Where Was God? - A testimony after losing my son.

After I lost Nate, my sweet son, I felt alone. 

Not in the physical or emotional. I had people. I had my husband, who was amazing and attentive and found his healing in helping me heal. I had my sister, and my close friends who reached out and listened and didn’t expect me to be ok. I had meals and gift cards for food delivered so my family could eat.

But I felt alone in my spirit. 

I questioned God.

"Where are you? Where have you been?"

You see, I had prayed for this baby. Begged God for him. It took years of trying and treatments and pills and shots and doctors to conceive Nate’s older brother Henry. So when we said we wanted another baby, my prayer, my plea was that it would be easy. That I would get pregnant on my own, and without delay. 

My prayer was answered. We were pregnant within a month. 

I was so nauseous and sick. But I was thankful because that meant a healthy baby. I got back genetic testing that said my baby was healthy, and I was thankful. I had an ultrasound and I saw his little body, heard his little heart beating, and I was thankful. 

I felt him kick. 

I loved him. 

And then I was told he was gone. 

The doctor couldn’t find his heartbeat on Doppler, so he ordered and ultrasound. It was a routine appointment and so I was alone. As we started the ultrasound, I knew something was wrong. They didn’t immediately turn the sound on so I could hear his heartbeat. They looked and measured and checked. And then they were done, and I knew. I said, “he’s gone, isn’t he?” And the ultrasound technician nodded and teared up. She left the room to call my husband at my request, because I needed him. But I couldn’t tell him that his son was gone. I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t be the one to cause that initial hurt. He came to pick me up and take me home. We told our children. We made arrangements for their care. Because the next morning, I had to go to the hospital and give birth to our impossibly small son. 

In these short 24 hours, I felt so much pain, and sadness. And I asked God why? But there was no answer. Everyone prayed for His comfort, and His peace, and His presence to hold me. But I couldn’t see comfort or peace or the presence of God in this situation. I didn’t feel comforted. Or held. I didn’t see where God could have been present in any of this pain. 

So, I prayed. 

I was angry at God. 

"Why answer my prayer so quickly and then take my baby so soon? Where were you? You are supposed to always stay. Always be there. If you get my baby, then I want to know why. Give me peace! Give me strength to do this."

Before I went to the hospital, I demanded that this be quick and physically easy. I demanded a lot of things from God. 

As time passed and I sat with my grief and mourned my son, I prayed “God, where were you? You are not unkind and cruel and controlling. You wouldn’t give me something I wanted so badly just to take it away and watch me suffer! You aren’t those things, but I can’t see you in all this. Where were you? Where are you?” I prayed this same thing over and over. “God, show me. Reveal yourself.” I began listening to worship songs that described my FATHER how I knew him to be in my rational mind, how I wanted to see him again, and not who He was being cast as in my grief. I played these songs over and over and over again. I had a playlist on my Amazon music titled “Help”. 

I went through a very scary time around three weeks after Nate was born. He was born on a Tuesday, and on that Friday, we left to join our fellowship for Sukkot. We spent the next 12 days on a beautiful mountain in community with followers of Yeshua there to celebrate the commanded Feast of Tabernacles. I grieved on the mountain, and I had moments where I couldn’t bear the pain. But I was, all in all, ok. I could function. When we returned home and unpacked and settled in, something shifted. 

I saw my doctor for a follow-up post-delivery. I still had all of the negative symptoms of postpartum hormonal shifts without any of the positive experiences to balance things. I spent several days having just moments of clarity and interaction with my husband and children amongst the darkness. I responded to text messages intermittently. But mostly I sat and stared off just feeling pain. And then numbness, like nothing mattered. And then despair that I would never feel joyful again but that this was my new normal. 

I feared my husband returning to work. Being responsible for my children and home without him there. 

And I felt guilt. I was so broken that I didn’t have the ability to give space to his grief. I couldn’t support him because I couldn't even function myself. And that felt unfair to this man who had given me so much. 

I felt overwhelmed at planning a memorial for my son. How would we afford it? How did you even plan such things? 

We picked up his ashes and brought him home, and that was hard.

In these dark times, I would sit and play my “help” list and just listen to the words… and beg God to make them true for me again. 

Over the coming days, I dove into organizing my home. I had been so nauseous and unable to keep up during my pregnancy, and just as that subsided, I was suddenly grieving and saying goodbye to my child. I needed a place to heal, not stress out about the clutter and mess. I felt “ok”. But I still asked God, a little more gently now, “show me where you were. This makes no sense, we have no answers, where were you in this?” 

We had been receiving test results from my hospital stay steadily since Nate was born. I didn’t have any markers for Lupus, an autoimmune disease that is a culprit in late miscarriage. I had no signs of infections. Nate had no deformities; all his features and organs were perfect and in the right places (which I already knew when I saw his sweet face and held his little feet in my hand). The chromosomal study came back with 22 identical pairs of chromosomes and one set of XY, proving he was a perfect baby boy. My placenta was healthy. In short, there was no medical reason that caused my baby to die. There was nothing that could have prevented his death. It was just, as they say, one of those things. 

So “why” would not be answered. And, if the ”why” wasn’t answered, it seemed only logical to redouble my prayers and pleas for where. 

And then one day, a Thursday, I was driving to my dear friend's house to catch a ride to a meeting for mental health support that another friend ran through our fellowship. I didn’t want to go and be around people and be “on” and act ok… but this group was a place where we weren’t expected to be ok. It was literally a place for people who specifically were not ok. I was in my car, and I was playing my playlist. And I realized in that moment what the answer was. Where God had been. I could see Him. 

I had only shared with a few people since Nate had died something I had felt all along. Through my joy and my excitement at being pregnant, I always knew I couldn’t keep him. Somehow, I knew that I didn’t get to keep him. I can’t explain it any better than that, just that I knew. The morning that I went to the doctor when we found out that his little heart had stopped beating and his little body had stopped growing, I had a compelling urge to use our home Doppler to find his heartbeat, but I thought “no I can do that when I get home.” The night before my appointment, I had a dream, and in that dream, Nate was born, but he was impossibly small. And, as it is with dreams, the feeling in the dream was that he was there, and he was alive and healthy, but even as we loved him and changed diapers and fed him, we knew that he was impossibly small for a baby. That he was too small. That it wouldn’t last. I had this feeling through my entire pregnancy, but I dared not speak it out loud. What if something happened? I would feel guilty as if I had spoken it into existence. But there was always that nagging that he wouldn’t stay. And somehow, I never panicked about it, I just pushed it down and was grateful that I was sick, that I felt pregnant, that the baby was growing healthy inside of me. 

When I went to the doctor that day, I was calm until I had my fear confirmed. And then I was comforted and kept company by the most kind and compassionate ultrasound technician I have ever met. She sat with me, she called my husband and cried as she asked him to come. She gave me the “good” tissues, because the regular ones were so rough, and she hugged me. She gave me pictures of our sweet boy. The next day, at the hospital, the nurses were amazing. They didn’t delay their care, it wasn’t drawn out, there was no painful waiting. I was treated with such care and kindness. Physically, the delivery was easy. I was at high risk of hemorrhage and needing surgery, and often times, the induction process can take all day, and require several doses of medication. I had one dose. My baby was born just a little more than 5 hours after my first dose of meds. I delivered the placenta without issue and had minimal bleeding. My labs came back fine, and I was able to go home as soon as I was ready. As soon as I was done saying goodbye. 

My recovery at home was easy, physically. I had minimal pain. The bleeding was light. I had no complications. Only a few symptoms that were expected and manageable. 

That is where He was. 

He didn’t take my baby. But he knew. He knew I couldn’t keep him. So, He prepared me. He guarded my heart. He gave me time to understand, even if I didn’t see it. He softened the blow. I was devastated when I found out Nate was gone, but I don’t know if I was shocked. The Father was there. He sent a kind soul to comfort me until my husband could come. He sent an amazing care team to guide me through the worst experience of my life with love and kindness. He gave me the strength to hold my tiny son, to see his face and feel nothing but love and joy at his existence. He helped me hold it together for my son so that I could remember everything about him with clarity. He answered my prayer to have a quick and easy delivery, to have no complications. He gave me an amazing circle of women to hold me up. He blessed me with generous people who gave freely and selflessly of their time, resources, money and support, to find a beautiful chapel for our son’s memorial, to raise funds to make that memorial a joyful and beautiful celebration of Nate. He gave me a community that would hold me up and let me borrow their faith when mine was shaken. A community that would bring meals to my children and send money and gift cards to have meals delivered. A family of friends to surround us.  

I don’t know what the purpose of this loss and grief is. I don’t yet know the purpose of Nate’s short life. But I do know he most definitely had a purpose. 

And I know that I would rather have this grief than to have never known the joy of that short life. 

And I know that truly, God was there. He was there long before my pain. He knew that I would face this mountain, and that it would not be moved, so he carved a path over it that made it possible, though not easy, to cross.