It was ten years ago on this day that my life was turned upside down. I was 18 weeks pregnant with a baby boy. We’d had an early ultrasound and were waiting until the 22 week scan to discover the gender. But I knew in my heart it was a baby brother for Noki. I’d felt him kicking and moving around in my belly. I had bought some maternity shirts because I was already looking very pregnant. We had just purchased a 12 passenger van as we knew we were going to be needing more space than our Sienna had for all the car seats and seatbelts. I felt safe in another healthy pregnancy.
Nothing could have prepared me for the midwife not being able to hear the heartbeat on the Doppler when just a few weeks earlier she had found it right away. I happened to have all six children with me in the room because this was just supposed to be quick routine appointment before we were to head over to the library to get some books. My mom had been my midwife for all my previous pregnancies, but she had been in Guatemala for midwifery missions work, and I wanted to get good care while she was gone. She was back home by this time, but we decided to wait to make the transition back to home delivery care once she was settled. It was only going to be a matter of weeks. When the midwife asked me to come with her down to the ultrasound room to check more thoroughly for the heartbeat, my heart sank. I somehow just knew what she would find. I will never forget the walk down that long hallway. All I could say was, “I trust you, Father,” not even realizing what I was saying or consciously thinking it. It was something that welled up from my spirit, a knowing that is deeper than all understanding or expression. It was a good thing I was working with a group of midwives who had hospital privileges because we indeed found a baby in my womb who was still and lifeless. Due to the risks of hemorrhaging, I would deliver him in the hospital that night, the only one of my babies not born in the safety of our home.
The story of his birth is not what I intend to share today, but it certainly is indelibly printed on my heart forever. I don’t know what I thought a baby at ~18 weeks would look like, but I didn’t expect to see little fingernails or lips or to be able to get foot prints. He was the spitting image of his father – long and lanky, with defined cheekbones and a beautiful mouth. Why didn’t I feel it the moment he died? I wonder about that. We buried him at my parents’ house in the mountains, leaving only a stone to memorialize all he was and would never be. All I was left with was the aftermath that only loss can create.
The heaviness of heart was a physical weight on my shoulders. I listened to Fernando Ortega’s album The Shadow of Your Wings on repeat all day and night for weeks, desperately praying for the lyrical themes of trust and surrender to get deep into my soul. I drove our 12 passenger van and felt ridiculous and empty. My arms literally ached for a child who would never fill them. My milk came in, scandalously heedless of my broken heart, and then took weeks to dry up. How can a child’s life just be…over? Before it even started? I still don’t know the answer, ten years later. What I do know is that what I now understand of my Father’s heart I would never have discovered if Joshua Zion hadn’t died.
I had never before considered God’s sovereignty in the way I have come to see it. If I had to sum up the past years of moving from terrible gut-wrenching grief that seemed to be endless in its tenacity, to only occasionally feeling a sharp stab in the heart as I would look around counting children’s heads with the awful feeling that someone was missing, to rejoicing and saying with full sincerity, “Thank you, Father, for giving me of this cup to drink,” there is only one word that captures it all. Sovereignty. He holds everything together, and though I knew this in my before days, I know-it-know-it in my after days. I stand today with the comfort in my heart of His goodness and ultimate trustworthiness. No, I do not think that a sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge and care. And no, I don’t have any more answers now than I did then. But I have assurance, and knowing myself and my proneness to worry, I have to admit that counts more than living my life in ignorance of the depths of the valleys I have gotten to walk with my God. I wouldn’t trade anything for it. No, not even a life with my precious child. I can only say that because I actually do know the high price of that loss. It still hurts today. It probably always will, but I know that I can trust His plan for me, no matter the pain. Isn’t that the kind of faith I always asked Him for?
Right now, I’m in a season of particularly difficult but good growth. It’s the weeding, moving boulders out of the garden, dirt-under-your-fingernails kind of growth – hard and relentless but fruitful. And it has been birthed from seasons of loss and heartache. We don’t just experience pain for pain’s sake, not when we have a God who is busily redeeming every single moment for our good. There is a harvest that our heavenly Father wants out of all this suffering. But there is a level of trusting before the fruit comes that we must enter. As I consider where I’ve been and the place I’ve come to, a story came to mind. It’s from John chapter 6, when the disciples are rowing across the sea after just witnessing the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus was not with them, but as the stormy waves assaulted their boat, they suddenly saw Him walking on the water toward them and were terrified. “But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.'” (6:20) It struck me that I often look at storms that come into my life with suspicion and fear. How often the Father has to remind me, it is ME doing this, do not be afraid! I need not look at what is coming and fear, but only trust the character of my heavenly Father and see His hand in whatever might be.
As He took my baby before what I thought was his time for His own righteous purposes and trustworthy plans and not for my harm, so He is helping me to see that He is always working out my life to bring Himself glory.
Baruch ata Yahweh, Eloheinu melech ha olam, dayan ha emet.
Blessed are you Yahweh, King of the Universe, the True Judge.
Hebron Heights Academy 