C.S. Humble

There is a great difficulty in loss. Grief is in many ways an inconsolable journey that one must endure with those who have shared in the loss. But even as those people journey together; they are all of them still alone, for the journey is a lonely one.
We were extremely excited when my Wife and I found out that we were going to be parents. The initial shock of the pregnancy test stupefied us to a point of almost non-reaction. We truly felt in that moment like we were going to finally reach the accolade of being, ‘Grown-up’. For six beloved weeks we planned, feared, trusted and loved for one another in a way that each of us had never known. Rubbing my wife’s porcelain stomach, looking into her eyes and smiling a smile that was genuine, I knew that this pregnancy would be one of the defining events of my life.
How very right I was.
Becky called me at 4:45 P.M., right as I opened my desk drawer at work. I picked up the phone only to hear the heartbreaking sound of my wife weeping. I suppose that as soon I as I picked up the phone and could hear her, I knew that our child was gone. Dead. Lifeless.
‘We lost the baby,’ she said in a tone that was self-accusatory.
‘What,’ I questioned back. Though I don’t know why I asked the question, I heard her perfectly the first time.
‘We lost the baby,’ she answered again. Her voice, filled with sadness and I could almost see the squinting corners of her face along with the tears that have always made her eyes so very blue.
I was allowed to leave work early and meet her back at our home. For the lasting of the day, we simply rested in one another. Knew each other in a way neither of us had ever known. This was our first collective loss, the first life that we really shared together, created together, was snuffed out by the harsh and natural world we live in.
Interestingly enough I didn’t blame God. Nor did I turn toward the idea that the great and grand plan of God would work in some way allow this to my greater good. I believe that down that path lies madness. Rather I simply still believed that Christ was Lord, that the immeasurability of his love and grace would some way pull my wife and I into joy again.
I still believe that.
-C.S.