Losing Justin
Daniel Propson on Miscarriage as God’s Bitter Word
God made man in such a way that, if he simply did what was pleasant to him, he would in short order have a bunch of smaller versions of himself toddling around at his feet. And as this is what a man (or a woman) was made for, the man without children ought to ask himself: What good is everything I manage to build, if I can offer it to no one?
To be sure, the parent’s calling is to give of himself, to the point of death, to meet the needs of his children. But the father (or mother) may find joy in this sacrifice, while the man or woman who is free of children all too often finds that his freedom is a burden, a loss, and a source of pain.
Particular Losses
Not very long ago, my wife and I experienced what modern doctors call a “miscarriage.” The term used is too gentle. Let me say what actually happened. We had a one-month-old baby in utero, and for some reason the little one died on us. We were just married, and so excited about having this child, but our smiles were lost in a storm of bleeding and weeping and questioning.
The reaction of several acquaintances to our loss was this: We were not taking this “complication” (as some put it) very well. And that word—complication—tells me something about the way we think of babies. Either a couple wants a baby, or they don’t. If they want a baby, miscarriage hurts them, but if they have another pregnancy, and are able to carry that baby to term, they will be perfectly happy.
What many people do not fathom is that, to the father and mother, each particular child is a unique gift, and they desire to know this one individual who has left them. When a “miscarriage” occurs, the Christian family does not weep because the child is dead forever, for in fact the child lives. No, the family weeps for its personal loss—not the generic selfish loss of a child, but the particular selfish loss of this child.
My wife and I would have been, in a worldly sense, better off without that baby. Our finances would have been more stable; our marriage would have had more time to establish itself; my wife would have been able to work full-time in her first year as a nurse. There was no external benefit to having that child, and the pregnancy was at least as worrying as it was exciting.
And yet, losing that child was hard, one of the hardest things we have ever experienced. People were encouraging, but many did not seem to comprehend that this was not a matter of struggling with a lack of children in a generic way, but with the loss of this one irrevocably irreplaceable child.
We heard whispers from the Lord about our baby. Perhaps it is presumptuous to say that. I just know that we were listening for God, and certain things came to us. We felt that this was a son, and we felt that the Lord was speaking to us about justice. In response to these senses, we named him Justin: Justin Benedict (the good word of justice).
And yet, God’s “benediction” upon us did not seem either good or just at the time. It kept us from knowing our son, from watching him grow. It was a bitter word, a word that inspired anger and frustration. Blessings like these have the power to destroy, to diminish, to disillusion.
Daniel Propson is an English teacher at Lincoln High School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He and his wife attend St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Detroit, and are members of the Word of Life community in Ann Arbor. They live with their two young children in midtown Detroit.
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