"Count the cost"

3 days before Tobi was born I went in for one of my final office visits with Dr. Crute.  I was put on the monitor in the office and then was sent over to L&D for extended monitoring because of a blip on the office monitoring when I was first hooked up.   After almost 2 hours of extended monitoring they let me go saying she was perfectly fine, healthy, and that I was contracting irregularly like I had suspected.  Two nights later, I sat on edge of the pool with Mama and Daddy watching Piper and Carey play and Tobi kicked at Mama.  That night, I suspect, at some point The Lord took Tobi to be home with Him.  She sat at his feet in utter amazement that someone could be so beautiful. I like to think He talked to her about how much her Daddy and Mama love Him and love her. I like to think He showed her the events that happened after her death that caused His name to be glorified and praised.  I like to think she stood with Papa and Jillian and all the multitude and sang to Him "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. Who was, and is, and is to come."

That morning, though, I excitedly woke to light contraction that were consistently 5 minutes apart.  I was so very excited and yet trying so hard to be cautious of my excitement because I had had contractions before that eventually went away. I began timing around 11:30am when I saw that they weren't going away and continued to time for a couple hours before calling and finding out that yes, I did need to head on to the hospital. 

I can't begin to put into words how excited we were to pack the van full of our stuff.   It went a bit beyond the normal excitement of knowing a baby is coming, for reasons that will take a whole other blog post to write about, but basically I had surrendered to the thought that Tobi would most likely come by c-section even though I badly wanted her to be a VBAC.  But then when I began contracting and things started to progress on their own I began to hope that maybe I would get this thing that seemed, at that point, almost impossible.  We dropped Piper off, took off to the hospital, waited in the ER for them to wheel me upstairs and then sat in the observation room waiting to get hooked up to the heart monitor, all with such incredible excitement and anticipation.  

Despite knowing that Tobi hadn't moved in a while, which for her was pretty normal, there was not a thought in my head that they would find anything but a little beating heart, beating fast and strong like it had all 41 weeks I had known her.  After several nurses, a couple resident doctors and then finally the OB on call looked at the ultrasound screen, they finally said that there was no blood flow to the heart and yes, she had died.   At that point, I did the only thing that my body could do… I began wailing.  Tears wouldn't come.  I just sat there and wailed into Carey's shoulder in complete denial that this could possibly be happening.  Everyone scattered like cockroaches to go get things set up for the c-section that did end up happening after all and Carey stepped outside with the horrible task of letting everybody know we had lost her.  I lay in that bed, still wailing but now asking the Lord out loud- like a crazy person I'm sure it seemed, "How can THIS not be meaningless?  How do I ever come back from this?"

When I say the Lord is good this is one way that I mean He is good.  I only was able to ask the questions "How is this not meaningless?" a couple times in those first few moments before I knew, I knew as surely as I live, that Tobi's death was for a very specific reason. His assurance and presence in this thing was so real but I can't describe it well enough to do it justice.  For some good, important purpose that I couldn't see, He had taken Tobi.  Not just that there is sin in this world and the consequence of that is that people and even babies die, and sometimes for what seems like no reason.   Not just that this happened and He would make it, somehow, be for good.  But that HE had pre-determined, before the creation of this world, that Him taking Tobi that day and in that exact way was the very best thing that could happen for someone or maybe many someones that He loves.

Since Tobi's death the Lord brings verses, or only a few words from verses to my mind that when I look them up I find some (to me) profound word from Him.  One was "Count the cost".  Over and over it played in my head for days before I googled it to see if it was somewhere in the Bible.  Luke 14:25-35.  Jesus tells a large crowd that if you want to follow Him you have to hate everyone you love by comparison to Your love for Him.  He also says "Don't begin (to follow Him) until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?  Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. They would say, 'There's the person who started that building and couldn't afford to finish it!"

He has spoken to me these last few weeks about suffering that we experience in this life.   Whether you follow Jesus or not, bad things will and probably already have happened to you.  But before Tobi's death I would have (wrongly) said with a fair amount of confidence that if I follow Jesus and am obedient to His specific direction in my life, then I will be under the umbrella of His protection and I will remain safe and healthy.  My children and my husband will live long and healthy lives.  I've spent the last 6+ months seeking the Lord's will and obeying to the best of my understanding His direction in my life… SPECIFICALLY my life pertaining to Tobi and her arrival.  Again, that's another blog post for another time…  But at the end of it all, I lay in that hospital bed, holding a painfully beautiful but lifeless little girl as the "reward" to all my obedience.  

And the words of John Piper from the song "Though You slay me" kept ringing in my head - "every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that".  ….In the path of obedience… There is suffering even in the path of obedience but it produces a peculiar glory you will get because of it.

To get to my point, I have learned that if You follow Him there is a cost.  To be sure, there is a cost to not following Him…  But if you follow and you obey His every prompting, there is a cost.  David Jeremiah once said in a sermon that he believed that's why so many Christians in America walk around with such immature faith - because we aren't taught the purpose, benefit and necessity of trials for mature faith.  I listened to that very sermon 2 days before she died, in fact.  I wondered if he was right.  I wanted so badly to believe he wasn't.

After having now experienced what I would call my first, real experience with true suffering I can tell you... he was.  I have found there is great benefit and have seen there is great necessity of moments of suffering in our walk with the Lord. 

As a side note, before I sound like a doom and gloom always person - MOMENTS is the key word.   The Lord reminded me (through something my sister in law, Chris, said) that throughout the Bible followers who suffered in the path of obedience like Joseph, Moses, Abraham, David, Job… also had long periods of peace and ease. Even Job died "an old man and full of years" after the Lord had blessed the latter part of his life more than the former part.

But what I wanted to remember for myself from all of this and share with anybody who cared to listen is this.  For the last two years the Lord has been teaching me about Who He is and about His nature. As I lay in the hospital in such pain over losing Tobi I almost wanted to die at one point, the Holy Spirit was able to remind me of all the things I knew of the Lord's character.  I was able to put my feet on the solid rock of Who I know He is. He reminded me over and over that He is the only constant.  That His nature never changes, no matter how much the situation may scream that He doesn't care, that He just plays games with us, that He's not good after all.

We, as followers of Jesus, are all bound to suffer at some point in our lives. Jesus tells us before we set out to follow Him we should count the cost of it.  He even says "He who has ears let him hear" meaning "pay attention and listen well!". Don't naively set out to follow Him and then find out after you only just laid the foundation that you aren't willing to pay the cost to finish the rest. But if you can make it a point in your life to ask Him to help you to know Him more and to study His nature throughout the Bible, then when the storm comes You can preach to yourself what You KNOW You've found Him to be and stay firmly planted on the path of obedience you've started down.  

2 years ago, in the little bathroom in Evansville where I did my quiet times, the Holy Spirit prompted me to ask that my fascination with Him would be my lifelong obsession.  That it would be like a drug that I couldn't live without.  When the pain of what's happened and the seeming unfairness of not having Tobi here comes, the Lord's promises and Who I know I've found Him to be is the balm that soothes the hurt.  That it is not meaningless, that He's not just playing games with us and that He cares more than we can ever imagine.    And that He "rewards those who earnestly seek Him".

So I say to anybody who listens, look to Him for help.  Ask Him to really show you His greatness and love and mercy and faithfulness and goodness and kindness.  And then be prepared for the overwhelming, overpowering, irresistible, heart healing love of El Roi - "The God Who sees me."

"But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works!"   Psalm 73:28