I have been sick, and home, with the flu this week. When I was feeling better, I decided to read a couple of books on my reading list. One of those was Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo. Todd is a Wesleyan pastor who wrote about his 4 year old son's near death experience. The book is a best seller, and an easy read. I would recommend it.
Chapter 17, Two Sisters, wiped me out. In this chapter, Colton (the 4 year old) announces to his mom that he has two sisters. The problem is Colton only has one older sister. Because of Colton's age, his parents had not chosen to tell him about a miscarriage that had happened years earlier. Colton tells his mom that his sister in heaven looks a lot like his older sister Cassie, just smaller and with dark hair. He went on "in heaven, this little girl ran up to me, and she wouldn't stop hugging me." Let me say here, if you are a parent who has lost a child to miscarriage, you need to read this book. This chapter alone will bring tremendous comfort and peace to you.
In November of 1979 we were moving from a church in Manteca, California to a church in Albany, Oregon. The day the movers were at our home loading all our possessions on a truck, Kathy began to miscarry our 4 month old baby. I rushed her to the emergency room and over the next hours they took good care of Kathy through the miscarriage and the D & C procedure that followed. They kept her overnight and the next day we set out for Albany, Oregon. When we got there, I had to go immediately to work because as the new minister of music, we had the Christmas season in front of us with a lot of music to learn, rehearse and present. We did the best we could to heal, but it was a difficult time, particularly because we did not know anyone in our new city very well.
Fast forward to a time when we were serving a church in the Denver area. Our choir was singing the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir arrangement of I Bowed On My Knees and Cried Holy. Kathy told me that as we sang the song, she saw a picture, perhaps a vision, of her grandmother, who had passed away in the 70s holding the hand of a little girl with red hair, Kathy's color. I know that gave Kathy great comfort.
As I read chapter 17, I began to weep uncontrollably. After 31 years, I realized that I had never dealt with the grief of losing this baby. Between making sure Kathy was taken care of, driving to and getting settled in a new city, starting a new job and jumping into the Christmas season, I never stopped. After Christmas that first year, it was on to Easter and everything else that went into this new ministry. On Wednesday, when Kathy got home, I tried to tell her about this chapter and about my own personal experience. I could hardly get the words out. I have not cried this hard in a long, long time. I realized, however, that at one point, my tears of grief turned to tears of joy. Joy, because one day I'm going to meet this young lady, my daughter I have never met.
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