When God Takes, He Also Gives

When the doctor told us it was a boy, we were ecstatic. My wife, Wanette, and I had cherished the arrival of our two beautiful daughters. Now we had wanted a son. And he had come. We named him Matthew (meaning “a gift from God”) Peter William-the double middle name was an heirloom of my family for four generations.

Following the doctor’s routine check of our son’s moving parts, we were allowed to take him back with us to the postpartum room. He nursed vigorously from his mother and we admired him with pride. He was beautiful! With joy we shared the news of his arrival with family and friends until fatigue finally caught up with us. It was 3 A.M. and I prepared to return home.

Five hours later the phone rang. It was Wanette. Something was wrong with Matthew, she said shakily. An hour earlier the attending nurse had noticed Matthew’s color was not good. The doctors had quickly examined him and diagnosed the problem as either pneumonia or fetal heart circulation-a condition where the heart valve does not close and the child functions as if still inside the womb. Matthew was rushed to the intensive care nursery (ICN) unit. He lay there, helpless and alone, hooked to a multitude of machines.

We were devastated. How many times had Wanette and I walked past the ICN unit the day before and pitied the premature infants who lay there fighting gamely for life. Now Matthew lay with them, seemingly so out of place. He was so big-eight pounds, two ounces-but was now as vulnerable as the rest in their struggle for life.

For two and a half days Matthew lay there with no change in his condition. We spent much of the time talking with specialists. They and the staff people working with our son were thoughtful, considerate and kind. But they could not calm the fear that ravaged our hearts. Time after time we visited the ICN unit-feeling helpless, but wanting so much to be near our sick son.

On the third day, with Wanette just home, we received a call from the hospital. Would we sign papers that would allow Matthew to be flown to the University of Minnesota hospital for a heart catheterization? We quickly agreed and, with our parents and two daughters, helped load Matthew into the ambulance for the ride to the waiting plane. We followed the ambulance to the airport, and I helped place my son aboard the aircraft. It was cold and rainy that March afternoon, and as I watched the Cessna 410 lift off the ground, fear tugged at my heart. Would I see my son alive again?

Two hours later Matthew’s nurse called. The transfer was complete and the catheterization would be performed within the hour. The minutes crawled by so slowly. At last the phone rang. The five veins that exchange blood in Matthew’s heart were hooked up incorrectly-a congenital defect that occurs only once in more than 100,000 births. But it had happened to our Matthew. We were numb. We scarcely heard the doctors say they would perform emergency surgery in the morning to try to correct the biological malady.

We wanted to be with Matthew, but Wanette was still too weak and the weather too bad for us to travel. Instead we kept a close vigil at home. The head surgeon called and told us the operation would begin at 8 A.M. Had we been informed of the chances of success? I said no, but weakly volunteered a hopeful guess-75 percent? The doctor said 40 to 50 percent was more likely.

Morning and afternoon muddled into one torturous eternity. Frequently the silence was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone and each time I would spring to my feet and clutch the receiver expectantly, straining for a word of good news. Each time, though, the voice at the other end belonged to friends or family wondering about little Matt’s condition. We knew that brothers and sisters in Christ across the country were praying for our little boy. The outcome was in God’s hands. But what would it be?

At six o’clock that evening the phone rang once more. This time it was the doctor. His voice betrayed his fatigue, his words crushed our hearts. It did not look good for Matthew. The necessary changes had been made but his chances of survival, let alone a full recovery, had diminished even from what they were.

We sat as if drugged, with no appetite and few words of hope. The hours passed blankly. Shortly after midnight, the phone rang once more. Matthew’s incision was beginning to ooze. A half-hour later the phone rang again. Matthew’s heart had stopped. For thirty minutes they had tried to restart it. They could not. Our son was dead.

Anger burned through the fog of my emotions. “How could God cheat me out of my son?” I cried, forgetting that he too had once lost a son unjustly.

In the days that followed we went through the motions of a funeral and burial, but my anger would not release its grip. People tried to comfort us with verses or passages of Scripture that had been meaningful to them. But filtered through the anger I felt toward God, the verses rang of clichs and triteness. The words of comfort I as a pastor had spoken to others in mourning were suddenly empty of solace when they were offered to me, rebuffed by a hard shell of angry resistance.

I was pastor of a newly formed congregation, a task that demands more than a person can give at times. My family and I were already paying a severe price for God’s sake, weren’t we? We didn’t need or deserve this kind of devastation. God, I’m pouring out my life for your kingdom-and this is the thanks I get?

My only recourse was to get back at God in the only way I could: I refused to talk to him. Sure, I prayed “professionally”-when the setting demanded it or someone asked the pastor to lead in prayer. But personal prayer had become suddenly meaningless for me. What about the many, many prayers offered during the months prior to Matthew’s birth when we had asked God for a healthy, strong, normal baby? What about the hundreds of prayers that were spoken during Matt’s intense struggle for life? Of what use is it to pray to a God who goes on vacation when you need him the most?

My struggle took on new dimensions in time. When I wasn’t driven by anger, I was tormented by guilt. After all, I was a pastor. Maybe my anger was justified, but it was directed at my employer. How could I be so angry at God yet still claim to be his messenger?

I had prayed countless times for a son. God knew how much I had wanted one. Then, just when it seemed he had heard and answered my prayer, God had yanked my son away like an ornery child who jerks away a ball of string just as his pet kitten reaches out to possess it. If that’s how God answers prayers, I fumed, who needs it? Who needs him?

The combination of anger and guilt successfully drove a wedge between me and the rest of the world. I even managed to keep my wife from entering the inner sanctum of my private battle. Once our district minister and his wife came to encourage us, but I tuned them out even before they sat down. I wanted to be angry at God and would let no one pry me away from my one solace. Yet I was privately embarrassed for feeling as I did. Even as I relished-even stoked-the coals of anger inside, I was being scorched by the flames.

My ordeal came to a head several months later. A friend and fellow pastor had invited Wanette and me to his home for a get-together with another pastor who had traveled some distance for a series of special meetings. I knew this pastor to be intensely interested in people and able to get to the core of one’s being with two or three quick questions.

As he talked his way around the room of guests, I knew instinctively that he was going to ask me questions I didn’t want to answer. But when the questions came, something inside let go and I spilled some of the sour feelings. He looked at me quietly, patiently, then informed me that I would be the one to drive him back to his motel room that night.

The evening eventually passed. His motel was across town, so we had plenty of time to talk. My loving friend began to probe and dig-but gently. By the time we parked in front of the motel we were at the heart of the matter. I can still hear his words: How long do you think you need to be angry at God in order to make him pay for what has happened? Don’t you see that what you are doing is destroying you, your family, your ministry?

Nobody had dared say that to me before. I knew I was being challenged by someone who loved me very much. I discovered that he too had lost a child during the early years of his own ministry, and so was speaking with the voice of experience. I had no answers to the horrible questions he had asked, and we sat in silence. Finally, we had prayer and said good night.

Driving home, I suddenly found myself pouring out my heart to God about everything that was churning there. I let fly everything I felt and thought. Two miles from home and I suddenly was out of ammunition and I knew it. For the first time in six months, I stopped fighting God. For the first time I saw my struggle for what it was-failure to remove myself from the throne of my life. I had been acting like a child who throws a tantrum when his favorite toy is taken away. All events revolved around me and my desires. Even my “sacrificial service” of building a new church, I could see, was mostly an attempt to build a good name for myself.

Exhausted of all pent-up emotion and laid bare before God, I asked him for forgiveness. As I did, an inner calm settled over me as I had never experienced before. The torment within was suddenly quieted. I began to put to death the old self with its childish desires. My infected soul had finally been lanced, and true healing could at last begin.

To say my battle with anger ended immediately and forever that night would not be totally true. I battle it each time I see a little boy about the same age Matthew would have been had he lived. That urge to become hostile and rebellious toward God is my Achilles’ heel. But when the urge comes, I recall and affirm the night I laid aside all that miserable baggage-I willfully choose not to pick up again what has been cast off through God’s forgiving power.

Unfortunately, I can’t list six or seven quick-and-easy steps that can help someone else live victoriously with grief, or write out a simple “how-to” prescription for conquering anger toward God. I can only say that when those times come, don’t shut out God. Involve him in your struggle; tell him honestly just how deeply you hurt. If I have learned anything, it is that God is love, and in his graciousness he allows us-even invites us-to express our deepest feelings. Some of the things I shouted at God that night are not printable, yet I discovered that God does not send a bolt of lightning to strike us dead for saying them.

Eventually, too, we need to deal with the guilt that accompanies feelings of resentment toward God. We who profess to be godly struggle doubly for harboring feelings we have been taught are profoundly ungodly. I felt terribly guilty for being angry at God. But it was only by honestly expressing what I felt, then realizing that God fully understands those feelings because he made us to be feeling creatures, that I could finally claim the forgiveness he freely offers.

In these months since Matthew’s death, Wanette and I have learned much about ourselves and the people God has placed in our lives. We now see this experience as having been a training ground for ministry-not that it was ordained as such, but that it has become so for us. We want to share our experiences with other parents who have lost or will lose their infant child. It would be a waste of our son’s short life not to use what we have learned about pain, anger, and frustration to help others who must bear the same severe burden.

Yes, it is still hard for us at times. Even as I write these lines it is difficult to swallow for the lump in my throat. But we are better, fuller people today than we were a year ago. I am convinced of that. A patient God and the caring thoughts and support of our Christian brothers and sisters have helped make that so.

-Randall Tschetter

Sioux Falls Bible Fellowship

Sioux Falls, South Dakota