My First (un)Born, His Redeemed
Eight months ago, my grandma asked: "When are you having a baby?"
I answered quickly, "When God provides one." Grandma then shared how she recently had a dream about a baby named Adam. No other context or details of the dream. Just a baby boy with the name Adam. Little did we know, there was a baby with us that day. The 4th generation was only 4 weeks along.
One week after the conversation, I would experience the joyous discovery of parenthood. And one week following, I would then experience its loss.
Today my firstborn was due.
Not a day goes by that I don't remember the joy & the loss. I think of what my body would look like, feel like, crave. I wonder what name we would have chosen. I reflect on all of the friends I could have been pregnant with, sharing a milestone together. I remember the complete and true joy I felt when I realized motherhood. Some days, I intrusively remember the nights I woke up in sweat and the hyperventilating mornings. In hard moments, I remember the comforting words from friends and family members when we first shared the news.
After sharing the news, my dad's initial response was, "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away." (Job 1:21). A sentiment based on fact: God gives. God takes away. I remember thinking in that moment" "This matter of fact, black and white, unadorned verse should make me angry... I should feel belittled by the simplicity of 'He gives, He takes.'" But the scripture didn't make me angry. It didn't stir up frustration or feelings of being dismissed. Rather, I found deep and true comfort in my Dad's short and faithful response:"The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away."
I needed the reminder: God took away. Not me. The days following a miscarriage, you're often left with a lot of questions that don't have answers. You are tempted to fill in those blanks with, "I should have..." or "My body wasn't..." You spend evenings and lunch breaks googling symptoms and statistics, spiraling yourself into a deeper hold of your own delusional sense of control and self-blame. You desperately want your doctors to explain what exactly happened, offering you a shallow "why" to remedy your grief. But they have nothing specific to give. They lump you into the unfortunately large statistic of women who suffer miscarriages, with the sense of it all being "normal." The absence of the WHY has the ability to desolate your existence.
In my dad's response, he didn't try to fill my emptiness with an emptier WHY. Instead, he pointed me to the WHO. WHO is God? Like a good father, he knows his daughter well. Dad knew I would immediately put the loss and tragedy under my realm of "control," leaving no room for grieving freely under God's control. Dad didn't rationalize my tragedy or promise that the reason would be made clear down the road. Instead, I was pointed to the One who creates, redeems, comforts, seeks, gives, and takes away.
Following my dad's initial response, he prayed over Logan and I. My mom offered sweet, nurturing words. Many more phone calls have proceeded with family. The next couple of months involved a lot of sorrow, anxiety, lack of appetite, emptiness, and anger. And God took them all. They are not completely gone, but they are not mine. They rest in the hands of God. The same God who has taken away, who has kept my firstborn in His loving hands, also takes & holds my grief.
When you truly live under the truth: "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away" you lose all sense of entitlement and self idolization. Life can be experienced under God's loving generosity & sovereignty. You don't need to spiral into self-blame and wade in shallow reasons of life's tragedies. In your receiving and your loss, you know where it all comes from and where it goes. All things good come from God. All things lost and tragic go to God. They go for His redemption: transfiguring the pain into joy, the questions into answers, the anxiety into peace, and our tragic death into eternal life.
My God gives. My God takes away. My God redeems.
Happy birthday, baby.
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