I have walked the journey of grief for decades, and in reality it began even before the death of our infant daughter. Being pregnant for the first time, I carried too a grief born of the dysfunction, guilt and shame of my childhood and youth. Why would God ever give to me the gift of a child? The punitive God I knew only retaliated with anger and harsh discipline. And then, amidst the condemning shame, my daughter was born without the capacity to sustain life, and she died shortly after birth. I was right. I did not deserve a child, and I really had no right to grieve. I cocooned myself in an outward Christianity that knew nothing of the God who longed to wrap me in His arms of love, and comfort me in all of my grief.
God did give me three healthy sons, although the cocoon still confined me. God never stopped longing though to shred the cocoon and give me the freedom to both grieve and be embraced by His love and comfort. Tonia would have been a teenager preparing to enter an adult world, and her youngest brother was still a preschooler. It was then the cocoon began to unravel and God began to give a freedom I never thought possible. His gifts had always been there. I just hadn’t understood. But slowly, I began to see and understand them. His gift of forgiveness assured me of His presence. He softened the weight of responsibility I had always succumbed to, and I began to see what was mine to give to Him and what belonged to someone else. The awareness of His presence deepened and so too did my understanding of His continuing gifts and His grace. Cocoons isolate us, but without that suffocation, I found the joy of understanding friendships. I was gifted with Umbrella Ministries, and then both the moms of Orange County, CA, and the moms of Heartstrings in SC, and even a BFF – each whose story reflected my own, at least in part, and each who understood my heart of grief, whether or not I spoke the words.
The sweetness of God’s gifts allowed me to understand acceptance. Life crashes, consumes, and disappoints, and spiritually and emotionally, our hearts are raw with the scathing. But walking forward is possible when I accept what God has allowed and I walk with my hand in His hand. He sees and understands the crashing waves, but with time and grace, He slows and softens the waves, and their power isn’t as deafening or as debilitating. And the sweetness of His gifts stirs a quiet, sustaining joy.
It is then I began to see the butterflies, the hope that life could go on. The hope that there is a tomorrow, and tomorrow will be different, but it can still be good. And the butterflies of hope, God’s hope, gently lit a light within me – a light that represents my child, a light that represents my God and all He has done for me, a light I long to share with others to give them hope. It is a light that gives reality to my God and it gives reality to my child who is still alive through me. It is a light that gives reality to the hope that is and will be mine forever.
And the hope that is mine forever is the hope I cling to for my own tomorrows as I walk still here in the place God has for me, wherever that place may be. And it is a light and a hope I long to leave behind in the places my footsteps have been and my heart has embraced.................
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: Psalm 40:1-3)
