Part II - Our hopeful news

Part II

I wanted to post a follow-up to the previous blog post (our sad news), one that tells how we are able to deal with the death of Charis. Even though the events of the last days have been extremely sad they have not been devastating.

To others this could be devastating; and it would have been for us if it were not for the reason for our hope. To have the hopes of bringing Charis home have been smashed. We will not be able to watch her grow or hear her voice – her cry. We will not be able to learn her personality or watch her interact with her two older sisters. These are the kinds of things that we lost when Charis died. We did not, however, lose a child - we know that she was not ours just as we know that Laura and Rachel are not ours. They all belong to God and since this is the case we can give Charis back to him knowing that He is trustworthy with her life. He keeps her life (Psalm 121:7).

We know for certain that she is in God's arms. We know that we will see her someday and we will know her when we see her. We know this from the promises of God's word. This is the reason that our loss is not devastating – the reason that when we held her for a very short time here and then had to let her go we can grieve "with hope." We gave her the middle name "Hope" because we can grieve with hope – we have a hope to see her at some time in the future. We do "not grieve as others do who have no hope" (1 Thess 4:13) and we do not hope as others do who do not have the gospel.

It is the gospel that gives us the peace (and hope) that we have in a time that might bring others to despair. We know that without the gospel and the story of the human fall as told in the gospel that there would be no explanation for the death of a child. There would be no satisfactory explanation for any evil in the world. It is impossible to adequately explain evil from any other world view. No religion – NO OTHER view of God and man can explain it. It is the gospel that tells us that this present age is under a curse. This curse is the reason that Charis died before we were able to meet her.

This curse is because of our sin and the sin of our ancestors. But the gospel does not leave us with the curse – it tells us that the curse has been broken by Jesus Christ. It tells us that God has brought us back to him through Jesus Christ. We know that because we trust in Christ and His provision that one day we will see Charis again. And we know that because of God's grace she is in heaven with Him right now. She died before she was physically capable of accepting/rejecting Chirst* – and His grace is the only thing that could bring her to Him (see scripture references below) - we will see her whole and not broken.

We know from the Scriptures that Charis is in God's hands – we know that He keeps her life and that we will see her again. This is the reason for our hope – this is our hopeful news.

One resource that has been good for us is a sermon series preached by John Macarthur. He does a great job explaining what I've rambled about above. :) Please follow the links below to see the transcripts:

The Salvation of Babies Who Die Part I
The Salvation of Babies Who Die Part II

Here is the challenging conclusion to his first sermon – one that helps us to refocus:

All children who die before they reach the condition of accountability, by which they convincingly understand their sin and corruption and embrace the gospel by faith, are graciously saved eternally by God through the work of Jesus Christ, being elect by sovereign choice, innocent of willful sin, rebellion, and unbelief, by which works they would be justly condemned to eternal punishment. So, when an infant dies, he or she is elect to eternal salvation and eternal glory. So, dear one, if you have a little one that dies, rejoice! Count not your human loss; count your eternal gain. Count not that child as having lost, but having gained, having passed briefly through this life, untouched by the wicked world, only to enter into eternal glory and grace. The true sadness should be over those children of yours who live and reject the gospel. Don't sorrow over your children in heaven; sorrow over your children on earth, that they should come to Christ. This is your great responsibility, your great opportunity.

(Passages: Psalm 22:9; Psalm 121; Psalm 139; Job 3:16-17; Ecclesiastes 6:3-5)

*The Scriptures say that anyone who has the physical capability of accepting/rejecting Christ yet does not dies in their sin. If someone is physically capable and does not accept Christ – even if they have never heard they spend eternity separated from Him. For a more full explanation see the reference to the John Macarthur sermons above.

Part I - Our Sad News

Well, I'm not sure if this place is the appropriate place to be putting my thoughts down but I thought it might be good for me to get my thoughts written (actually typed) out. It will be good for me I think and maybe good for others to read and respond. I think I will post this in two parts - one that describes what happened and what we went through and one that describes how we've been dealing with it.

Part I.
Last Thursday (01/04/06) afternoon Andrea and I found out that the baby we had been looking forward to having at the end of May had died a couple of weeks ago. Andrea had gone into have the doctor check things out and they were unable to hear a heartbeat. The nurse listening for the heartbeat wanted to do an ultrasound to see what was going on inside the womb. What she found was that instead of being at 19 week size - the baby had stopped growing around 17 weeks - AND there was no heartbeat.

At this point Andrea called me from her cell phone as the nurse went to get someone else to check out the ultrasound. It was completely unexpected and sent both Andrea and I reeling. We both had had fears that this would happen (natural feelings) but thought that since the baby had made it so far that we were really out of the woods. So, I went to the doctor's office to pick Andrea up and we just cried and prayed for a while. It seemed like a bad dream - we were both numb.

The doctor told Andrea that she had two choices - to have a "D&E" (where they would simply pull the baby out like an abortion) or to go through the process of inducing labor and giving birth to a dead baby. Out of respect to the child that we would not be able to meet this side of heaven we chose to have labor induced. Thankfully Stephen and Jasmine (my brother and sister-in-law) came up and took our two daughters (4 and 2 yrs old) back down to GA to stay with my mom.

Monday morning we went into the Drs. office and they confirmed with another ultrasound that the baby had died - this was my first look at the ultrasound that confirmed the sad news. They eventually moved Andrea over to the hospital and started inducing labor. We had hoped that this would be a quick thing and that we could get it over with as fast as possible. Unfortunately Andrea had to go through hours of labor.

Finally at 3:39am Tuesday morning she gave birth to a little girl. We named her Charis (Greek - meaning grace). She was so very small – 4 ounces and 7 inches long. We were given the option to hold her and we both agreed that we would like to. All of the nurses and techs walked out of the room and left us alone for as long as we needed. We looked at our Charis that we would not get the privilege of watching grow up and cried and prayed some more – this was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my whole life. With tears in our eyes we gave her back to the nurse – we would not be taking her home as we had hoped since we found out we would be having a new baby.

Andrea had to stay in hospital until about 2pm on Tuesday – still having contractions and very sore. We came home that night and rested and have basically been resting ever since. We have had our friends from church come over and bring food to us and have had lots of people praying for us and encouraging us.

To any normal person this would have been devastating I am sure. Make no mistake – it has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to face – but it has been our faith and our faithful God that has seen us through. Something that might have been devastating turns into something that can bring hope. I will talk more about this in the second part.