Problems are for Solving

As I’ve written, we found out Tuesday that we’ve lost another child. This is the eighth miscarriage for us. For most of them, the first warning sign we had was the beginning of bleeding. On this one we found out during an ultrasound. That happened once before, in our second miscarriage, the first of six in a row between Peter and Margary. Below is something I wrote as I grieved over that child.

(written June/July, 2002)

Bon Voyage T.o.D.

My wife began bleeding today. There are many times in our marriage that this has happened for many different reasons-but this is only the second of this one. In contrast from the first time-we knew this was coming.

Something wasn’t right-that’s what she told me over the phone only weeks ago. She was having cramping and had passed some mucus-either one of which wouldn’t have alarmed her-but together they came and she had a feeling something was wrong.

It had been about eight weeks since she was late and we took a test. There’s the line! Another baby! What joy we had at knowing that God had chosen to bless this unlikely pair with another child.

We went to the wrong doctor’s office. We didn’t mean to-there was an OB/Midwife group in the same building, with the same address, one upstairs, one downstairs. We didn’t know any better and waited downstairs for over an hour before the mistake was realized.

A midwife came back to work on a sunny day. It was after 3:30 and it was perfect outside for enjoying God’s world. Not too hot-not too humid. And she came back to work. The upstairs nurse was a gem-a real kindred spirit. She laughed and joked with us-this was our seventh pregnancy in as many years.

Out came the Doppler. No heartbeat could be found. No worries, they told us-it’s not rare at twelve weeks to not be able to locate the baby with the Doppler. We’ll sneak back and give you a free ultrasound.

My wife’s uterus measured just right for a 12 week pregnancy. But the sack was empty-no heartbeat, no baby. Something was wrong-my wife’s intuition was correct. What could it be? Is the baby gone? Did we do something wrong?

We had to come back tomorrow. The trained ultrasound technician would be necessary to have an internal sonogram. That would show for sure what was going on inside my wife. Not to worry-the midwife who performed the ultrasound wasn’t a trained expert and might have missed something. Go, have some blood taken at the lab and then come back tomorrow afternoon.

Friday. Nothing. A blighted ovum, the doctor said. No embryo from the conception. No baby. We were happy to know that there was no baby-no miscarriage. But the doctor was wrong. A blighted ovum is a conception-it is a child.

We found out that some blighted ovums, or those diagnosed as such, eventually grow into a long-term pregnancy. We held out hope that our child would be spared and that God would let us meet him.

Today my wife started bleeding. We knew it would happen soon-but we had hoped it wouldn’t. In the back of our minds we knew that our baby was dead-but we hoped yet that God would spare him. God can bring back a child from the dead-we know that-and God can show mercy as He wishes.

Theodore-that means a gift from God. That is the boy’s name my wife had selected. Danielle if he were a she. Theodore or Danielle. T.o.D. We’ve named all of our children before they were born-from our first (MoZ-for Moriah or Zechariah).

Funny how life works sometimes. Certainly our God is good and knows beyond our greatest wisdom. As I was typing the above more than two weeks ago my wife called to me from the bathroom. The bleeding had increased. She then proceeded to pass out. We called the midwife who said to head to the hospital.

We were sad, of course. We still are. We’ve lost a child before-and though it is somewhat easier to adjust this time having gone through it once already, it still hurts a whole bunch to lose a child.

Simeon. Simeon or Anna. Those were the names we’d picked out for the child we lost in 1999. That one was much harder. We’d just moved from South Carolina to Illinois where we knew no one. My grandmother had just died causing me to leave my wife and children for a funeral in Colorado. That was the first time we’d spent two nights in a row apart since we’d been married almost four years before. And then came the call from work-that she’d had spotting.

We barely knew anyone from church-only having been here a couple of months. People pitched in to watch the kids while we went to the doctor-and then to the hospital. It was a bad experience checking in that time-my wife was bleeding out a miscarriage and they seemed to be most concerned about getting our billing information down. So much for the only pro-life hospital in town. Theresa spent the night in the hospital and I came home to a baby-sitter I’d barely met and my children. I got back to the hospital early the next day and she was discharged. The hospital was so-so and the doctors were nothing to write home about-and so we chose not to use either again.

This time the hospital experience started out great and went downhill quickly. The ER nurses were fantastic. No wasting time with paperwork-and I was never asked to leave my wife’s side. The downhill part is mostly due to primadonna doctors. They tried to get us to sign a release form without talking to us first. The anesthesiologist was visibly perturbed at having to come all the way to the 7th floor on a Saturday for a consultation before the surgery. Our latest doctor (his last service) was incommunicative and elitist as he pretended to care for us. So much for the health-don’t-care-industry.

The neatest part about this miscarriage is the way God took care of us through it. When Theresa passed out we had ‘houseguests.’ I put that word in quotes because as of the next day we were moving out and they were renting our home. Because they were there in God’s providence, I didn’t have to call an ambulance and I was able to be with my wife during this difficult time. The next morning we had one friend who showed up early (she answered her phone at 10:30 the night before) to watch the children, and another friend who answered the call at 6:30 AM to oversee our move.

It’s a strange Saturday when people show up to help someone move and the people who are moving don’t. It’s truly amazing to me when I think of how well God took care of us that weekend. We closed on our new house on Friday morning, planted the beans and tomatoes in the new yard that afternoon, and went to the emergency room that night. On Saturday while I was attending to my wife men and women who we didn’t see got most of our stuff loaded into a truck (after unloading the new renters’ things into the house) and over to our new house. When we got home in the evening that day sure most of our stuff was in the garage, but Theresa’s mattress was made up and ready to sleep on and I had no problem finding what I needed to get the kids to bed.

The next day three men (on Father’s Day mind you!) showed up after church and helped me move all of the big items into the house from the garage, into the proper rooms, and put together all of the beds. As of 48 hours after the beginning of the final stages of the miscarriage there was nothing in our garage that I couldn’t lift myself other than what we’d planned on storing there already.

I think it’s easier this time for another reason. Since we’ve lost another covenant child before we have some confidence that ToD is enjoying playing with Simeon or Anna. In the presence of Jesus Himself. We miss both of these children that so many will meet before we do-and we long for the day when we too will be with the Lord and finally fellowship with them. God, for His wise eternal purposes, has spared these children of my poor fathering and the hardships of this sinful world and has chosen to keep them to Himself. Though I miss my children-I’ve long since learned that arguing with God never works.

It’s 5:00 now. I couldn’t sleep tonight for whatever reason-between asthma and allergies and other things. So I finished this. I’m glad it got saved before we left for the hospital. I would never have remembered to finish it otherwise.

I hope that you can see a bit of my life in this struggle and know me better. I know that I have been able to know God more through what He has brought us through. Please join with me in wishing T.o.D. a hearty bon voyage. I know he’s already at his destination and probably has been there for some time (can you say that someone’s been in eternity for some time?) but I never finished saying good-bye.

Good bye ToD. Rest well with Jesus. The tears in my eyes right now won’t be there when you meet me-that will be after Jesus has wiped away all my tears like He’s already done for you. I don’t have to wish that God will be with you until we meet again-He’s with you in a way I can’t fully understand yet. Good bye my child. I loved you imperfectly during the short time you were here and I will love you still forever, one day perfectly with His love. We will miss having known you but we know that you are better off and that our loving God has planned this for our good. Enjoy playing with your brother or sister-we’ll be there soon to enjoy you both.

You know, it’s funny. Not ha ha funny, but weird funny. I don’t think I ever grieved until now over to. Something about my ‘inspector gadget’ personality I guess that I didn’t grieve until I did it at a computer. It was just Monday morning when I finally set it up. Life changes quickly. Peter is now one and soon he’ll be walking and talking. As close together as our children are we’ve never really had a time without a baby. We had actually prayed before conceiving to that God would give Theresa a short respite between number 5 and 6. There was a time when we might have been tempted to be resentful at the conception-and that ended right before we found out TC was pregnant. We were able to rejoice whole-heartedly in the news of the new child coming.

Now we’ll have that space we prayed for before between children. Sure it’ll still likely be small compared to most people we know. All right all the people we know. But we were rejoicing in the new face we’d be seeing later this year. And we’re still sad that we won’t be able to look into that face until after we see Jesus’ face-but we know that it won’t hurt at all then. It’s just kind of weird to think about the house without a baby.

Toby is finally getting potty-trained, and Elsie is close on his heels. For the first time since 1997 we may have only one child in diapers. I got married in 1995. If you had told me then that we’d have five plus years with two or more children in diapers, with most of the time being three-I’d have said you were crazy or walked away from the marriage, I’m not sure which. In hindsight I so often am glad that God doesn’t tell us in advance what our decisions are bringing in His providence. There are so many things I would have done differently if I’d known then what I know now. But I wouldn’t know Christ the way I do had I not gone through all of those difficulties I so wanted to avoid.

I’m sure this is another time like that. A time I wish I didn’t have to go through-the loss of a child and the adjustment to that reality. But a time in which God is cultivating His Spirit’s fruit in my life. A time aimed as all times are-at making us more like Christ.

Bon voyage, ToD. We’ll not forget you. We’ll see you soon.

Marquette Heights, IL
July 2002

A few weeks ago we had to make a quick trip to northeastern Pennsylvania for a funeral. A man I admire had died.

This man fathered my wife’s mother–he is the first Christian in that side of my children’s line. And he was a godly great-grandfather to seventeen little ones, grandfather to sixteen and father of five.

He loved Jesus.

And so we were sad. And because we were sad we celebrated.

We celebrated his life.

Grandpa Rhodes now sits with Jesus. He has no pain and no sorrow and he will serve Christ forever with redeemed arms and legs and energy like he never dreamed of in his final days. And Jesus has shown him his inheritance and said “well done.”

My wife has been greatly influenced by her grandfather. She spent many summer days working beside him in the strawberry fields. She often talks of the hard summer and the hard work of the man who never quit. Retired three times he was always busy until close to the end when his 80+ year-old body failed him. And sin, and the death that comes through sin, became more real to him in that decaying body that lies silent in the grave now.

And so we celebrated. His sister told stories of when they were young, and his brother (who no-one expected to speak) pointed everyone there to the Scriptures that Alan Rhodes loved. This was a funeral he planned himself years ago after his stroke and it was a beautiful reminder of his life and his true life in Christ even as we grieved his death.

So long, Grandpa Rhodes. We will miss you here–but I would not wish upon you one more day in this dark, sinful place. May you enjoy glory forever. We will be there soon and then the celebration will never end. Because in that eternal celebration we will celebrate one death that conquered death forever–and we will rejoice in the life that he bought us. Forever.

Today I passed by the WalMart near my office. Off the lot, right near the road, there used to be a gas station. For whatever reason they closed the station down. If I hadn’t seen the gas station with my own eyes, though, I would never believe there had been one there. The part of the lot that used to contain a gas station is cleared and there is no evidence whatsoever that there used to be one.

Growing up I remember in my home town a gas station that had been closed for some time, possibly since before I was born. It was still there and vacant–and there was no doubt whatsoever that it had indeed been a gas station. While it was not a gas station anymore, it still looked like a gas station.

My heart is like that old gas station. I had an elder once explain the difference between sinners and saints. Saints are redeemed sinners–no longer slaves to sin–and so are no longer labeled “sinners.” Like old gas stations, though, saints still often bear quite a bit of resemblance to what we once were. Today, like many days, I longed for my heart to look like that pristine lot that showed no evidence of ever being a gas station–I long for a heart that shows no evidence of ever being enslaved to sin.

Our hearts, though, are more like the old gas stations. The longer they’re closed down, the less someone can see what they used to be. And the longer we have been set free from sin, the less we and others will see the evidence of that former bondage.

Until we get to heaven. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51)

That changing will be like the gas station up the road. Other than the scars on Jesus, there will be no evidence left that sin once had dominion in our bodies. We will remember it, but there will be nothing left to see. There will no longer be evidence that we were once an old gas station.

And as before, I remain homesick longing for that day.

This past month my family and I were in Washington, DC and stayed at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland. On the Monday evening we were there we walked down the road to Cesco Trattoria, an Italian place that the hotel desk staff recommended.

Oh, my!

From the freshly baked bread, to the bottle of Chianti, to the freshly made (on site) pasta dishes and the meat that we had (a filet and some venison) with the pasta everything was amazing. Truly fantastic to the point where I could not stop exclaiming how good it was.

I have eaten out quite a bit in my life and worked in some mighty fine establishments, and this is by far the best meal I have had in recent memory, possibly my whole life. We sat around the table, the children, Raquel, Gabrielle, and Theresa and me waxing and enjoying and in a froth about how good this food was. The wine was perfect for the meal and we just ate and ate and were filled with joy at the artistry of the chef.

Midway through the meal it hit me, and I made an announcement to the table: Do you all realize that the food in heaven is better than this?

Better. Better in unimaginable ways.

As I wrote yesterday I have been longing for heaven quite a bit of late, and so Continue Reading »

I’m homesick. No, not home, sick: homesick.

And I’m not on the road this week.

Yesterday morning I got awoke to my wife bringing me a cup of coffee. Not just any coffee, but a “triple-shot-redeye” she made with the espresso maker she got me for my birthday. Quite the beverage—I don’t need any more coffee for the whole day after that start.

And so I sat up on the bed, my wife next to me, enjoying being home. Since it was Sunday, I turned on my iPod rather than the radio station and queued up The Far Country by Andrew Peterson. (Another birthday present—this one from Raquel) Midway through the first (the title) track, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and by the second line of the chorus of track two I was bawling like a baby.

I couldn’t help it. Continue Reading »