A talk I tried to get out of

But God was like, "Nahhhhh."

I had two papers due this week, nato was out of town with Penelope for a cheer comp for 5 days, and I had 2 speaking engagements to prepare for. To say that all I did that week is write doesn’t punctuate the amount of work I was drowning in all that well. When it came to speaking on Friday night, I had some things I wanted to say, a thread, but I didn’t write it out. If you ask me to speak on purpose and intentional living, that message lives in my bones. But I went into the night feeling weak and with zero notes (could be an ADHD disaster!), “God, do your thing. Pull it together. Make it work.” And He did. I had so much fun delivering that message it made me want to do more public speaking but mostly made me thank God that He still shows up for us when we ask more abundantly than we even know.

But the talk on Sunday afternoon—It’s hard to describe. I didn’t want to go. It was an event for bereaved mothers. The gal planning the event asked me 2 years ago to speak and I said yes. LOL! As the week inched closer, I had serious doubts. I am not one to be seen as an expert on a topic I have no business speaking about. Yes, I have had a miscarriage at 9 weeks but that is very different from a woman who loses her child at 36 weeks in the womb or as a 2 year old or 24 year old. Maybe unpopular to say because “suffering is suffering and pain is pain” but I believe their burdens to be quite heavier, in truth. Yet it was too late. The marketing was up and the invitations were sent and I didn’t want to be there but would, out of obligation. 2 years to prep, and I wrote my talk 5 days before the event. To boot, I would be reading the talk, not commanding the stage with confidence. A meager offering. I sound terrible, but I assure you it was because I had no business being there.

Or so I thought.

3 speakers who experienced tragic losses of children went before me. Every time they spoke, they touched on the very things I wrote. Our messaging was the same but different: Speaker 1 talked about the hope of resurrection, speaker 2 talked about the grief of living in loss and a hope for heaven, speaker 3 talked about how necessary community is in grief. All 3 were wrapped up in my talk. Look at God. He had a very specific message for these ladies. It emboldened me. I told the women that every time they heard me say something the other speakers said, it was an Easter egg from God. Happy hunting!

From my garden this morning: We still keep finding easter eggs from our Easter egg hunt!

Over the past 2 years in seminary, I have learned so much about suffering with Christ, death, heaven, and resurrection. I came into seminary thinking heaven was a place you go when you die not realizing the Bible doesn’t say that.

When Jesus returns, we—the living and the dead—will be caught up with Him in the heavens in souls and bodies. Not to escape this world or our bodies, but to welcome Him. Like a welcoming procession, we will meet Him in the air and usher Him back to a renewed earth. Heaven on earth. If you want to know what heaven is like, you’ve got a version of it here, a glimpse, a shadow. Anything that is good here, will be a zillion times better in the new creation. Anything broken here will be made new. Everything good that was lost, will be found. Your bible is bookended by Genesis 1: A picture of Eden and Rev 21-22, a picture of a new Eden. Eden is calling us as even as we live in the in between.

I talked about how Mary was a bereaved mother. How she had to carry on in ministry (we know she was with the disciples and in the upper room in Acts because Luke tells us) limping from grief of missing her son who lived in a real body and who suffered in a real body, and Mary had to watch him die. There are studies which show maternal cells persist in children. Cells can migrate to the fetus during pregnancy and remain there for years after birth.

Conversely, There studies that show fetal cells can also persist in the mother's body. Research has detected male fetal DNA in the brains of women who had male children, even decades after pregnancy. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Mary knew this physical connection and that agony of feeling like a part of her was dying.

I called my sister who delivered her full term baby boy knowing he would die almost immediately, and he did. And she buried him days later. I said, “what can I even say to these women?” And she said, “Nothing. There’s nothing to say. You think you’re going to die from despair and you want to.” And my heart said, I do know the kind of despair where you go to bed asking God to take you in the night. It would be good to die. Then I will have relief from my heartbreak.

So that gave me the strength to get up on the stage holding a different kind of grief while bearing witness to theirs. Tenderly, I would shine a light in the cracked open broken hearts with the very promise Jesus’s death gives us. Jesus rose to life in a physical body. With real scars and we’re not sure what to make of that? Will we have scars in heaven? We don’t know. But we do know that means if you have lost a child, your child’s body matters. Your body matters. Your scars matter so much to God, Jesus kept his when he came to visit people after the resurrection. And one day, you will hold and touch and get to know and sit with the ones you lost in their bodies because we have a promise: We get to share in Christ’s sufferings, but we get to share in His resurrection too.

Romans 6:4–5

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."

Jesus didn’t just die so we could be “saved” from hell. He died so we could be raised up again and finally live in His complete presence, working in Eden with purpose, cultivating it, and enjoying a redefined vision of family. We will all be siblings—that’s why Jesus says, “Pray like this. Pray OUR Father.” He is our sibling too and we are to treat other Christians as our family even now.

Still, grief is a reality. Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus and when he saw His best friends weeping, He wept. Because death itself is horrific and wrong, it’s backward, it’s not what Eden was made for. NT Wright says, “Grief is the shadow side of love; not to grieve implies that you haven’t loved, and if you have, then not to grieve is to live a lie.”

We live in this weird liminal space of now and not yet. The kingdom of heaven has been inaugurated when Jesus died, but it isn’t fully realized. Still, we get glimpses of heaven and we are told to pray for them: thy kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven. All of creation is groaning and displaying eternity, albeit sometimes poorly but sometimes very well. I believe Nature itself keeps screaming “Resurrection! Death to life!”

I compost my tomatoes right back into my garden. They rot and split open and die. And when the weather turns, tomato plants pop up in clumps. Death doesn’t have the final word. So too, when we are split open in suffering and partnering in Christ’s suffering, it does not swallow us up whole even though the long winter beckons despair. We are split open, the seeds fall, it seems as if death as won. Our tears water the soil. And in a miracle of miracles, warmth returns and the seeds find their way to the light creating another plant and 45 more tomatoes who will nourish many. Death is never in vein.

Here is one such clump. That is probably about 15 baby tomato plants!

And so I will keep saying that to those who find thmeselves in a long winter with despair knocking at the door telling you you’ll be swallowed up whole, there is no spring coming. But it is a liar.

Jesus’s resurrection wasn’t just a historical event.

And we do not have a great High Priest who can't sympathize with our suffering and our sadness. Yes, we share in His suffering, but He shares in ours too and weeps with us. Yet we don’t live as a people without hope. He will come again and raise us to life to live with him forever. So do not give yourself over to despair.

The story is not over.

*Hey! can you like of comment on this post? It helps!*

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One of the women who spoke at the event was Jamie Heard of Faithfully restored. her moving video of losing her 2 year old is here. Grace the tissues! In her talk, she talked about how her sons organs were donated and saved the lives of many children and I couldn’t help but think about his body, broken open, and like seeds, produced new life for others. It put a very real body to my seed analogy. Mind you, I didn’t know she was speaking, or her story. God was simply weaving all the talks together!