Tag Archives: Grief

Theology Thoughts

Have you heard about Jeremiah? Or Hosea?

prophet jeremiahYou may not realize it, but there is a problem with actually having READ the Bible (and yes, you read that right – there IS a huge problem with actually reading the Holy Scriptures).

The problem is this: things don’t always turn out good for those who follow God.

Yes, I know people like to quote Romans 8:28 when bad things happen (“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him”)…similar to how they like to say that nice things in the “I’m sure God has better plans for you” vein.

The problem with these statements is that they are not really supported by the Scriptures – as in the Scriptures does not promise us that all will be well; that we will life the ‘good’ life full of happiness, joy, and wealth. Neither does God promise us that the pain we go through in this life will make us stronger (as one popular song proclaims).

What He does promise is that one day He will set all things right.

One day; THAT day; the end of the end, when all things will be set right.

That is the promise that we hold on to – that despite the storm around us, we know that one day (whether in our lifetime or a thousand years in the future) all evil, greed, selfishness, pain, pride, sexual violence, and, yes, even death itself will be destroyed.

In the mean time we walk – no, we RUN – after the King of Kings knowing that He is actively at war with the evil within and around us. We move forward knowing that pain WILL come and that He WILL be there to walk through it with us.

Remember those nice comments about how things will get better? The problem with them is that there are times when God calls us to walk through the fire so that others will hear the news of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The prophet Jeremiah is one such man. God called him while he was a young man with one goal – to stand in the gap for the nation of Israel, proclaiming God’s message to them, knowing even has he started that the majority of the people would not listen. There is a reason Jeremiah is called the “Suffering Prophet”…

Jeremiah had a choice – he could have said ‘no’, and walked away to live a decent life (as in, he could have fled the city of Jerusalem, bought a nice house in the country and watched the war from a safe distance). Yet Jeremiah didn’t do that. He walked through the pain knowing that God was going to take the screwed up world around him and turn it into something good.

Continue reading Have you heard about Jeremiah? Or Hosea? →

General

Just Those Few Weeks

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two sonsIt’s just after midnight and I can’t sleep… too many emotions….too many thoughts….

June 3rd…

A day I lost my third child.

Yes, a third child…two of them were lost in the womb; the third through selfishness and the legal process.

I really want to shame the biological parents of the son I was to have…but that is not the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus is to bless those who hurt you… so I pray blessings, love, grace and mercy on them. May the King of Kings ever be in their sight; may they be the parents that my son needs them to be.

And, Lord, while you are at it… could you help me figure out how to process this ’cause I don’t know how…

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The below poem has been hanging on our wall for the past six years in remembrance of the two children we lost in the womb. Now it is a reminder of our third child… Andrew, we only knew you for a few weeks…but in that time you changed our lives. May you grow old knowing you were loved.

 

Just Those Few Weeks
By Susan Erling
For those few weeks
I had you to myself.
And that seems to short of time
to be changed so profoundly.In those few weeks
I came to know you
and love you.
You came to trust me with your life
Oh, what a life I had planned for you!

Just those few weeks
When I lost you,
I lost a lifetime of hopes,
plans, dreams, and aspirations.
A slice of my future simply vanished overnight.

Just those few weeks
It wasn’t enough time to convince others
how special and important you were.
How odd, a truly unique person has recently died
and no one is mourning the passing.

Just a mere few weeks
And no “normal” person would cry all night
over a tiny, unfinished baby,
or get depressed and withdraw day after endless day.
No one would, so why am I?

You were just those few weeks my little one
you darted in an out of my life too quickly.
It seems that’s all the time you needed
to make my life so much richer
and give me a small glimpse of eternity.
General

Saying Goodbye to My Son

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son and dogPart of my heart died yesterday morning….in a crazy sucker-punch move the birth mother of the little boy we were adopting decided that she wanted him back. Since she did this right before the judge officially terminated her rights, we had no choice but to turn him back over….so in effect, a son was born to us on May 23rd and died on June 3rd.

Pain, grief, hurt, heartache… all words that mean a lot more today than they did Monday when I posted a celebration post… it is crazy how fast one’s life can change…

Before I get too emotional (which I will in future posts), here’s a bit about the technical realities of adoptions. In any adoption there are three major landmarks: placement, parental termination, and finalization.Placement is when a child is placed with the adoptive family. When this happens there is usually a one to two week legal risk period where everyone is waiting on the courts to terminate the biological parents rights. Once the courts have terminated the parental rights of the biological parents, the child becomes a ward of the state with legal rights granted to the adoption agency who passes custody on to the adoptive family. At this point the biological parents can no longer get the child back – all their rights are gone (at least in Idaho, other states have different laws).

The third landmark is finalization when the child officially becomes a member of the adoptive family and a new birth certificate is issued. This happens about six months after the placement date. During this period the adoption agency will send a case worker out to the adoptive family’s house to check on them two and four months out from the placement date. If for some reason the adoptive family decides not to go ahead with things, the child will go back to the adoption agency who would then place the child with another adoptive family.

adoption-logo2Normally all this happens smoothly as the adoption agency has screened and counseled both the biological and adoptive families on all the ins and outs of the adoption (i.e. the emotions, legal issues, etc.). Yet there is still that slight risk…. as in our case when things went bad between the placement and parental termination dates. To give you prospective, this is only the second or third time in ten years that something like this happened with the adoption agency that we use (A New Beginning Adoption Agency – a GREAT agency who helped us with our first son’s agency and have been awesome to work with!!!).

So that does this all mean to us?

It means that we are back to square one (with a slightly more beat up heart…). We still want to add to our family (our four year old asked for both a boy and a girl next time!) so we have asked the adoption agency to put us back on the list… so now we wait until another birth mother picks us and we start the process over again. The good news is that all the funds that we raised will be rolled over to the next child so financially there wasn’t a total loss.

Emotional, spiritual… well that is a different post. 😕

 

 

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