I never thought I would be texting her as an adult to come help us say goodbye to our baby. Jen wanted to put Kate in Andrea\u2019s arms. Nobody else.<\/p>\n

I told Jen her job was done and that she had done it well. It was finished. That brought peace. We kissed her face and whispered, \u201cSee you soon, sweet girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Driving home from the hospital without a child is not a trek I hope anyone else reading this ever has to take. It is a sad and brutal thing. All you want is to hear the thing you\u2019ve found yourself trying to escape the last few years:\u00a0a screaming child.<\/p>\n

We rested for a day and went to the funeral home on Thursday. There are only a couple of reasons 30-year-olds walk into funeral homes. None of them are good. This one least of all.<\/p>\n

We ripped through the minutia. It was surreal. Picking flowers for your baby\u2019s casket.\u00a0Picking a casket for your baby<\/em>.\u00a0My gosh. We chose four white roses representing each member of our family to lay around Kate\u2019s casket for the memorial. We picked a burial plot. That destroyed me.<\/p>\n

She would be buried next to Thomas. She shared a delivery room with him. Now she shares a resting place. Jen found great joy in this.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

The memorial was on a Saturday morning. I read a letter I had written about the week. I didn\u2019t think I could get through it. The Lord continued to sustain, though. I looked out over 50 or 75 of our dearest friends and family, and tried my best to preach what we had learned from the week. Here\u2019s part of what I read:<\/p>\n

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Hebrews 5:8<\/a> reminds us that Jesus learned obedience from suffering. We have felt the weight of that verse this week, and testify that it is good. We lost Kate, but we got more of God, and it is a sweet thing.<\/p>\n

There is no bitterness among us. How could there be? We aren\u2019t even promised tomorrow. We are sustained here on Earth in the expanse of the universe only by God\u2019s words. We are owed nothing.<\/p>\n

We are instead grateful to have met Kate. To have shared half a day with her. For Jen to have shared eight months with her. That is a gift! It is nothing else. And while Jen wanted Kate to meet her and see her face and feel her embrace, we rejoice that she saw Jesus first.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always enjoyed the spotlight to a degree. I think everyone does in some way. That feels like a pretty personal thing to admit, but I\u2019m also writing about the loss of a child, so I guess we\u2019re beyond that. This was a week when I both embraced and loathed the spotlight.<\/p>\n

I embraced it because I was glad to shine a light on our Lord, and I loathed it because I really, really wish I didn\u2019t need to in this way.<\/p>\n

The last of these spotlight moments was carrying my child\u2019s casket from the hearse to the grave. I spoke with our pastor a few hours before that. He stared me in the eyes and told me that, as her father, I wouldn\u2019t regret putting her casket in the ground.<\/p>\n

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I shook as I stood in the road 25 yards from her resting place and stared at a casket the size of a wastebasket, with 15 sets of eyes staring at the back of my head. I didn\u2019t want to move. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to wake up.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I lowered my six-pound child six feet in the ground with a pair of straps that looked like they should have been corralling boxes in the bed of our truck when we moved to our next house.<\/p>\n

I had to get down on my knees and then lay on my chest to reach far enough in to release the casket. We buried Kate with some of our favorite things. Books, pictures and drawings from the kids. We wept over the grave and laid four roses on her buried casket (even the one Hannah destroyed at the memorial).<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Putting a baby in the ground changes you. I don\u2019t know how it couldn\u2019t. We went back to the church, and I found one of those strong men I mentioned earlier. He held me again and told me things would never be the same for any of us. He\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

A 19th-century hymnist named Horatio Spafford knew the feelings we felt that day. Spafford and his wife lost four daughters when their ship crossing the Atlantic sank. He then wrote what might be the most famous hymn of all time. We sang it at the memorial. The first verse crushes.<\/p>\n

\n

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
\nWhen sorrows like sea billows roll;
\nWhatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
\nIt is well, it is well\u00a0with my soul.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On our way home from the memorial and burial, Jen told me she felt like she\u2019d never worshiped like she did at Kate\u2019s memorial. She\u2019d never had this much on the table.<\/p>\n

In our 30-plus years on Earth, we have almost exclusively known great gifts and a rich life. I said this at the memorial, but we have a\u00a0good<\/em>\u00a0life. We have tremendous friends, enjoy our work, and delight in our children.<\/p>\n

For a lot of us (myself included), Christianity has come easy. There\u2019s been no suffering. There\u2019s been no pain. There have been few questions. There\u2019s been no reason to\u00a0not\u00a0trust God and to\u00a0not\u00a0call ourselves Christians.<\/p>\n

And now there is.<\/p>\n

Now we have known unimaginable depths. The sorrow that flowed that week is an unspeakable thing. And we can truthfully say the Lord is good in both the joy and the sorrow, if not greater in the sorrow. That was what we tried to point to all week.<\/p>\n

That we do not hope in our children. That we do not hope in each other. That we do not hope in our friends or our families or in anything outside the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. That is all. In Christ alone. This was a wild reminder of that. One we didn\u2019t want, but always need.<\/p>\n

My friend Nathan said that until that week, loving the Lord amid sorrow this deep was only a theory for many of us. Putting a baby in the ground makes it real. And not just for us. Our friends mourned deeply with us, which was as rich a reminder as I\u2019ve ever had of God\u2019s purpose in ordaining\u00a0a deep community of friends.<\/p>\n

Peter would call all of this sanctification:<\/p>\n

\n

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith\u200a\u2014\u200amore precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire\u200a\u2014\u200amay be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:6\u20138<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If I\u2019m honest with myself, this is a good thing for me. Would I choose this path? Never. Would I choose any part of it for myself or anyone I\u2019ve ever met in my life? No. But it is ultimately good for me and for my family, and that\u2019s a really difficult thing to admit.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

This is why I say we lost a child (a baby!), and gained everything. Christ is everything, or he is nothing. We lost so much, but gained so much more. We got so much more of the Lord than we ever had before. We got more of the Lord than I knew was possible for a human to get.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to describe what I mean when I say we got more of God. That is an ambiguous thing, I realize. We all saw it on each other\u2019s faces, though. The Lord was near. We all shared a lot of joy and peace that week that wasn\u2019t man-made. It was sweet. It was a deeply spiritual week. Probably the most spiritual of our lives.<\/p>\n

Life that week was so thick and so rich that it barely resembled all the other weeks I\u2019ve experienced. And the goodness in all of this (and a sign of God\u2019s spectacular grace to us) is that the only constant we knew that week is that God is still good and his grace and love roll deeper than we will ever know. He is sufficient, but he is also beyond sufficient. He is good enough to give us more of himself, no matter the circumstance.<\/p>\n

James 1:17<\/a> says this:<\/p>\n

\n

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jen says that means our faith must not waver because God didn\u2019t change. He didn\u2019t waver. The only thing that has changed is how much of him we carry with us. We lost sweet Kate, but we got so much of the Lord. Not in spite of, but\u00a0because\u00a0of\u00a0her.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t mistake what I\u2019m saying here. We lost a lot. We lost\u00a0a child<\/em>.\u00a0It is every parent\u2019s deepest fear and greatest nightmare. I honestly can\u2019t, off the top of my head, think of anything worse in terms of sheer traumatic force applied to two married adults. But we gained even more than we lost. This is a bittersweet reality. One too complex for me to understand in full.<\/p>\n

A pastor named Dave Zuleger once observed this about suffering:<\/p>\n

\n

Suffering is one of the great instruments in God\u2019s hands to continue to reveal to us our dependence on him and our hope in him. God is good to give us the greatest gift he can give us, which is more of himself, and he\u2019s good however he chooses to deliver that gift.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We can now testify to the truth in these\u00a0words.<\/p>\n

We have two healthy kids and one on the way. God is good. We have two healthy kids and the one on the way has died. And God is even greater than we thought he was.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

So now we move on. But we move on as vastly different people than we were before. All of us. Not just Jen and me. Our friends, our families, everyone who was involved. We have been grateful for that. Not only that\u00a0could our burden be divvied up, but that the Lord would mature us and those around us because of this.<\/p>\n

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My friend Josh sat with us in the delivery room a few hours after Kate was born and confessed amid many tears that he\u2019d never longed for heaven like he had on that day. I thought that was a compelling and honest confession. One I tearfully agreed with and tucked away.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always found heaven to be a strange thing. Or rather my relationship with heaven. It seems like a place we should long for more than we do given\u00a0how twisted and disturbing the planet we live on is. And yet, I like it\u00a0here. I really do. C. S. Lewis would say I prefer mud pies.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not something I\u2019m proud of. It\u2019s also something I\u2019m hopeful will change as I continue to accept the reality that sweet Kate is there (and not here) forever. And it\u2019s already started. Heaven is more at the forefront of my life because of that week. We\u2019ve talked about it more. It\u2019s a place I think about. It\u2019s a place I want to be.<\/p>\n

Not to see the girl I lost, although that will be a good thing. But it is a pale and pathetic thing compared to seeing in full the God who willingly chose that which I would never dream of choosing. I want to meet my daughter, yes, but what I really long for is to meet the Father who gave his Son.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: Permission to print granted by the author and The Gospel Coalition<\/a>, where this article appeared<\/a> on January 7, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Spurgeon once said this about suffering: It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":86271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1767,1768,1769,7264],"yoast_head":"\nWe lost a child and gained something greater<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cYour life can change with one phone call. You\u2019re not exempt.\u201d The problem is that I\u00a0always thought I was. I thought my friends were, too. 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