The God of the Good

Since losing Cove, people have asked us how we're doing. Sometimes, I say we're doing good. Other times, I just say we're doing okay. Not that we are always good or okay, but how do you answer such a loaded question in a passing conversation? You can't.

Some days are really good, and some days are okay still. Other days are hard.

Grief is a rollercoaster that you're not even buckled into. I can have a really good day and then come home and have a meltdown. I can have a bad day, and then enjoy ice cream and a movie with Manna that evening. It's such a strange thing that you don't really understand until you experience it.

I know that grief affects everyone differently. I have experienced sadness and a deep ache that words can't even describe. I have weeped thinking about all that Cove went through in this world. I've been through the cycle of would-have, could-have, should-have. I've questioned why things had to be this way. I've been angry at times, and I've wasted days away sitting in my mess. I've slammed doors, and I've stared at the blank wall. I've looked through her stuff a hundred times, and I've avoided it, too.

Grief has also enlivened me. It has made me feel human. It has strengthened my marriage. It has given me opportunity to experience God's comfort. It has given me opportunity to comfort others. We think of grief as like this plague, but really, to grieve is healing. Grief is our way of wrestling with our reality. When tragedy has become our reality, we grieve the life that we wanted instead. I didn't want this reality, but this is the one I must embrace.

This year wrecked us....and we are so blessed for it.

As weird as that sounds, I look back on all that has happened, and I cry tears of thankfulness. We so often associate health, wealth, and comfortable lives with God's blessing. Those things can be blessings from God, but God's blessing doesn't always come through those things. I know because I've lived a different story. Our experience, from a worldly perspective, would seem like punishment, if anything. But what if the wrecking is exactly what our hearts needed after all? What if this journey, hard as it has been, is actually a gift?

When Cove went through her first major heart surgery, I was dissappointed that God didn't miraculous heal her, to be completely honest. I felt like I was being punished. I felt very un-chosen by God. We had prayed so fervently. We truly felt led to ask God for a miracle, more specifically that God would let us see His miracles. We prayed that it would be something only God could do. It made so much sense, and we were so sure of how God was going to answer that prayer. Of course, God would bring us into this dire situaiton and then turn things completely around, leaving the only answer to be His hand. Then one surgery came and went. A second surgery came and went. Several months came and went. Even still, I just clung to this prayer of miraculous healing.

We walked through a hard six months of watching our baby grow up in a hospital. We were split between our two daughters. Manna (big sister) only got to meet Cove one time before the end of her life. My heart broke every time I had to leave Manna at home and then every time I had to leave Cove at the hospital. An especially difficult part was witnessing all of the unthinkable things that Cove's little body endured. But the hardest part was realizing that it was all she had ever known, so it didn't seem to bother her.

When the end came, I almost couldn't believe that it was really happening. Part of me didn't believe it was actually going to happen, but I guess that's normal. One of our friends told us to not stop praying. So, even when we held her during her last hours, we still joyfully prayed, knowing that if God wanted to, He still could.

If there was a special enough prayer that someone can pray or enough faith that someone could muster up to get God to answer how they wanted Him to, then we did it. But that's not how God works. If creation could manipulate God, then He wouldn't be God. If our plan for our lives was better than God's, then He wouldn't be God. Finally, if our lives were without problem, then would we ever see a need for God?

Walker and I did everything that we possibly could have, and God's plan was still to take Cove. That thought honestly gives me so much peace and assurance.

I got to hold Cove for about 3 hours before she finally left us. I thought birth was really special, but that moment was strangely the most beautiful and holy moment that I've ever experienced. It was as if we could physically see her soul leaving her flesh behind. And we know that Jesus was right there to take her with Him. We felt sadness, but we also felt such joy!

Throughout that whole journey, when things would get hard, Walker and I would look at each other and say, "we're going to make it." In the first moments after Cove was gone, Walker looked at me and said, "we made it." It truly felt like a finish line, a sense of relief, and proud moment of completion. We had just endured the hardest trial yet, and we were still standing to tell of the goodness of God.

There was no question in our minds....God did answer our prayer, and we witnessed it. He healed her, completely. It sounds cliche, but I mean that when I say it. We were wanting a partial healing--one that would be just enough to give her a longer life on Earth. Even if that would have happened, Cove still would have died someday. God's desire for her was eternal. He healed her not in part, but in whole. And honestly, that's what our deepest desire was for her, too.

One of my good friends had a dream right before Cove was going to have her long-awaited surgery. In the dream, she had lost her purse. She prayed and prayed that God would help her find her purse. After a few months, she finally found her purse, but there was nothing in it. Her wallet, keys, money, and other things were gone. She prayed to find her purse, but what she really wanted was the more important things inside of it.

She said she thought of me when she woke up from that dream. I pondered on it a while. Then, someone was praying for us, praying that we would get to bring Cove home, but that had not been our prayer. In that moment, I realized that I didn't just want to bring Cove home. Even if I brought her home, that wouldn't change her health. I wanted her to be healed. That was my deepest desire. Looking back now, I can see that God gave me the desires of my heart, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

For a while after Cove passed, I was truly content, but when the experience became a memory, I began to really grieve. It hurt when I would have to scroll more and more on my camera roll to get back to pictures of Cove. It hurt when everyone who was loving on us and ministering to us had to go back to work. It really hurt when Walker had to go back to work, and I was at home with Manna for the first time. It hurt thinking about Cove's body being out in the graveyard. It hurt the first time someone met us and asked us how many kids we have. It hurt sharing our story with someone new. It hurt going on the family trip that we thought Cove would get to go on.

The whole time we were in the hospital, I had said, "when we break Cove out of here, we're going to the beach." After Cove passed, we just wanted to get away, so we went to the beach. We had a sweet couple that offered us a place to stay, and it was a time of healing and restoration. It was also a time of wrestle.

I started to wrestle with the question of why? Not as in, why did this happen, but why would God have led us to pray so fervently just for things to end the way they did? I just couldn't understand. It felt like I had been led on. I could accept God's plan, but I couldn't understand why God would lead us to pray so hard just to leave us seemingly hanging.

The first evening at the beach, we walked out to the sand just to see it for a moment. The sun was setting, and it was glowing bright pinks and oranges. I had this moment looking at the clouds over the sunset. The sun was going down, and the bottoms of the clouds were trimmed with the glowing light. It looked as if there were a bunch of lines written on a page. It made me think about how God is the author, and who was I, a mere created character in the story, to question why the author writes the story this way.

Being a writer, I can imagine how crazy it would seem for me to write a beautiful story with character development and an articulated plot just for one of my characters to look up off the page and question my reasoning. My character wouldn't have much of a case because I'm the one who sees the whole story. I would see the beginning all the way to the end. I would create conflict and resolution to make the story good, worth reading. And my character would grow throughout it all to finish better than they began!

Who am I to question the author?

I had another moment the final morning before we left. I was having quiet time on the balcony, looking out at the water, listening to the waves crashing. I felt like Job, so I went to read in Job. I ended up reading where Job wants to make his case before God, and God puts him back in his place. God asks Job, "where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?" Then God goes on to say, "were you there when I told the seas where to stop and come no further?" When God turns your questions back on you, you better listen carefully!

I started to pout, but then, I started to ponder. There are some really smart people out there that are really knowledgeable about their field of study. Marine biologists probably know a lot about the sea world. Yet, there's still so much that they don't know about the rest of the world. Even moreso I, myself, only understand a tiny bit. But God knows everything about a seagull....how their anatomy works, what food they need, where they need to go, and what environment suits them best. Not only that, but He knows what each individual needs, when and how they need it, how many feathers they have, and how much longer their life will last. If God knows that about a single seagull, how unfathomnable to us is the knowledge He holds about everything else in creation.

Who am I to question the creator?

We came home, and though I felt so refreshed and rested, I still had that question of why pray? We prayed so fervently, just to lose Cove anyway. So, why pray? What does it affect? God doesn't have to answer all of our questions, but in my life, God has always had a way of giving me what I need to take the next step forward. I was crying to Walker asking, "why would God lead us to pray so fervently when He knew what was going to happen?" And God spoke to me in that very moment and said, "I led you to pray so fervently because I knew what was going to happen."

God knew what was going to happen, and He knew we needed close communion with Him to face it. I've been learning that prayer isn't so much about changing our circumstances. Sure, I think we can pray for our circumstances to change, but prayer is more about preparing us to face our circumstances.

God knew. So, God prepared us.

When I began to open my eyes to see all that God had done in and around us, it made me realized that we had been specifically chosen for this assignment. God considered us worthy to suffer through this trial so He could be glorified in it. He gave us a new mission field in the hospital. God saw us fit to love and care for Cove everyday while she was here....so many people were invested in Cove's story, but no one got to experience it first-hand like we did. Even more than anything else, God chose to deepen our faith so we could grow closer to Him.

He chose Cove. He chose our family. He chose me. He has immensely blessed our lives through this.

It still hurts. I know it always will, but we don't grieve as those who have no hope. Sometimes, I think about Cove and feel sad, not because I wish she were here, but just because I miss her. Other times, I think about Cove, and it makes me think about Heaven! It gives me the eternal perspective I need to do God's work while I'm here but not hold onto this life too tightly, knowing this is not where I want to be forever. We always called her our covenant reminder, but now she truly is. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us the promise of a life that does not end!

We move forward, but we don't move on. We will never move on from this beautiful experience that God gifted us with. I'll never get over it. I'll never stop sharing it. It's an amazing story, but the best part is that the author is still writing it.