Mòrar’s Musings
Late on a Friday afternoon, after a long hard week of ministry, plus 5 nights and a 65 hour weekend of volunteer on-call chaplaincy at the local hospital, I got a phone call from the chaplain.
“I know you just came off on-call,” she started. “But I have a very sensitive situation and you are the only one I can turn to.”
While there is a compliment in this, it’s the compliment a minister learns to dread.
The chaplain told me about an impoverished couple, who had come all the way across the country to have their baby in the hospital where the birth mother was born.
The future comes to birth with painful groans. But with a stillbirth, there is no future. It has been snuffed out a week before, when a heart forgot to beat.
When the call came, I took a baptism stole and a huge prayer shawl that would envelop both parents, and went to baptize that wee baby.
There was grief so raw that it cut like a knife. And slowly there was conversation about the past, about the hopes and dreams that were shattered, about next steps, about love and faith. And Mum said, ‘I wonder if there will be a reason.’
We talked about dark blessings -- those blessings that do come despite the tragedy.
I remembered another mother, whose friend told her, “you really are a better person since your son died.” And she told me her response: “I’d rather be a bitch and have my son back.”
Never would she choose this journey, but slowly she began to appreciate the blessings, and this mom thought that she would too.
This is but the beginning of the birth-pangs, Jesus tells us. The future comes to birth with painful groans.
How can I say that there will be a future for those childless mothers? How can I say that the husbands and wives, mothers and sons, sisters and friends of people killed in many places this week will have a future?
Because of faith. Because even in the midst of planning her child’s burial, a mother can think of her partner, can envision herself going on, despite the difficulties.
The image that comes to mind is that of a crucible: a pot in which metals or glass are heated to a very high temperature and can be transformed into something new.
