Chaplain's Corner

Life – what a mystery this thing we call life is. Human life is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries. Oh, we have all taken biology, we know how human reproduction works. But does the biology make it any less a mystery?  Not for me. Seven times in our relationship my wife and I have experienced the miracle of conception. One moment, an independent egg and an independent sperm then miraculously they come together and a human life begins.

But there is a lot more at work in conception than just biology. Think about it. If you have ever been personally involved in the conception of a child, what happens when you find out, when the announcement is made, “I’m pregnant.”  Those two words and the conception they represent begin a chain reaction, a miraculous chain of events that mobilizes many, that alters plans, that frees up funds, and that ends up in preparations that prior to the announcement seemed remote or even impossible.

Of course the announcement, “I’m pregnant”, is one that may be made out of the deepest of joys or it may be made out of the deepest of anguish. If the child is planned and wanted, the announcement is celebrated. If the child was unplanned and is unwanted, the chain of events that is triggered can lead to horrible ends.

But even when the child is unwanted and unplanned, if the child dies, either by natural causes, or the child’s life is taken away by the choice of the mother sorrow follows. The folk at crisis pregnancy centers around the country hear the stories every week. They counsel women who for one reason or another chose to have an abortion then after the “problem” is resolved find themselves with another problem:  The guilt and shame that comes when people takes matters that don’t belong to them into their own hands. This is one of the interesting realities that those who support a woman’s right to chose just don’t deal with:  If an unborn child is nothing more than a product of conception; a piece of tissue, no different than a tumor or an appendix that can be removed and discarded surgically, then why the guilt and shame?

I have never met a person that experienced guilt and shame over the removal of a tumor or an appendix. I have cared for people who have had pieces of a lung removed, who have had brain tissue removed, who have had arms or legs amputated and never have I had to help them deal with guilt related to the loss. Yet is common place for a woman who chooses to end a pregnancy to experience guilt and shame accompanied with grief.

In the same way I have met so many who have lost a child to miscarriage or who have had a baby die in the womb or whose child died during childbirth and they all experience deep sorrow and grief They grieve not only the death of a child, but the death of all the hopes and dreams that had already begun to grow around the anticipation of that child’s birth.

So what is the difference?  Why experience guilt over the choice to end a pregnancy?  Why experience sorrow and grief when a pregnancy ends unexpectedly?  Why is there such emotional investment connected with an unborn child:  Because the unborn child is a person. The unborn child possesses that spiritual quality of “being”, the very essence of what it means to be alive. From the moment of conception there is life, not just biological life but spiritual life. That unborn child has a spirit. This is part of the miracle of human conception which can not be explained by biology. There is a spiritual connection between the two: mother and child; a connection that is more than that which is achieved by the umbilical cord.

Of course, spiritual realities are not subject to the objective scrutiny of the scientific method. But we mustn’t think for a moment that this means anything. There are many realities that are not subject to the same rules and formulas that are used in scientific examination. But this is true because spirituality is different, it is a reality that exists alongside of physical reality and is every bit as real as physical reality.

Next Wednesday, May 25th, I will once again have a service at the Heritage Cemetery in Steinbach, to commemorate the lives of children conceived in our region whose lives came to and end all too quickly. If you or someone you know experienced such a loss and were connected to our health care system at the time of that loss, a letter of invitation to the service may have already been received.

But I know that there are many women who have experience a miscarriage who did not connect with the system at the time of the loss. There are others whose loss may have occurred some time in the past, but deep within their hearts there is still a pain, a sorrow, a grief that has never been honored. There may even be women in our region who made a choice recently or years ago to terminate the life of an unborn child and you live with a nagging guilt and shame on top of the grief and sorrow of that loss.

The service that will be held is for every person, mother or father, grandparent or friend who feels the need to honor in some formal way the death of an unborn child, or the death of a child at or shortly after birth. There will be no condemnation, no signaling out the reason or cause of the loss, only an opportunity for people connected by this shared sorrow to stop and honor the child that has died and honor the pain that that loss has left in their hearts.

Having experienced this loss on five occasions, each year when I lead this service, I experience a measure of healing for that sorrow I carry in my heart. Sadly when these deaths occurred nobody ever suggest to my wife and I that what we had just experienced was the death of a child that needed to be honored and mourned. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I lead these services each May and extend this invitation to others who have shared a similar death and the sorrow that accompanies it.

You might be thinking, why dwell on the loss?  It happened, nothing can change what happened, so just leave it in the past and move on. In one sense you are right. It did happen, there is nothing you can do to change what happened and we needs to move on, face the future and not allow the past to be an anchor that we drag behind us. If you have experienced this kind of loss and there is no residual sorrow that hangs in your heart, then maybe a service like this isn’t what you need. But in the past we have had women attend the service whose loss happened fifty years ago, who expressed gratitude for the opportunity to hear their child’s name read aloud and have others who understand stand in solidarity with them to remember.

Well, the invitation stands. If you have experienced the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth or shortly after birth and your heart still feels the sorrow, come join with a small group of others who know this experience and honor the child that you have lost and honor your sorrow. The service will be held on Wednesday, May 25th at 1:00 p.m. at the Heritage Cemetery on Loewen Blvd in Steinbach. Look for the white tent erected at the back of the cemetery. The service will start promptly at 1 p.m. and last about 20minutes. God Bless!