I Don't Know Yet, But I'm Here Doing It
Our return to church and Christmas after losing a child
On Christmas Eve, my 5-year-old son Finley participated in his first Christmas pageant. The children’s pastor had asked him two weeks prior if he wanted to be a shepherd. He replied with his signature response: “I don’t know yet.” The day before, we asked him again. “I don’t know yet.” We asked him the morning of. “I don’t know yet!”
We got to church. The children’s pastor asked, “Are you going to be a shepherd with the other kids?” “I don’t know yet.” We went to a side room where other children were putting costumes on over their other clothes. A volunteer asked him if he was going to be a shepherd. “I don’t know yet.” He accepted the shepherd’s costume anyway, a rough robe that fit loosely over his shoulders and draped to the floor. Then the volunteer tied a sash diagonally across his torso. He joined the other shepherds, and lined up in the foyer with the angels and magi.
While the above story may be typical for some families, for us it has a deeper, more challenging history. This was our first Christmas Eve church service since 2016. This is the first year we have attended church at all in the month of December since 2017.
In 2016, we were attending a church we’d been at for four years. (Let’s call this Church 1). At the Christmas Eve service, our firstborn son Emerson was dedicated. He was six months old at the time. A few months later, we were trying out different churches to attend. We went to several (Churches 2, 3, 4, and 5) where friends attended or were on staff, but we hadn’t found one to call home yet. In December 2017, Emerson died, 18 months old.
Pastors at former and current churches reached out with condolences. We held Emerson’s memorial at Church 1, the same church where he’d been dedicated. But we did not return to regular church services. We had faith, we desired community, but being at church was too painful.
Three months later, one of my friends invited us to a game night at his church (Church 6). We went a couple times. We met some people, and we thought about being a part of that community. We decided to return to church on Easter. That was a mistake. Easter is a happy, joyful holiday. We were still in the early days of grief. We wept through the entire service. We had to tell people—strangers—about our dead child.
Church was a wound for us. Grief had wrapped itself around faith and community and being with other families. Here are some of the ways we felt hurt:
Seeing other intact families—parents with their children, happy and smiling, living and breathing. It was especially hard to see toddlers about Emerson’s age.
Answering typical questions like, “Do you have any kids?” and “Where are they? How old are they?” Suddenly, we had to decide on the spot whether to share the deepest tragedy of our lives with total strangers.
Singing worship songs with lines like “All God’s promises are Yes and Amen,” and “Our God is mighty to save.” Where was God’s “yes” and “might” on the afternoon our son died?
Listening to sermons or prayers or announcements which blew past discomfort, doubt, grief, pain, and sorrow, in order to confidently assert God’s comfort, God’s healing, God’s power.
To be clear, the first two scenarios could happen anywhere: the grocery store, the park, at work, etc. But experiencing them at church was especially painful.
In October 2018, ten months after Emerson died, Finley was born. We decided to try church again. Perhaps people would be so focused on the sweet, little baby they would forget to ask about older siblings. (We were wrong about this, of course.) We waited until after Christmas to go. Emerson had died five days before Christmas—that holiday was tarnished with grief for us.
So in January 2019, we attended Church 7. Every worship song hurt. Overall, the service was a happy, polished performance. We wanted the church to work out, but it was painful to be there. Two other moments salted our wound:
When giving announcements, one of the pastors talked about the previous day’s events. “In the morning, we wept with bereaved parents at their son’s memorial service, and in the afternoon, we rejoiced and played at our church pool party.” There was no deeper commentary about the nature or blending of sorrow and joy. It was as if the two events were of equal gravity in the life of the church.
The pastor’s sermon was about becoming “awake” in Christ. He said, at the climactic moment, “Don’t remain asleep. Wake up. Some naps will cost you your life.” Our firstborn had died during a nap, unexpectedly. You can imagine our disgust and rage at this message.
It took us several months to return to church after that. In the summer, we went twice to Church 8, where one of my interns attended. What I appreciated about this church:
At every service, there were stations to light candles in remembrance of lost loved ones.
During their “Prayers of the People,” you could send in live prayer requests, and they would pray for it from the podium—all the painful, joyful, sorrowful, hopeful requests of the community were given voice before the whole congregation.
In the fall, we went sporadically to a church far from our house, Church 9. Allison has family at this church. I have work colleagues at this church. It’s a church oriented toward social justice and community. A church that acknowledges harm done, that recognizes pain and grief and sorrow, and works toward reconciliation and healing in community. We attended a handful of times between September 2019 and February 2020. Then the pandemic started, and everything went online. We streamed services every week, but we did not feel connected to the church body. Eventually, our frequency of streaming waned. We tuned in once every month or two.
During this time, we reflected on what we desired in a church. We both grew up going to church. Church was the place—so we were taught—where you could bring your problems, your sorrows, your pain. Church—so we were taught—was a safe place.
But now we were experiencing pain because of church. When we walked into a new one, we weren’t excited or curious about the ministries offered or the worship services or the small groups. We were wondering how long we could last before someone in the church—pastor or otherwise—wounded us. We didn’t want our experience of church to be like this.
Ultimately, we wanted to be part of a church where there was room for our story of grief. Not just: “this is sad, we know your story, but isn’t Jesus great?” We wanted grief and sorrow—in a word, lament—to be part of the normal, regular worshiping life of the church. A church that acknowledged pain and sorrow, a church that week-in-week-out held space for the pain of its members and the pain of the world.
It’s a form of hospitality to hold space for another’s story, for another’s pain. Hospitality isn’t only about the moment, asking someone what they need. Hospitality is also about preparation. A church that acknowledges grief in its liturgy is a church that invites the bereaved into community. It is a church that says, “We lament, we have sorrow, we grieve.” It is a church that does not hide from or sweep away genuine experiences of pain.
Of course, for Christians, there is the hope of resurrection—the redemption and healing of all things, including our pain and sorrow. But that reality is yet to come in its fullness. Some churches point always to hope as if present pain did not exist. Some churches look for the “quick fix of Jesus” who heals all wounds. These churches demonstrate their discomfort in the face of grief and pain. They pray for healing, for hope, for resolution, for miracles—as if the only purpose of illness is to get well again for God’s glory. Perhaps these kinds of churches pray for healing not only for the benefit of the sick; these churches pray for healing so their own discomfort at seeing pain can be eased.
Allison and I have made friends with other bereaved parents. Some of them have received questions like, “Shouldn’t you be done being sad by now?” and “At least you have other children” and “Look at all the blessings you have.” These are no comfort to the bereaved, but are clear indicators of the speaker’s discomfort with others’ grief. Sadly, these comments come from inside the church as much as outside.
This summer, we decided to return to Church 8, the one with candle-lighting stations and weekly Prayers of the People. We hadn’t been there in four years. We went sporadically. Finley resisted going. He did not want to go to Sunday school with the other kids. We all sat in the family viewing room, playing with the toys and trying to hear the message over the clamor of our kids.
The day before Finley’s second year of preschool started, we met the pastor’s family. After a series of random questions, we found out that the pastor’s daughter and Finley were in the same preschool class. Finley suddenly had a new friend in two places.
The next week, Finley tried Sunday school. I went with him and stayed the whole time. I did this twice. The following week I said goodbye after walking him downstairs to the children’s area. The week after, I didn’t even go downstairs. Finley went with the other kids and the teachers. He was starting to make connections with them. But if you asked Allison and me if we had made connections, you would get the answer, “I don’t know yet.”
Every service, after the Scripture reading, there is a children’s message in the sanctuary. All the kids gather on the stage and interact with the children’s pastor, who tells a story, asks questions, and gives some insight into the text for the day.
During the third week of Advent, the theme was Peace. After asking the kids how to define “peace,” the children’s pastor asked them, “What do you think peace looks like for someone who has lost a loved one?” After some hmms and huhs from the kids, she said, “They might not have a sense of peace during this season.”
This insight about grief and peace may have gone over the heads of the kids. But for me, it was significant. This was the moment I thought, “This church has room for our story.” This was a church that acknowledged grief during its regular worship service. It did not gloss over the pain on the way to the cure-all of God’s peace. It did not exclude sorrow because the Advent-Christmas season is “supposed to be merry and bright.” The pastor demonstrated hospitality to those whose stories include grief.
I’m not saying this church is perfect. One of my seminary professors, Rick Steele, used to share what he called “Steele’s Law of Ecclesiastical Disgruntlement”: “The grass is brown everywhere. It’s your job to bring the watering can.”
We have brought ourselves, our grief. Our grief is a wound that can be reopened anytime, that can be reopened unintentionally, accidentally. We have brought our desire for community. We are trying to make church work, but it hasn’t always worked in the past, and in fact, has often been painful.
But there’s one more thing we brought that may be the water in our watering can: our children. Finley has gone from, “Why do we go to church every time?” to “Is today church day?” Finley likes playing with his new friends at church. Every Sunday, after service, Finley asks to light a candle in honor of Emerson.
When the children’s pastor asked us if Finley would like to be a shepherd for the Christmas pageant, Allison and I echoed Finley in saying, “I don’t know yet.” We left the decision up to him.
We were already going to church in December, the hardest month of the year for us, the month that Emerson died. That was a big step for Allison and me. Would having Finley participate be too much for our emotions, too much for our grief? We didn’t know yet. The uncertainty was its own challenge.
Sometimes inertia is what carries us through. We’d already been going to church every week, so we went to the Christmas Eve service, too. We showed up and Finley decided to be a shepherd.
As the service began in the sanctuary, there was nervous energy and laughter among the shepherds, angels, and magi—typical kid behavior. It was at this moment I got choked up—I remembered my own childhood, being nervous about going in front of the congregation to recite Bible verses or act in skits. The children’s pastor reassured the kids: “This is not a performance. You can just be yourself. When the shepherds came to see Jesus, they didn’t line up in a neat line. They were excited. The angels were excited. It’s okay for you to be excited, too. Just be yourself.”
When the reading of the story started, Mary and Joseph (played by two adults) went up first. Then the angels walked up. Then it was the shepherds’ turn. When Finley got on stage, he started waving and blowing kisses at Allison and Callen (younger brother), who were looking through the window of the family viewing room. I stood in the back and took pictures and video. Afterward, Finley took off the costume, and we watched the rest of the service from the family room.
Later that day, Allison said to me, “Maybe my healing is not entirely up to me. Maybe Finley is part of that process.”
For the first time since Emerson died, we have shown up to church regularly. That is our act of courage. This church’s hospitality to sorrow and grief has encouraged our attendance. But Finley’s courage has led us to this unexpected return to church in December, and especially on Christmas Eve.
If you ask us how we feel about church, we won’t say, “No.” We won’t say “Yes,” either. But now, because of Finley, we also won’t say, “I don’t know.” We will say, “I don’t know yet.” Yet is the word of hope. Yet intends a future experience, a future understanding. Finley didn’t know yet if he wanted to be a shepherd. He didn’t know yet until he was actually doing it, being a shepherd on stage. Perhaps that’s what our faith looks like now. We don’t know yet if we can be part of a church, but now we’re here, doing it.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.