Somehow it is difficult to express how one can manage to live, to go on, to love and to have other children after the loss of child. My first beautiful and perfectly formed daughter was still born at a full seven months. The irony of it was that it was preventable. She could have been saved if we had taken her early. But times were different then, it was a rural community and we didn't know how to do better. But oh how it hurt!
Close to 14 months later my son was born with a rare birth defect. He lived to be 11 months 22 days old. The loss was almost more than my youth could endure. Only faith in God pulled me through this dark time of life. But please understand it was God, not me, I denied Him, I called Him names and I said I could not believe in such a cruel God!
It was many years before I realized He never left me. He was there with me and He healed the hurt, as I turned my anger towards Him. I finally came to understand at least in some ways I was a tool and God was the Master.
Grief is a hard emotional to deal with and when you feel a loss so big it consumes you, then it is even more than grief. You have now been swallowed up in depression, anger, guilt, and even hate. These raw emotions are like a cancer that eats up the good in your life and soon only a shell is left. At this time you have to admit it is time to let go or to ask God for help.
I asked God for help. I asked God for forgiveness and direction. It took many years before I would go to a church again, but at least I quit denying there was a God.
One day I looked up at the deep blue sky as I stood in a field of green wheat about eight inches tall. As the Texas wind blew the wheat into green waves across many acres, the contrast of sky and green wheat caught my eyes. I realized that my departed babies would not be here to see this kind of beauty. I thought perhaps I should try to see more beauty as if for the first time. I thought how different the world might appear through the eyes of a child. Think about it, seeing something for the first time. The awe and wonder of it the joy of it seeing the most common or mundane things for the very first time.
Suddenly my life was more peaceful. I actually began to live again. And in time there was another son and another daughter. I adore my children. I am grateful for the memories of my daughter and son that died so many years ago. Although I desperately wanted to blame God for my loss, I wanted to deny His existence the mere fact that I never quit talking to God was proof He never gave up on me.
Grief is deeply personal, like God, it can't be taken lightly. Like God it doesn't go away completely, but one can manage to live and love and laugh again. Thank God!
