Unplanned
Countless unplanned events mark the timelines of our lives.
Some welcomed, others totally unwanted. But each of the unwelcomed, and the wanted, are part of the planned story God chose to tell through all our histories nonetheless. I believe He has purpose in all of the minuscule moments as well as the major milestones we each experience, but I don’t always like them, and I rarely know how to cope with the hard ones well.
Remember the song “Hosanna” by Hillsong? It came out in 2006 and I still cry every time I hear it or when it pops into my head. The stanza that stood out most from the moment I heard it was “Break my heart for what breaks Yours...show me how to love like You have loved me...”.
I cry repeating that stanza because it takes me back to the very moment God made those 17 words a prayer for me. It was late at night in 2008 and I was hiding heavy tears in the bottom of my shower. Guttural groans of guilt and gasps for breath filled the space I was in. No words came to mind or out of my mouth. Until they did. And the words I mentioned above began echoing over and over off the walls of my pain.
“Break my heart for what breaks Yours…show me how to love like You have loved me…”
God answers prayer.
Not always in the way we think, know, hope or want, but He always, always, answers. And after that night, I found myself {fearfully} praying for my heart to be broken for the things that break His. And for Him to show me more about His love; how, who, and what He loves. It seemed the only remedy to help me understand and cope with reality.
Those are heavy, and very scary, petitions. I don’t recommend praying that way.
But God answered my prayer, repeatedly. And my heart broke, repeatedly. And I learned more deeply about how He loves. All in ways I would have absolutely never chosen. Although my heart was continually being shattered, Something told me the pieces were in Good Hands.
In the hardest places to find peace, The Gospel lands softest on my soul. And God, in His mysterious and merciful way, kept taking me there over and over, to those hard-to-find-peace-places, and still does 16 years after that prayer began.
Carson is my youngest nephew. His birthday is March 25th, 2019.
Tullian and I were in Fort Lauderdale at a church where he was guest preaching the Sunday Carson was born. My family anxiously anticipated his birth. I was prepared to fly to Texas immediately no matter where Tullian and I were in the world. And when the call came in, I couldn’t get to Texas, and to my youngest sister Marci, fast enough.
In the week prior to his birth, during my sister’s regular 23-week check-up, Carson was diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect. The prognosis was that he would most likely be stillborn. The news was a devastating delivery of some of the worst information a human can hear. Our family was gripped with grief while holding on to the promise of a possible miracle.
My parents were crushed to hear the condition of their newest grandchild and of the traumatic dangers their daughter, my baby sister Marci, now faced. My dad, the pillar of strength that he is, figured out where to shop for an infant casket and buy a burial plot. My mom, clung to her faith, to my Dad, and held my sister up as she tried to endure reality. This was something none of us had any experience with.
Upon hearing the unbelievable news at her appointment, Marci was given an option to stop Caron’s heartbeat that day, or, to allow his heart to stop on its own. Yes, a mother just heard some of the worst possible news she could ever hear, and now has to make a decision of aborting her dying unborn child or allowing nature to take it’s course.
An unbelievably unplanned and unwanted moment.
She couldn’t imagine aborting her child if there was the slightest chance for a miracle. And the 1% chance she was given was enough for her to wait until his kicking came to a stop to alert her to the fact it was time for little Carson to pass from one world to the next.
My family went from planning a nursery to planning a funeral. From anticipating birth and new life to awaiting birth and death at the same moment.
THANK GOD for an amazing couple I know and love. Dear friends of mine now for over a decade, Jeff and Mackenzie Rollins. They experienced something similar to what my family was going through just a few short years before.
The night before I got the call to fly to Texas for Carson’s birth, MacKenzie messaged me on Facebook asking me to share a post about their brand new ministry they were launching - Hope Family Care - born out of their own grief and pain from losing a child. I read her message in tears knowing my sister’s urgent need for support in the exact ways their new ministry offered. I immediately told Mackenzie the God-ordained timing of the launch of their ministry. She became my go-to resource for critical next steps as a family.
I’ve never wanted to ease my dad’s heavy heart more than the day I went with him to the funeral home to plan baby Carson’s service. My Mom and I went to buy fresh flowers so I could make the tiniest casket spray I’ve ever created...in their kitchen. A grandparent shouldn’t have to experience this. More tragic truth of just how broken this world truly is and how much we need Jesus. My sister didn’t want anyone else making Carson’s flowers or touching the sacred details of his little life. She entrusted his eulogy, one of the toughest, most unforgettable moments in her life, to me. It was one of my greatest {and hardest} honors to date.
I sat down at my parent’s dining table. The same table I had sat so many times with family, my own sons, shared meals, had arguments, played games and discussed life. The very same table I had just finished making Carson’s beautiful flowers on and helped his big sister Lani (4yrs at the time) create “Carson’s special flowers” for her to give to him at his “special place” we were going the next morning. I sat down to write the words I would speak aloud to myself and the crowd of supportive people present.
But the main person heavy on my heart as my “audience” was Marci, my precious, broken, sister...and most importantly in this moment she was, Carson’s Momma.
She was definitely in a hard-to-find-peace-place and she needed the tangible comfort of God more than ever. False hope is worse than no hope at all for the hopeless. Empty words are worthless and can scar far worse than saying nothing at all. Carson’s life was over before it began to us, but, he was here and his life mattered. Marci needed reassurance of that truth for her heart; newly broken in a way it had not yet experienced. Her heart needed to be held by the strong hands of only One that could manage the sharp shards of this absolute agony.
The weather was perfect, everything was as my sister requested, and Carson’s service was tragically beautiful. In the eulogy I recounted the details of his little face, and the common excitement parent’s go through when they find out “they’re expecting”.
But I knew I had to address the elephant in the room that was suffocating everyone differently. The horrific realities we were facing as a family, and everyone everywhere has faced, will face, or knows someone who has or will in some way at some point in life. Here’s an excerpt:
“Sometimes plans don’t end up the way we hoped or believed they would go. And the thing that you’d never pick in a million years- picks you.
And whatever you really believe, at that moment, becomes true or false; holds up or breaks under the pressures of actual life.
Our most painful moments become the price of admission to our own personal crash-course of self-awareness and what is actually True.
In those moments people may say things like “hold on to God” – “don’t let go of your faith”.
They mean well, but let me relieve you a little…
God will NEVER let go of you- no matter what.
And His holding on doesn’t depend on us, our grip, or our strength.
And the truth is, you can’t hang on, but He can, and rest assured He will!
That old saying “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” is a lie. He allows endless things to happen in life we cannot handle. Those moments hopefully point us to our utter dependence on Him. Not to ourselves, or our own strength, but to Him-and His strength.
In Psalm 56: 8 the Bible says:
You keep track of ALL my sorrows.
You have collected ALL my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded EACH ONE in your book.
God holds them ALL. What a comfortable Truth. Although His plan is a mystery, He has planned every day for every soul. Nothing is a surprise to Him.
We live in a broken world where sin wreaks havoc in our lives. It’s riddled with disease, sickness, sadness, malady, hurt, hate, destruction, trauma, tragedy, crime…..and death.
We aren’t promised to be spared of these things here on earth. Ever. The world we live in is imperfect and our souls long for Heaven, which is where we believe Carson is.
And we believe Jesus was the first face Carson opened his precious eyes to. This precious baby boy is where all of our souls long to be whether we know it or not. Our souls long to be where we came from and to Whom we belong.
There is a quote by Ann Voskamp that says:
“Hope is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the belief God is working through all things no matter how they turn out.”
I don’t know how I got through reading the eulogy. I take that back- I do. The only way any of us survived that entire event, any other painful moment, and can function today is because God carried all of us however we needed to be carried (or dragged).
The ways in which God gloriously shows up specifically in our darkest, most horrific moments astounds me.
How does He make beauty out of ashes?
I don’t know exactly, but I know He does because I’ve witnessed cataclysmic fires consume relationships and people I love, yet, life springs out of the grey ash of nothingness.
Is there purpose in the pain?
I believe there is. Although I believe God’s plan wasn’t for any of us to hurt and experience grief, we do because we live in a fallen world populated by failing people. Imperfection reigns supreme here. We are not as we ought to be and therefore neither is life, any part of it, nor can it be this side of Heaven.
Pain doesn’t just exists, it’s alive and thriving across the globe. Our only true Help and Hope is Jesus- “The Man of Sorrows” and the promises He has made to us.
Hence my {answered} prayer...”break my heart for what breaks Yours...”
Desperation and suffering is the unwelcome catalyst often used for us to learn more about how He loves and who He loves.
Carson’s life is proof of this. His life gave our family never-before-felt desperation and suffering. Which gave us all reasons to pray like we never have before. His life made us feel more incapable than normal; like the world really is an awful place to remain; and like living in it was more impossible than usual.
No matter what we felt {or feel currently} as a family collectively or individually, He holds all of our tears, the happy and sad ones. He knows our every sorrow. He answers every prayer. And two thousand years later God continues to use things like little helpless babies, and bloody crosses to bring us to the broken places of dependence we desperately need in order to meet, and come to know, the God that was broken for us and delivers us all from this broken world.
