My First Quiet Time After Loss

Following the stillbirth of my first daughter, I looked to the Scriptures intently for answers about where she would spend eternity—later recording my findings in Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss. Then, as my husband and I planned our daughter’s memorial service, we looked to the Scriptures for words of the Lord’s peace and hope that would be featured on that day. In these earliest days of grief, my grandfather also wrote devotionals for my husband and me when loss was newest; these daily biblical words came to me spoon-fed—as the weak need. 

Scripture was part of the first days of my grief, yes.

Reasserting the Scriptures to My Days

But time passed; the early days of loss turned into the early weeks. My fervor to find answers about my daughter’s eternity was beginning to lift through finding resolution. The service planning was complete, and the devotionals from my grandfather too reached their natural conclusion. Soon, automatic insertion of Scripture into my days was curtailed. 

Waking to a soundless house day after day, I needed to reassert to my hours a prayerful opening of my heart before the Scriptures. My spirit had experienced halting exposure to death. I felt different; I was different. That I carried existing theological convictions into grief was grounding for me, especially because I did not feel particularly apt to be taught or schooled theologically directly after loss. Yet, part of me also ached for time with God anew. 

I wanted fellowship with Him during these days through the ministry to my spirit of the Word and prayer. I felt that only He could understand the specifics and nuances of how I had been changed by loss and was still being changed by grief. I wanted to approach Him as a child—to ask my Father’s mind for my stunned state.

As a child, when I was new to reading the Bible for myself, my parents advised me to start with the gospel of John. From what little I remembered of these first readings, the images of John were bright to my growing mind—Jesus as the Bread of Life, Jesus calming the storm, and much more. I remembered my parents’ advice in grief.

The Words of Eternal Life

As a grieving adult wanting to approach God as a child, I looked to the same parts of John’s gospel and more areas too—like talk of the resurrection and teaching on the waters of eternal life—to fill me. John’s gospel read like the book of eternal life, so dominant was that theme as I received its words. 

Of Resurrection

My wounds from loss were met with Jesus’ words: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day” (John 6:40). Death had been in me, had been born from me, and then had worsened its effects over the dear body I could hold in my arms for mere hours. I took the Bible’s words as assurance that the impressions on my mind, spirit, heart, memory, and eyes of death would one day be eclipsed by the impact of the resurrection on my person. 

With hope of the resurrection already directing me, I journaled this prayer while reading John: “Thank You for all of the healing that has happened in my life, Lord.”

Of Living Water

As inevitable tears came during the weeks and months after loss, I also read: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38). I began to think of my tears with hope.

The wilderness was the setting for water being provided for the Israelites: “He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers” (Psalm 78:15-16; c.f. Exodus 17:1-1). God displayed His power in a time of Moses’ desperation. And in my time of need, through the truth of Scripture and the Holy Spirit within me, I believed my tears could fall like living waters. 

My sorrow formed into expressions congruent with biblical themes—tears of distress over the state of the world, of humility over human sin that caused the world to fall, of expectation for Jesus’ return, of widening openness to a heavenly Father able to see His people’s raw pain, of acknowledgment that God gave to the souls of men the experience of blessed human relationships, of joy in a certain future, and more. 

With the truth thus in me, nothing of my spirit was left to wither, to die—not that I was made omniscient with answers in pain, of course, but that my faith was set on a trajectory containing enlivening truth, toward resolution and hope. I knew God could be glorified through the character of my response to loss, and in that, living water could issue from me by grace, my tears contributing their force to that flow.

I Went to Jesus

John’s gospel was life to my spirit after my girl departed this world, and I clasped thoughts of resurrection and life. I went before Scripture, a baby myself to the loss experience, to holding the effects of death on my little girl, and to the emotional complexities of somehow envisioning a forward-moving life again. 

Though in the early weeks after loss I was resistant to commencing with any typical routine, which I felt would have only signaled that life could move forward as it had prior to loss, I knew times with the Lord before His Word had to be for me an exception worth making. I mercifully found within me a desire to commune with God, and I made much of it to myself. I extended my reluctant spirit toward it. 

However haphazard the result, goodness was graciously wrought. To the best of my current memory, I sometimes would have a single biblical thought last me days of meditation. Barriers existed too—I frequently slogged through the simplest of thoughts, Scriptural ones aside. Other times, I would consume Scripture chapters at a time. 

But through these varied times before the Lord, I was being carried into an increasing understanding that my days on this earth could still mean something—something for Him—when life was removed, and I would not go on as I had. I credit the Scriptures for this hope. For where else could I go? 

Who else has the words of eternal life (John 6:68)?

Lianna (@liannadavis) is wed to Tyler and mom of two dear daughters. She is author of Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss (Hope Mommies, 2019). More of her writing can be found at her website.

We would be honored to share your story as a Hope Mom on our blog. On Saturdays we feature Hope Moms’ stories in order to showcase God’s faithfulness even in the midst of such deep sorrow. If you would like to have your story shared on our blog for this purpose, learn more and submit here.

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