“There’s a time to cry and laugh; a time to be sad and a time to dance
with joy." ~ Ecclesiastes 3:4
Jessica, a Pastor and five months
pregnant, came to know God’s indivisible nature in a most unusual way. Not from seminary, not from counseling; not
from her life’s 31 years of experience.
She’d become a regular at the birthing center partly for
spiritually reassuring new mothers, but also due to some complications with her
own pregnancy. She was present that
fateful morning, one that she’d come to believe was no coincidence, when a
young, single woman named Aubrey went into labor. She would deliver a pre-term baby alive, but it
wouldn’t be able to live for more than a few minutes (babies are not considered
'viable' until 23 weeks).
The nurses asked if Jessica would stay with Aubrey as she
went through this tragic labor. She
reluctantly agreed, sensing some divine intervention calling her to serve.
Jessica sat and calmly held her hand, whispering, praying,
and crying. After she delivered her tiny
little baby girl alive, Pastor Jess quickly baptized her “In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Distraught with grief, Aubrey held her newborn daughter briefly,
admiring her eyelashes and counting every precious finger and toe. But at a mere one pound and battling each
breath, she couldn’t bear watching death come.
Jessica whispered, “Do you want me to hold her until she
passes?”
“Please,“ Aubrey replied though desperate tears.
Jessica carried the little child into the next room, rocking
her prayerfully in the dark. “Jesus,
take this little one, so pure and perfect. Let her know love. Hold her and tend her just as her mother would
if she could.”
As Jessica held the tiny child on top of her growing
stomach, her own baby began to gently kick for the entire 15 minutes that they
sat there together. It seemed as though she
was communicating to this dying sweetie deep truths in little breaths and
kicks. Maybe she was telegraphing to her
sister in Christ that she too would be OK, reminding her that she was returning
to a place that they had both come from.
Two babies, one now dead, one with promise of new life. This all resides together in the hands and
the heart of God, the Creator. The line
between life and death, which had seemed so rock solid, was in fact very thin,
very porous. Life and death are twins,
enriching each other, bearing truth, exposing the structure of the universe as
a natural expression of God’s existence.
It all fits in God’s tender embrace - all of our terror and
sorrow and all of our joy and delight.
Like Yin-Yang - where opposite or contrary forces are actually
complementary.
Holy Father, who collects broken pieces,
knits them together and declares us whole.
Help us fear a little less, rest a little more, and live a little
louder. Remind us that death is but a
chapter of the great whole. Amen
