I'm Too Young

I find that, today, I am having a harder time writing than previously. Sharing this intensely personal experience has been, in some ways, cathartic but it also means that I am reliving the pain and freshness of the broken heart that comes with losing a child. Please bear with me if I ramble a bit as I try to formulate my thoughts into coherent sentences and paragraphs that make sense.

going back in time to September 22, 1983

It is September of 1983 and I have just given birth to a wonderfully healthy baby boy. I am single and know that I am not ready to raise a child on my own. I am alone and find that the support I thought I had really was conditional and that saddened me. It also made it easier for me to make the decision that I made ... to give the precious little man up for adoption.

Now, I realize that in this day and age it seems to be all the rage to blame others for the decisions that we, personally, make regarding our lives. I will not do that here. I have never blamed my parents or other family members for my decision to give this little life to someone else to raise. I take full responsibility for the decision I made all of those years ago and continue to hold this baby (young man now!) and his adoptive family up in my prayers on a daily basis.

now back to May 2005

So along with everything else that I am feeling, there is guilt. I am totally convinced, at that time, that God allowed my Danny to be taken because I didn't take responsibility for my first little baby and didn't raise him myself. I beat myself up for a very long time after Danny's death, holding myself responsible for several reasons. "It must be God's way of telling me that He's unhappy with me" or "God didn't like that I didn't raise the first baby myself, so He's chosen to take away the light of my life" and "GOD, WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU THAT YOU WOULD HATE ME THIS MUCH?" were all things that frequently crossed my mind. At the time, I didn't even realize that satan's way of getting into our lives, our hearts and our souls is through deception. After all, satan IS the master of lies. I believed these things until it didn't make sense to me any more. None of it made sense. I was constantly torn between believing that God was real yet believing that no "God of love and mercy" would allow this to happen to one of His children. How can I figure this out? How can I make my heart stop hurting without making it stop beating? I would cry all night long, silent tears of loss, shame and guilt covering my cheeks and falling quietly onto my pillow. 


Many night I would wake up from the night terrors in a sweat, yet shaking because I was freezing. Dave would simply hold me against him, smooth back my hair and whisper "Everything will be ok my love. I promise that we will get through this." Eventually, I would fall back asleep. My nights were full of vibrant memories of Danny and I, but always the negative ones. One night I would dream that we were screaming at each other and all of a sudden he was gone. Another night I would dream that he told me he hated me for letting him die and I would wake up trembling because I would believe that I HAD, I HAD "let him die". I didn't know what to do. I forgot that I could pray and simply talked to God whenever these things happened. 
I didn't want to pray because, quite frankly, I was afraid of the answers I would get, or just as likely, afraid that I wouldn't like the answers that I DIDN'T get.


I delved into my church life and new church family in La Paz. I became an active member of the worship team and loved singing praises to God. All the while, I was struggling in my heart to give God the throne and the heart of my life. I was afraid that once I did that, there would be no turning back and my life truly would be His. I wasn't ready to give up the sorrow and heart-wrenching grief that I felt. I decided, consciously, that I wasn't quite ready to "feel better" yet and that, somehow, it would desecrate Danny's death if I allowed my precious Father to heal me and allowed myself to "get on with life". That somehow, showing God's love, faithfulness and mercy through all of this would make Danny less of a person by showing God to be more. Even now it is hard to explain, but hopefully (prayerfully) those who are meant to understand this statement will and, by the grace of God, will come back to His love.