Purposed: Hope Remains

Five years ago, I didn’t know about women like us. I didn’t know that miscarriage happens to 1 in 4 women; that stillbirth is 1 in 160, and that 6 out of every 1,000 infants in the US don’t live to see their first birthday. I was totally oblivious, until October 18, 2010.

My Gwendolyn fit into the last category. After a perfect first pregnancy and 24 hours of labor in a birthing center, we lost her heartbeat. I was put on oxygen. I heard the terror in my midwives voices. I was rushed to the ER for an Emergency Cesarean. And when I woke, my husband told me that our little girl was in the NICU with heart and liver damage. And I still thought, “Okay, somehow we’ll recover. She’ll be okay.”

But Gwen didn’t recover. She slowly declined, and I helplessly watched her perfectly formed, chubby little 10lb, 1oz body quickly fade over the next 36 hours.

Like you, I was in shock—I didn’t know how to pray. In that moment the Spirit interrupted my broken dreams to bring 2 Timothy 1:12 to comfort me: “But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed…” His point was clear: “Erin, you know Me. I am not a different God today than I was yesterday when Gwen was kicking inside of you. I will not be different tomorrow. You know me.”

So stubbornly, desperately, I clung to that truth—I knew Him. I didn’t understand Him; I didn’t understand how He could allow my precious girl to breathe her last heaving breaths in my arms. I didn’t understand how He could watch me leave a hospital empty.

I didn’t know that happened in America. I wanted desperately to know I wasn’t the only mom who didn’t have a baby sleeping in the nursery so carefully crafted for her.

There are a lot of infant loss communities, as I soon came to find out. On certain websites, you can join a forum that is grouped by gestational age of loss. Many of those can be good—I’m not knocking them—but what I realized in the aftermath of losing Gwendolyn is that they lacked what I needed most: truth and hope.

A lot of women in the infant loss community call us “Angel Mommies.” And that just rankled me. I knew Gwen wasn’t an angel, and I would never want her to be. I know people say it to be comforting, but anything short of the truth is a hollow consolation. Who else has heard, “Well I guess that was just God’s will. He has a plan for you in this. He needed her more than you did.” or other such platitudes? Those phrases are half-truths or straight up lies, and they hurt more than heal.

In 2011, we founded Hope Mommies because we believed that we were moms who trusted God with our babies—born out of hope, prayed for in hope, taken to Christ in hope. Hope Mommies has grown internationally in four years, and our mission has always been to share the hope of Christ with bereaved mothers and families.

Nancy Guthrie writes, “Truth is what we need when the hurt is the deepest.” We have experienced a profound shattering, and we must have something to hold on to, something to anchor us. That anchor is the hope that God offers us in Christ Jesus. I don’t want us to miss this, which is why I want to lay out for you pieces of the hope that remains for us in the midst of brokenness, because it is central to everything.

Hope means “to look forward to with a reasonable expectation of fulfillment.” Biblical hope, looking forward to things that we can’t see but the Bible says are there, is even more than “reasonable,” because it’s what God’s Word says, and God cannot lie. The Bible assures us that there is eternity ahead—whether in heaven or in hell—the things we cannot see. But there are things that He wants us to know about eternity.

How many of us, when holding our little loves, thought, “This can’t be it. This isn’t right. Death isn’t right or natural?” You’re right! Death is not right. Death is a result of sin. Death and decay and illness and sin and wrong in the world are a result of individuals choosing to believe the wrong things about God. Choosing to think that we may know a better way, instead of trusting in our Creator God and His ways.

And because death is a reality for us and an enemy of God, God wants us to know how we can not die, but be reconciled to Him and have life that goes on for eternity.

Sisters, He wants you to know and be assured of the reality of heaven. Heaven is the place where God dwells. It is absolute perfection. Nothing imperfect or unholy can live there, because God is there. So if that’s the case—that heaven is only for the perfect—then how can you and I know for sure that we can go there at the moment of death? You and I are not perfect. We may try really hard and do a lot of good things in our lives, but Isaiah 64:4 says that all of our good efforts, our attempts at perfection, will always fall short. They don’t hold a candle to God.

This moment, when you and I realize that we are totally unable to help ourselves or save ourselves or make ourselves acceptable to God, this is the moment when God breaks through and brings hope. In Romans 5:8 it says, “At just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Christ, who was perfect, took on our imperfection on the Cross and died in our place. You and I were in debt to God for our sin, and Christ paid that debt for us. He was the only possible substitute. That is why we say that Christ is our Hope: because Christ did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He lived perfectly, which we couldn’t. He died in our stead, and then, because He’s God, He rose again and conquered death. He gave up comfort so that we could be comforted. This is the good news. This is our hope. This is what anchors our souls when we are grieving.

So what will you do with Christ? When we learn the truth about God, mankind, eternity, and what Christ did to bridge the gap—we all have a response. God didn’t leave us another option. When you consider Christ, do you believe that He did this for you? That He took on the debt you owed to God for your sin, paying it all? Have you surrendered to say, “Christ I can’t do this. I can’t make myself perfect. I am wholly in Your debt for life, and I choose to believe that what You did was enough. I let go of my sin and my ways, and choose Yours.”

If you haven’t yet made the decision to follow Christ, I want you to seriously consider this decision. The promises of God are the blessings for those who choose to come under His wing.

There is no surviving infant loss apart from God. There is no hope, unless you choose to believe in Him.

Time doesn’t heal. Books will not heal. Counseling, exercise, travel, escape, more children—these will not heal you. Only the Healer can heal. He can use some of those things as tools, but your brokenness can only be repaired by the One who knows you inside and out.

This article was originally published on the blog on April 22, 2015

Erin Cushman is the founder of Hope Mommies. She is married to Blair and has four children: Gwendolyn, who has been with Jesus since October 20, 2010, Malacai, who is three, Gemma, born in June 2015, and Baby Cush. She loves photography, gardening, cooking, reading, playing with her children, and especially loves when all those things combine.

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