grieving with guinever

My 2 year old daughter died. There was no prolonged illness, no warning. No time to get used to the fact that she would probably die. There was an accident and then a little over an hour later, she was gone. I left the hospital, stunned.

Silently, I processed her death, sitting on the couch all afternoon as friends came and went.

• Why did God allow this to happen?
• Where was the miracle?
• Where were the guardian angels?
• Why ME?
• Why NOT me?
• God wanted this to happen.
• It’s not my fault.
• Nothing, no one could have prevented her death.
• It was her time to die.
• God wanted her to die today.
• Abby’s death was supposed to happen.

I didn’t like her dying then, and I don’t like it now, but this is what God wanted to happen. Abby dying nearly 2 years ago was the plan for her, for me, for my family. So I rested that day in God’s sovereignty, and experienced peace. I am trying to rest now, but it is harder now than it was that first day, those first weeks, the first months.

Gary North wrote about his son’s recent death in his newsletter, The Daily Reckoning. “My former pastor, novelist Henry Coray, who died in his nineties a few years ago, said this in a sermon over 40 years ago:

“Until the day that God has pre-ordained before history began that we are to die, we are immortal. On that special day, we are inescapably dead.”

So we are immortal until the day that God has pre-ordained for us to die. This quote makes me pause. I need to read it over and over. I am reminded of General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson who sat up tall on his horse during battle, bullets whizzing past him. Captain John D. Imbode asked him how he could be so brave. Jackson replied,

Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.

To accept God’s sovereignty without hestitation is what I want to do, what I try to do. Sometimes I fail at this. It is a daily decision to rest in God’s sovereignty, accept His will for my life.