The death of a child forces us to question all of our core
beliefs. Our relationship with and understanding of God will
change.
Faith Versus Planning
Is creating a web page (or reading a web page) about preparing
for the death of your child indicative of a lack of faith in
God? I don't think so. As I've said elsewhere on this site, if
true miracles happened as often as we wished they would, they'd
be called Commonplaces. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
praying for God to save your child. I never prayed harder for
anything in my entire life. I asked everyone I know to pray,
and they spread the word to pray as well. We had 750 people (at
least) praying for Emily. I don't doubt the efficacy of prayer.
I truly believe all those prayers had an effect on us. They didn't
give us our miracle, but that's not to say they were ineffective.
I'm sure I felt the power of everyone's support. I had several
experiences which proved to me that God was enduring the waiting
and the grief right at our sides.
Planning doesn't negate faith. If you believe in God as an
omnipotent being, then you believe God has the power to heal
your child. When the Gospels write that Jesus couldn't perform
miracles in his home town because the people lacked faith, it's
because those people lacked even the faith that he could
do it, not because they didn't believe hard enough that he would.
They were, in a sense, ridiculing God. I don't endorse ridicule
under the best of circumstances. God most certainly could transform
any of our babies into perfectly healthy babies. I believe God
could raise my daughter from the dead and heal her even now.
Will God do that? Probably not. But I'd be very open to it happening
if it did.
St. Athanatius wrote, "Pray as though everything depends
on God. Work as though everything depends on you." This
became our motto. We prayed for a miracle and planned for a funeral.
I don't think there's a magical number or type of prayers that
can force God's hand. There is no correct amount of faith that
will coerce God into a healing that isn't in the divine plan.
We can ask. We can beg. But in the end, God has the final say.
Our Nefarious Plan
In the Catholic Church, a person needs two documented posthumous
miracles in order to be canonized a saint. The first miracle
beatifies the candidate; the second completes the process. I
decided, in a move my husband called "mercenary Catholicism"
to pick a person who was pretty much bound to become a saint
eventually anyhow, and ask for that person's intercession. I'd
point out that we could help each other--get me my miracle and
I'll lobby to get it recognized by the church. (Catholic readers
will probably chuckle; protestants will be horrified.) We selected
Fulton J. Sheen,
and I even got ahold of the priest (a very holy, helpful man)
spearheading the campaign for his sainthood. I still think it
was a good idea--these people are bound to get two miracles eventually,
and I was asking to be one of them. In the process, I learned
quite a lot about a very spiritual man. I'm not suggesting anyone
else take this course of action, but it did give a structure
to our prayer.
How could God do this to us?
This is the book of Job in a nutshell, and I found comfort
in that the writer of the book of Job didn't seem to have an
answer either. Thomas Aquinas admitted that innocent suffering
is a very good argument against the existence of God. Philosophers
and scholars have debated this for ages without reaching a satisfactory
conclusion, so I won't even try to answer it on a web page.
I don't know what God has in mind. I know several people tried
to tell me that they knew what God had in mind, but it didn't
help. (But now I know who to ask the next time I need to know
the mind of God!)
"Children are a gift from God." The conclusion I
reached was essentially that--Emily, anencephaly and all, is
a gift from God. I'm not sure why I couldn't keep my gift, but
that conviction only grew stronger the longer I carried her.
Emily made me understand the preciousness of time and the precariousness
of her life. I grew to love her individual soul and what I could
decipher of her personality. She has changed me and my husband
and our relationship to one another and to the world. She has
affected the life of her brother. She has inspired many and shown
others the value of a life, even if brief.
Anger at God
The first thing my parish priest said to me was, "Get
angry at God. God can take it." I would think that it damages
any relationship to deny a genuine anger more than admitting
to the anger and trying to work it out between the two of you.
As you would do with a spouse or a close friend, when you become
angry at God, talking it through with God ought to be an option.
I count it as a sign of respect and trust when a friend confronts
me about something I did, so I hope God does too. When my husband
contracted cancer back before we were married, I got so angry
at God that I couldn't really pray for two years. I felt the
anger and either denied it or else waited for it to go away on
its own. It didn't, of course, because I felt God had played
dirty with me in the way things unfolded. My husband's cancer
was cured, but my anger wasn't. (For the whole dirty tale, check
out Holding Hands With God, edited by Ronda Chervin; my
story is called "Engagements".)
A long time ago I read, "Animosity toward God is still
contact with God." I believe that's true. As long as you
don't cut ties, you can work through the anger and your sense
of betrayal in the relationship. Then you can reach a new understanding.
What comforts me?
I believe that God gives children to the parents best able
to love them. We can answer or ignore this call, and the newspapers
too frequently carry stories of parents who failed to love. However,
a thought which comforted me and might not comfort anyone else,
is that for some reason Emily needed us as parents more than
we needed a healthy child. I had a particular way of loving her
which matched up to her needs better than any other woman. You
will have a certain style of loving your baby which also will
best match up to your baby's needs. You are the best parent for
your child.
Bible verses
I'll share the ones that came to my mind, but I have to warn
you that I'm a bit cynical. The first one was this:
"I am the Lord and there is none else,
I form light and create darkness,
I make good and create evil--
I the Lord do all these things."
Isaiah 45:7
Most of the Bibles I've seen have translated the line with
good/evil a little more gently, but my Biblical history professor,
who also taught Biblical Hebrew, says that's the most accurate
translation. Weirdly enough, that comforted me. I needed to know
that this apparent evil done to my daughter was really something
under God's control.
My husband pointed out the line from Job (3:10) "Shall
we accept only good from God and not accept evil?" Since
then I've also found "It is I who created the smith to fan
the charcoal fire and produce the tools for his work; so it is
I who create the instruments of havoc." (Isaiah 54:16)
I know this wouldn't make most people happy, but I felt vindicated
at least a little. I don't think I could handle believing what
a number of others told me they thought, that this wasn't God's
doing but rather Satan's. If it was Satan, that makes us a victim.
If it was God, that makes us a part of the plan, and I could
deal with that. I just wanted to make sure that God knew I was
well aware who was responsible. (Don't let my bizarre theology
mess up anyone else's, though.)
Later on I didn't think about those as much. The one below
was very important to me, though, and it's one of the passages
we had read at Emily's funeral:
"Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest
in the kingdom of Heaven. And whoever receives one child such
as this in my name receives me." (Matthew 18:5) I'd always
applied that verse to using natural family planning (since we
might well end up receiving one such as those whether we wanted
to or not!) but later I saw that we were receiving Emily just
as she was, and in doing so, maybe we were taking a little bit
of Christ into our hearts and our family. A little further down,
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for
I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the
face of my heavenly Father." (v 10) So many people--doctors,
friends, those who've terminated--seem to despise our babies
and will then act as if they despise us. But God clearly treasures
them.
I don't have the verse on hand right now, but when Jesus says
that whatever we've done for the least member of the kingdom
of God we've done for him--that made me feel better too. And
in the sermon at her funeral, the priest spent a long time talking
about how two sparrows can be sold for a penny but not one falls
without God's notice. God did take note of Emily's life. And
God definitely made use of her life on this Earth.
I'm interested in passages that helped and inspired others.
I welcome input from other faith traditions as well! My familiarity
and most of those with whom I've spoken is limited to Judeo-Christian
scriptures. Some others' favorite passages follow below:
"Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you
by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will
be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will
not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will
not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the
Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour."
- Isaiah 43: 1b-3a
"And we know that God causes all things to work together
for good to those who love God, to those who are called according
to His purpose." Romans 8:28
Others?
I would like to hear others' reasoning--what comforts you?
Why do you think this happened? What do you think your child's
life has accomplished or will accomplish?
Back to Tips main page
