Breaking a contract, part 1

With a long hug and a gentle kiss on the forehead, I finished tucking my three-year-old in bed. We’d read, sang, prayed, lingered. Now I moved on, ready to do my nightly exercises.

I would have called myself content, full, confident. I should have used words like smug, naïve, proud. The wheels were about to come off and I was powerless to stop it.

That evening I opened a door to a blackness I would not leave for several months. That night a baby, only a few short weeks from conception, died without ever feeling the warmth of his mother’s arms.

The funny thing about miscarriages is that few know how to respond. There was something wrong with the baby and this is for the best, one older woman told me. Another said that her sister had had one. You know that you’re getting older, another almost scolded me. You can’t expect much.

I wanted to hold my baby. I wanted someone to hold me and kiss my forehead and cry out, I’m so sorry.

Four days later, after minor surgery to complete the loss, I stood at a window while the world marched on. The horror of what I could not prevent pushed me into a numb world of shadows. Where I should have mourned, I hid.

I kept the paint touched up on the outside, but the inside was as empty as my womb. No one knew, or no one commented.

My life had largely been self-powered. I knew God and I knew I was a good disciple, living a clean life and following the church code well. I was a good addition to his flock and he, apparently, had always honored my commitment by blessing me.

But this was no blessing, I cried out. I had prayed desperate prayers of exchange: “save this child and I’ll….” No rescue had ensued.

I didn’t know then what I know now. The rest of that statement would have been, “and I’ll return to our previous agreement.”

We had a deal, in my mind, and he hadn’t kept his part. I left for awhile. He apparently was moody and whimsical, unlike myself, and couldn’t be counted on in a crisis.

Hosea summarized my position in his warning to Israel: “But even if we had a king, what could he do for us?” (Hosea 10:3)

That was my point. In the crunch, what had God done for me? I trusted my own viewpoint. God had failed me and so I withdrew.

It was months before God’s persistent wooing caught my ear. Sitting at a campfire, conversation pulsing around my silence, I realized I missed him.

He sang to me:

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love;
I lifted the yoke from their neck
and bent down to feed them.

Hosea 11:3-4

In my worldview, God and I were in a legal separation. But not in his. I might have declared the covenant dissolved, but he did not. His contract could never be broken. He just wouldn’t leave me or forsake me.

Tomorrow: the next crash