9 years
Nine years ago, we lost our baby.
Teifion was born, weighing in at the perfect seven pounds seven ounces but never breathed a breath. Teifion died a few days before his birthday.
I held him in that hospital room and whispered ‘Life to you, Teifion,’ but none came. Yeah, I know that I should have expected that much, but remember that bloke Lazarus in the bible? Well, he’d been dead for a while as well.
I was so sure he’d come back, I’d been reminded, since I found out a couple months earlier, that I needed to have faith and that boy would be healed. ‘Life to you.’
That was it. I would not hold my dead baby any longer; a few minutes had been enough. The nurse would remove him from the room… but soon, I’d hear her footsteps pounding back towards the room, and she’d swing open the door and skid into the room and she’d look at us for a minute with her mouth just open, and her eyes like Os and then she’s splutter out the words, ‘H— H— He’s Alive!’
Yeah, any minute now.
It didn’t happen. What happened was, we watched a sitcom in the private room they gave us away from all the happy parents and their new wriggly bundles and, amazingly, we laughed and laughed. And then I cried all night because I was having those first sneaking suspicions that maybe he was not coming back, maybe I would never get to hold my baby alive on this earth. And those sneaking suspicions were just too much to bear. And my words of faith turned into shouting demands at God. ‘Now, God! Do It Now!’
Why was he waiting?
Was he growing my faith maybe?
But the next day I left that hospital (in a wheelchair for some reason that I cannot fathom) empty handed and stayed that way until a few days later when we had the call that Teifion’s ashes were at the crematorium and could we pick them up please?
And I held a small plastic black box in my hand. the remains of my son. The remains of my faith.
Embarrassingly, there were even times when i took that box of ashes out of my drawer and prayed over them. ‘LIFE!’
‘Life, Life, Life, Life, Life, Life, Life, Life, Life… C’mon, C’MON!’
This is going to be a very long story if I go on this way.
Okay. Nine years later I have a faith in God that goes deeper than anything I had back then, and I’m trying to figure out, to put my finger on what it was that got me here. How did I get from hating him so much (once I figured out that actually, no, he was not going to do what I was asking him to) to loving him despite… anything? How did I get to a place where I am willing to say, ‘even if everything goes differently than I expect/want/need it to, you are God’?
Did I have a relationship with God the father back then, 9 years ago? I had certainly had encounters with God, plenty of them. Renewal had swept through the church and everyone was all giggly-and-warm-feel-y and jumping-in-the-aisle-y. And not just the warmfeelygoodiness – I had had those moments when I had felt God tell me things, dropped a thought into my mind or a word for someone else. I look back and still believe that that was God talking to me. Oh yes, I had plenty of encounters. But I’d been taught what God would do if only I did this and that I could change the world with the power of my words. My entire faith in God was built around that. Genie in a bottle, I had.
But there I was, nine years ago frantically rubbing that bottle, repeating all the right words and there was no POOF! ‘What do you want? Your wish is my command.’
I hated him for not being that God that I’d created him to be.
Looking back, I did not lose a relationship with God – I didn’t have one to lose! Encounters are not the same as relationship. What if Jeff and I only did dates? Once a week we’d go do something together and then said, ‘Right, that was lovely, see you next week then, yeah? Can’t wait! Oh, and if I need something in the week, I’ll call.’ And the everyday stuff, the mundane, what if we just didn’t do any of that stuff together?
That’s stupid! I love him and I want him to be part of my everyday life, that’s what marriage is, that’s what a relationship is. And yet what I described above is exactly how my ‘relationship’ with God went.
When I lost my faith in ‘God will do’ I started to actually be able to find HIM. It took a few years because I was so cross at him, so cross at this god that I (with the help of the charismatic church) had created.
But now…
You are my God even if… even though… whatever. I do not fully (ha, slight understatement!) understand you. You do not fit neatly and conveniently where – well, where I used to want you to. I do not want that god anymore; I want you! You are so big and huge and impossible and everything! You humble me when I think I have you all figured out and all my descriptions of you are just blluuergbluubbyblerghblergh and I am reminded of how little I actually am, how small I am and how massive you are! I am so glad that I have no box that big enough to fit you in.
This post was supposed to be about the grief of my son Teifion…
8 September 2008 Christine Gill
tags: faith,
god,
grief
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