A Lack of Faith

How is it that even a young child can lack faith in God or fail to trust God?

I grew up knowing that my parents had lost their first child when she was less than three months old. I always thought that losing a child was such a terrible thing and didn't understand how my mother, who was very young at the time, could have survived it. I admired her for her strength and her ability to go on despite such heartache. I never gave much thought to how my father must have felt until years later - just a few years ago actually when I heard his story for the first time (I feel very badly about this now); after all, he was older, away from home preparing to fight in a war, and fathers didn't (in my mind) spend as much time with their children as mothers did.

As young as I was, I prayed that God would not let me lose a child when I grew up. I continued to pray this for years, since I knew that I would not be able to handle losing a child and feared that I would blame God. Blaming God for what happened might cause the dreaded "thing" to happen - "waking up" in hell if I should die. Throughout the rest of my life, until the incident I'm going to relate below, the possibility of losing a child was always with me.

I had my first child when I was twenty-two, and everything went well - easy pregnancy, easy delivery - wonderful, beautiful baby. The second pregnancy, an ectopic pregnancy (though this was not diagnosed until after having surgery to save my life), was anything but easy. I considered the fact that I did not die from this experience to be a miracle and still believe this.

I suspected an ectopic pregnancy when my daughter was seven months old after experiencing extreme, long lasting pain the day after Thanksgiving and then again on Christmas night. I saw the doctor the day after Christmas; however, when the doctor suggested that I probably had the flu (top on his list of possibilities with an ectopic pregnancy on the bottom of a list of six or eight possibilities) I jumped at the possibility. My trusty "Good Housekeeping" medical book (a very good book) said that it was often impossible to have children after having a "tubal" pregnancy, and that did not suit me since I planned to have several children. The book gave me a lot of information, including the fact that when there is internal bleeding, one often feels referred pain in the left shoulder - I had this pain. I told the doctor about all of my symptoms (except the pain in my shoulder). Since I did not want to have a tubal pregnancy, I decided that if I could diagnose my condition using only my medical book, my doctor ought to be able to make a correct diagnosis (despite one missing symptom) since he'd had years of medical school and practical experience to help him. The only thing my medical book did not tell me was that I could die from this condition.

I was extremely weak and did not feel like going anywhere, but my husband and I had plans to visit my his family for New Years. My husband would not have made the trip without me, and I had this irrational feeling that if my husband did not see his father on this trip, he would never see him alive again. I continued to grow worse during the visit; and on New Year's day, I was so weak I could not stand up without passing out. The biggest problem was that we were fifteen hundred miles from home. I refused to go to the hospital where we were; therefore, my husband drove those fifteen hundred miles with me lying in the back seat trying to hold on to our then nine month old daughter.

We made it home, and I was immediately admitted to the hospital. My doctor was shocked to find out that I had traveled 3000 miles since he had seen me about a week earlier. I knew I was dying and told both my husband and baby goodbye, believing I would never see them again. The amazing thing was that I was not afraid; I was at peace. I had dealt with some things that had been a barrier between God and me, and He gave me the strength to find peace while believing that I would not wake up from the surgery. The doctor, I believe, was guided by God (it turned out that he was ill at the time himself). The surgery went well, and I recovered much more quickly than expected. The amazing thing, in addition to the fact that I survived, was that I never experienced any grief over the loss of this baby. I felt that God had allowed my to lose a child in a way that I could deal with. I had known from day one of the pregnancy that there would never be a child for me to hold and to love. I never thought of a name for the baby or dreamed about this child growing up - none of the normal things women do when expecting a baby. I knew within myself that there would never be a living baby to hold, and this somehow prevented the horrendous grief that I had feared for so many years. I was so thankful to God to be alive, to be able to go home with my husband and my nine month old baby, that there was no room for grief. I read somewhere that grief is often delayed, and that sometimes months or years later it suddenly rears its ugly head. This never happened. Sometimes I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with me that I did not grieve; I no longer believe this.

And I was right. My surgery was on January 2nd or 3rd (it's been nearly forty years ago) and my husband's father died unexpectedly toward the end of that same month. I had recovered sufficiently during that short time to be able to attend the funeral with him and my daughter.

Little did I know that this was not the end of the story that began with a little girl who did not trust God to know what was best for her; actually, this was not the story at all. But I'll save that for next time.

The journey began again and continues fresh each day.