NINE years ago today, about 11:30AM, our world changed, for disaster had struck. Not only were we to lose our precious Nathanael, but we had an uncertain storm-tossed journey ahead of us—it ended up being four complete months of days and sometimes harrowing hours of tortuous minutes.
As that massive storm approached, dark melding into dark on the far horizon, clouds of uncertainty combining with clouds of tempestuousness, building dark upon dark, with peels of thunder and lightning flashing all around us at times, we staged ourselves for danger, faith and many prayers carrying us through that four-month series of crises.
Each of these years since that time, we have had Mum with us. This is the first year I’ll speak to Mum, and she won’t answer. Mum and Dad shared stillbirth with us; they lost our sister, Debra Leanne on September 21, 1973—50 years ago this year.
Even though I wrote enough to compile a book of that time that we published in 2018, there is still so much that most people except those closest to us do not understand.
I wrote about it, and continue to this day to do so, to open the eyes of people’s hearts to pregnancy and infant loss.
One-in-four pregnancies end in loss.
So much heartache needing healing.
JULY FIRST each year is special. The pain felt in 2014 is very different to the redemption of peace within the sea billows of sorrow that roll wistfully now. There is something irrepressibly healing in the sorrow that can only be redeemed in the peace of the Lord.
Today we are invited to sit and ponder our grief and to ask the God of the universe to show us the way to peace, even as grief threatens to tear us apart. Peace doesn’t come overnight, but that journey of a thousand thoughts and million feelings along the way starts with that first, most bravest step today. And it continues by humble patience and solemn acceptance of faith as each storm rises up within us, often when we least expect it to.
IMAGE: by Helen Roberts (Heartfelt) Mum with Nathanael, the morning after he was stillborn, October 31, 2014.
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