Love begins when life begins inside the mother.

Psalm 39:4-5

December 6, 2009

Baby Eddie

My first visit to Babyland at Catawba Memorial Park was about six years ago – October 16, 2003.  My wife Linda and I had been youth pastors in Reidsville, North Carolina in the mid-1970s, and one of our former youth group members had called to say her husband’s cousin was at Frye Hospital, and her newborn was not going to survive.  She wanted to know if I would visit the family.  Of course I would.

Little Edward Saul Ramirez did indeed die.  He was only six days old.  The family at that time didn’t have any church connection, but that didn’t matter.  What they needed was love and care.  I thought I might never see them again, but actually, they have become active members of our church family since that time.

Yesterday I opened the folder where I kept the copy of baby Eddie’s memorial service that we had here in Babyland.  I discovered when I did that I had titled the service in the same way I always do for a memorial service – “A Celebration of the Life of….” followed by the person’s name.

It is easier to “celebrate life” when a person has lived seventy, eighty, or ninety years.  There are many memories to look back on, and everyone present has a story or a reflection of what that person meant to him or her.

No clichés

As I return to this place today for this service, I still believe we are here to celebrate life.  You are here because you have all lost one or more lives that were precious to you.  Perhaps your baby was lost early in pregnancy.  Perhaps your precious life ended while still in the womb.  Maybe, like Baby Eddie’s parents, you had the opportunity to hold your baby while he or she was still breathing – but your time was way too short.

You have found in this group some of the support you have needed to keep going.  You have, I’m sure, learned that your grief is natural and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.  Others often do not understand, and probably everyone here has faced at least one person who said or implied you just needed to move on, that you could have another child, that having a miscarriage or a stillbirth was not as bad as the pain of those who lose loved ones later in life.

But you know differently.  You have found in one another those who understand, who care, and who are there for each stage in your grieving process.  That’s important. 

You know, better than anyone outside the circle of those who have experienced a similar loss, that this time of year is particularly difficult.  While families gather around and share the giggles and spontaneity of children, you are left with only dreams of what might have been, and often with empty arms.  You need each other because you need people who understand.

You have probably all struggled with how God fits into this picture.  Maybe you have found some answers that help, and maybe not.  Maybe answers that help one of you seem hollow to another.  Clichés and platitudes may actually encourage some in their loss while they just irritate others and add to their pain.

I determined today that I would try hard not to offer any simplistic “answers.”  I am a preacher, and have been in training for or practice of ministry for more than 35 years.  I am way past needing to defend God or explain him.  Sometimes he puzzles me, too.  I have learned not to ask the Creator of the universe to justify himself to me.  I just want to trust him.

But in his wisdom, love, and goodness, God does sometimes give us just a little bit of light to illuminate the path in front of us.  I find some of that light in the words of Psalm 39:4-5 –

 ”Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
       and the number of my days;
       let me know how fleeting is my life.

 You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
       the span of my years is as nothing before you.
       Each man’s life is but a breath.
       Selah.”

“Selah” means pause, so let’s pause for a moment and let that sink in.

The gift of grief

Against the backdrop of eternity, every life is short.  A few weeks in the womb is to a hundred years as the difference between paying 2 cents on the national debit of 12 trillion dollars vs. paying $100 on the same debt.  We all live painfully short lives.

But that’s not where I want to focus our thoughts.  It may not feel like it, but we are here to celebrate – to celebrate life.  We are here to remind one another that life is precious, that it’s good, that every life, no matter how brief, is a gift from God.

The reason we feel such pain is that we love life so much.  God made us this way.  We are created in his image, which includes the capacity to love and be loved.  That is unique among all God’s creatures. 

The reason we grieve, the only reason we grieve, is because we love.  And you, especially you Moms, know that love doesn’t begin when a teenager becomes an adult and can be a friend as well as a child, or when a child becomes a teenager, or when a preschooler becomes a school kid, or when a toddler becomes a preschooler, or when a baby learns to talk or walk, or even when a baby emerges through the birth canal.  Love begins when life begins inside of a mother.

The loss of that life is real and deep even when it happens before the baby is born.  It is God who creates the life, and it is God who gives us this capacity to love.  It is also God who created us with the ability to grieve and the need to grieve, when that life ends.

What I’m saying is that the deep pain we feel in grief is part of what it means to love.  If we didn’t love, we wouldn’t grieve.  If we didn’t have the capacity for grief, we wouldn’t have the capacity to love.  It is all wrapped up in what we call “life.”

So we really are here to celebrate life.  And we are here to say categorically that every life is worth celebrating, and every loss must be grieved.  That’s how God made us.  Although I would never say this is why we have losses, it is nevertheless true that those who grieve often have a greater depth of love.  They don’t take the gift of life for granted.

So, my friends, I invite you to celebrate the gift of life today.  Your baby’s life, no matter how long your baby lived inside or out of the womb, was a miracle of the God who creates life.  He or she deserves to be celebrated, to be remembered, to be grieved. 

And when you grieve, you can know that the God who made you and your baby grieves with you.  He loves you, and demonstrated that love by coming into the world in the person of his Son, who died and rose again to give us the chance to turn life into eternal life.  Amen.