I hosted a Bible study in my house a few years ago. We called ourselves the Lunch Ladies. A small group of women would get together, share lunch and discuss what we were learning about God and dig deeper into His Word. Two of the ladies that were attending, had lost a child. Their children had died in very different ways and ages, but both mamas had lost a child. They had lived through the greatest heartache a mother can imagine.
Digging Deep
These two women love the Lord, and believe in Jesus to the core of their being. They both believe with all their heart that the child they lost is in heaven. It stunned me when they agreed that the child they lost was the only one they didn’t worry about. They both had other children. There was peace that surpasses all understanding, and beyond peace, there was even confidence and a strange relief that I couldn’t understand, but it made me curious.
By the grace of God I don’t share the experience or testimony of losing a child, but I want to glean from people that have walked with God through the impossible. Living through the death of a child is completely impossible, however Scripture tells us that nothing is impossible with God; that all things are possible with God (Mark 10:27). There was something deep, haunting and rich about these ladies and our conversation that I can’t shake, or wrap my mind around.
These ladies didn’t know each other prior to that Bible study group, they didn’t travel in the same circles. In that conversation, about their deceased children,they were in total unity of how they felt and what they knew to be true. It rocked me.
The conversation forced me to look at life and death like a mother who had been through it. I never allowed myself to look beyond the grief that people must feel, when they lose a child. It’s just too hard to look any further. God comforts in grief, His word says so and that’s all I cared to know. I was missing something deeper than pain, in my fear to look closer. I thought the process went from comfort to coping until death, or Jesus’ return. Once I looked and listened, I believed the impossible is possible with God. Both Mamas still teared up at the mention of their children that were gone too soon, but it was a tear with a twinkle that communicated Hope, peace, and confidence.
Surrendered
There was a strange sense of relief that they talked about, and I could see it in their faces when they admitted it out loud. That look and slight relief that washed over them when we were talking about the greatest pain a mother can imagine, is directly related to surrender. That child, the one that didn’t survive is the one that gave these women their greatest survival technique; trusting God. Trust Him and surrender to His Sovereignty. Honestly, what choice do we really have? Trusting Him is survival for the next breath and somehow it turns to relief.
Trusting God in Life and Death
How is it, we can trust God for salvation and life after death, but the true struggle is to trust Him with life here and now. How can we believe he has the power to take us to heaven and give us perfect eternal life but we fight to believe he can take care of us today?
What Are We Missing?
It is hard to understand how people missed who Jesus was and that He was the Messiah, when He walked on this earth. He clearly and openly lived His life, verse by verse, exactly who and how the Scriptures claimed Him to be. Are we missing it again? Are we missing what God is showing us in our life here? Will we sit with lunch ladies and know God better, see and trust his goodness now and forever.
If a mother, or two, can bury a child and live to testify that God is trustworthy and good, even when they have been through the worst, I’m with them. It doesn’t get any worse or better than that. May we not miss God, and all He has for us. May we see His goodness in the land of the living until we see all our Love face to face.
Psalm 116:8-9
8 For you, Lord, rescued me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
9 I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
I pray we trust God with life and death, now and forever.
