Men and all the Babies they’d Lost

Photo by Nynne Schrøder on Unsplash

The last thing I expected to find at a men’s Christian fellowship meeting was men talking about the babies they’d lost.

As a new person to this particular meeting I was asked to share a part of my story. I talked about my children, which means talking about my stillborn son. It wasn’t until after the meeting that one of the men pulled me aside and shared his story, and then another did as well. As the other men watched on, listening intently to each man share his story, there were nods of agreement that suggested more than theoretical knowledge.

I venture to say that each of these men had either personal experience or they knew of someone close to them who had had such experience.

So many men have lost babies; so many have walked alongside their wives as they miscarried, had stillbirths, had lost infants, or had had other family members lose children. And so many babies that are aborted are missed, too, and indeed it can be argued they’re missed more, if that’s possible.

Those who have suffered infant loss
have suffered three losses on average.

As Michael shared, speaking about how he had stood by his wife, he spoke of how shocked they were that, at full term, the baby’s heart had just stopped. As David shared, he stated how much he had learned in losing his baby. (Both men said they’d lost at least one other baby/pregnancy.) They both said that what they hated at the time was people telling them that ‘God had a plan for this in their lives,’ or that, ‘Perhaps you have a secret sin in your life He’s trying to deal with — maybe start going to church again.’ What? Of course, that’s rubbish. And how inappropriate it is to sully God’s name and offend the sensibilities of grief.

What encouraged me most about these two interactions was that these men were being vulnerable and were even prepared to be emotional as they demonstrated their connection with their wives. The meeting was good, but these interactions are the ones that prove transformational.

Having only recently been at a meeting to discuss how a silent grief conference was to be run, there was a comment made that we somehow needed to explore men’s grieving. And less than 24 hours later I found myself absorbed by a conversation that just took off.

It proved to me that men, fathers and grandfathers, brothers and uncles, need to talk about their lost sons and daughters and siblings and nieces and nephews.

When we make space to talk about our grief,
and when others are prepared to listen,
not to interrupt and advise,
but to listen to learn and show care,
great healing can be had.

Men need to process their grief
just as much as women do.

Whilst fathers don’t carry their children,
their children are nonetheless theirs.

Whilst fathers don’t carry their children,
they carry the same hope that mothers do.

When men are bravely vulnerable enough to express their grief, which is them just being honest about how much love hurts in loss, they open up precious emotional space with the women in their lives.

**Michael and David’s names have been changed.

Two fresh discoveries as father and husband

‘Meg bit Ted,’ my son read out, immediately his eyes filling with tears. Even before he read those words I had sensed something was about to happen. I consoled him, before asking him if he was okay. He said he was, but clearly, he hadn’t quite recovered. Being that it was before the school day had commenced, I mentioned to the teacher what had happened, and she said, ‘Oh that’s sweet — that’s empathy.’ I agreed. We went and sat on the mat, and then my son said he didn’t really want a dog because he didn’t want his teddy bear to be bitten.

Empathy can suffer a broken heart.

Empathy can experience the fullness of God’s reality.

Empathy can be bravely vulnerable.

Yet we often suppress empathy
because it feels like weakness.

And thankfully we don’t protect our children
from these experiences at school.

Particularly in an increasingly narcissistic age,
one of the greatest gifts we can give our children
are opportunities to experience and express empathy.

Then I called my wife at work to let her know what had taken place. Of course, it melted her heart. Then something very unremarkable happened. We ended the call in the same way we normally end calls when one of us is at work, with a simple goodbye, and not with an ‘I love you.’

Suddenly God showed me something. Up until recently I had been saying ‘I love you’ whether my wife said it or not. In not saying ‘I love you’ was I missing an opportunity to communicate my love, even if my wife didn’t feel comfortable reciprocating given that she was at work?

The opportunity is to recommence telling her that I love her, and not be bothered that she cannot reciprocate in that situation. I had simply followed her lead, having thought it was the right thing to do to stop saying I love you. But the better opportunity is to continue saying I love you whilst accepting that it is best for her not to reciprocate in that situation.

I really feel God was saying,

love reaches forth without expecting
the other to reach back.

Love loves because it can,
not because it must,
not because it’s cajoled,
and definitely not to be repaid.

I subscribe to the view that none of us knows when we breathe our final breath, and I would prefer for all my loved ones to know through my words just how I do feel about them.

Some days whizz by without much fanfare, but there are other days that are just full of significant experiences. Within 30 minutes there were two experiences that are significant in the eternal realm.

Why would I communicate these things this way to you, today?

It could be as simple as being reminded of the sanctity of life which is enriched by commonplace experiences that we all have.

We all have those simple and powerful moments with our children. All our children are special. My child is no more special than yours! All our precious in the eyes of God.

Love has its living opportunities.
We take them today or we miss them forever.
And if we miss them today,
we take them tomorrow.

As we journal about our experiences we allow God to enrich us through the precious experience of reflection. This is simply what I’ve done here.

Truly I wonder what on earth we really have.
Death, of all things, teaches us to be open in this way.

I know that we have love, and those that God gives us to love. We may and most of us do have myriad possessions. All the stuff we have is ultimately swept away, and yet one thing remains throughout all eternity — the spiritual connection we have with each other.

Grief so silent, as if loss never took place

Have you ever had a miscarriage, or a stillbirth, or an abortion, or do you have a child with special needs, or have you suffered abuse? Statistics suggest that covers a large percentage of the population.

Please, there’s no need to self-identify, because many who have suffered many things but don’t feel free to share what they still feel they haven’t completely dealt with.

The issue here is much of grief cannot readily be spoken about. It leaves the common person feeling uncomfortable, besides the fact that the grieving person does not want to expose themselves emotionally unnecessarily. It is easier in many ways to deny what is plainly evident; to just keep moving forward.

But without dealing with the past,
the future can often remain clouded by it.

Another matter can be raised:

The initial loss event isn’t always
the most traumatic part of grief.

I know so many people who were not so much traumatised by their initial loss experience, but were actually traumatised more by how they were dealt with, whether it be the clichéd remarks from people who should know better, or from a response or lack of response from people they had come to trust.

Sometimes it’s the stress within the family environment that causes the family to implode. Things said in the heat of the moment, or perhaps something well intended but poorly communicated. Tenuous relationships become fractured because smaller more tolerable conflicts that occurred in the past, but weren’t dealt with, reveal pre-existing cracks within the relationship. Relational breakage occurs.

Conflict is a huge part of complicating grief,
whether it be the inner conflict
of not being able to reconcile the loss,
or external conflicts because of misunderstandings,
and often a combination of these.

Add to this, conflict we can have with God —
that He could ‘allow’ something like this to happen!

There is a silence in grief that is deafening in its harrowing quietude. So many people suffer in silence. So many people cannot access the healing they could do with. And so many families continue on that winding road of dysfunction because truths of reality cannot be spoken of as truths of experience.

Somehow there is grief, and quite a lot of it, that cannot be discussed or expressed or processed. Sometimes people would engage in counselling, but are put off by the cost, whether it be financial or emotional or time or other.

My wife and I are presently preparing to present at a Silent Grief conference where the focus is on exactly this topic: the grief that is not generally spoken about. The grief we are expected to move on from. The form of grief that doesn’t rate much of a mention because it’s so comparatively common, or worse, because there’s deep shame attached to it.

It is precious in our view
that we have had the experience
of losing Nathanael.

We never wanted to lose him,
but…

We truly saw God move in many, many ways, not least by the prayers of the faithful, and the testimony of our faith at the time, even as we witnessed it in ourselves.

We saw that God used Nathanael’s life,
even though he never breathed outside the womb.

And yet, just like you perhaps, I somehow feel guilty for talking about it too much, even though that hasn’t stopped me. I keep thinking that people are thinking, ‘Gee, is he still going on about that?’ I know some people will be thinking that.

But there is no overriding drive in me to believe for the needs of the woman and man who need space for their voice; those who need to be heard; or simply those who need to be acknowledged:

We want to say, your grief matters.
That it is incredibly significant.
That you’re allowed to feel gutted,
even years or decades on.
And, that you’re allowed to feel recovered
if you are.

We never ought to suffer in silence, but inevitably we do, because this world thrives on success stories and does not seem to like stories with a bad ending. There is an exception to this, of course, when the bad ending can be redeemed. And that is why grief needs to be a topic we can talk about, because processing our grief is the way to redeem what God has for us because we have suffered.

Grief needs space to be discussed, where the grieving are validated for however they process their grief. There are no wrong or right ways for dealing with the truth in our grief.

The grieving person needs to hear that it is normal to grieve, just as it is normal for the sting of loss to never completely vanish, and that it takes courage to get open emotionally.

They also need to hear that there is hope beyond the intensity and immensity of grief; that loss is an integral part of the growth process.

Grief so silent,
as if we don’t care,
give it a voice,
make room to share.

Grief so bold,
as to give it a voice,
reveals God’s grace,
that gives us a choice.

The Silent Grief Conference profiled in the picture focuses specifically on pregnancy and infant loss, and abortion grief.

Is there a purpose in suffering?

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised so much, but I was taken aback recently when someone I look up to suggested they were not as far along their journey of maturity. I was actually staggered that they were facing what I thought for them would be quite an elementary challenge.

And then I was reminded of the common nature of life that overwhelms us when we least expect it.

We never expect to be challenged
unless challenge is what we expect.

We don’t tend to anticipate hardship or loss or trials of many kinds. When we are blindsided, we could never have anticipated it. We should expect disappointments, failures, betrayals and the like, but few of us ever do.

One of the greatest ironies of life
is that when we think we have arrived,
we are most at risk of finding out we haven’t.

I suffered divorce in 2003, burnout in 2005, a midlife crisis in 2007, and we lost Nathanael in 2014, but the worst year of my life (so far) was 2016. How is it that that year eclipsed those previous experiences of cataclysmic challenge and loss? I know why.

Can a pastor of 40 years in the ministry suffer depression for the very first time? Yes, he or she can. Can a psychologist who has counselled people for decades come to a place where they need a psychotherapist to get them through what is revealed in them as a great hole? Yes, it can happen like this. What about mentors. Can it be the case that somebody who has mentored someone for years becomes the person who needs the guidance? Yes, it’s a possibility. How ironic it is that someone who guided another person through the passage of grief swaps roles with that person at a later time when they go through grief. Then there’s the case of the scholar that’s guided a student, and that student is given the great privilege of conducting their mentor’s funeral. The person who arrives at cancer never foresaw it heading their way, nor did the parent of the disabled child, who went to sight-see in Italy but found themselves in Holland. And finally, there’s the minister who is heralded as the great leader who comes crashing down with a great fall. Everybody who loved their leadership and them as a person is shattered. Yet, within every fall is the opportunity to rise.

We keep learning;
we can never anticipate
the learning for any of us
that’s on the horizon.

Common to our human nature we tend to elevate those we look up to. But they are just human beings like we are. Guides are guides; they’re aren’t God. Why do we smooze mere mortals with an excess of praise? Because flattery has become an idol.

I found it striking, years ago, to watch a man in his eighties of such maturity in the Christian faith suffer much because, although he had dealt with much spiritual pain in his life, he had not yet dealt with a lot of physical pain. That physical pain sanctified him so much as he gritted his teeth through it. His spiritual prowess was further impetus to soften him more through the physical pain to bring him to an even deeper level of spiritual humility. Even in his eighties!

God has a way of levelling the playing field.

He doesn’t give our challenges to us arbitrarily, though it does seem that way. We must believe for our benefit, that His design in the circumstances of our lives is good; that it is designed to grow and mature us in ways we have not yet faced. It does us no good to imagine that God is simply being cruel. If we think that God is being cruel, we suggest that our lives are more important than others’ lives because we don’t complain as bitterly when someone on the periphery of our life suffers.

We are not there yet…
life would hold no purpose
if we were.

Isn’t it a great comfort that, no matter who our contemporaries are, they like we are subject to the very same fragilities of life as everyone else is. But only a person who has been cruelled by pain can see this. Pain teaches us that we don’t have the control over life we always somehow thought we had.

Pain schools us in the most valuable
curriculum of all: reality.
Equipped to bear reality,
we serve with anointing.

This is a harsh yet encouraging fact:

The person who’s been through pain
that sanctified them
has a spiritual advantage
over the person who hasn’t.

None of us are there yet… ever.

Photo by Amogh Manjunath on Unsplash

The elegant simplicity in brilliant pastoral care

Photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person
in our lives mean the most to us,
we often find that it is those who,
instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain
and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
The friend who can be silent with us
in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us
in an hour of grief and bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing, not healing and face with us
the reality of our powerlessness,
that is a friend who cares.”
— HENRI J.M. NOUWEN (1932 – 1996)

It’s a long quote of Nouwen’s but every bit of it is like 24-carat gold to a world that so often gets care for the individuality in humanity wrong. Individuals getting individuals wrong. And corporations doing it with reckless efficiency. And churches, especially the bigger and striving ones, that have lost the art. But it is commonly found in most chaplaincy.

There is something fundamentally ordinary
about the choicest pastoral care.

And there is something incredibly fundamental about why. The Holy Spirit is either part of the moment or He isn’t. The moment we think we can do it on our own, we don’t need Him, and the Spirit of God will force Himself on nobody, no matter how much the vulnerable person needs it. The pastoral helper either invites the Presence of God into the space or they don’t.

When we get out of the way
in the pastoral care encounter
the person we’re helping can have
an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

I was once asked in a therapeutic setting during my training to explain how I did my pastoral care. All I could say, given that I was like a deer in headlights needing more time to answer, was, ‘I don’t know.’ It is a mystery how the Holy Spirit works, but I know the less I try to do in my own wisdom, the more situational wisdom I’m ‘provided’ with.

Truly I am either lost for words or I could write volumes — but neither helps me explain the Holy Spirit’s work amid pastoral care settings. Majestically, God is a mystery, thankfully.

I know the more I try to think
the more my thinking is blocked.

Yet, discernment for vital cognitions
of the Spirit is essential.

As I remain open entirely to experience the person before me, suddenly I’m given what I need; to listen better, to use gestures to encourage, to interject briefly for more information in demonstrating true curiosity of respectful interest, to compel the other person to perceive they consume my being at that moment. It’s all about them.

If pastoral care is anything about me,
the practitioner,
it loses all its power and purpose.

A huge part of this is having the capacity to bear the brunt of their pain. Those gifted in pastoral care are not daunted by another’s anguish, and indeed are impelled to engage with another’s passion through the power of compassion. I know that’s true for me. I’m drawn to pain. I’m taken by depth. I crave it. So my job is often about being patient in superficiality.

When I talk about elegant simplicity, I mean the simplicity on the other side of complexity, i.e. once the mystery of brilliant pastoral care has been worked through. In the context of pastoral care, elegant simplicity understands why practice needs to operate as Nouwen has described. It must. There is something integrally other-worldly about pastoral care that brings healing in a way that never feels like a human being has had anything to do with it or procured it.

Perhaps pastoral care at its core
is that rare friendship of the
Person of God through a human being.

** It’s worth saying that I put pastoral counselling and mentoring into the broad category of pastoral care. Counselling cannot not be pastoral care. Same with mentoring.

Gentleness, the witness of Godliness

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Piousness is often couched in the knowledge of God, particularly in this day, and in the past hundred years or so, that speaks of knowledge or of doctrine or of some definite view, but with force. As if God is on our side. Of course, we should understand that we all find a way of justifying ourselves as good people; as God’s people. There are so many tragic examples of people trying to overpower other people in the name of the Lord.

It is something good to repent of.

What if, instead, we didn’t seek to overpower anyone, and instead sought to serve people in gentleness?

One doctrine that has a commanding power is the fruit of the Spirit. I would argue that for its living qualities, gentleness, as a mode of the fruit of the Spirit, is ever persuasive in the Kingdom of God, and a commanding and underestimated power when cast into the world.

But most of us, most of the time, choose something more overtly persuasive, but a power that overpowers — which puts all our relationships at a disadvantage. Overpowering people with our words or gestures or tone or behaviours damages trust, but biblical gentleness, which is a form of generous graciousness applied with patience, always acknowledging and accepting that God is in control, is a power the world hardly sees. And yet gentleness is our opportunity to be set apart for the good works of the Kingdom.

… gentleness is our opportunity
to be set apart
for the good works of the Kingdom.

Good works of the Kingdom
are not what we do
but how we do them.

Anyone can do good things, but it is the motive of where those good things are coming from that is important. The test of whether the good thing is coming from God or not is in the pure attitude of service as contrasted with an attitude of seeking any kind of reward. See how gentleness is worlds apart from the common activity of doing stuff in the name of God but without the Presence of God empowering it?

Gentleness is a gift to everyone, and not least to ourselves, but it is a selfless power given over to people, for the Kingdom’s good. Gentleness gives without thought of return, and somehow in bequeathing gentleness, gentleness is sometimes reciprocated, for gentleness is a powerful example.

Gentleness is the witness of godliness,
especially when gentleness is returned for violence.

Of course, there is a great amount of power from God required to repay violence with gentleness. Can we see therefore that the pacifying nature of gentleness is a powerful strength and nothing like a doormat kind of experience, where we roll over and submit out of cowardice? Gentleness is more like courage.

There is nothing cowardly about gentleness,
but a supreme faith undergirds it,
that trusts God when God says,
‘Vengeance is mine!’

Gentleness leaves justice with God,
trusting Him to do all that is necessary.

The power in a gentle response

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As my wife left our home recently, off to worship practice one Sunday morning, even as she had just finished chiding me about my misjudgement of a situation about somebody else, she said, ‘And by the way you’ll get better results speaking [with our son] in a gentle tone than loudly; even a medium tone won’t be effective.’

With that, I locked the door behind her and went to the bathroom to think.

There is only a smattering of success in trying to motivate a five-year-old to get dressed and do all his jobs of a morning. As a parent you get sick and tired of repeating yourself. And like most parents my tone and volume increase commensurate with frustration. I was being reminded that just because I was barking orders didn’t make me more effective. It was a timely reminder.

This reminder followed another prompt that my wife had given me only minutes beforehand. I was becoming frustrated with how someone was treating me. But it was pointed out to me that they may only be responding in kind. And she was right. A further point was made. I don’t like it when I’m cornered, so it makes a great deal of sense that others don’t appreciate it when they feel cornered.

Feelings are important.
They may not be the truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth,
but they are a person’s truth.

Feelings need to be heeded.
If we don’t heed another person’s feelings
we tell them they don’t matter.

Putting these two matters together as I walked toward the bathroom I felt the nudge of God to own up. Again, I’d fallen for the trap of trying to control matters. Again, I was wanting things my own way, either not considering or disregarding others’ needs. Both situations, one with my five-year-old and one with an adult that hadn’t taken place yet, decreed the need for a response of power in gentleness.

Though these conversations with my wife are sometimes hard to hear, they’re often how God speaks to me through His perspective in the timeliest of ways. I had the opportunity to adjust my method with my son. I was also granted a freshened perspective regarding the other situation. God showed me that once again my ‘righteousness’ was actually self-righteousness cloaked in indignation. And besides, had I not owned up to my wrong of thinking I was right, my ‘righteousness’ may well have caused a wrong in the said relationship.

Proverbs has a word about gentleness:

‘A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.’

‘A gentle tongue is a tree of life,
(kind words heal and help)
but cutting words wound and maim.’

My take on these proverbs:

There is power in a gentle response,
but a coarse tone only produces frustration.

Power is paradoxical.
Use it and we lose it.

Be gentle and redeem great power.

The power of asking
overwhelms the force of telling.

Gentleness is the choice of wisdom. It is the shortcut to relational wellness. Every relationship prospers in the presence of gentleness.

The ever messy, rough-and-tumble of normal grief

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The more we engage with those who have endured normal grief, the more grief can be endured as normal. I for one have been so enriched in community with professionals, pastors and laypeople in terms of enhancing my understanding of grief. Experience must be reflected on, communicated and shared.

In other words, learning about grief is augmented in community and stifled in isolation.

Yet, what we learn in a community of experience is:

Grief is an ever messy,
rough-and-tumble journey
toward a new normality
in the chaotic realms of acceptance.

Grief is like a clothes washing machine: it takes what was our ordinary life, runs us through cleaning cycles that discombobulate us, before it pours in clean water that rinses us of pride, and then spins us dry, wringing out every skerrick of superficiality. What’s left, in the garment that is our life, as it hangs to dry in the summer breeze, is something we’ll acceptably wear any season of the year.

It’s a becoming thing. The garment’s not dry yet. But you see the potential in it as flaps in tune to those gusts that heal the cloth.

The garment’s not dry,
the garment’s not dry,
leave it out longer,
trust wind from the sky.

That’s grief. It’s a process. It’s unpredictable, and by its unpredictability it’s teaching us something about the reality of life now.

Somehow, we’ve passed from a life as it was into a life that now is.

There’s grief even in the fact that the old life is to be said goodbye to. What is gone is lamented only as much as it is when we can’t yet bear what has come to be.

And what has come to be is a courageous life — enough to withstand the ferocity of the washing machine turbulence that sends us into nauseating tones of weariness as an ongoing state of affairs. What has come to be is a life that lives a hope beyond an everyday despair. Such a hope is fervent in hope in that it steps gainfully even in the realisation that it would prefer things to be vastly different. Such a hope is pregnant with faith, for faith walks a walk that is replete with doubt but it walks anyway, believing a vision of good and that that vision will come.

Grief is a journey of hope through hell by faith enough to trek right the way through.

I know what I want

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I’ve experienced the best of life

And I’ve known the worst

I know what I want

God can redeem us even when we seem cursed.

I’ve been with the happy

And I’ve been with the sad

I know what I want

Being with those who are real makes me just glad.

Many people in life have no interest

In going deep with their pain

I know what I want

To be with those travelling in the rain.

So many times I’ve been asked

Why I focus on sad things

I know what I want

The beauty that God brings.

I’ve found you cannot have

Enough of God’s profound grace

I know what I want

Anything that makes me seek His face.

I’m not afraid

Of what hurts in this life

I know what I want

Just to trust God in the devil’s strife.

Such majestic beauty enfolds

Through vulnerable sacrifice

I know what I want

Courage will suffice.

I’ve learned never to underestimate

The value of connection

I know what I want

Jesus’ redemption in the power of His resurrection.

This life is so deep

So beautiful and true

I know what I want

To see the beauty in the blue.

Call me a fool, go on if you will

It could be a mistake

I know what I want

I don’t want to be fake.

God is real and life is hard

Both realities in union

I know what I want

I want truth in communion.

In this suffering life

Faith comes into its own

I know what I want

In Christ to be grown.

Just what on earth am I saying? There is more to life than consuming and living superficially and being right all the time and even getting everything out of life that we can. Life doesn’t owe us anything, and neither does God. And yet life is an opportunity, as is conflict, and stress and grief and anxiety.

If only we can learn in life that it is best to stand solid in loss and not run away from pain. Even in our trembling we can learn so much. Indeed, as I know personally, and as I know others in their personal situations, life truly doesn’t begin until we’ve journeyed through some hell.

We must travel through some things to see the beauty on the other side. Faith would not be faith otherwise.

If we never had to trust God,
we would never learn to trust Him.