Why...

Today marks five years since the death of Moriah.  Much has changed since her passing, yet so much of her remains in all we do.  I (Justin) wrote this as I am preparing as a Hospital Chaplain.  Trying to answer the "Why" of Moriah's death feels like an impossible task...but it's worth trying.  She is more than worth it.  May it be a comfort to those who are still asking the question in their own lives...

              The death of my daughter, Moriah Sarjit Nelson, continues to be one of the greatest defining moments of my life.  Six months in utero, my wife and I were told that our daughter will be born with a significant heart defect.  As she joined the world of the living, we realized that she had additional complications.  Even the beginnings of her story stir up a plethora of emotions and thoughts.  Why did this happen?  Despair. Uncertainty. Anger.  If there was a God, how could this happen?  The list can go on and on.

              Her story included a one-year hospitalization in a Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit, a year in a subacute facility, not to mention numerous hospitalizations.  When things go wrong for so long, one can’t help but wonder what the point is in all of this.  What makes it worse is that it is at the expense of a child…MY child.  She did nothing wrong; nothing to deserve such a painful existence for many years.  Losing her at the young age of seven seemed to affirm feelings of protest, bitterness, anger, and resentment.

              My Christian faith has been the one constant source of strength.  It continues to be the only buoy that remains floating in my sea of despair.  It is the one place where I find rescue.  It is dependent on the Incarnate God, made Human, who not just says He understands through words on a page, but physically endured and willingly engaged in the suffering of humanity…my suffering.  At the same time, it has often been a source of confusion.  Much of my understanding has been taught through dichotomy:  Good vs. Evil.  Jesus vs. Satan.  Sickness vs. Health.  Heaven vs. Hell.  Salvation vs. Damnation, Holiness vs. sinfulness, etc.  My intention is not to diminish nor uplift these dichotomies, but to simply say it exists. 

              So how does Moriah’s story fit? In Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, Kate Bowler seems to provide a great example of what the Western Church might feel like to a person in the depths of suffering and despair:

The world, it seems, is also filled with fathers and mothers begging for their children’s lives and hearing nothing but silence.  And, ever after, every church service that sings that God is good rattles like tin in their ears.  There can be only one reasonable conclusion, says a father whose children have been cut down by disease: no one is listening.[1]

In my experience, there is a strong, unsaid pull within Western Church theology to find the hope and silver lining in suffering.  There seems to be a hunger to know the reason for every suffering and evil that leads to a satisfying, pleasant ending.  To not be able to do so is a sign of weak faith doesn’t reflect a god of love.  I admit that early in my journey, I was searching for this ending.  I was searching for this meaning.  Yet with each disappointment, the pursuit seemed foolish.  Not only that, but it felt like it was cheapening my daughter’s story.  It was so much more complex.   So much deeper.  There was no way to put it into a pithy saying that could somehow make me feel better and question God less.

              It has been five years since Moriah has passed, and I am far from getting all the answers to the why of her story.  But as time goes on, my understanding is less of a dichotomy.  Moriah’s story will never fit a simple explanation.  Instead, I’m seeing it as a both/and; no longer either/or.  Moriah’s story is NOT about something bad happening so something good happens.  Far from it.  Even writing that sentence pisses me off.  I believe that the Christian God is calling me to hold both in tension.

              Yes, it was evil, it was wrong, it was unfair, it was cruel how my daughter had to suffer.  And like Christ, yes, the cross was horrendous, horrible, brutal, unfair, and cruel.  And yet Moriah’s story was beautiful, lifegiving, miraculous, and my greatest gift to seeing people as I believe Christ calls me to see and love.  Her life has touched endless families.  Her life continues to speak through everything I have done up to this point; quitting my job with a family and pursing a God that I believe has invited me into something deeper and greater that I have yet to comprehend.  To go to seminary, work in a church, and eventually get to work in Clinical Pastoral Education as a Hospital Chaplain and visit the rooms of other people who are in the midst of their own despair.  I feel like I see everything through her eyes.  And like Christ, the cross also leads to God’s greatest display of love for humankind.  Through his boundless and uncompromising love, Jesus made a way for a man like me to know God freely.  The cross is beautiful, humble, hopeful, freeing, generous…the cross is love.

              So why did Moriah die?  Why did her story go the way it went?  I think it is both/and…none of it is wasted…it simply is.

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[1] Bowler, Kate. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved. New York: Random House, 2019.