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When Rejoicing Together Becomes Mourning Together

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By Hannah Comerford

On December 30, 2018, Jason and I learned we were parents, our baby due the next September.

In those few short weeks, we had planned to tell only a few people. Yet the news was so long awaited and so unexpected. We were simply so full of joy that we couldn’t keep silent. Soon we’d announced it to our closest friends, our entire community group, the pastors and their wives, the elders.

We wanted others to rejoice with us, to celebrate with us the way Zacharias and Elizabeth’s friends had celebrated the birth of John the Baptist, the way Hannah celebrated the birth of her son Samuel, the way Sarah and Abraham had rejoiced over their son Isaac.

We’d been told this probably wouldn’t happen. And now it had.

And our friends rejoiced with us. With hugs and tears and encouragement and excited daydreaming. With squeals of joy and words of wisdom. With the promise of a party when the secret was open, when everyone knew what the Lord had done for us.

The first three weeks of January became some of the best weeks of our life together.

On January 22, 2019, we learned that our baby had died.

At some point around the same time we had started celebrating with our friends, our baby had stopped growing. My body did not realize this, had continued to move along as though everything were normal, as if our celebration would end in a joyful delivery just like any other successful pregnancy. When we saw our first ultrasound, an empty sac was all that remained.

A shame shadows the untelling of a pregnancy. In our culture, it’s often hard to remember that a safe pregnancy and birth are not guaranteed, just as no one’s next days are. Telling others that the very joy you’d celebrated not two days earlier was now no more, that you are reversing the happiness they’d had for you—it makes sense why so many wait until their pregnancy is “safe” before announcing.

The last week of January became one of the worst weeks of our life together.

In a time when our church is already struggling with loss and transition, how could we add another source of pain?

Yet that is what church is for.

It was little things that reflected this community: Text messages reminding us they’re praying for us. Buying toilet paper, Tylenol, and other household items so we didn’t have to leave the house. Ordering meals to be delivered. Cooking meals and dropping them off. Sitting and watching movies with me to distract from the pain. Being ready to comfort and help at a moment’s notice, but giving space when we needed it. Understanding when we couldn’t talk. Listening when we felt ready to talk.

The same friends who had celebrated with us mourned with us. This is friendship, community, family—Church.

Our God was big enough to grant us a child—a reminder of His strength, His goodness, His love. In sharing our news with other believers, we were able to share that reminder with them, that they might praise God.   

Our God chose to let us lose our child—a reminder that this world is fallen, that it will never be truly right until He returns. By sharing our griefs with our church family, we share in that reminder.

But our grief also carries a reminder of hope. The retelling of the book of Revelation in The Jesus Storybook Bible includes this description:

And the King says, ‘Look! God and his children are together again. No more running away. Or hiding. No more crying or being lonely or afraid. No more being sick or dying. Because all those things are gone. Yes, they’re gone forever. Everything sad has come untrue. And see—I have wiped away every tear from every eye!’

Our grief is not forever. If we mourn together, we can together remember that God will make all sad things come untrue.

We mourn together as those who have hope.

Note: We found the following articles and book helpful during this time. Regardless of whether you yourself have experienced this pain, we encourage you to read through them for a better understanding of this issue and its place in the Church.

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God Is Always There!

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By Kendrick Gilli

As Christians, we know that not everything in this world is rosy and wonderful. All sorts of things will happen to us, some from our own misguided making and some as attacks from the devil. Satan wants us to be demoralized and to lose hope and our faith in the Lord. He wants us to turn our eyes from the Lord and to doubt God’s sovereignty. However, God knows that we will face those trials, and He has provided us many examples from His word to give us hope. Just take a look at the book of Psalms. Often David cries out during times that seem hopeless, but he also always chooses to turn back to the strength of God.

The day before “snowmaggedon,” Janna was called into her principal’s office and told that she could not teach anymore due to her certificate being expired. In fact, they told her that it had been expired for 4 years, according to OSPI (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction). “How could this be?” she wondered. She had thought that she had done everything that she was supposed to have done. Her first instinct was to panic. Without her job, how would we be able to survive monetarily? How could God let this happen? Didn’t He care? It was so tempting to wallow in despair and doubt. But then, the Lord reminded me of a verse in Psalm 23 (Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.). Even in the darkest days, the Lord will be right beside us and will not leave us.

            There are going to be times of hopelessness and despair in our lives, and when we are in the middle of these tough circumstances, we often cannot see how God will help us through it. These are the times when I like to look back on the past, when God has helped my family and me through some very deep waters. I might not be able to see out of my present situation, but knowledge of my Heavenly Father loving me and leading me through past hardships helps me trust in His plan for my future. How many times has the Lord helped guide you through “impossible” situations?

            During those days of snow, OSPI was closed. It seemed to just delay the inevitable. Janna leaned on my hope in the Lord. That is fine, because there have been lots of times when I have leaned on Janna’s faith. In the end, after many days, things were worked out in Olympia. It was just a glitch in the system. Annoying! But it helped remind us of how our Heavenly Father is with us. Sometimes we need a reminder. We need to keep our eyes on the Lord.

            There is a lot of change coming down the pike in Elim. Martin is leaving. We are moving toward a new senior pastor. And we wonder what direction the Lord is taking our church. Is our faith firmly planted in the Lord? Is our hope strong that God will lead us in the right direction? Are we feeling a little apprehensive for the future? Let’s take our own look back at when God walked with us through difficult times and maybe read a few psalms.

Lord, put on our hearts and in our minds that You are walking with us through the good and the bad, the tough and the easy times. Amen.

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When Friends Leave

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By Dan Amos

When the newsletter comes out, it will be Valentine’s Day. For two weeks, Fran has treated me to a daily paper heart with a thing she loves about me. One of the things I love about her is she challenges me when I need it. Recently she said, “You don’t have a lot of really close friends you open up to, and you’re losing one of your best friends in Martin. How are you doing with that?”

I didn’t really have an answer to that, because I was avoiding the question as much as possible. It was easy to go into the mode of “What do we do next as a church to fill his position?” That has already taken a lot of time and energy of those on the Elder Board and surely the staff, but just like everyone else, I have a personal reaction to Martin moving on.

As I remember it, our first Sunday in 1994 was Father’s Day. Martin had been at Elim a couple of months at that point and was not there that day. This is one of several things I haven’t let him forget. We met soon enough, and he remembers taking me to lunch at a Taco Time near McChord where I was stationed at the time. I’ll give him that one because I don’t remember it.

One of my first memories was a church picnic at his house out in Graham, and he introduced me to Rich Henderson and we were soon part of their community group. Martin put a lot of energy into getting people into CGs. We’ve been in one ever since and we led one for many years, but we’ve never been in Martin and Kim’s group. Most of those really close friends from our first groups have also moved on—to the Philippines, Edmonds, Montana, Arizona. In the previous 10 years, we had lived on three different continents; now we’re the stable ones.

I guess that brings me to one of the first things I’m feeling. I’m tired of my friends moving away. Just because family and opportunities are elsewhere doesn’t mean you’re allowed to leave. I know that’s not rational, but it’s a feeling, so it gets to be irrational.

Martin forced me to learn to say no to the pastor. He would call me (on the landline, because this was before cell phones and texting) and ask if I wanted to meet. It was usually at 7 a.m. on Saturday. This was his prime time. It was my only chance during the week to sleep in, and I grudgingly said yes for a long time. But I learned to say no. We’d push back to maybe 9 a.m. It was still not my favorite, but it was a compromise. He later heard it forcefully from my wife at a CG leaders retreat where he wanted to get things going at 8 a.m. on Saturday. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to get someone to stay with the boys for the weekend, and she wasn’t about to be up, dressed, and ready at 8 a.m. if she didn’t have to be. He changed the start time.

Our boys are similar in ages and spent a lot of time together. They engaged in healthy property destruction, fortunately mostly at the Schlomer house. This gave us the need to talk about the mysteries of raising kids, boys in particular. They are such a wild card that you can do your best putting into their lives, but what they choose to do with it is really up to them.

All three of our boys came to know Jesus supported by the ministries of Elim. Luke was baptized by Martin in what is now the Shorts’ hot tub. JC and Di Williams lived there at the time. Nathan was very proud to put a rose in the cross made by Gene Davies signifying a new believer at Elim. Andrew was probably about the same time, but back then he didn’t like being up front.

These memories are kind of all over the place, but that’s how relationships can be. Martin is my friend, and I am mourning the coming separation. He has been a big part of my adult life and a big part of my family’s growth. I imagine there are many who have similar feelings and are concerned about what is to come next.

As Jeff Foerster said, we have a big God who is not surprised by any of this. He is with us. Martin has invested in and empowered leadership for times such as this. We will calmly and deliberately find the best man we can to fill the position of senior pastor. He won’t be Martin, but who is? He’s one of a kind.

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Are People Mostly Good by Nature?

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By Bill Naron

Doctrine and theology are terms that in our time carry a lot of negative connotations. Some people in the church find it boring or do not really understand it. For some, it is offensive because of the objective nature of the truth that it conveys. For others, they have heard so many false teachings on doctrine or theology that they are not even sure what to think.

One thing is certain: we live in a culture where ambiguity is king! Truth must be relative, and culture encourages us to go out and find OUR truth. “My truth is good for me, but it may not be true for you” could be the mantra of our culture today. In many ways, the Church has struggled with how to engage culture with truth in this time. We want to share Jesus with the world, but we do not want to come across as judgmental.

In this struggle, it becomes hard for us to see how to stand on objective truth. We then see the pillars of objective truth start to corrode. We can see this portrayed in the following survey from Ligonier Ministries.

In 2018, they gave people the statement, “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” Among evangelicals, 55% either strongly agreed or moderately agreed with this statement. Only 42% of evangelicals disagreed, and another 3% of evangelicals were not sure. When you look at the data from the overall survey group, which is inclusive of the general American public regardless of religion, they show that an overwhelming 67% of those surveyed agree, while 26% of those surveyed disagree and 7% were unsure. These numbers are astonishing!

The Church in majority believes that people are mostly good by nature. This is a huge contradiction to the truth of Scripture. In Mark 10:18 Jesus says, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” Jesus plainly states the truth for us that no one except God is good. In Romans chapter 3, Paul expounds upon this point and lays out for us the state of humanity.

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips” (Romans 3:10-13).

Paul lays out for us the state of humanity. We are trapped in sin; we are not seeking after God. We are by our nature opposed to God. In this it is seen that no person is without sin, that every person has fallen short of God’s glory. Because of this we were subject to God’s wrath, we deserve the penalty of sin, which is death.

There was seemingly no hope for us. Like a corpse, we were lifeless; the members of our body could not seek out for our Creator, nor were we able to commune with Him, because we were so diseased. Jesus was the only one who could do what He did; He was and is the only one who could and can save us.

We now have hope! We are now aware of our sin, and while we strive to live a life wholly dedicated to God, our flesh is still inclined to sin (Romans 7:18). Our justification was instant, but our sanctification takes time.

If it were true that people are mostly good by nature, then why did Jesus come, and whom then did He come to save? We diminish the sacrifice of our Savior with this type of belief. Since our beliefs will influence our actions, this false belief may also cause us to take a more apathetic approach to outreach, when the reality of what we see in the Scriptures and the examples of the apostles show us that this should move us to compassion for those who are lost.

Feel the weight of what we were saved from, knowing that those who are lost are subject to the same fate. Jesus endured the cross for His bride that we may be reconciled to the Father. He also endured the cross for those around us. Let us boast in the cross of Christ and rejoice in His resurrection, that we may go forth and share this hope with the world.

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