This past week a baby who was greatly anticipated never drew a breath, the reasons are not clear in our minds. They are not clear in the medical minds.
The questions roll over and over in our heads. The caregivers for the mother during labor, lay awake at night dealing with the "What if’s?" and although the facts are there, they do not offer consolation. As my sister and I stood talking to a father who lost his baby in a stillbirth 18 years ago, he shared how you can let sorrow break you or make you. How true! I see how in many situations, we can let horrible things, that are truly terrible and hurt to the very core, effect us in a negative way the rest of our lives or we can let it make us better people for it. <p> The pastor was talking about one of my favorite stories about Jim and Elizabeth Elliot and how the story of how she went to live among the people who killed her husband and her friend’s husbands with her little girl. Many of us would say that it was not something that she had to do. She had every right to hate those people, yet she took a horrible, awful thing and went on to see how it could be used for the glory of God. <p> I sit here and faced with the enormity of what the parents of the stillborn baby might be facing. I do not know that pain. It was my constant fear while pregnant.
But yet, here I am seeing the effects that the questions, the answers etc. not only have on the people who lost the child, but the people who were there. The doctor, the nurses, the midwife, the assistant, the mother of the mother of the baby, the relatives and others. They are bearing a heavy burden of the responsibility, and yet, sometimes there is no "reason" we can pin it on, but that it was what was the plan from the beginning.
I can't imagine the heartbreak that couple is feeling right now. So often, we wonder why bad things happen; especially when they happen to those we consider to be "good people." The best explanation I've heard is that it is because man has a free will. Go all the way back to the Garden of Eden and you'll find man exercising his free will and making the wrong choice. The world has suffered the consequences of that sin ever since.
Sometimes people suffer consequences after making their own wrong choices. But sometimes, I believe, people suffer not because of anything they have done or any sin they have committed. It's not necessarily because it's God's will for them. It's simply because we live in a fallen world and our "adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." (1 Peter 5:8) Sometimes that enemy finds a way into a person's life and he is then able "to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." (John 10:10)
God is the Giver of Life. He is the Giver of Blessings. What the enemy meant for bad, God can turn into good, even though we may not understand how any good can come out of some situations, such as what happened to this young couple. All I know for sure is that God is good and I can trust Him no matter what. And I pray that He gives comfort and peace to the parents and their families and everyone else affected by this tragedy.
-Angie