Divine Appointments

Maddox’s would-be first birthday is only a week away. I’m having a hard time missing him tonight, so I'm here to share.

I believe in God’s sovereignty, that He is all-knowing and that He is all-powerful. I believe that God wrote all of my days and every moment in them in His book before the beginning of time (Psalm 139:16). I cling to these beliefs and they have helped see me through this trying year. Because I believe in God’s omniscience (His infinite knowledge) and omnipresence (that He is everywhere all at once), I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe He is in every moment. God is with me now and has walked before me to meet me in my future, no matter what tomorrow brings. All that said, I do believe in divine appointments, and I’d like to share three one of them from the past couple of weeks (I ran out of time to share the other two tonight).

Last Monday (or the Monday before?) at work, I had to reach out to a service provider for the company I work for to get assistance installing software on my computer. It’s Monday morning, right? To give you an idea of my mood at the time, let’s put it this way: I’m sad the weekend’s over, I’m busy ‘cause it’s Monday and the last thing I want to do is spend an hour on the phone talking to an IT person about getting this software to work. God sure showed me. By chance, the person who was supposed to help me wasn’t available and had one of her colleagues call me instead – and he was the nicest guy! We made small talk while we worked through the software problem I was having.

When you find out that someone’s around your age and married like you, the follow-up question is always, “Do you have any kids?” Always. Guaranteed. 100% of the time!

Something I committed to in the earliest days after giving birth to Maddox is sharing him with every opportunity I get. I quickly realized how common stillbirth is, but that so few people were open about their losses. Andrew and I agreed that we would recognize Maddox as one of our children for as long as we live. When people ask us if we have kids we say that our son Maddox is in heaven. When we have more children someday and we’re asked how many kids we have, our answer won’t only include our living children; we’ll always have +1, Maddox in heaven.

And that’s always a perfect segue to talking about God and how even through the unimaginable nightmare of losing a child, He is worthy of our praise!

That Monday morning, God took a phone call that I didn’t want to have and turned it into one of the best conversations I’ve had about Him and Maddox in months. I love to share Maddox with new people, even when it’s hard sometimes, and Shane was genuinely interested in hearing about him, learning how to respond to others who have lost a child through miscarriage or stillbirth, and – the best part – praising God for the divine appointment He’d orchestrated thousands of years ago. Talk about a good Monday!

My conversation with Shane and sharing this now reminds me of a blog post my greatest friend, Meghan, shared with me a couple weeks after Maddox was born. I dug through my email tonight to find the link – The Nonconformist Mom. At that time, it was too hard for me to read most of Jennifer’s posts about her dear friend’s loss (and subsequent loss), but one thing I did have the strength to read has stuck with me all year.

In a post titled “God’s Grace in Zion”, Jennifer says:

Think, had Zion [her friend’s stillborn son] lived here on earth, the most that would have happened is that people would bring over buckets of KFC for a week…maybe buy a pack of diapers. Things would go on as normal.

But now…people are praying. All over the world…as far away as Israel and maybe further…people are searching. People are begging for peace and mercy. God is being praised. God is being glorified. Faith is being increased. It’s a beautiful thing.

A beautiful thing indeed! It would have been a lot of fun to be able to answer Shane’s question by telling him about our 11-month-old boy who gets into everything and leaves me exhausted. But Jennifer is right when she says about Zion earlier in the same post, "Without opening his eyes, he preaches. Without speaking a word, he testifies to the grace and sovereignty of God." The same is true of Maddox. His life and death has caused prayers to be prayed and God to be praised. All year people have prayed. All year people have praised Him. From the moment we learned that Maddox had gone on to heaven to this very second, his life and our shared story has pointed straight to God. I’m humbled that God would use Andrew, Maddox and me in this way.

I would never ask for this. In fact, I have asked God to take this cup from me a hundred times. I wish Maddox was here every second of every day, but praise God for the life that Maddox had and praise God for this journey that has brought us closer to Him!

Thank you, Lord, for our little boy and that the first time he opened his eyes it was Jesus' face he saw.