I almost don’t live through delivery because Sarah weighs ten pounds. She looks beautiful and healthy.  The doctor shrugs helplessly and doesn’t know what has gone wrong.

We bury her a few days later. Our families and friends want to share the burden of our sorrow, but in our distress we are unable to even connect with each other.

We invite God to be with us, but we are paralyzed by the trauma we have endured. Our hearts ache silently with a torrent of emotion. Buried with our daughter are our voices and our grief. What are we to do with powerful and crushing feelings?

God’s Word has clues for us in Job 7:11: Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

It is necessary and freeing to express all our feelings. We believe that we are strong and that our faith will get us through it all. In reality, we are weak and only a new faith in God’s power will save us.

Three months later, we are expecting our second child! So soon after losing Sarah. Of course, after all we’ve been through, this baby will be all right. We tremble as we hold hope in our still aching hearts.

At our 20-week ultrasound, we barely breathe as the technician probes my swollen belly.

Relief as we see Baby moving around on the monitor. Disbelief as we hear, “I’m sorry, there’s a problem in the brain.” They are not even sure if she has a brain as there is water just beneath the skull obscuring their vision.

Baby has hydrocephalus. Later we find out that she also has a hole in her spine.

Believing that the baby will die, I sob to my husband that I want to adopt and not have any more of this kind of pain. We didn’t bring Sarah home. What if this baby dies, too?

At this moment, grace draws our hearts together and Michael reminds me that our child has no idea that anything is wrong. She is alive and God wants us to love her one moment at a time for as long as she lives.

Reassurance comes to us from the Prophet Isaiah 49:18, 20: Lift up your eyes and look around and see; they gather, they come to you…The children born in the time of your bereavement will yet say in your hearing: “The place is too crowded for me; make room for me to settle.”

We have a renewed trust in God, we believe in life, and we receive the ability to use our voices. We refuse to be presented with any choice other than life, and we ask to be told all the available options to help our daughter, Meagan.

Just days later, Michael hears on the radio about an operation done in utero which can greatly improve the quality for a child who has spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Our answer to prayer! We live in Ottawa, Canada, and Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee is the closet place which offers this surgery.

As it is still in the experimental stages, the procedure is not covered by our medical insurance. Always having done things on our own, Michael and I finally acknowledge our inability to live in isolation, and we open our hearts to those closest to us.

We are encouraged as friends and family act quickly to form a prayer network and organize the funds necessary for the trip. Their support in our deepest need confirms for us that we are made to live in community. We gain a new confidence that God is indeed leading and blessing us on our journey.

During the five day consultation period at Vanderbilt, we listen, we question, we pray, we decide. There are too many risks involved. Due to the severity of the water on her brain and the extent of damage to her spine, Meagan would almost certainly require a shunt to drain cerebral fluid from her brain to her belly.

Closing the hole in her back now would have little or no effect. We sense the procedure is too risky for Meagan at this time.

She will have both the operations for the spine and shunt done soon after her birth. We wonder what purpose the trip has served if not to have the operation. An answer can be found in Proverbs 16:9: In his heart a man plans his course, but the lord determines his steps.

Although we decide against the surgery, the knowledge and insight we gain into Meagan’s condition proves invaluable, and the experience gives us an informed voice to continue to speak for Meagan when we return home.

Meagan in born on July 24, 2002. The doctor tells us she is paraplegic. We see her as a gift. We bring Meagan home after five weeks in the hospital.

Loving our baby is easy. The daily schedule and care for her extra needs are humanly unbearable: bladder draining with a catheter every three hours, medication five times a day, constipation, special diet, fragile and broken bones, x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, appointments with specialists, telephone calls to associates, and government funding agencies, letters, receipts and annual reports. We are engulfed by a sea of details.

At our disposal is a team of people and resources to alleviate some of the stresses of our life. But we are not living. We are barely surviving.

Spring of 2004. Sewage flood. Our completely furnished basement is destroyed in an hour. Two dumpsters full of our belongings: clothing, photographs, appliances, furniture, flooring, walls, and furnace. Everything gone. We make a list of all the items thrown away. Thirteen pages of 20 items each. We have one year in which to replace them all.

To have a fully restored basement requires us to submit to our insurance adjuster all of our receipts. Shopping. Receipts. Photocopies. More letters. More work. More details. How can we do this?

We have no time and little energy. A work crew comes to rebuild the basement walls and install new flooring. Surely it will be only a matter of weeks before we have our home and comfortable routine back. Our old life?

Fall of 2004. Rain flood! The brand new carpeting has to be removed and replaced. New items are stored upstairs crowding our living space. In desperation we cry out: “Stop the disasters, God! Help us!

Words of comfort and conviction come to us from Psalm 91:10: No disaster can overtake you. But more insistent are the words from Job 22:15:  Will you keep to the old path that evil men have trod? They were carried off before their time. Their foundations washed away by a flood.

O Lord, terrible things have happened to us, and will continue to happen to your people. You have not promised us a life without trial. But, Lord, you do offer us all that we need when we turn and surrender to you all aspects of our lives.

You want to be our insurance, our source for all that is good. You long to be intimately involved with us and with all the minute details of our lives. You have the power to restore us even when there is chaos all around us. Just as we were asked to submit every last receipt and detail for our basement, you also ask us to submit every detail of our lives to you.

Submit to God and be at peace with him. In this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instructions from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored… (Job 22:12.) Alleluia!

This was the Good Friday part of our story. In part 2, we will tell you the Resurrection part.

— Reprinted with permission from The Bread of Life magazine, Hamilton, Ontario.

to be continued