For a long time I have wanted to sit down and look back over all the the Lord has done in my heart and in our family after losing Nehemiah. But life just gets so busy and I just hadn't made time for it. Then a pastor from our church asked me to share my testimony at our Sunday night church service in April. I couldn't get it out of my head that I wanted to share about God's nearness and comfort to us in grief. It felt vulnerable and scary. I knew it would probably trigger pain but also knew it would be good and most importantly I really felt like it was what the Lord wanted me to share about. So, I obeyed. Here are the notes from my talk. I want to have them on here to remember. He is good!
"Hello! My name is Casey Spark. My husband Tim and I work
with the campus ministry Cru in the Greater Grand Forks area. We’ve lived in town and gone to Grace for
about 10 years now. We have 3 boys and I’ll show you a picture of them just
because I can and I love them. These are our three amazing, rambunctious,
little men. Carter is 6, Cooper 5 and Crosby is 3.
Backing up a bit, Tim and I got married almost 11 years ago.
I can remember a time when people shared they had been married over 10 years
and I just thought they sounded so old. Now I’m that person but I feel so
young. Age is weird. Anyways, at our wedding my dad gave a toast and shared
some “secrets” with Tim about me. Stuff about me being a light sleeper and
loving candy. But he also told him that when I say I want to wait to have kids,
I mean wait until later this week or night. He was being playful but it was
sort of true. I didn’t grow up loving kids or even babysitting much but at some
point…maybe when I was engaged to be married, something changed. We did end up
waiting a couple years before trying to have kids…mostly because of TimJ After struggling to
get pregnant for about 2 years we got pregnant with Carter. And then things
sort of blew up and we had 3 boys in 3 years. It’s been amazing and exhausting.
One minute I am pulling my hair out because of the chaos and sin and conflict
and mess. And the next I’m begging God to freeze time so I can just soak in all
the love and chubby cheeks and kisses and hugs. I’m a mess. But I love it.
After Crosby was born we felt sort of like we were drowning
in baby boys. We didn’t feel like we had much more capacity for another child
at that time so we were going to wait a while and see. And then somehow we got
pregnant again. I mean I guess I know HOW it’s just we were still very
surprised. Overwhelmed, yes. But also excited. The boys were ecstatic. They had
been begging us for another baby!
Anyways, the pregnancy was progressing normally and we were
all very excited to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. For those not
too familiar with the baby world, you typically go in for an ultrasound at
about 20 weeks which is half way through the pregnancy and can find out the
gender if you choose or else they just check to make sure everything looks
good. We went in at 22 weeks…a little later because we were out of town over
Christmas break. After having many ultrasounds through three previous
pregnancies I could tell pretty quickly that something wasn’t right. The
ultrasound tech didn’t take much time at all and then she got somebody else to
come in and look who also didn’t take much time at all. My heart was in my
stomach and fear overtook me. They told us we just needed to wait to talk to
our doctor but it was pretty evident the news wasn’t good. We made it up to see
our doctor about 20 minutes later and he told us right away that our baby had
died. Time froze. Sometimes this just happens, he said. But before we could
even start to process this awful news he said that it was urgent that they
induce labor or there would be health problems for me. Our world had just
turned upside down but we hardly had time to stop as we needed to make a plan
quickly on when I would go in and who would watch the kids.
It’s difficult to think back on those 48 hours. There was so
much shock and pain. So many decisions. So many little hearts to take care of
in addition to our own grief. We came home after that appointment and had to
sit down and explain to the boys that our baby had died. Carter, who was 5 at
the time sobbed. Cooper was almost 4 and just kept asking questions. “Why did
this happen?” “Where is our brother?” “What is heaven like?” “Will we meet our
brother someday?” And sweet Crosby at 2 seemed sort of clueless as to what all
the emotion was about.
We went into the hospital the next day and began the awful
process of delivering a stillborn baby. Again we were bombarded with decision
we didn’t know we’d have to make. “What will you name the baby? The nurse
asked…You need a name for the death certificate.” “What do you want to do with
the body?” “How long do you want to spend with your baby before saying goodbye
and leaving?” Awful decisions that we never wanted to have to make. So as the
nurses started to induce labor, we started looked at lists of names. Tim found
the name Nehemiah and once we read that it means “comforted by God” we knew it
was our baby’s name. At that point I had no idea what the next couple weeks and
months and years would look like. I hadn’t walked through much loss or pain, at
least not this intense. What would this journey with God look like? We wanted
to trust that our great God, who loves us and died for us and gave us new life
in Him, that this God would also be able to comfort us and bring healing and
hope into this sadness. So Nehemiah seemed to be the perfect name for this son
that I long to meet someday.
Leaving the hospital without our son was one of the hardest
things I’ve had to do. We were able to hold him and be with him but he wasn’t
alive. We needed to leave and even get home to help our boys through this
grief. It felt SO daunting. I talked with a dear friend of mine who had lost
her baby to heart failure at 6 months. She told me then that you can’t run from
grief. She encouraged me to not be afraid of grief but to know that Jesus is
right there in the midst of it. I knew I couldn’t get through this without Him
and so from the start I made an uncomfortable commitment to grieve. There
are so many truths that I know and believe…God is good. God works all things
out for good. God’s ways are above my ways. He knows best. These are all deeply
true. But a passage I kept coming
back to over and over again was John 11 when Lazarus died and Jesus wept with
Mary. He knew He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He could have easily
said...”Wait. Trust me. Stop crying, I’m
going to work this all out!” But He wept with her. Yes He is good and will work everything out but I also believed He wanted
to meet me in my pain and I didn’t want to miss that.
From the time we found out we had lost our son, we were
completely blown away and amazed at how God used the body of Christ to bring
comfort in those weeks after his death. Before even getting home from the
hospital two friends from our small group Bible study had brought us meals. So
many friends helped carry the burden through prayer, cards, texts, calls, gifts
for our boys, coffee, flowers, and just entering in and wanting to know how we
were doing. A lady at church came up to me months after his death and told me
there wasn’t another person she had prayed for more often in the past months. I
hardly know this woman. There were just so many ways the Lord showed us
grace and His kindness to us through friends and family. It was so humbling and
such a blessing. And while this was unbelievably helpful to have this burden
shared, we also knew we had to carry it as well and most intensely. And this
was hard. Really hard.
Looking back, the only way I know how to describe the grief
from the months after losing Nehemiah is that it felt like I was drowning. Like
my feet weren’t on solid ground. It felt like I had been swept out to sea and
could sort of see land but then another wave would come and disorient me. It
was confusing and so frustrating. It felt chaotic and unpredictable. But often
times I felt the Lord’s comfort even as I was out to sea. And time and time
again it was like the Lord carried me back to shore. Two friends shared this
exact same verse with me around this time and it brought so much comfort in
this season. Hebrews 6:18 “Therefore we who have fled to Him for refuge can
have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is
a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.”
My God wanted me to flee to HIM for refuge. He wanted to be
near in the messiness of my heart and pain and give me hope. And despite how I felt, He was and is my
strong and trustworthy anchor. The anchor for my soul. I came back to this
verse daily.
In addition to feeling out to sea I also found myself
needing to sort of put a puzzle back together every day. I can remember waking
up and thinking “I know the Word says you are good but this doesn’t feel good.
I know the Bible says God is in control, so why does this feel so out of
control?” There were so many things that didn’t seem to fit neatly together
anymore. I needed to remind myself that truth comes not from what I feel but
what the Word says. I needed to remind myself that He is good and even choose
by faith to believe this despite what I felt. He promises to draw near and
heal the brokenhearted. He is loving. He is in control. As I kept going
back to what is true and letting Him remind me, I felt a sort of comfort in
grief that I had never known. I felt God’s nearness in suffering that apart
from the suffering I hadn’t gotten to experience. There were definitely days it
felt more like an angry wrestling match but regardless He was in it and is in
it with me. Somehow suffering becomes shared with Him and this has intensified
my faith and trust and love for Him.
As the months went on, the ebb and flow of grief has became
less frequent and less intense. Still to this day, a year and 4 months later I’m
surprised at times by grief. I think about Nehemiah often. I long to meet him.
To know what he looks like. What he is in to. What his personality is like. The
boys still ask about him often and even though there is a tinge of pain I’m so
thankful they remember him. His death has caused us all to long for heaven
more intensely and to know and trust Jesus more deeply. What grace. To God
be the glory!
I want to end with the lyrics of a song that ministered to
me greatly over this past year…called Cornerstone:
When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
Christ alone; cornerstone
Weak made strong; in the Saviour's love
Through the storm, He is Lord
Lord of all
Weak made strong; in the Saviour's love
Through the storm, He is Lord
Lord of all
Thank you"
.jpg)
