My thoughts and prayers for the
past two weeks have been with some dear friends who lost their son in a
terrible tragedy. They are laboring under an extremely heavy burden, and I am
greatly concerned about them, their marriage, and their family. I am worried about their physical
health but even more concerned about their spiritual and emotional health. I pray
for them daily with faith that their relationships with each other will be
strengthened by this terrible experience.
I have never lost a child to death,
but I have four siblings who did - two sisters and two brothers. My sisters lost
infant sons - one was a day old and the other less than a year old. One brother
lost a teenage daughter, and the other a young adult son with children of his
own. Two deaths were from health problems, one from SIDS, and one from suicide.
The son of a third brother lost his infant son less than a year ago from an
accident.
I asked a couple of my siblings about
their experiences of losing children, and I came away a wiser person. I asked
my older brother if losing his teenage daughter was anything like losing our
mother. He explained that both experiences were painful; however, he eventually
got past the pain of losing a parent but never stopped mourning the death of his
daughter. My elderly grandmother said about the same thing after burying one of
her sons. She said that burying a child was worse than burying a spouse. My
other brother died of cancer a couple of years after the death of his son by
suicide, and I never had an opportunity to ask him.
I asked an older sister about her
experience of losing a newborn baby. I was particularly interested in how the
loss affected her marriage. She indicated that she and her husband grew closer
through the experience; however, another couple in their congregation lost a
child about the same time and ended up divorcing. Divorce seems to be a fairly
common occurrence after the death of a child, but none of my siblings or my
nephew divorced. I have never asked my younger sister, but she and her husband
seem to have grown closer also. All of my siblings speak of their deceased
children fairly often and believe they will see them again. The parents who
lost young children have faith that they will have the opportunity to rear
their babies in the next life and be with them throughout eternity.
An uncle of my young friend spoke at
the memorial service and referenced a scripture story that illustrates the
difficulty of losing a child. He spoke about Jacob (Israel) and his son Joseph.
Jacob dearly loved Joseph and favored him, which made his ten older brothers
jealous. One day they sold him to some Midianites who took Joseph to Egypt. The
brothers took Joseph’s coat of many colors and dipped it in the blood of a
young goat. When Jacob saw the bloody coat, he “rent his clothes, and put
sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons
and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into
the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him” (Genesis 37:34-35;
emphasis added). Jacob continued to mourn for Joseph until he saw his son again
in Egypt.
The death of a child at any age or
any cause seems to be particularly difficult to bear. This type of mourning
never goes away but is an adversity that one must learn to endure in order to
simply survive. There are two ways that we can be of help to those suffering.
We can mourn with them, and we can encourage them to turn their hearts to God. The
best way to carry this heavy burden is to take upon oneself the yoke of Jesus
Christ and allow Him to help carry the load. He alone knows how each person
feels and can apply the necessary care to endure. He alone can be with them
every minute of every hour. May God bless all grieving parents and particularly
my dear family members and friends, and may we give them the support that they
need.
No comments:
Post a Comment