A personalized excerpt from a prayer found in Every Moment Holy, Vol. II:

The Loss of a Child

O God, my God. O child, my child.

My Alice.

Sometimes there are no words.

…

O God who sees my suffering, I care little now what becomes of me – whether I prosper or diminish.

I only want to hold my Alice again.

And all of life is hammered upon the anvil of these hard questions:

Why? What now?

Why? What now?

…

You have left in my heart a hole as wide as the world, my Alice, and as long as the rest of my life.

Oh Christ, how will this ever be made right? Oh Christ, why do you tarry so long, before you make this right?

You tell me you are with me, O God, even in the midst of this. I long to know you are with me, even in the midst of this. Please show me you are with me, O God, even in the midst of this.

…

I am emptied out, O Lord. My heart is spent. What once in life was bright with joyous expectation is now muted and filtered, like the unexpected blotting of the midday sun, eclipsed to an unnatural twilight.

Were the moon to be plucked from the sky, would it leave any larger a void, O Christ, than the life of our Alice, lost to us?

Be present, O Spirit of God, in the empty spaces my precious girl no longer inhabits. Meet me in the crushing quiet of the mornings. Meet me in the emptiness of her room. Meet me in the loneliness of the table at mealtime. Meet me in the vacancies of nights when I would have tucked her in, and kissed her cheek or forehead before sleep.

Meet me in this grief, O God. Meet me again and again and again. Day upon day upon day.

…

And all of this is only part of what is gone. For as we pass — in months and years to come — the seasons our sweet Alice never lived to see, we will also miss the many hopeful things that might have been.

We will miss the stumbling forays into life, the kinships and friendships formed; the bike rides and birthdays and family vacations; the blossoming of talents; the growth and graduations; the gradual letting-go as she approached adulthood.

We will miss even the disagreements and hard discussions and hurt feelings that come of loving imperfectly in this life. How many such disappointments we would gladly endure now, just to hold Alice again in our arms.

We will miss the bittersweetness of seeing her mature and flourish, to one day leave our home and begin a life that would have been her own, to see her story of struggle and of joy as it unfolds, and to know that even at the end of our own lives, hers would endure, touched by ours, the good work of generations carried on.

So we will weep for what was lost, and we will weep for what will never be, as the seasons wheel and wheel and wheel, and we grow slowly older in our grieving.

…

Whenever someone’s child reminds me of her, I feel again that sting of emptiness. I feel suddenly so alone, so lonely for the one my arms ache physically to hold.

My muscles still remember how it felt to receive the press of her being, so perfectly distinct.

Sometimes there are no words.

…

I am too broken, too heartbroken, too shattered and scattered and splintered and rent, to find comfort in anything but you, O Christ.

…

Remain with me, my God. For you are not aloof from what I feel. You also lost a child. Your sympathy is real. Be near to me, O Christ, for you were also crushed by every grief and afflicted by every affliction. You were a man of sorrows. Somehow, in this, I find a hope rekindled.

I am not alone in this. My God has gone before me, into suffering, grief, death, loss, separation. Where I am, you have already been. And you are with me in this now.

I would follow you, even in this.

Especially in this, I would follow you.

…

Beyond this grief, O God, beyond this emptiness and pain, and from somewhere far beyond this valley filled with shadow, sometimes comes the voice of your Spirit whispering again, “for this promise belongs to you and your children.”

We are yours, O God. Alice was yours. Is yours. Is with you, in the immediacy of your love.

But I am left here to endure what life will be without her. I live now in this tension.

I have no words. God, give me the words, that I might pour my heart in prayer to you.

…

O Christ, creator and sustainer of all life, and maker of the very child whose loss I now lament,

now gift me with the faith and hope and strength it will require to finally surrender my desires, my dreams, my goals, my purposes and plans — even my demands — for how Alice’s life might have unfolded. I tried to protect her. I labored for her flourishing. But it was never in my power to create the long, prosperous, and happy life I wished for her.

Now give me the strength I will need to lay down those dreams, to more fully release my precious Alice back to you.

Such strength is not in me. I could as easily rip the heart from beneath my ribs, and offer that. The cost would be the same.

In my head, I know my Alice belongs to you, O God. You created her. Her very being is your claim. But that bare truth, alone, is too abstract. It does not figure in the ways our hearts had grown inseparable; how love of her made me more alive and vulnerable than I had ever been, shaping and reshaping me in ways no other human bonding can. I know Alice was your creation, Father. I confess that she is yours in ways she is not mine.

And yet, she was created of the substance of my own flesh and blood, the blueprint of her being bore the stamp of my own, and I feel as if a part of me has also died with her.

I feel the impossible pain of Abraham, commanded to release his child to you, to release every dream he had for his child, knowing in his head that the child was yours, a blessing from you, created by you, and yet knowing as well how much of his own heart would be buried with the body of his child.

The great and pressing grief can never be relieved simply by a right theology. It must be transmuted from within by some lavishing of your effectual grace.

How I need that grace made evident today, O God. Some gift of Spirit, as palpable as flesh. I cannot sift the mystery of your ways. There is no satisfying answer I can apprehend. What I need is not a scholar’s explanation of my suffering.

What I need is just to hold and be held within a peace that passes understanding, a peace that flows from your eternal presence.

Grant such depth of peace, my King, such depth of presence, that I might at last begin to let go these broken dreams and disappointments; that I might more deeply trust you with the things I cannot comprehend, and then, within that trust, more earnestly release Alice to you — for she was yours before she was ever mine.

And now she lives and dwells within your glorious love and light, vibrant and hale and satisfied in you.

So how can I cling and try to hold her here with me, as if she exists now only in my memory, when she is so alive in your delight?

To speak these words, releasing my Alice, even by degrees, is an act of trusting you, my God, of trusting that your purposes are good, your mercies enduring, and your promises true. Even in my anguish, even when events extend beyond my ken, your promises are true.

To speak these words repeatedly is an act and an expression of the faith that there will be a day — an actual calendar day— when all this sadness finally comes untrue.

…

And with release, let gratefulness increase. For even in the sorrow and the pain, O Lord, the wonder and the beauty of the days I shared with my Alice remain, and those glad times still tell the truer story of what was and is to come.

Within the wide span of human history, you, O God, in your wisdom chose to place us near together, to knit my life with the life of this miraculous being, for a brief and brilliant time.

Before the world ever began, you ordained that our existences would overlap. You purposed that our hearts would intertwine. It was your design that I would know and hold this very child.

You granted me the glorious charge of guiding this beautiful bearer of your divine image toward the purposes of your eternal kingdom.

For this privilege and joy, I offer you my praise.

I would not trade a single second we shared with Alice, to lessen my own ache at losing her.

I am grateful for the gift of all that was, O God. I will willingly bear these wounds of love, till loves heals every wound.

…

Now, O my King, bring us swiftly to that day when every loss your children have suffered is finally and forever redeemed by your joyful mercies; when even this specific loss will be restored, this very grief upended, this particular sorrow overthrown.

Let me begin to glimpse, even now, that flame of hope, its flicker spreading in my vision, dim though its shining might seem at first, through this curtain of shadow.

In days and years to come, O Lord, may all dark doubts and temptations to despair dwindle to nothing, while this shimmering splinter of impending joy swells ever brighter, ever stronger, ever more central and certain at the center of our loss.

Do not let my love turn bitter. Let it turn fierce instead — fierce in its defiance of death, fierce in faith, fierce in its resolve to seek first the Kingdom of my God, tenacious in pursuit of that which is eternal, tender in compassion toward the suffering of others, invested in acts of kindness, mercy, creativity, reconciliation, and restoration — convinced that all lost joys mourned in this life are but pale preludes of the fullness to come.

Those days I shared with Alice were resplendent in their quiet glories. Death cannot undo them. They are treasures stored.

Let them chime now in my memory, O Lord, as heralds of a greater, approaching glory, like thunders rippling forward in time toward the crashing symphony of their fulfillment, point and pulling my heart always unto that impending hour of advent, resurrection, and restoration, when you will heal and bless these lands and creatures and dwell here with your bride;

when I will see Alice alive again, hear her happy cry, race to embrace her, and share with her an eternal joy beyond all measure, in a world that will begin at sorrow’s end.

…

Sometimes there are no words.

Amen.