What is the purpose of deconstruction but reconstruction?

A lingering vacant stare out the window. No words. All cried out. Empty. Lost…

… until energy would flow in once again for more tears and heartache.

I took the photograph above moments before Sarah and I left the hospital room where we had spent four days being with our deceased son, Nathanael Marcus. As many of you know, he was stillborn. He never took a breath. He never cried aloud. On October 30, 2014, sometime between 3:30pm and 6:30pm he slipped into the arms of Jesus, without a soul even knowing.

For those who don’t know, we discovered 19 weeks earlier he was on a collision course with death, and so for 122 days we made weekly visits to the hospital — including eight amnioreduction procedures — to keep him alive and Sarah safe.

It was the most stressful time of our lives, but please let’s be clear, losing Nathanael wasn’t all that we were dealing with at the time… not by a long stretch.

You may not notice in the photograph,
but Sarah in the moment was haunted
by more grief that you can imagine.

The moment was dawning on both of us that we had to leave Nathanael at the hospital, just a couple of days before his funeral, and we were on our way home. We could not stay in the hospital any longer. We were ready to go, but we were gutted to go.

It was a day littered with countless fragments of intangible grief.

Neither of us said much, which is unusual even for me. We knew business had to be done, so we took as many photos for memories as we could, left the room, I placed our bags in the car, and we then went for one last goodbye with Nathanael. We were planning on another visit the next day, but we didn’t want to miss a single opportunity. We took nothing for granted. Leaving him there alone was heartbreaking.

It was a time when saying goodbye didn’t seem real. It seemed not final enough and too final to comprehend all at the same time. The moments of goodbye were underwhelming and overwhelming all at the same time. Why is it in grief that the mind is so confused and confounded?

That was then.     This is now.

Five years. Of the many times I interact with pre-schoolers in my work as a school chaplain, I’m reminded, “Ah, Nathanael…” Fortunately, I have an “arrangement” with grief now; I welcome sorrow as God is palpably right there, in it, with me!

We are no longer afraid of grief when the worst experiences of life have rattled our cage. It’s like the chat I had with my eldest daughter recently; she has experienced enough over the past 15 years to crush her heart many times, yet she’s kept a soft pliable heart despite it all, which I call a miracle, and certainly a gift from God. Much credit must go to her, too, because in being continually deconstructed, and in keeping her heart soft, she’s been continually reconstructed to become a better and wiser version of herself.

Many of the people I have the honour and privilege to work with in a counselling room are facing deconstruction, not unlike the biblical Job. They’re enduring great loss, hardship, despair and perplexing circumstances.

Ultimately what happens when they do not give up, but they press on in within their pain, keeping their hearts soft and attuned to what they’re really feeling, is they’re patiently resurrected and restored.

We’re never certain of this at the time of grief, but God is present when we feel the whisper of hope that gently susurrates, “Don’t give up!” We don’t know why we keep going when the journey of deconstruction is so long and arduous, but the hope of being reconstructed and restored compels us to keep stepping.

To keep stepping forward when everything in us is saying “Quit!” is the testimony of absolute faith.

Now, as I look back, there is only joy for the sorrow still alive in my heart for Nathanael; joy for what we learned in that season, for the continual assurance of God’s presence with us, for what we were able to tap into in our brokenness, for the fact we will see him again, and, for the facts of experience, where hope said, “You can do this,” and to discover that not only could we, but we actually did it.

This is a reliable rule of life: when life crushes us, if we resist the temptations of escape or attack in the deconstruction that inevitably takes place, God will most assuredly, in time, reconstruct us.

~

Happy 5th heaven day, Nathanael, for tomorrow. Thank you for what your life has taught us. We thank God for the time we had with you. We will love you all the way until you welcome us home.