Elena 
The topic is the “dark night” I have been experiencing, and faith in the
midst of doubt. And it all really began with the scare at week twenty. I confess
a sort of anxiety in writing about this. The anxiety is this silly superstitious
feeling that giving voice to what has been going through my heart and mind is
going to “jinx” things for my new born son. Yet, it is genuine faith that
convinces me that a belief in “jinxes” is silly – the voice of a demon in my
mind. But this demon is real and powerful. At week twenty, I prayed the sort of desperate prayer that any parent might pray for a child and spouse. It’s the sort of primal feeling that many of us feel that hardly needs to be described. I think there is simply a biological hard-wiring in most parent’s to experience danger to a child – even an unborn child – as though it were a threat to very self. And it struck me as I prayed, and especially as I blogged asking for prayers, that these prayers are not always answered the way we expect and want.
I thought of a very like-minded married deacon who once commented on my blog
about how he blamed himself for a miscarriage he and his wife experienced. I
thought of uber-Catholic, Elena, and her miscarriage.And for the last
thirteen weeks, almost every minute of every day I have been living with the
fact that our prayers are not always answered in the way we expect, or
want.
I begged forgiveness, and then became angry – with an anger I can hardly
describe as it dawned on me that any being that would kill a baby over the sins
of his parents is not worthy of being worshipped. But the anger subsided as I
realized almost instantaneously that it simply is not the God revealed in Jesus
who would do such a thing. Yet, bad things do happen to good people – perhaps to
all people – but maybe it happens especially to the good, or is particularly
painful when it does. After all, Jesus was crucified when he specifically asked
his “Abba” not to let that happen. His sinless mother had to watch her only son
die. Catholic Deacons and staunchly pro-life conservative Catholic women like
Elena lose babies before term. Innocent children in Iraq have bombs dropped on
them. People in Africa die of starvation when there is enough food for everyone
on earth to eat more than three thousand calories per day. Yet, somehow, the God
revealed in Christ seems to oppose all suffering and death. Jesus never uses his
omnipotence except to heal and forgive. He strikes nobody dead, and demands the
death of nobody. Even when compassion for the underdog drives him to just anger, he acts violently towards no human person.And finally ends with
All I will say that is that a God who would have killed my baby is not worthy of my worship.
God didn’t kill Raphael. He died from some unexplained reason that I’ll discover inthe next life although I suspect low progesterone. He did not die in vain. He is not forgotten. He helped to deepen my connection to the next life and for that I am grateful. God didn’t kill Frankie either. Her little body just wasn’t meant for a long life on this earth. I wonder how many people are coming to Christ by witnessing the heroic walk through grief her mother is journaling?
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Hey Elena,
I found the link to your site via the link from JCecil’s site. Let me say first up that I really like and apreciate your site.
Second, you raise some pretty deep and fundamental questions and I realise I’m sterpping into some pretty deep water by commenting and I dont claim to have anything like a full understanding, but I feel I need to say something.
YOu say that God dosnt kill babies. Firstly, God as the first cause and prime mover of all things has, in some sense, caused everything that comes to be. Now of course this needs to be qualified; it is only in some sense that He has done these things, but that dosnt change the fact that He has done so.
I’d encourage you to read chapter 45 of the book of Isiah, especially verse 7. In that verse, God makes it clear that He is the one who brings disaster. It seems to me that, if we refuse to recognise God as the author of disaster we fall intop the trap of Jobs wife, taking the good things from the hand of God and refusing to take the bad.
Interesting to hear your take on this. I suppose I came down alogn similar lines on my article on the topic of Joe’s troubles.