Losing a child is the most
ridiculously difficult thing one can ever go through. The grief
washes over you like waves, slowly at first until suddenly one of
them knocks you down and you are overcome by it, leaving you gasping
for air as they keep pummeling you without mercy until you despair
even going on. I have experienced no greater pain in life, and it is
a very lonely, hopeless pain. The kind of pain that keeps me from
sleeping at night and makes me want to not get up in the morning.
The kind of pain that other people don’t seem to understand.
I always felt it was incredibly
insensitive when people would tell me, “I could never do foster
care. I wouldn't be able to give a child back,” as if I were
somehow magically less caring than them or perhaps just didn't love
the child as they would. Now, walking through the experience, I can
see that it truly is not for the faint of heart. I never dreamed 15
months ago when I was told that parental rights were being
immediately terminated on this child, who became my son in my heart
the moment I brought him home from the hospital, would one day be
returned to his biological mother. In this system, there was nothing
I could have done differently or better. There was no second chance
for me. I am a helpless byproduct of a system that leaves a long
stream of broken people in its wake every single day, and now, I am
walking through every parent's biggest nightmare.
Tonight as I sat here alone grieving I
began pondering in my pain, and I began to see the love the Father
has for us in a whole new light. We are created in the image of God.
God has feelings just as we do. He gets angry, He loves, and He
grieves. I began to imagine what God must have gone through as He
watched Jesus walk out His calling to be tortured and murdered. He
knew as He sent Him here that there would be no other way. I can
imagine how heartbreaking it was for Him as Jesus called out to Him
in the garden of Gethsemane asking Him to take the cup of suffering
from Him. How difficult was it to stand by as His perfect son was
mocked, beaten, scourged, and nailed to the cross to suffer and die
one of the most excruciating deaths known to mankind.
Fast forward to today as I sit here in
the dark writing this because I couldn't sleep because of all that
is in my heart. I know that my situation is very different from what
the Lord went through, but it gives me a whole new appreciation for
just how much the Father gave up for each one of us. I would be
willing to do just about anything to not have to give up this child I
have loved and raised, who calls me “Mama” and gives me kisses
when I get him out of his crib in the morning, yet God did it
willingly. This Jesus, who was with Him in the beginning as He made
everything that was made and was His daily delight. He didn't have
to be coerced. He did it because He loves us that much.
The Word says, “He who did not spare
His own son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with
Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) He already gave
us His best. Why would He withhold anything else from us if He was
willing to sacrifice Jesus? It goes on to say, “For I am persuaded
that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor
powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth,
nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
The Lord gave me that verse several years ago as I was walking
through some trials that seemed difficult at the time, and I have
considered it a “life verse.” I have always looked at that last
phrase as almost an afterthought, but now I can see that it means
everything. His love is IN Jesus because that is what He gave.
I had not planned on publishing this
until long after things were settled down in my life. The feelings
are too raw, and right now I can’t answer the question, “How are
you?” without crying; however, the Holy Spirit will not let me put
it on a shelf. In all this suffering, I feel that there is a
confidence that this has built in me that cannot be shaken. I don’t
understand everything that happens here on this earth, but I know
that the love that God has for me, for all of us, is greater than any
of us could begin to fathom. So if this world takes my son, I can
have confidence that the Lord will not withhold His Word from me and
that he will always have peace, that because he has been trained up
in the way that he should go, when he is old he will not depart from
it, and that one day I will hold him again, if not in this world in
the next. Because my God loves me, because He said it, and because
He is faithful.
