Austin's Blog

Parents who lose a child often struggle to move forward. To move forward is to leave them behind. How can you leave the one you love so much behind? How can you bear to forge a new life without them? How can I possibly live the rest of my days without my precious son? I have to remind myself that I am not leaving Gabriel behind. For the believer, this “left behind” mentality is simply not true. We aren’t “leaving them behind” but continuing to live as you move forward to heaven, where they are found. Moving forward isn’t moving away from him but actually moving toward him. We honor the Lord by continuing to serve Him. Each opportunity is one step closer to them as well as God. Emotionally, I’ll be honest and say I don’t want to move forward. I don’t want to live our lives without Gabriel. Yet, we must. This is the life God has for us and the time we have belongs to Him. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Biblical hope is a memory of the future. Our memories of Gabriel will one day melt away into the reality of resurrection glory—my very son in my arms, never to be taken from me again because of Jesus Christ. Tim Keller writes, “Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration—not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.” We must move forward towards him. We can’t go back. We can’t stay there, even though we wished we could. We must move toward the dawn of the resurrection.

This is not something to get over; it is something to get through. This trial is a womb that is birthing something magnificent and glorious in the end. Our suffering is, indeed, the will of God. Knowing and acknowledging it as the will of God does not necessarily mean it is easy. Geoff Thomas writes, “Ah, we say, the moment you know something is God’s will it is easy. Well, for some of you it may be. But the whole glory of Gethsemane was that God’s will wasn’t easy. It was not easy for the Lord Himself … Many times, in life, we know that it is God’s will and it hurts. It really hurts. It hurts bad. We long to be delivered from it… God’s will for us is sometimes hard.” It is the will of God and it still hurts. This hurt is not what we expected. Elisabeth Elliot wisely reminds us though, “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”