Giving Thanks for Life.

I've been struggling for a few weeks to deal with some thrice-removed stresses--that is, things that bother me that 97% of the time don't directly affect me or my family's daily life but which still matter to me because they deal with people that matter to me. I know worrying is wrong. Yet I've spent far too much time turning thoughts and comments and incidents over and over in my head, trying to understand them and, in a weirdly existential-cum-physical way, fix them by understanding them.

Then God smacked me with reality and perspective.

A dear, dear friend called last Wednesday. This friend and I have shared countless joys together--college achievements, engagements, marriages, the births of our children. One particularly poignant joy we have had is to share pregnancies--we've been pregnant at the same time with our kids. She just shared with me about a month ago that they were expecting again, so we'd be pregnant together again for the third time. We've joked that perhaps we'll actually hit the same due date someday.

My friend called to tell me that she and her husband lost their third child to miscarriage.

She told me she thought about waiting a day to tell me since we were planning a visit for Thursday. Our visit turned out to be vastly different than what both of us had anticipated--shared joy at being together, shared sorrow at the loss they suffer. And in the midst of our friends' incredible grief, they showed us how to give thanks for life.


Thursday night, my friend's husband led us in prayer. He began by reading Psalm 51. When he reached "in sin did my mother conceive me," his voice broke. Then he prayed with thanks for what God has given us and what He has taken away. And his simple petition reminded me that we are so thankful for all of life, from the long and full-lived to the short and not-yet-visibly lived. We do not see how God will use our friends' precious child's life to His glory. But He loves that child more than we can ever comprehend. And He loves our friends, and their broken spirits, more than we can ever comprehend.

My friend has been blessed with a vocation outside the home in which she serves others. And in the midst of her shock and wordless tears, she was able to see and articulate how God will use their loss for others' gain in her vocation--that she will now be able to better understand and empathize with women she sees and visits with who have also lost children to miscarriage. She essentially was giving thanks for her child's all-too-brief life, for that life will bless her with deeply insightful care for others that she otherwise wouldn't be able to provide.

God is mysterious. His ways are not our ways; His work in our broken world is hidden from us. And we can't even begin to understand or fix our brokenness. So the greatest mystery of all is that He gave His Son's life for ours so that none of us--our spouses, our children both born and unborn--would die. He has numbered the hairs of our heads and all of our days. He loves us with an everlasting love.

Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
   blot out my transgressions.
² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
   and cleanse me from my sin!
 ³ For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
   and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
   and blameless in your judgment.
⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
   and in sin did my mother conceive me.
⁶ Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
   and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
 ⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
   wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
   let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins,
   and blot out all my iniquities.
¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
¹¹ Cast me not away from your presence,
   and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
   and uphold me with a willing spirit.
 ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
   and sinners will return to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
   O God of my salvation,
   and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
   you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
 ¹⁸ Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    build up the walls of Jerusalem;
¹⁹ then will you delight in right sacrifices,
   in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
   then bulls will be offered on your altar.

                                                                        ~Psalm 51