My God, My God...

This post was originally written in early November 2012 and I just got around to posting it to my blog.  :(

I am going to admit something that I am not terribly proud of.  From the moment I found out AJ didn’t have a heartbeat, I started searching my memory for scripture, something for me to hang onto, to provide some sort of comfort.  The verse that kept playing in my mind was Philippians 4:19 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  During those first few days, there were times when I just didn’t think I could go on but I would repeat that verse over and over and somehow, by the grace of God, I was able to pick myself up, sometimes literally, and continue on.

When AJ was born the room was absolutely silent except for the doctor counting 1…2…3…4…5…as he untangled my son from his own cord.  The doctor placed him in my arms and the verse that immediately  popped into my mind was Matthew 27:46 “…My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

What???  I know I am not forsaken.  I am blessed beyond measure.  I have a great life.  I have an amazing husband who loves me dearly (and I LOVE him!), four beautiful, healthy children here on earth who are mostly sweet and loving, a warm and comfortable house.  I have true friends and a great church.  I have everything I NEED and much, much more.  So, what part of that sounds “forsaken”?  Just because God did not fulfill MY plan does not mean that he has forsaken me.  And for even briefly thinking that…I am not proud.

I wish that before I delivered AJ, I would have read the scripture about Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane.  I know it seems like an odd passage to bring comfort, but it has.   Jesus prayed in the garden “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.  Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” Matthew 26:39.  I could relate to that.  I remember soaking in the bathtub the night before I was induced and begging God to let that ultrasound be wrong, to somehow let me give birth to a living baby.  I knew he had the power to perform miracles, but if that wouldn’t be the case, I asked that he would help me to do this gracefully…to praise him in the storm…to not waiver in my faith. 

I have a beautiful devotional called a “A Year of Hope” by Nancy Guthrie and in it, she says “…it is hard to accept that our loving God has the power to eliminate suffering and yet chooses not to.  It was Hebrews 5:7-8 that helped me in my wrestling with this.”  (Hebrews 5:7-8 reads “While Jesus was here on Earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver him out of death.  And God heard his prayers because of his reverence for God.  So even though Jesus was God’s son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”)  Guthrie goes on to say “I have clung to these verses in the lowest days of grief.  In it I see the fully human, fully God Jesus facing the Cross and crying out to his Father, who has the power to make another way, enact another plan…but chooses not to.  And I see his submission to that perfect plan of God, a plan that included suffering and death.  It helps me to know that even as he submitted to it, Jesus wrestled with God’s plan to redeem the world through his death on the cross.  It helps because I, too, have wrestled with God’s plan for my life even as I sought to submit to it.”

I found that passage powerful because I, too, have been wrestling with God’s plan for my life.  I am just having a hard time seeing the sense in AJ’s death.  I have been searching for something “good” to come out of this.  I just wish things could be different.  I wish I could go back to being naïve and thinking things like this only happen to other people.  I wish I was holding my 5 month old baby instead of bringing balloons to his grave.  I know that God is holding my heart.  I know that I am His. “If anyone knows the pain that comes from losing someone you love, GOD DOES.”