New grace

Lord willing, we are just days away from meeting sweet Zoe’s little brother. My head is swirling like our washing machine, which is currently filled with blankets and burp cloths for our little boy. I can’t believe that we are about to welcome another child into our family. A child whom we hope we will get to bring home from the hospital with us. 

The last few months as we have anticipated his birth have been filled with their own challenges. Once you have had a child die, everything feels very different. Because I’d had a miscarriage before Zoe, I already knew what a gift it was to be pregnant. But every single moment of this pregnancy has just been a treasure that I don’t take for granted. Every kick. Every sleepless night. Every bout of nausea. It all reminds me of God’s grace towards us in this new child. Grace is unmerited favor, we do nothing to earn it or deserve it. Rhett Benjamin is an undeserved gift from God, just as Zoe was. 

It has not been easy though. Every day has also been a battle between fear and faith. The fear that he would also be sick with Zoe’s terrible disease, or that something else might happen to him could have just paralyzed me. I honestly could have just drowned in those thoughts and allowed myself to experience zero joy during this season of pregnancy. I have continually had to turn my eyes back to the cross, to remember that even if Rhett were to be taken from me also, it would not change the character of God. He is good. No matter our circumstance, he remains the same. He is immutable, even when my emotions are chaotic.

Rhett’s life also brings new griefs about Zoe. I am so sad that she is not here to welcome her little brother. So sad that my parents won’t be bringing her up to the hospital to sit in the bed with me and gingerly pat his head for the first time. Heartbroken that every picture next week (and always) will be missing her beautiful face. When I imagine what Rhett will look like, I wonder if his blue eyes, perfect lips or little hands will look like Zoe. These are new “big sister sorrows” that I had no idea would exist when she died a year and a half ago. But now I think with every new season of life, there will be different things that we will miss about her.

We hold all of our sorrows in tension with hope: both for this life and for life eternal. It can be frightening to hope for things in the present, to believe that something might go well this side of heaven. And yet somehow hope makes us more tender…acknowledging our vulnerability and lack of control over whatever suffering might come our way in life. It can be just as daring to embrace hope as it is to embrace suffering. 

Cody and I pray that when Rhett is born, we will be able to experience the heights of joy because we know the depths of sorrow, not in spite of it. Joy really is richer and deeper for those who do not cower away from sorrow and suffering. To exist fully, they must exist together. That is what brings real richness to our own hearts and to relationships. 

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep,” Paul wrote in Romans 12:15. This beautiful juxtaposition of believers meeting one another where they are in suffering or celebration has never been more clear to me than it was a month ago at our church. We were given a wonderful shower for Rhett in the same room where we had received and wept with friends after Zoe’s memorial service. It made the space even more holy to me, remembering that this is how believers are to share in one another’s lives…weeping and rejoicing, rejoicing and weeping.

Similarly, the week before Zoe was born, some of our friends were married in our sanctuary. It was a truly beautiful wedding, and they closed with the modern hymn by King’s Kaleidoscope, “All Glory be to Christ.” Two weeks later, we sang that same song in that same sanctuary. Not at a wedding, but at my baby’s memorial service. It is a song of that reminds us our lives…the weeping and rejoicing… are temporary, but the glory of God is eternal. We praise him in the seasons of sorrow and the seasons of celebration, not necessarily because we feel like it, but because he is worthy.

“All glory be to Christ our king!

All glory be to Christ!

His rule and reign we'll ever sing

All glory be to Christ!” (Link to song here)

Celebrating

What a year. On Saturday, we celebrated Zoe’s first birthday. It was not what I’d envisioned when I found out that I was pregnant with her. Definitely not the kind of first birthday that Pinterest portrays. Not a day filled with smash cakes and giggles. 

It was a day heavy with anticipation. As the day approached, memories became increasingly vivid and fresh once again. My anguish mirrored the heaviness in my heart from last June, when I knew that each day which passed pushed us closer to Zoe’s final day. 

However, when I woke up on Saturday, crippling sorrow did not overwhelm me. Instead, God mercifully granted his peace and presence. It was the same sort of strange peace that we felt on June 24, 2016. 

We spent the morning at Zoe’s grave, preaching to ourselves the promise of the resurrection. Being in that place is so holy for us. It is the last place we saw our daughter on this earth, and the place from which she will arise when Christ appears again. Zoe’s headstone is a little sermon in stone. It reminds us that she and we are “waiting in hope for the glorious resurrection,” a carefully chosen epitaph.

Without the hope of the resurrection, we are “people most to be pitied, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I Cor. 15:19b-20). This hope of the resurrection is far more radical than the prevailing popular view of heaven. We won’t just float away on a cloud, instead Christians are promised a bodily resurrection! Just like the resurrection that gave life on Easter morning to Jesus’ dead body! 

Death will one day die. The earth will give birth to the saints of the ages! Once again, it is TRUTH that draws me out of darkness! 

It is in light of this marvelous news that we can be of good courage in the face of death and the grave. One day, the words of I Corinthians 15:54-55 will be true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” For now, the sting remains. But it will not always be so! Thus, we live in the tension. We know the pain of the present and the glory of the future. We eat cake and cry.

God used Zoe Karis to teach us that every gift is from his hand. We worship the Giver, not the gift. When we get that relationship backwards, focusing solely on the gift, we will be lost in white-knuckled misery. I want to learn to hold everything with an open hand, giving thanks to the One who both gives and takes away. 

We have been given a new gift from God; a baby boy whom we hope to meet in November. We are so thankful to the Father for this new little life. The journey of a new pregnancy has not been easy. God is expanding our hearts to love our new baby, but our son does not diminish the pain of our daughter’s death. No child can ever take the place or fill the hole that Zoe left in our hearts. He is his own person, a unique and wonderful gift from God all his own. 

Because of his big sister’s disease, he has been carefully monitored. Several weeks ago, when we could clearly see his long legs kicking and his well formed spine arching and moving on ultrasound, we were filled with such joy that he seems healthy. And yet, simultaneously, we were filled with such deep sadness that Zoe did not have the same strong and long bones. A healthy baby would be a welcomed and wonderful gift, but we know from experience that an unhealthy child is no less a gift. Zoe Karis was our sweetest and most sanctifying gift from God. What an honor it is to be her parents. 

We praise God for sustaining us one whole year without Zoe. We celebrate her life, give thanks for her baby brother, and await the great and glorious day when we will all be together in the presence of our Redeemer and King.

365 days

It has been a year since we first received the news that Zoe was sick. For 365 days, God has strengthened and sustained us.

There have been many days when I've looked down at my supply of strength and thought "this won't last me through tomorrow, I can't make it any further." And yet each new morning, there has been enough grace for that day.

I feel like the widow of Zarephath from I Kings 17. She only had a handful of flour and a little oil, just enough to make one last meal for herself and her son. But God was gracious to her, and each morning she found another handful of flour, another spoonful of oil. "The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah" (I Kings 17:16).

Each morning for the last 365 mornings, God has given me the "flour and oil" necessary to make it through whatever trial, phone call, test result, sorrow, or grievous task was ahead. There really is a great peace which settles into your heart when you cease from striving for control over your own life.

We've done a lot of reflecting over the past couple of days. Cody's been working on a video of Zoe's life and he shared a preview with me last night. As we watched ourselves read to her, take her on walks and to concerts, and introduce her to loved ones, we were amazed at the joy on our faces...joy that came from the strength that Christ himself provided.

I recall those first tender days with clarity. Learning she was sick. The amniocentesis. Weeping. The excruciating wait for phone calls. The confusing and conflicting information about her diagnosis. Feeling her bounce around inside of me as I imagined the dress we'd bury her in.

I remember all of the confusion in those months. No one could figure out what was wrong with Zoe. It was only after we received her autopsy that we learned that Zoe was not afflicted with the more common type of skeletal dysplasia which we once thought. She had a extremely rare (literally 1/1,000,000) condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta type II. There are other variations of OI with which people live, but Type II is always fatal.

Those three months were terrible and wonderful. I'd never felt so alive...as I looked into the face of death without hopelessness. With deep deep sadness, absolutely. But not hopeless fear. The truth of Scripture enlivened our weary spirits. In II Corinthians 5:6, Paul writes that "we are of good courage" because of the reality of life beyond this life. Resurrection. When resurrection reality pulses through your days, earthly fears are greatly dimmed.

On the morning of March 24, 2016, before the ultrasound when we received the news, I wrote "Father would you prepare our hearts to trust you, no matter what we might find. Help me to believe that you are always good, your character never changes." The very next morning, I wrote "This does not change your character." And one year later, I can wholeheartedly say that God most certainly has not changed. But he sure has changed me.