We celebrated my wife’s 40th birthday on Saturday 27th February 2016, and it was one of the worst days of our lives. The photo of Sarah and I denies our reality. We were still shell-shocked from the traumatising events two days previous. We experienced so much challenge and change in that month of February 2016, none of it were we prepared for, but that was just a taste of what lay in store for us over the ensuing months and years.
Of course, it was Sarah’s milestone birthday, and we’d planned the celebration for her for weeks beforehand, and we had to make the most of our time together with family and friends.
The day before the celebration, as a couple, we felt alone. We were reeling from news that left us in a devastating place of grief, and there weren’t many people we could share with. We seriously considered calling off Sarah’s 40th birthday because neither of us were in a mental or emotional state to celebrate. We were still in shock, unable yet to reflect on what had occurred.
Then, at the party, there was a moment where our eyes locked from a distance away and we both realised neither of us had our not-yet-three-year-old son. Immediately we were thrown into panic. We were in a public park, people everywhere, and NOBODY knew where our 35-month-old toddler was! Immediately, I ran, calling out for him, thinking abduction, then looking over to the pond in the middle of the park, I feared drowning.
My reaction was not only out of the trauma of imagining our son in a dire situation, but it was also in the backdrop of the trauma I’d experienced two days previously. Very fortunately, one of our guests, a dear friend from yesteryear, found our son in the playground fifty metres away playing by himself. We’d lost him for only a few minutes but it seemed like an eternity.
To be honest, it was a relief when the party was over because neither of us are good fakes.
The following day was Sarah’s actual 40th birthday and we travelled to Busselton because we were suddenly on two weeks unforeseen leave. It was a horrible day, where thoughts of what was going on tormented just about every moment. The following day was the same, as was the next one, and the next one... you get the idea.
During this season of life I was reading John Townsend’s “The Entitlement Cure,” which discusses the concept of ‘pocket entitlement’: we all have pockets in our lives where we can behave entitled. I was in a season of trying to determine HOW things had gone terribly wrong, and I had a personal spiritual breakthrough that I lived out of for the rest of 2016 and into 2017. It’s interesting as I look back how I’d taken full responsibility for MY part of issues, but because others didn’t and wouldn’t, it had the effect of us feeling gaslit.
It’s also interesting how, out of four holiday units on that Busselton beachfront, the one we stayed in back in February 2016 still holds such sad and traumatic associations, whereas the other units we’ve stayed in don’t. It’s indicative of how sticky trauma is.
As I go back to this photo of us posing around Sarah’s cake, I recognise we were at the very core of the pain right there, where smiles hid a world of pain. As I look back to that time of nearly seven years ago now, I see how far we’ve come since, and how much we had to sow by faith in recovering from that time. We go back to the photo and others like it, and we want to say thank you to that version of ourselves that kept going despite the significance of the challenges that presented at that time.
What this photo demonstrates is that photographs often lie, especially when smiles are offered when people are in a world of pain.
At that time, we were still only just over a year on from losing Nathanael, and even though I was always saying “we’re fine,” losing our child took more of a toll on me and us than we realised or were even aware of at the time.
I felt sorry for Sarah that her 40th was such a disappointment. Those days were a shock for us both, but in many ways, it was a vicarious trauma for her. I imagine we’ll have the chance of a do-over in 2026 for her 50th.
When life takes a turn for the worse, and these things do tend to occur suddenly, it can take years to recover and reconcile matters, as it has for us. But one thing that isn’t lost on us is the faithfulness of our God throughout. Our choices to do things right and to do right things are always honoured, just as we’re forgiven for making missteps along the way.
We’ve learned a lot about life, people, ministry, God, and ourselves in the past 7-10 years, and it stands us in good stead as God grows us (or I should say, me) up.
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