Cassie Whittemore Photography

Our precious Zoe Karis was born on Friday morning, June 24, at 5:12am. She had a strong heartbeat at delivery and is now present with Christ Jesus.

We miss her so much and we are so grateful for the time that we had with her. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we grieve. I hope to write about Zoe's life with us in the days to come. We rest in the sure and certain hope of Christ...that she is with him now and he will raise her with a perfect glorified body at his return.

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words." I Thessalonians 4:12-18

The Wilderness

We all know what it is like to be very thirsty physically. Once on a flight home from Europe, I was seated in the very middle seat of the middle section. A couple of hours into the flight, I was so thirsty it felt like my throat was going to swell shut. The two sleeping people on each side of me deterred me from getting up to find a cup of water. I was miserable! When the flight attendant finally came by with a tray with cups of water, I think I asked for three. The cool water refreshed my parched throat. 

This season of life has been a desert. A dry wilderness. This is not an uncommon place for God’s people. After his baptism, Jesus spent 40 days in the desert. Moses led the people of Egypt through the wilderness for 40 years. The desert is a place where all of the perceived comforts of ordinary life have been removed. 

And in this dry place, I have been profoundly thirsty. Spiritually thirsty. And Jesus is so faithful to refresh my weary heart every single day. He has been the cool water to soothe my spirit. The words of Psalm 42:1 have never been more real for me: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul longs for God, for the living God.” 

There really are streams of mercy running through this desert of suffering. 

Traveling through the valleys strip away all of our false notions of control and our own self security. Its not that my life is any more out of my own control now than before, I’m just keenly aware of it. 

With each passing day, I feel the heaviness even more deeply. I am profoundly sad...sad just right down into my bones. This is not how things are supposed to be. Death was never God's intention, which gives believers space to be deeply grieved. 

I will never be ready to say goodbye to Zoe Karis. Cody and I love her more and more every single day. We talk to her and sing to her and read to her. We are trying to fit a lifetime of memories into the remaining weeks (please Lord, let it be weeks!) of pregnancy.

Without question, I am praying for a miracle. I would love to go to the MFM on Monday and hear that Zoe’s sweet little body has been transformed! But my devotion to God is not based on whether or not he heals Zoe in my womb and if she lives. I would love nothing more than to watch my daughter grow up. But I do not place my hope in a physical, earthly healing. I have hope in the merciful God to whom Zoe belongs.

The wilderness forces us to rely on God. It gives us an opportunity, like no other time in life, to worship God not because of what he can do for us, but just because of who he is. If he is not worthy to be worshiped in the worst of times, he wouldn’t be a supreme being deserving veneration in the best of times either. He would only be a fickle figment of our own making. A god in our own image. 

Cody and I have had a ziplock bag hanging in our shower for a couple years with the first question from the New City Catechism posted in it. The card reads “What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own, but belong body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our savior Jesus Christ.” 

Zoe does not belong to me and Cody. Her body and soul belong to God. The outcome of her life is not in our hands, it is in his hands. Really, we could all use that reminder. Even my life is not my own. Because of Jesus, I belong to God. 

I can really let myself go down a sad spiral if I only think about saying goodbye to Zoe. However, it is remembering these essential truths of the Gospel that refresh my soul and draw me out of the depths. I think that is really what Paul is talking about in Philippians 4:8-9. Not just thinking about “good” things, but meditating upon holy, weighty redemptive truths. That is what brings peace in the storm and water in the desert. 

Truth gives me comfort. I find peace when I remember that though sin has broken everything, even chromosomal composition, God took on flesh in the person of Christ Jesus. He really became human. Gregory of Nazianzus argued for the humanity of Jesus saying, that which is unassumed is unhealed. Basically that means that if Jesus was not completely human, he could not really save humans. I am so grateful that Jesus is fully human. He assumed flesh and chromosomes that he might heal even genetic abnormalities. 

These realities refresh my soul. I would rather be in the desert with God than in a mirage of oasis without him.