Jesus Wept

I have to confess that the hardest part of being in the place of immense sorrow is holding on to Faith.  When we were in the NICU and posting daily, sometimes multiple, updates per day I felt a sense of calm and peace, and I knew it was only by the grace of God.  I was shattered on the inside and scared out of my mind but we kept going.  I remember saying to both my husband and my mother that I thought that God had gotten me mixed up with someone else because I was not strong enough for this.  I am sure many of you have heard the staying, "God does not give you more than you can handle."  But every moment of every day, though the swells of sorrow threaten to overwhelm me, I am still here.  Since Ethan's death I have cried out to God over and over again asking for his Peace to comfort me, and begging to feel him near.  The year before Ethan, when we miscarried our third child, I cried out to God and begged him to let us keep our baby, and as that precious life slipped away I was overcome by grief and anger.  I had believed in a loving and just God.  I had worked with abused and neglected kids - I saw those children whose parents did not know how to even to begin to love them, and God has now taken away two children from a family who would have poured out so much love upon them.  Being a big believer in justice in our world, I find it difficult to fathom how a God who is justice and love can turn away.  I have been struggling and angry and yelling and crying all at the same time, and our pastor friend told me that was okay, because God is a big God.  So I have been letting him have it, but it hasn't helped.  Then two days ago I went to our local Christian bookstore - desperate to find something to help me deal with my grief and growing depression.  I found a book by Beth Forbus, "When Love and Sorrow Embrace."  I wish I would have found it after I miscarried, but it has come into my life now.  It is directed towards women and men whom have lost a child through miscarriage or stillbirth.  Our story is close enough to that to make sense to me as well.  I was reading in it today and found a verse that I had read many times before and heard many times before.  In the story of Lazarus being brought back to life it says, "Jesus Wept."  He wept with those he loved, not because he was helpless to change the situation and would, but because he loved them and felt their pain.  What a comfort - in that  moment I felt the arms of Jesus go around me, shaking with his shattered tears as his wept with me.  But the true glory is this:  just as Jesus knew he was about to reunite Lazarus with those who loved him and he relished the thought, so he knows that just as we planned and waited for the baby we miscarried and Ethan's arrival, but had to say "good-bye" before "hello"; now in the arms of Heaven, they are both planning and waiting for my arrival - when there will be no more "good-byes" but only joyous "hellos".  Hope though dim yearns to stretch toward faith relying on the comforting grace of my savior's arms.