Better Than a Miracle: Finding hope beyond catastrophic loss

Jesse jumps for joy on Hawaii's Big Island.

The news hit like a bucket of cold water to the face. Our thirty-two-year-old son, Jesse, was being placed on life support after returning ill from a mission trip to Uganda. Unwell for days prior, his condition had suddenly deteriorated with what later was discovered to be cerebral malaria.

Traveling at the time, my wife and I had taken the doctor’s call in a Safeway parking lot thousands of miles away. After hearing the grim prognosis, the shock spread to my gut where it turned into a gnawing, painful dread.

I numbly stepped out of the car and dropped to my knees on the pavement, pleading with God from the depths of my tormented soul to spare Jesse’s life and take mine instead. Grief-stricken tears streamed onto the uncaring cement.

Thus began five and a half months of parental anguish as one futile operation after another attempted to stem the tide of devastation that ravaged his previously athletic body. There would be fifteen highly invasive procedures before it was all over, accompanied by more than 900 liters of transfused blood.

Finally, with every medical intervention expended, the doctors threw up their hands and declared that, short of a miracle, they were out of options.

Seeking a miracle

That miracle was just what thousands of people had been seeking for the five-plus months Jesse was tethered to his ICU bed. Legions of faith-filled, God-fearing people from countries around the globe had fervently and faithfully entreated the Lord of Life to spare Jesse’s.

Yet, alas, Heaven had other plans…

Life support was soon removed, and after hours of struggling to breathe, our dear son departed this life for a better one, cradled in the loving arms of a dear friend who gently bid him, “Go to Jesus.” As he left, she felt what she believed to be Jesse’s hand upon her shoulder, reassuring her that all was well.

Later, another friend went into the hospital room where the body lay in order to collect the cards and letters from Jesse’s many well-wishers. Completely alone in the room save the body, the friend heard the distinctive sounds of breathing…full, unrestricted heavenly breaths.

Between surgeries during Jesse’s months-long ICU stay.

Little comfort

Meanwhile, a miracle of another order was unfolding in the wake of Jesse’s passing. We would later hear of numerous people whose lives had been transformed during the five-and-a-half-month ordeal.

The transformations many had prayed would happen in my son’s shattered body were in fact happening in their own lives. Marriages were being healed, people were turning to God, and those who had fallen away were renewing their commitment to follow Him.

But this was little comfort to those of us who lost one of the most loving and caring human beings we had ever known. God chose not to perform the miracle in Jesse’s life that we cried out for long and hard.

Tens of thousands of earnest prayers based on dozens of scriptural promises and prophetic utterances by devout believers went unheeded. As one doctor noted, “It was not for lack of prayer that Jesse was not healed.”

God took our only son according to the same sovereign design that prompted him to sacrifice his own. He later reminded me that Jesse was never really ours in the first place. He fully belonged to God, to whom we had unreservedly dedicated him and to whom Jesse had joyfully and whole-heartedly committed his own life.

Our son, like all loved ones, was only given to us on loan. He never belonged to us or to this rough-and-tumble world. God simply took back what was always his — took him home where he belongs.

Juggling a soccer ball at sunset on a Kona beach.

Something more

During the months-long ordeal while Jesse was hospitalized, I would alternate between pleading with God for his life and recommitting myself to accepting God’s sovereign will regardless the outcome. On one such occasion, I heard that still small voice ask me an unsettling question: “Do you love him more than Me?”

Shocked to my core, I realized that I did. I loved my son more than I loved God. I openly confessed what He already knew and then shamelessly tried to use my rededication as yet another means to sway God’s decision to unleash a miracle. But, once again, the only change that followed was in me.

Months later, after our son’s death had catapulted us into dark and painful places no one should ever have to go, God began to speak to me about something more important than the miracle we so desperately sought. I realized that had God miraculously healed Jesse at any point during his excruciating decline, that healing would only have been temporary.

Folks would have indeed sat up and taken notice — not least among them an incredulous medical staff — but, eventually, Jesse would have aged, sickened and died in spite of it all. That’s just the nature of things in a fallen world.

I began to grasp that all miracles, no matter how spectacular and impactful, are but temporary reprieves in a process of dying and death that defines all life on earth. Lazareth died again after his momentous resurrection, and so would my son had he been raised from his deathbed.

In other words, what we sought all along was only a temporary fix so we might derive more enjoyment from what was already an incredible and undeserved blessing — the life of a dearly loved son. Yet, God had much bigger plans that continue to unfold with each new day.

Beyond miracles

Finally, I understood the real miracle. It was the promise Jesus gave to his disciples that he would always be with them no matter what transpired. It was a promise that neither time or circumstance could ever take away.

Immutable and eternal, Jesus’ promise to be with those of us who follow him was given without a single reservation. It was true then, is true now, and will be true for all eternity.

I began to comprehend that the promise of Christ’s abiding presence was infinitely superior to any miracle we could ever desire. To live in the doting presence of the Master of the Universe both now and forever, through thick and thin, in hardship, sorrow, and pain, was an incomparable gift.

That gift applies not only to all who loved Jesse and grieved his passing but to Jesse himself. For he now lives in the loving presence of his Savior for eternity, just as by faith we do within the confines of time and space.

Dwelling in the divine presence is what all humans ultimately long for, whether we recognize it or not. It is the place we belong and where we are meant to dwell, forever. God’s presence makes heaven heavenly and life on earth worth living.

So God took our beloved son but offers his comforting presence until we all meet again in joyous reunion. Miraculous healing is always temporary. But the promises and presence of Almighty God endure forever.

Of pain and promise

The wound of our son’s early death will never fully heal. I’ve learned that it’s not meant to. We will continue to miss him dearly and to cry out in resurgent anguish as the wound reopens from time to time. The pain of loss will mark the rest of our days. It has become a permanent part of who we now are.

What we hope for now, however, is described by Jerry Sittser in A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss. Sittser is a Christian professor who lost his mother, wife, and daughter in one fell swoop in a car accident caused by a drunken driver.

Employing an analogy, Sittser describes his loss as the remains of an ugly stump left in his yard from the sudden destruction of a once beautiful, spreading tree. The hideous stump, he says, will always remain.

Yet, slowly but surely, God began to lovingly cultivate a lovely garden around it. Over time, Sittser attests, the total effect of the yard has become pleasant once again, stump and all. And his tragic life has become not just tolerable, but once again full of goodness in spite of the horrifying loss.

Life beyond loss

A year and a half away from Jesse’s passing, my wife and I are still far from a place of appreciating the garden God is cultivating around a nightmarish loss that will never seem anything but.

Still, with each new day, we endeavor to lean into the promise of Christ’s abiding presence with us in an ongoing process of renewal in the face of catastrophic loss. His gentle, loving presence is our lifeline to hope and a return to fulness of life.

Few people will pass through this world without experiencing some form of devastating loss: a loved one, a marriage, a career, or one’s health. It’s the price of admission to this adventure we call life. Yet no loss and no longed-for miracle can ever measure up to the value of these poignant words of Jesus:

I will be with you always, even until the end of the world. (Matthew 28:20b, CEV).

It is His abiding presence with us that makes anything in this life worth having…or losing.

Jesse in Kona with his favorite conversation starter.