God's Grace

As we walked back up the stairs having enjoyed a mince pie after the carol service a phrase unexpected popped into Hannah’s mind, ‘into your hands I commit my spirit’. At the time she had no idea why she’d had that thought, but two days later sitting in hospital having just been told by a consultant that our baby (due in March) had died, we realised that as we walked up those stairs God had received our daughter’s spirit.

Faith is rarely a journey of certainties; instead it is a journey of trust. Like everyone, me and Hannah’s faith journey has had its ups and downs, but through it all we’ve come to trust in God. We can’t comprehend him and often fail to understand his ways, but we do trust him. Most of all we trust that he is good. For whatever reason the world he made is no longer good in the way he intended, but God himself is good. He doesn’t always protect us from the pain of living in this imperfect world, but he always accompanies us through the pain, seeking to reveal his goodness.

So we prayed. We prayed that God would protect us from any feelings of anger or bitterness at Grace’s death and we prayed that her short life would lead to love and peace. We asked God to reveal his goodness.

Over the two weeks following that prayer God revealed his goodness in ways we’ve never experienced before. We had an intense sense of his presence and deep sense of his peace. We saw his goodness in the miraculously quick labour, and even in the midst of the sorrow we experienced his joy at the birth of our daughter. We’ve seen God’s goodness through the loving actions of his people, through the many texts, cards, emails, phone calls, visits, flowers and meals. And we’ve seen his goodness in the deeper love we’ve developed for each other and for our friends and family.

Obviously we would never have chosen to go through this painful experience. But we can now see that the pain we felt was a small price to pay for the time we had with Grace. And this pain was far outweighed by the wonderful experience of God’s goodness.

Life is a gift and God gifted us with Grace for just under 27 weeks and then he asked us to give her back. But our daughter lives on. We believe that she lives on with God in heaven, and we believe that she lives on through the love and peace her short life produced.

God is indeed good!

Tim