It has been a very taxing week. Our close friends received a devastating diagnosis for their two month old son. He will survive, but things are going to be very different from what they imagined for him. The immediate reaction from their whole community has been mourning and anger. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I can say my first thoughts were pleading and accusation.
“How could you let this happen?”
“Don’t you love us?”
“Please don’t take away their baby. Have mercy.”
The fear and anxiety of the final scan and tests results held everyone hostage all week long. The results were heartbreaking and hard to process, but at the end of the day we are relieved to know that he will survive. He and his parents have been spared of the ultimate separation.
Heui Chan and I talked about it last night. Our miscarriage and now the state of our friends’ baby has brought out a lot of bitterness in us. The suffering and death of little ones, as Heech put it, is hard to understand or come to terms with. I couldn’t agree more. There are other sad events in life that test us, but there’s something about the innocent helplessness of babies and children that makes us cry out, “What the hell is going on?”
Recently, I’ve been reading devotionals targeted at loss and miscarriage in my Bible app. The passage from this morning focused on embracing weeping and sadness because the Lord also weeps with us. The death of Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, and the distress of Lazarus’ family moved Jesus to tears (John 11:35), even though he already knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead. While this is a sweet picture of Jesus’ companionship in our suffering, it was the following verses that I sadly resonated with.
“So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” John 11:36-37
My heart is confused and hurting–for myself and for my friends. Couldn’t God have spared all of us from facing this? It’s cruel to say that there’s a plan here. There’s no raising of the dead in my story. There’s no relief after three days for my friends. There are a lot of correct Christian answers here and I will remind myself of them, but today this post does not end in the ‘right answer’. May God have mercy on all of us…this is just too much.
Drops of Jules 