We didn’t choose it or plan it, but it chose us, and our plans changed

There are moments etched in our history that define us, and I know so many people for whom this is indelibly true.  Whether it’s a great escape or an incredible moment of fortune or it was a tragedy we just had to endure, those things don’t just change us, they become us.

When Sarah and I walked our one-year-old out of the ultrasound rooms bewildered with numbness back in July 2014 we knew our world had changed.  It took us weeks to acclimatise to that news, but surely there was worse news on the horizon.  We still look back in a sense of bewilderment as to how we got through, and just how faithful God was to carry us when we were weak and without.

We neither chose to lose our son Nathanael to stillbirth nor did we plan any of it, and yet plans were made, and we ultimately had to choose to walk that path.  We may not have had a choice, but realistically we did.

We chose to keep stepping, because of all things it is easier to keep stepping forward than it is to throw ourselves onto the ground in a tantrum.

Somehow we found solace in that, even in preparing to lose our baby who grew so well in the womb, at least we had each other, and amid the craziness of betrayal smashed into our ambiguous grief along with a numbing time schedule, we learned to laugh at the silliest of things.

That period defined us and many of the closest people to us in a way that still blows us away.  Such events should have completely vanquished our hope.  They should have crushed us into the ground.  They should have finished us.  But they didn’t.

You know in the times that seemed beyond the pale for you, that certain things hold together in disaster.  Somehow what should completely overwhelm us, doesn’t.  Even if it seems to overwhelm us at the time, inevitably we do crawl up from the canvas.

The memory of driving home, for me it was a fragment of vision going over a bridge, stays with me, and it’s a core memory of a time that chose us, a time our plans were changed.

Our times are changing, and they have indeed changed our plans.  Not a single one of us isn’t completely shocked by what has happened in the past few weeks.  In Australia two months ago, it was bushfires.  The current situation has put that way back into the shade.

We accepted our lives were changing back in 2014, and though we didn’t like it, we found it far easier to roll with it than to do anything else.  And it worked out.

We will look back from years ahead of now and find that it worked out.

If you feel inclined to share, you may.