As soon as it happened I wanted as much distance from that
day as possible. The passage of time is healing those wounds but there is still
a struggle. A struggle to let go of the pain. The struggle to just let go of it
all. I got mad at God when it happened. I asked Him to protect the baby. I
pleaded with Him to stop the bleeding. I prayed and prayer and prayed. But
nothing happened. The bleeding eventually stopped but there was no healing. Nothing
remained by a bruised and battered faith.
I walked away from God. Not visibly but spiritually. I still
looked the part, trying to keep up appearances but I was still hurting and
doubting and wondering how such an awful thing could happen. My husband and I have been
experiencing what St. John of the Cross described as a “dark night of the soul”.
Our family bible study stopped. There was just nothing left in us. My anger
turned to indifference.
As stated before, I was still going to church but just so
everything seemed normal but Jeremy had stopped going. One particular Sunday,
something happened. It was communion Sunday, and as they passed the bread and
grape juice around, I let it pass by me. I could not in good conscience partake of
the communion in the state I was in. As I sat in silence while the rest of the
service continued, I wept. I hated being in this place. Something had to change.
Jeremy and I had many long talks, trying to work through all
of this mess. Our family bible study was reinstated this past week. It felt so
good to come together to read God’s word. I may not know why everything
happens, but I know without Him, I am lost.
Today happens to be the Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah. It is
the Jewish new years, a day to commemorate our dependence upon God as our Creator and Sustainer. The central observance of Rosh Hashanah is the sounding
of the shofar, the ram’s horn,
which also represents the trumpet blast of a people’s coronation of their king.
The cry of the shofar
is also a call to repentance, for Rosh Hashanah is also the anniversary
of man’s first sin, and serves as the first
of the “Ten Days
of Repentance” which culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
As I’ve gone through the last few months and reflect back,
I’ve come to realize that nothing is guaranteed in this life. We are always
living our lives not knowing what is next. When we plan for something to be a
certain way, even when we take steps to make it so, things could still not end
up the way we had wanted. I don’t understand why God allowed such a tragic
thing to happen to us (or to anyone for that matter), but I do know that He is sovereign
and that like our first parents, Adam and Eve, who sinned in the Garden of Eden,
God had a plan even from the beginning about how to redeem it all in the end. I
may not understand it all, but I trust it. I trust Him. And I know He will help
me move past this, in faith.
{ Rosh Hashanah Craft }
We may not be Jewish but I believe that as the bible states, we have been grafted in
to the olive tree, and their holy days are as much a part of our
heritage as believers in the Messiah, and as such, our family observes
them with Christ at the focus of all of them as He is the fulfillment
of the promises. That being said, in honor of Rosh Hashanah, Hannah and I had a simple lesson, I read the story of Adam and Eve and we made some stamps out of apples and did some apple printing. Celebrating today was a wonderful reminder of God's sovereignty and how He always has a plan to save His people even from great tragedy.
