When God Takes Away What He Gives

Isaiah wanted a little brother since the time he could look around, and realize he was the only kid in the troop of his kind. I still remember the day he found out Mom was expecting our eighth – God received many desperate prayers those long months that some miracle would be preformed and the female-heavy Simao family would receive yet another boy. When we found out that this new little baby was a Naomi and not a Noah, we were worried he would take the news hard. He cried…and then wrote his new little sister a poem. When she arrived a few weeks later, she found one of her biggest admirers in her older brother, who had once prayed she would be a boy.

“I think I know why God never gave me a brother,” Isaiah told his cousin one day that Summer. “It’s so you and I could be best friends.”

Isaiah made friends with everyone, but his “best friends” were a small circle. Mainly cousins. (And if you weren’t his cousin and became one of his best friends, he called you his cousin anyway.) But if you were one of Isaiah’s friends, you were something special. You could never be replaced. And it didn’t matter if you were way younger, if you didn’t see him for months, if you moved out of state – you were stuck friends for life. His friends were his brothers. The brothers that were the answers to his prayers.

Almost two months ago, we found out Mom was expecting once more, and my instant thought was how much Isaiah had prayed for a brother. The emotions were mixed – and there were plenty of them. The pain of experiencing a new sibling Isaiah had never met, was excruciating – a whole new aspect of our life, from which he would be missing. Another person whom I would love and care about, who would never have met my dearerst brother. What is it like growing up missing a sibling you’ve never met? What is it like when you’re the only one in your family who never knew him?

But there was joy in the thought. Oh, what joy. This baby – this gift, this blessing – was coming in the midst of such grief and pain. This new child could by no means alay the sorrow in our hearts, but this child was a comfort, a way God was saying to us: I love you. I see your pain. And I have not forgotten you. 

There is such sweet pain when memories start to reach toward dreams again. But memories reach with tentative fingers. Slow. Afraid of another heartbreak. Hopeful.

I was hopeful. It was a hope through tears. A comfort that caused both sorrow and happiness. This new child I loved with an aching heart, but there was no less love because of the ache. And God was gracious. Oh, so gracious.

And then the strange signs, the rising concerns, the doctor’s appointment, the ultrasound….

No heartbeat.

Why?

Why in the midst of such existing grief and sorrow, would God give such a comfort only to take it away? Why would God put such fresh love in a heart full of such fresh grief, only to break to it again, sorrow upon sorrow? Why does it seem God would tease your memories with another dream, only to crush the tentative fingers?

I don’t know.

I’m just a saved broken human being, crying on her way to Heaven.

But I know my Savior is good.

And I know this: I do have a comfort God has given, which He will never take away. I have love – not mine, but His – which is the eternal salve, for He has saved and bound my broken pieces with His nail-pierced hands. I have a dream that is more than a dream – that is a certain hope, that is a Divine promise: He is good. He will save me. And He will come again.

At this time, I have been spared the grief of growing up with a sibling Isaiah has never met. Now I must walk through the sorrow (and joy), of him knowing the sibling I have never met. There is a fresh crack in my broken heart. There are new tears in my bottle. There is another ache in my aching soul. But one day, no more.

One day my heart, so guarded by my Savior, will be made new, and beat in a glorified chest. One day, God will collect my last tear and say, It is finished and the cork will be set in as I walk through Heaven’s gates. One day the ache of the sorrow of missing will be replaced with the ache of the joy of seeing.

Maybe today.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe decades of aches, and tears, and bottles from now.

But for that day I eagerly wait. Come, Lord Jesus. Come!

Soli Deo Gloria,