“I’m sorry to tell you your baby is dead,” the obstetrician said to me.

I could scarcely take it in. My baby? The baby that moved and seemed to nearly leap out of my womb? Who regularly hiccuped? The little one I hoped was a girl? The doctor went on to tell me they would send me home and wait for my labor to start.

I didn’t want to go home to the little nursery I had prepared for this third baby. I had two children. One who was ten, the other three. This was our bonus baby.

Tears started to flow and wouldn’t stop. They continued for hours.

I waited for four days for labor to begin. It would not, so they brought me in to induce labor.

During those days of waiting, I avoided people I knew. I didn’t want to have to explain. While I was rocketing with grief and disbelief, the world continued as normal. I needed to prepare meals for my family, wash their clothes, oversee baths and put my children to bed. Now, there would not be that third baby to rock and to love.

While I waited in the labor room for labor pains to start, they didn’t. Two days later, they took the baby by C-Section.

I was too struck with grief to even pray. I remember one friend came to visit me and she told me God could bring my baby back to life. I didn’t believe her. My son asked, “Can’t God heal our baby?” I didn’t respond because I didn’t believe.

I had been a Christian for quite a few years, but it had been in the past three that I had really learned who Jesus was to me. I was regularly reading my Bible and it had opened up to me. Right now, I had to rest in his love for me. I didn’t have it in me to read and pray.

The nurse who took me up to my room–they put me in the orthopedic floor for they thought it would hurt too much if I went to the OB ward– gave me a card that told me she was praying for me. I’m not sure if I still have the note, I kept for a long time, but I won’t forget the kindness of that nurse and how and it helped me turn to the One who loved me so much. And that’s what I did.

The first Sunday I attended church after our baby we named Carrie died, the pastor spoke on the following verses. They resonated in me then and still do.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39 NIV).

Yesterday, the daily hymn in our devotional was one that resonated with me so many years ago and now as well.  I love it because I have experienced that deep love through those dark days of loss–first when my best friend was killed, and then, when I faced the death of my baby. Here are some of the words:

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

Rolling as a mighty ocean

In its fullness over me,

Underneath me, all around me,

Is the current of Thy love;

Leading onward, leading homeward

To my glorious rest above. (Samuel Trevor Francis 1834-1925).

Here is a piano recording that my talented friend performed. Enjoy, and let the current move you toward the deep love. Here’s Colleen Adent.

I mourned the loss of the child who died in my womb so many years ago and am assured by the loving God who was there with me in that loss and now during days of wondering if God is still here in this world of  suffering and evil, I know He is. As more words in that song say, “How He watches o’er His loved ones, Died to call them all His own; How for them He intercedeth,”

I hope you can discover that deep love that I experienced so many years ago in that loss. And in the years following where more grief,  loss, and joy touched my life. I share this story with you, hoping it might direct you to the One who loves you so much.

What are you mourning today? Fear of war? Fear of financial collapse? Fear of evil taking over everything? Perhaps you are mourning a death–or deaths–of loved ones. Illness that cannot be cured? Loss of livelihood? Loss of home? Fear of death? A marriage that is collapsing?

I pray the verses above might remind and comfort you with the words, nothing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. 

I never got to meet Carrie here on earth, but I know I will meet her in heaven. It’s getting closer every day.

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