Trying to stay strong after Stillbirth

  • Thread starter Thread starter john_ks
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

john_ks

Guest
Hello all,

Almost a year ago now on Christmas Day, 2012, my wife and I delivered our beautiful son, Noah Flynn, who had passed away in the womb just a day before. We were in RCIA at the time in our local parish, studying to become Catholic. We were so excited to have our 2 year old son Henry and new baby baptized at the same time together, but sadly it did not turn out this way. My wife and I were both in non-denominational churches before wanting to join the Catholic faith and it felt as though all was falling into place.

We were completely shocked when our son suddenly died, when we thought we were having a healthy pregnancy. Noah was growth restricted, a phenomenon that rarely occurs in the third trimester, we were 38 weeks along.

To this day, I do not know why this happened. Did God not think we loved this child? Was there something we were being punished for, past sins perhaps? I know this all sounds crazy, but this is what a parent thinks of when their child dies.

Can anyone here explain to me why God allows such tragedy to occur? Also, is my child safe in Heaven? Finally, was there a reason for this that we cannot fully see?

Thank you for helping us heal, this has been a long, hard journey.

John_KS
 
To begin with, I am sorry for your loss.
The church provides many opportunities for God’s healing grace to overcome the tragedies we encounter. There is a special blessing for a woman after childbirth when the baby has died. It’s one of two “ante-partum” blessings (the other being for a successful delivery). Get an appointment for you and your spouse with the pastor. Ask for that blessing. It is a very moving and encouraging prayer.
May God bless.

Reb Levi
 
What God leads you to, God leads you through.
Sometimes, GOD gives us more than we can handle…don’t let anyone tell you different! If they do they are only dealing with their own issues. When you face the severe medical issues and/or death of a child…God is surely giving you more than you can handle.
So…what are we to do?

Give it to God.

He’s asking you to trust in His plan…and it isn’t always easy…but it’s THE WAY! I think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane…and the agony that he felt…and I compare my suffering to what Jesus suffered on the Cross…and I try to be silent (Thank you St John of the Cross!)
 
john_ks said:
To this day, I do not know why this happened. Did God not think we loved this child? Was there something we were being punished for, past sins perhaps? I know this all sounds crazy, but this is what a parent thinks of when their child dies.

Can anyone here explain to me why God allows such tragedy to occur? Also, is my child safe in Heaven? Finally, was there a reason for this that we cannot fully see?
Click to expand...
John, There are two things I want to address separately. Your post has touched me deeply and personally because in the lead up to Christmas, I also feel a strange mix that you will come to know. We lost our first child Gerard Robert to stillbirth on Christmas day in 1989. He would have been 24 this coming Christmas day. I am literally there with you and your wife in this awful suffering that the first year is. So terribly terribly sorry.

Through support networks, I quickly came to realise that bad things happen to good people every day. God isn’t in any way exacting His vengeance through these means and its not good to dwell on such thoughts. In time it makes you identify so much more deeply with others in deep and unjust suffering like those in Africa and other famine and war torn places as well as those in our own midst etc. People around us felt so sorry for us that this happened on Christmas day, but I never felt that. I always felt somehow joined with Our Lady who gave birth to her Son on this day and also lost Him so unfairly. If Our Lady suffered this in her life… I surely couldn’t feel that it was some sort of divine retribution in my life. I’d also been a paid up member of the Right to Life movement since I’d left school and it comforted me to know that at least Christmas day is the least likely day that abortions would happen anywhere in the world. That seemed very important to me.

Secondly, the Church used to teach that unbaptised infants went to Limbo. She now teaches that these children souls are left to the mercy of God. I have always known that my little boy is with Jesus in heaven. I have asked him to intercede along with Mary and the Saints for the sake of one or other of his brothers or sister in the many bumps and trials they have gone through during their lives. This is technically not the Churchs position, but as a mother, I just can’t relate to my child in some ethereal limbo. They must be somewhere right? Mothers and Fathers have to find them and relate. That’s our children! Of course they are with Jesus in heaven. (I wouldn’t have a theological argument about it though as I respect the Church teaching as very important)

Again, I join my prayers to yours in the lead up to Noah’s anniversary date. In my sons rememberance album I pasted the following prayer… The Prayer of Abandoment.

**Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Charles de Foucauld**

Noah Flynn Rest In Peace.
 
john_ks said:
To this day, I do not know why this happened. Did God not think we loved this child? Was there something we were being punished for, past sins perhaps? I know this all sounds crazy, but this is what a parent thinks of when their child dies.

Can anyone here explain to me why God allows such tragedy to occur? Also, is my child safe in Heaven? Finally, was there a reason for this that we cannot fully see?

Thank you for helping us heal, this has been a long, hard journey.

John_KS
Click to expand...
I am so very sorry for your loss. Losing a child is painful and pain like that just doesn’t make sense. It hurts too much to make sense.

I know because 27 years ago we lost our Steven when I was 26 weeks pregnant and was hit head on by a wrong way driver while driving to the post office to mail our income tax return. That’s why it happened to us. Because I didn’t see a wrong way driver until it was too late to get out of the way. But I still ask God why because the reasons don’t fix the sorrow. I may not know why my son had to die but I know that today my husband and I are especially concerned for the rights of the unborn.

We entrust our beloved deceased children into the hands of God. Your child is blessed to have such loving parents who grieve for him and desperately want him to be with God.

I will pray for you and and wife.
 
I grieve for your pain in this loss, especially since it occurred at Christmas, and you had no warning at all. I also lost 5 children (two of them twins) either in the womb or minutes or hours after birth, as all were premature. It has been many years, but I still remember each birthday, and I too ask them to join their prayers to mine and to intercede for me. Only one was able to be baptized at birth, but I have always believed God’s mercy is sufficient to take these innocent little ones straight to Heaven.

The only answer I was ever given, other than that it was God’s Will, was someone who gave me a quote about “to save them from something which would have been worse”. Oddly, that did comfort me.

I will say a prayer for you and your lost little one tonight, but I believe that baby is now with God and praying for you too. God be with you.
 
john_ks said:
Can anyone here explain to me why God allows such tragedy to occur? Also, is my child safe in Heaven? Finally, was there a reason for this that we cannot fully see?

John_KS
Click to expand...
John, you are not alone.

My wife and I suffered the loss of our son in the second trimester. It was devastating.

I don’t know why. All that I know is that now we see through a glass dimly.

I hope one day to see him and talk with him. He is still a part of our lives and we rejoice in him even though he is in heaven.

Peace be with you. God bless.
 
John, God created life, and gave you and your wife the beautiful gift of being able to pass His life on to new little people. Satan created death when he coaxed us all into sinning.

It was God’s design that you would always have Noah with you! At your most basic level you know you were created to be together, forever in a loving relationship. Unfortunately there is a war going on for souls. A jealous, hateful being doesn’t want you to be happy, and live with God in Heaven. He created sin, disease, and death, and then blames it all on God! Yet God has, and is, over coming this hideous death. Jesus will come again to establish a new Heaven & new Earth where we will never be separated again!

Some have had visions of Mary in Heaven with all the babies laughing, and singing with them till they can be reunited with their families. Noah is with his Heavenly family, but he longs for you to join him someday. You & your wife have created this lovely little man. He is a blessing to all of us. The world is a better place because Noah is in it. Noah is eternal! He still has a good & wonderful purpose. Maybe it is to pray you into Heaven. Find a way, through your tears, to celebrate Noah this Christmas. God bless you my friend.
 
John, I am very sorry for your loss, and am praying for you and your family.
 
I have nothing to give but my prayers, sympathy and support! I. AM. SO, SO SORRY
 
I am so sorry.

A prayer I learned on CAF that comforted me after a miscarriage:

Jesus, I wanted to hold my child on my lap and tell him about You. But now, I ask you to hold him on Your lap and tell him about me.

By the virtue of Hope newadvent.org/cathen/07465b.htm I believe all innocents who died before being baptized are with God.
 
I’m so sorry you are having to suffer this. When Lazarus died, Jesus wept. Do not think that tears for the loss of a loved one are inconsistent with holiness and faith. You have lost a dear one, and as Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Mourning is very much OK.

When your child died, you yourself were in RCIA. Had you yourself died, you would have been granted an ecclesiastical funeral, just as if you had in fact been baptized already. Likewise, especially since it was your intention to have your child baptized, there is no reason to believe your child is not now in a like state. The Church does not say “this one is in heaven” or “that one is not in heaven” except for those saints who are proven by miracles granted by God, but Pope Benedict said that salvation of unbaptized babies and others is most certainly within the prerogative of God. Baptism is the normal route, but nothing is impossible for God. Jesus said “let the little ones come unto Me” and noted that their angels were nearest to the throne of God. There was not a baptized child in the whole lot that he was talking about. He meant to say that in light of his saving work that removed the devil’s claim against us, the innocent ought to be seen as already close to God.

Why do any of us suffer and die? That is the way of this world now. It was inevitable that you would lose your child or your child would lose you. Christ came to defeat death; it is not the will of God that death operates in the world as it does.

At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” Luke 13:1-5

By “perish as they did”, the Lord did not mean perishing in a similar accident. He meant dying without being prepared for it. We don’t know when we’re going to die. The main thing is to always be ready, to be as fit for Heaven as we can at all times.

It is good to pray for all the dead, including our children–who knows, but perhaps this is the special merit of young babies who die so young, that their “work” is to prompt those who lost them more to prayer–but do not look at your child’s death as something God “wanted”. Look at it, rather, as being like all the trials the devil tempts and torments us with. Look at it as an opportunity for God to change the world by the obedience of those who love him. The devil would have you react to this calamity; God will defeat evil by transforming it into yet one more defeat of his enemies because you chose to respond in faith, love and hope instead of reacting in ways the devil would have you do. Let God comfort you and let God raise you up–not one or the other, but both!–so this tragedy will have grace come out of it, as the Pascal Mystery teaches us to do.
 
EasterJoy said:
It is good to pray for all the dead, including our children–who knows, but perhaps this is the special merit of young babies who die so young, that their “work” is to prompt those who lost them more to prayer–but do not look at your child’s death as something God “wanted”. Look at it, rather, as being like all the trials the devil tempts and torments us with. Look at it as an opportunity for God to change the world by the obedience of those who love him. The devil would have you react to this calamity; God will defeat evil by transforming it into yet one more defeat of his enemies because you chose to respond in faith, love and hope instead of reacting in ways the devil would have you do. Let God comfort you and let God raise you up–not one or the other, but both!–so this tragedy will have grace come out of it, as the Pascal Mystery teaches us to do.
Click to expand...
I have always suspected this is true.

We all want to imagine that the important work we are to do in this life is a conscious act of our will. But perhaps that is just our pride. Our children who die young have done the work of exercising their gift of life for as long as they were able. That is a powerful message that those of us who live on ought to share.
 
SMHW said:
I have always suspected this is true.

We all want to imagine that the important work we are to do in this life is a conscious act of our will. But perhaps that is just our pride. Our children who die young have done the work of exercising their gift of life for as long as they were able. That is a powerful message that those of us who live on ought to share.
Click to expand...
The saints in heaven do the work of intercession on our behalf–we know they have won this privileged place in the economy of grace. There is no reason to believe that those who die during their innocence are not given a similar sort of work to do before the Final Judgment, work which it would be their pleasure to do, but useful and vital work to us, all the same.
 
EasterJoy said:
The saints in heaven do the work of intercession on our behalf–we know they have won this privileged place in the economy of grace. There is no reason to believe that those who die during their innocence are not given a similar sort of work to do before the Final Judgment, work which it would be their pleasure to do, but useful and vital work to us, all the same.
Click to expand...
Oh definitely!!!

If (as I suggested in my previous post) those who die innocent are doing good and useful work before they die, how much more might they be doing good and important work while waiting for the Final Judgment!
 
EasterJoy said:
The saints in heaven do the work of intercession on our behalf–we know they have won this privileged place in the economy of grace. There is no reason to believe that those who die during their innocence are not given a similar sort of work to do before the Final Judgment, work which it would be their pleasure to do, but useful and vital work to us, all the same.
Click to expand...
I understand why the Church has not made this definitive explanation, as the doctrine of Original sin must be treated with the greatest theological care. But what I actually marvel at, is the general acceptance among people that have lost an unbaptised child, that that child is in heaven and fully with God and not only that, there is a natural inclination in a bereaved parent, to regard their child in the way we regard the Angels. In my family, we’ve had probably a higher than average occurence of stillbirth as my sister, cousin and aunty have all suffered a stillbirth or more (as well as a number of miscarriages). I find it an amazing experience to share our similar regard for our deceased unbaptised babies and can really understand the place of ‘sensus fidelium’ in the Churchs processes in things.
 
LongingSoul said:
I understand why the Church has not made this definitive explanation, as the doctrine of Original sin must be treated with the greatest theological care. But what I actually marvel at, is the general acceptance among people that have lost an unbaptised child, that that child is in heaven and fully with God and not only that, there is a natural inclination in a bereaved parent, to regard their child in the way we regard the Angels. In my family, we’ve had probably a higher than average occurence of stillbirth as my sister, cousin and aunty have all suffered a stillbirth or more (as well as a number of miscarriages). I find it an amazing experience to share our similar regard for our deceased unbaptised babies and can really understand the place of ‘sensus fidelium’ in the Churchs processes in things.
Click to expand...
I know that free will is in operation for all of us, which keeps the Church from making any such pronouncement, but considering the amount of work it takes the evil one to separate a soul from God even when given a long life in which to do it and the help of so many glamorous distractions and carefully-placed and subtle lies as we face in this vale of tears, it would seem the task of ensnaring such an innocent out of the saving hand of Our Lord would be impossible in practical terms! They have both a flying head start and a short distance to travel, not to mention a natural inclination to go the right way upon seeing him: Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Luke 18:16-17
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top