Multiple losses multiply trust in God.
by Ashley Glader
I wasn’t born cynical and doubtful. I was raised in the ideal Christian home with two involved parents, two older brothers, and loads of loving relatives.
However, at just eleven years old, my eyes were opened to the cruelty of the world.
Columbine
I woke up on April 20, 1999, and said goodbye to my brother John as he headed to high school in his old Chevy pickup truck.
Later that day, I was pulled out of my fifth grade class by the woman who did carpool with us. “There’s been a shooting at Columbine High School,” she told me.
With tears in my eyes, shock turned into realization. “My brother goes there.”
I would have never imagined that my goodbye to John that morning would mean never seeing him again. While I was in a lockdown drill at my school, he had been hiding under a library table, comforting a girl he barely knew.
As hatred and bullets spewed under the table, he was killed in minutes. Gone, at just sixteen years old.
Doubts and questions
As my family and I began the daunting tasks of dealing with the public media attention, saying goodbye to John’s body, and attending funerals, thoughts began to invade.
I heard stories of students who said the shooters looked right at them and passed over them. Why not John? My mom was part of an organization that prayed for their kids and the schools they went to. Why pray? Was this really God’s perfect plan for John’s life and mine?
John remained ever close to my heart as I grew into a teenager and then an adult. My nagging doubts and questions were never far either. I spoke with pastors and studied apologetics and the Bible as best as I could, but my doubts were never quenched. Though a dedicated Christian, I developed a side of cynicism.
Marriage and family
I pressed forward in life. When I was eighteen, I met my best friend and married him at age twenty-three.
Just a year and a half after being married, I held a positive pregnancy test in front of him. We were excited but frightened, as all new parents tend to be. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Bridget. I then went on to have a beautiful baby boy named after my brother, John.
Fear and resolve
Pregnant with our third baby, I started feeling anxious for reasons I couldn’t explain. I had recently started a blog about losing John. In it I wrote, “I feel God telling me that no matter what the future holds, I will make it through.”
Just weeks later, we went into our twenty-week ultrasound with hope and walked out, devastated.
Our little boy, we discovered, didn’t have a left arm and had possible stomach and heart issues. Terrified, I wondered, What will this mean for our little boy? What will this mean for all of us?
Despite our uncertainty, we were certain of one thing: We would fight for our little warrior, Joshua.
Strength from Scripture
We went to what seemed like endless doctors’ appointments and ultrasounds, but nothing ever gave us any definite answers.
Though born at thirty-eight weeks with only one arm and a bruised-looking eye, Joshua one of the most beautiful babies I’d ever seen. Right then, I turned to the book of Joshua in the Bible and started reading. Joshua 1:9 became our verse for our family:
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (NIV).
Grief and hope
Just days after birth, Joshua endured surgery on his intestines. Within the week we discovered that he didn’t have one of his eyes, and his only thumb wouldn’t be functional.
We grieved each loss and yet clung to hope that Joshua’s health issues would be limited to those and that we could take him home soon. A month later, after another surgery, doctors struggled to get him breathing on his own.
One night as I was returning to his room from pumping, “Code Blue!” blared over the speakers. I witnessed doctors performing CPR on our precious son.
The valley
There’s never been another moment that showed me how little control I have in life. Every muscle in my body was willing Joshua to live, but I literally had no control or say in the matter.
Joshua did live. It was a painful next few weeks, but after two and a half months in the hospital, we brought him home to our other two children, where we could be a family together under one roof.
Unexpected death
Only one and a half days after bringing him home, I woke up to find Joshua wasn’t breathing. He had passed in his sleep, peaceful and at home with his family.
This wasn’t expected, despite his anomalies. Although confused, I was grateful my baby no longer suffered pain. I tried to find peace in knowing that our eternal home awaits him one day.
Wrestling
After time, those nagging doubts I’d held since I was eleven bubbled over. I could no longer push them to the back burner. What good is prayer? Why would God bring Joshua through all of that suffering just for him to die? Does God even care about us? I still read my Bible. I still went to church and Bible study, but for a while I just couldn’t bring myself to pray. What did it matter?
I talked with many people about my questions. I went for hundreds of walks and talked to God because I just couldn’t not pray for too long. He was my only hope in this broken world. But how could I trust Him?
New focus
Maybe I needed to focus on what God actually promised: to be with me.
When looked for God’s presence in those dark days, I did find it. I went through my painful memories and dug out the good, like Joshua’s sweet toothless grins and the ways people brought us meals and kindness throughout his short life.
I finally concluded that there are a million different things I will never understand about the Bible or about why God allows certain things to happen, or why sometimes He performs miracles and sometimes He doesn’t. My hope isn’t in answers but in God and His character, which I know is good.
Surrender
Two years after Joshua’s death, my older brother, Patrick, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at only thirty-five years old.
This time, I looked to God and said, “I don’t get it, God. I don’t understand. But Your will be done.”
My prayers turned from focusing on healing to how God might work through the situation and Patrick’s life. My brother died five and a half years later. In his last words to me, he said, “You have to give yourself entirely to the Lord.”
After all this time and all the trials I’d gone through, I think had finally surrendered the unknown and chose to trust God in what’s next: His gift of eternal life with Him.
Turning to God
I grieved Pat deeply and the fact that I no longer have any living siblings. Despite the ache, the tears, and the longing, I didn’t fight God this time. I wasn’t plagued with questions I couldn’t answer. Instead, I fully turned to God in my grief. I trusted Him, the one who holds the answers.
Maybe things will never make sense here on this earth. But I trust that one day in eternity, they will.
Resources
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Ashley Glader has been published in Still Standing magazine and Premier Woman Alive UK. She is a guest blogger on Christian Minimalism and Study With Friends. Ashley is also a podcast guest on No Trash, Just Truth and God, Attachment, Healing. She lives in Littleton, CO, with her husband and children. Connect with Ashley here:
Website: ashleyglader.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/ashleyglader
X: https://x.com/ashleyglader