I spent hours in prayer the whole next year. I had constant choices before me all the time. I could either fester in my pain, try to ignore it or I could cry out to God with it. Completely, by the grace of God, I almost always chose to cry out to God with my pain. I had my moments of weakness when I indulged self pity but overall I made the right choices. I was surprised to learn that turning to the Lord during grief is a rather bittersweet experience. On the one hand, the Lord was closer to me than one could possibly imagine. It is the sweetest most wonderful feeling but the process of expressing grief to the Lord is also excruciating. I know, however, that after a full year spent in worship and prayer I gained, by God’s grace, victory over grief, in most areas, in a miraculous amount of time. But all the while there was something else happening too.
There was another war being waged within me; one which I kept guarded from the Lord. Whether I did this consciously or not, I don’t know. I questioned the loss of my little baby through the glasses of the faith teachings. I did not, yet, possess all of the necessary tools to truthfully cope with this trial. In a little compartment in my heart and mind, I continued to hold ideas hostage before the Lord. This lengthened and complicated my grieving process in another way. Leave it to human intellect to skirt God's truth even in the face of His wonder working power. In that little compartment I still stood steadfast and unyielding to God's sovereign plan for my life. I do not want to minimize what God had done in my life in another area because it was undoubtedly a step in the right direction. Looking back I think to myself: “What could I possibly have been thinking while I watched as God performed a miracle in my life?” But deep inside I know what I was thinking: “I have partook of my token trial and I am done now”.
Growing up in the Catholic Church prepared me for thinking that I could live the easier life. We went to church and saw all the families standing around us with their children in their well pressed clothes. Hair do's all in place. The mass was always said and performed nicely. As a family, we came early, took our seats, knelt and prayed. After wards, we left early never knowing what hardships the other families were experiencing. And they never saw or knew what ones we might be experiencing either. My parents didn't purposely protect themselves in this regard it was just part of the culture of the church we attended. But as a child growing up in this, I naturally thought that everyone was perfect and that their lives were perfectly tranquil. Even at home, our life was the same steady pace day after day. Very few ripples affected our lives. No great traumas or trials crossed our paths that I ever knew of. Sickness and tragic losses were foreign images to me. I wasn't completely ignorant though. I knew something wasn’t right. That is to say, thank God that nothing horrible and traumatic did happen to us but somehow it did not fit with what I perceived was happening in the world around me. Instead of creating a happy go lucky child these experiences drove me to wonder when the "bad" was going to hit us. My parents were oblivious to my dilemma. Had I shared my thoughts with them they probably would have "set me straight" in my thinking. But alas I obsessed about when it was going to be our turn. The question rang in my head, “When it did hit us, would I lose a parent or some such awful thing?” I really wondered how long we could sail through life without any of the storms of life hitting us. In my sinful way, I mentally tried to balance what I perceived as an unnatural charmed life (in reality just a good childhood) with a life of fear and negative expectations.
My parents, to this day, appear to live the same way. All of my siblings are "good" hard working responsible adults who never rebelled as teenagers to any notable degree. We all get along and have fun together at family reunions. We are all healthy for the most part. With one or two exceptions, all of my brothers and sisters have had relatively smooth lives. My folks are both healthy and are in their 80's. They are happily married and are in relatively good spirits most of the time. According to a worldly standard, they really did and do have a great life. I was sort of torn in my adulthood. One part of me expected to have a smooth life like my parents. This is the part that fit perfectly with the foundations of the faith movement. The other part of me knew that it was too much to ask and that the lightening was bound to strike. This is the part of me that nurtured “fear and control”. This is why I sort of became a control freak and decided that I would make sure that nothing bad would happen to me. I just wasn't prepared for the Lord to love me so much He would make sure that it would. When the baby died; that was that. It had finally happened. I could breathe freely and know that the bad had finally struck me and now I could go on and live just like my parents did. As fantastic as it seems, I really believed this. Little did I know God would relieve me of this fantasy.
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