Two years ago today I took a pregnancy test on a whim. I was shocked to see two dark lines! As Loren sat on the couch and read his Bible before Sunday service, I sat down next to him and held his hand as I flipped his Bible to Jeremiah 29:11. I began to cry as I read the verse: "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I set the test on his Bible and we laughed and cried at the thought of the FOURTH child the Lord had blessed us with. And then, with both our hands on my belly, we prayed for the Lord's protection on the life growing inside me, that the Lord would grow him or her up to glorify Him with their whole life and be a fiery arrow shot out into the world. We began to talk about where we'd put the cradle, how we'd cram another person in our tiny duplex, how it was time to get rid of our little Mazda and get a van. As our family sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast, we listened to the song "All I Need" by Caedmon's Call:
Did not catch her name
Did not catch her tears
It hit me like a train
When her story hit my ears
Mother of eight sons
Father off to war
Got no home address
Just bricks on a dirt floor
Jesus is all I need
Tiny plot of land
Corn stored up in piles
Years it doesn't rain
They just stay hungry for a while
No fatted calf to kill
She made a feast of cuy and corn
She said, "Who else knew my name
Before the day that I was born?
Jesus is all I need
Jesus is all I need."
She bragged about her boys
How they're growin' into men
How they learned to praise the Lord
Old Style Ecuadorian
To buy the new guitar
They had to sell the swine
Said, "My boys go to school on a foreign angel's dime.
This world calls me poor
I bore my babies on this floor
He always provides
Sure as the sun will rise.
So I'll sing Him songs of praise
'Cause I know He'll keep me in His gaze."
Rain poured from the sky
We raced back to the van
There were tears in the eyes
Of this poor, forgetful man
Mother of eight sons
She knows the peace of God
Lord, help me learn to lean
On thy staff and thy rod
Jesus is all I need
Jesus is all I need
We went to church giddy and giggly but deciding to keep the news to ourselves. I whispered the news to my mom before church started. She laughed, started to cry, hugged me. That tipped off Cameron and Jennifer behind me and they found out. By the time we got back in the car half the church knew!
Looking back on that day brings such a crazy swell of emotions. Grief, of course, for the heart that beat inside me for those short months. Joy for the life that lives on in heaven. And awed silence for the God of the Universe, who that day began such a work in our lives. It was very easy, in the early days after Tirzah's death, to ask God WHY He had created her only to take her from us. I railed and said I would have rather have never had her to begin with. I got angry, questioned His goodness, and embraced every one of my doubts.
Now, twenty months after her death, it is clear to me that the Lord gave us Tirzah for a reason. And not just a vague "we'll know why someday" reason, but something very obvious in our hearts. He has made Himself, and His heart, real to me in a way that He never was before. In the same way that Loren and I are so much closer after losing my dad and Tirzah, I am so much closer to the Lord. He has burned away much of my innocence, but along with it much of my fear for the future, my doubts about Him, and my questions about His sovereignty.
Two years later I can say, without a doubt, that God is good and does good. He is good when babies are born and He is good when babies die. And although I am certain that I will never fully understand all the plans that He had for Tirzah and her short life, the ripple effects in the lives of others are obvious.
So today, again, I grieve with gratitude, and pant for clear glass and a place without tears.
