At Mars Hill Church, we value the study of Scripture. For the women in our Women’s Midweek Studies, the study of God’s word is a high priority, since we women are taught to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), and to learn to love God with our minds as well as our hearts. In the most desperate moments of our lives, we discover that the word of truth brings life where there is death, and light where there is darkness.
Jackie and her husband, Sam, have been faithful members of Mars Hill for many years and today serve at Mars Hill Sammamish with their young family. She and her family have experienced deep grief in their life, and she recently wrote about her study of God's word within the context of tremendous loss. I’m grateful for her sharing this story with us.
–Hilary
Women’s Ministry Director
An indescribable horror
Three years ago, my four-month-old son Zechariah Philip died during his afternoon nap.
It was a sunny Tuesday on June 8, 2010. I had a houseful of guests that day, entertaining my grandparents, aunt, and cousin for lunch. My family wanted to get pictures with the baby, so I went to wake my content, placid little Zeke.
The horror of the moment I found him is indescribable. My whole world shattered in seconds. I knew immediately that he was gone, though the paramedics tried hard to save him. None of it seemed real, and I was sure I would wake up at any minute. But, terribly, it was real and my Zeke was gone.
One cannot prepare for a loss like this. One day I was nursing and rocking my son—a beautiful little boy with bright brown eyes, fuzzy brown hair, and an irresistible smile—the next I was weeping over his precious picture on our computer screen and talking with a funeral director. It was a tremendous shock to not only to us, but to our entire community.
Because Zeke’s death was sudden, we were frozen in grief for a long time. As the reality of life without him began to sink in, I found that things were comforting one day and troubling the next. Everything I knew about everything was shaken.
Looking back at loss
As I look back on that time, God showed us that he was still with us, whether we “felt” him or not. He did this through his people, the church, who were the hands and feet of Jesus to us as life moved on without our Zeke. Watching people who barely knew us serve us so well was incredibly humbling. They prayed for us, cleaned our home, made countless dinners, and sent cards, letters, flowers, gifts, and emails. They didn’t get a lot in return, but they chose to sacrificially love us.
Also during that time, I can see how God comforted me as I’ve spent getting to know him again through his word.
An active word, not a Band-Aid
I’d grown up in Christianity so I had a lot of head knowledge of Scripture, and I knew all the Bible stories. But I believe I had been missing the big picture of the Bible. I was a Christian, but in my heart I still struggled with feeling like I needed to check off a “holiness” list each day. The gospel of Jesus—that he does the work of salvation for us—didn’t matter it too much because I had too much “holiness” to attend to—I needed to do the work to save myself.
With others, I would throw out a Bible verse and quickly gloss over people’s pain with a quick Scriptural “fix.” I didn’t know how to grieve with others, so I’d use the Bible to try to write off the hard questions, hoping that it would somehow help to make them feel better—and missing the value of being with someone in their pain.
The loss of Zeke forced me to wrestle with everything I knew about God. It forced me to be real and put away every trite cliché and Sunday School story. I hate that Zeke died. I hate that he won’t grow up in our family. I don’t like this “plan.” I have had to be face to face with God, having loved him for most of my life, knowing he could have prevented this but didn’t, knowing that this was part of his plan for our lives.
As I’ve studied the Bible, I’ve begun to see that God’s word is living and active, not a set of rules and stories that make me a better person. Nor is it a Band-Aid fix—it’s a medicine of truth and hope, administered by the great physician, the Holy Spirit. I have been broken, crushed to the point of desperation, and am being attended to by my Creator through his Word.
Scripture amid suffering
The night after Zeke died, I couldn’t sleep and lay tossing and weeping in bed, almost unable to breathe as sorrow gripped my heart. I read through Psalm 119 broken, begging for God to have mercy on me, begging his help for our family as we coped with this loss. God answered my desperate prayer that night. Looking back, that chapter changed how I viewed the importance of God’s word. That chapter is and will always be one of my favorites in the whole Bible.
There was also Isaiah 53:3–5:
“He (Jesus) was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
I know agonizing pain. I know debilitating grief. It brought me to my knees when I realized that Jesus became sin and sorrow for me. He took it all and faced God the Father’s rejection so I would never have to. Then he took that sin and sadness to the tomb and left it there, rescuing me from this broken life. He didn’t stay dead. He is alive and is coming back one day to bring those that believe in him to their real home.
It’s easy to lose perspective and to focus on the pain and sorrow; sometimes the hurt feels bigger and more important than life itself. There have been times over the last few years where I’ve grappled with God, gotten stuck in self-condemnation, or have sunk into depression and despair. Yet, every time, it’s been the Holy Spirit speaking through God’s word that has pulled me from the “miry bog” and “put a new song in my mouth.” Because the Bible is about Jesus, it is my truth, my comfort, my balm, my nourishment.
Portion, hope, and a new pregnancy
We put Lamentations 3:21–25 on Zeke’s prayer card at his funeral. The last two verses are:
“‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore will I hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”
I have seen this to be absolutely true. The Lord became my portion, my everything through Zeke’s death. I realized I could not put my hope in anything but him. And as we waited for him, he showed us his goodness. He gave us a new understanding of his church and his word.
I do not know why God allowed Zeke to die. But I do know that he’s using Zeke’s death to accomplish more than we could have ever asked for or imagined (Eph. 3:20).
Four months after our boy died, God shocked us with another pregnancy. I was due the month we lost Zeke.
Tomorrow, Jackie writes about the pain and fear that came with this new pregnancy and how God met her there.
