Three months ago I gave birth to my son, Lincoln, four and a half months too soon. It was nothing short of traumatic, dreadfully devastating and just plain sad.
I remember everything about that day. The excitement I felt approaching my 20 week ultrasound, being confused at the stillness of my son’s body up on the monitor, hearing the words, “Amanda, he’s dead”, and feeling as though everything went silent and my heart had shattered, the unanswered prayers of faith, the unnatural and traumatic experience of giving birth to my son’s dead body, the coldness of the hospital room…
These last three months have been excruciating, as any mother who has experienced the death of their child knows. But something I’ve learned, something I’ve experienced through this, is that you can hurt and heal at the same time. I hurt everyday, but it doesn’t stop God from trying to heal my broken heart everyday.
God wants to heal your broken heart too, Mama. Why? Because He cares about it.
To the hurting Mother, I want to encourage you with two truths today, God is still good and your baby knows the sound of heaven!
God is Still Good
When I say that God is good I’m talking about something deeper than just repeating Christian rhetoric. I’m declaring a truth about God that is so very real. His goodness is. It’s in His very nature to be good. He can’t help it! It consumes Him. So whatever may come your way, view your circumstance and God through the lens that He loves you. He has set His affections upon you, Mama, and He’s not turning His gaze from you for one single second! You have captured Him. So know this, even if God doesn’t answer your prayer, it doesn’t mean He isn’t good and it doesn’t mean He doesn’t love you. Let God’s Word be your anchor. Let those words be your truth when painful circumstances come your way and try to tell you something different.
Unanswered prayers don’t mean God is ignoring you or doesn’t love you. It doesn’t mean He’s cruel, evil or doing wrong. He can’t do wrong! He’s full of light and there is no darkness in Him at all. We assume our will to be the best way, but God in His goodness knows what’s best. He’s never wrong. He’s never evil. Everything He does is right and everything He allows has the opportunity to draw us closer to Him.
We fought for our son’s life! We had the ultrasound tech come back multiple times, as we believed for Lincoln’s body to wake up. We’d heard stories of God healing other babies so we trusted Him to heal our baby. We believed with that mustard seed of faith, with all our hearts, and pointed God back to His Word through tears and much desperation, but our prayers were not answered.
God has wisdom we do not carry. He has plans we do not know of. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He allows things that we do not understand. But He is God and we are not. Our circumstances do not change His goodness! Our pain does not change the love that’s ever flowing from His heart. God is FULL of mercy, so much love, unending kindness and through it all He promises to never leave you, Mama.
Broken Before the Healer
However, this doesn’t mean you won’t have your doubts. It doesn’t mean you won’t question His goodness. I’ve cursed and gotten angry at God. I’ve sobbed and screamed at Him on the bathroom floor. Doubt and anger are so very real in this grieving journey. Yet it’s essential to be raw and broken before the Healer of your soul. You can be honest with Him. You need to be honest with Him because all that pain is in you, and it needs to come out. It’s okay to yell at God if you need to but cry with Him too. He’s close to the broken-hearted so you don’t have to look very far to find Him.
God is tender with you in this process. He’s sensitive to your pain. He’s the God who cries with you. The God who listens when you scream at Him in the car while tears stroll down His face. He’s the God who is listening when you think He’s silent. He’s the God who doesn’t stop loving you when you curse at Him through tears and confusion. He’s the God who doesn’t push you away when you doubt Him. He’s the God who draws close in the midst of the darkest hour of your soul.
Your Baby Knows the Sound of Heaven
The reality that my son, and your child live with this good and loving God continually blows my mind.
On earth we have “quiet times”, we go to church, and we read the Bible all to encounter Jesus. We reach for Him because we were made to be with Him and designed for that unhindered nearness with Christ. There’s something inside us that longs to be close to God.
Over the last three months it’s been striking my heart with deep revelation that my son is WITH Jesus! Your son or daughter is with God! Your child doesn’t have to reach in faith or worship in wonder. They are there, right now, physically abiding in the same residence as GOD. The God! The One who invented the tree and thought up colors, the One who can heal the sick, who died on a cross and came back to life—that God!
My son, and your son or daughter, live with Him. Your child never cries, never has pain or feels sadness, they never have a boo-boo, never experience sin, just peace and joy. Our children hear the laughter of God, they see the smile in His eyes, and they hear the sound of His voice. It’s normal to them! Doesn’t this excite your heart? Of course we miss our children IMMENSELY, but what a life they get to LIVE.
On the days when my heart can’t bear the pain, when I feel as though I can’t breathe, God reminds me of Lincoln’s reality. He reminds me that though Lincoln did die, he’s very much alive in heaven. And that we are only separated for a time. He’ll tell my heart of the glorious joy my son is experiencing. Life with Jesus, it’s all he’s known, can you imagine?
We will see our children again, sweet Mama. Before we know it, we will hold our precious babies in our arms. I’ve heard that a thousand years is like a day, so maybe when we see our children again we’ll only have been separated for a day, or less than a day or maybe no time at all.
Amanda lives in Colorado with her husband and two children. She’s a full-time mom who is passionate about touching the deep things of God with her children. She deeply believes that to know God is to love Him and it’s her greatest heart’s desire that her children would know Him.
Amanda enjoys traveling with her family, hiking, and having coffee with friends.
She’s passionate about prayer, missional motherhood, living present in a social media-obsessed culture and living missionally and eternity-minded.
After the death of her son, God placed a groaning within her, a deeper longing for the coming King, a life with no sorrow or pain and an ache to bring as many people with her into the courts of heaven. Her eyes are fixed on the age to come, and the glorious reality of a life face-to-face with God.
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