I’ve always loved Christmas. The special music, the way people light up their homes, the smells… I love choosing gifts for people and yes, I’ll be honest, I love seeing the gifts people have chosen for me. These last few years of grieving and depression, I’ve had a much needed and very welcome respite of a few weeks. Christmas is a time that’s full of promises. Even if it’s a secular celebration for you, there are gifts to wrap and unwrap, a slap up meal, and probably parties with family and friends. When it’s a religious celebration, there is all that and the memory of a special baby.
Jesus is unique, a very special covenant, but every baby is a promise. Even before a wanted baby is conceived, the idea is a promise that the parents treasure, sometimes for many years. Someone told me that they didn’t understand why people were so upset by miscarriage because it’s not as though we’ve lost a real person. It’s true that a baby who died before birth is not a person who has ever lived an independent life. But we have lost the promise of a person we are longing to meet. Both parents may have dreamt about this person for decades. Four grandparents may have hoped to meet them for even longer. Siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends… when we are born we are already connected to dozens of people, and most of these connections extend backwards before birth.
I’ve been thinking a lot about God and promises recently. Husband and I have both been sure, since before we were married, that God has promised us more than one child. Neither of us believes that promise has changed. But I made assumptions about what “more than one child” looked like, and I need to accept those assumptions and accept that even when the answer to prayer doesn’t look the way we thought it would, that doesn’t mean the prayer has not been answered.
We have conceived seven children, and death is never part of God’s plan. Maybe these are all our biological children. Maybe there won’t be any more. That will not mean our prayers were not answered. Maybe we will become parents in some less typical way.
We’re too old to begin the process for conventional adoption, something that is never straightforward and brings significant risks for all concerned. But with God, all things are possible. God doesn’t care whether or not something is achievable in human terms.
Maybe the parenting God has planned for us, apart from our precious K, looks different from anything we can imagine.
Maybe, after all, we will conceive again and I will successfully carry our rainbow and give birth.
Our prayers are not denied when they are delayed. Our prayers are always heard and always answered: but even when the answer is Yes, that will not necessarily look like the Yes we imagined when we prayed.
(Drawing by Hannah Dunnett, coloured by me.)
Joy in the Mourning 