Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing

The following is an excerpt from my previous post:

Should suffering come, so will grace (1 Pet 5:10). Should there be more pain, there will be more comfort (2 Cor 1:3–5). Should trials beat us into the dust, there will be power (2 Cor 1:8–9, 12:9). Should the all the worst things imaginable happen all at the same time, at our side will be a God who causes “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). 

We don’t need to fear that there is some future version of reality we will not be able to bear up under. Our God will let nothing ultimately crush us. He will comfort us and uphold us in the midst of any sorrow, any trouble, any pain. 

Several months after I wrote those words, we learned that our baby due in February has a rare heart disease called Truncus Arteriosus. Unfortunately, this is not a condition that can be addressed later in life but will require open heart surgery soon after birth. If all goes well, baby will spend the first 1-2 months of their life in the NICU/pediatric CICU and will have several more surgeries in the years to come.

This news hit us with pulverizing force. The grief we have felt over the last couple of months has been heavy and bitter and consistent. It’s usually not overwhelming, and I credit that God’s gracious ministry to us. But I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad. Learning about what our baby’s first weeks beyond the womb will look like has been a torturous education. I’m very grateful—deeply grateful— for the amazing medical support that will serve our little one. And I absolutely hate that they’ll need it.

Yet the words quoted above—my owns words, grounded in God’s words—have proven so true thus far. When friends ask how we’re doing, I usually say something like, “We are sad, and we feel upheld. It feels like there is solid ground beneath our feet.” Like the apostle Paul, we have found ourselves filled with sorrow, yet still able to rejoice (2 Cor 6:10). The joy we feel is not jovial or light. It’s marked by tears more than laughs. It’s not the kind you feel when pain is relieved. It’s the kind you feel when you know that your unrelenting pain is not a meaningless product of chance but a God-paved pathway to knowing him more fully.

And I believe that with all my heart—that this road of suffering has been appointed to us by a sovereign God who is drawing us in closer to himself. I believe that on this road of suffering we will encounter new and breathtaking manifestations of his power and love toward us in Christ. We will know him in ways we have not yet known him. And it will be great. It will be hard. Very hard. And it will be great.

Lord willing, we will meet this little one in three weeks. And we will meet them with weighty, tearful, faith-filled joy.

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