children

As unbeknownst to some, and yet newly informed to others, we are expecting. There’s one in the oven, as you might say. (Or as I tell my wife, there’s an alien growing in her dome. She laughs, seriously.) Happiness abides in the Young home, and expectant joy with every karate match I witness of our son in the womb. It’s tough having a ninja for a father, but he’ll grow into it.

And yet, as some may know, this is not our first child. We had the joy of conceiving a child last fall after waiting on the Lord’s “opening of the womb”. And shortly after, we had the sorrow of the Lord taking our little one away.

The sorrow was deep and abiding those first several months. There were moments where I would choke up at work with no one else around, for no other reason than an arrow of hopes dashed sailing from my memories and hitting the mark. There were other times when I’d try to relay current events and feelings in our home, and thankfulness to God for his faithfulness, and unintentionally crack in the middle of it.

It’s ok. Men cry; a lot.

So, it’s taken me a bit by surprise as the waves of sorrow and grief have been reoccurring in our new season of pre-birth-anticipatory-felicity. It seems out of order, even selfish and self-absorbed (if I were honest), to continue to have grief over a lost child in the midst of the happiness of a new child.

I brought this up to a friend. They’d had a similar experience.

“What categories do you put this into? How did you guys process this?”

“We wanted to validate the gift of our fist child, a real gift from, while also celebrating the blessing of our second child. We worked through the category of seeing that God had given us our first (whom they gave a name to). He wasn’t an accident, nor a joke from God. He was given, but not given to us to raise. However, God did give us our second, whom he did decide that we would raise.”

That was helpful. Very helpful.

Here, I think the weighty truths of “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21), and “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28) come together and kiss. On the one hand you have the sovereign reality of God’s giving and taking, and on the other hand, you have the motivation holding us before God: our good in him. We bless the Lord when we see his purposes and the events of our lives (joyful and sorrowful) not as antagonistic flicks from the divine hand, but as his loving, Fatherly hand “working all things for [our] good”. God treats his children with love – even in the painful things of life.

The Lord gave us a child, and took that child away. Yet in no way did he diminish the value of that child’s life or our delight in receiving that child. And yet, in the mystery of his love, in the mystery of how “all things work together for [our] good”, he decided to not give that child to us to raise.

My friend’s counsel has been helpful because it gives me grounding to think about the miscarriage of our first without making the experience into a wallow in the dust. Sorrow is dark. The loss of that child was a wound that will not heal until I die and see Jesus. Then he’ll cure the wound entirely. The darkness of the wound will be healed by the light of his presence.

The difficulty of the miscarriage is: Am I diminishing the gift of our first child in the joy over our second child? Seeing the lost child as given but not for us to raise strikes a helpful path for me. It’s not well-intentioned, but unhelpful counsel (i.e. “But you’re baby’s with Jesus now.”), and it’s not angering advice either (i.e. “It’s not like you actually lost a child…”).

The pain of miscarriage is different all together, and yet under the gracious hand of our Father. Ge gives, and takes away as he chooses, not because he’s trying to make a point, not because he’s vindictive, not because he’s indifferent, but because he is the Almighty Wise One, who sees what he is doing as The Shepherd who love his sheep, and gives them exactly what they need.

I do not expect to understand why these things have happened. The Bible never promises full clarity on God’s providence. But I do know that He is Good. He is Love. He is my Shepherd. He gives and takes and gives and gives and takes and gives and gives.

But most importantly, he gives Himself.

The Christian life a strange one. A life simultaneously mourning the effects of sin in meaningful, deep ways while also celebrating gifts without fear and real joy (Romans 12:15 and 1 Corinthians 7:30). It feels much like an open-handed life. A life of gratitude in all things (1 Thes. 5:16). A life grateful for knowing God as our Shepherd, who leads us through the green fields and dark valley’s (Psalm 23).

So with an open hand I received the child the Lord gave us last fall, and with an open hand I watched him take him away. The sorrow is real, and experienced open-handedly by clinging to a God, grateful for his kindness not to leave me. God did no wrong to me in taking our child. He was ultimately never mine to begin with. And yet, with an open hand I now receive this new little boy he’s given us with thankfulness and joy.

The only thing guaranteed in life is the presence of God. With an open hand He gives and takes away – the open hand of Christ in mercy and love for us. So, with an open hand we receive, and reach up to cling to him, not the gifts.

He gives and takes away, blessed is the name of the Lord.