God is Present In
Spite of Your Loss
An Incident in
Hospital Pastoral Care
Rev. Edgar Welty
Acting as a Chaplain Intern and a Woman of Courage
Background:
It normally
would not be a good thing for a niece to have a baby die of SIDS. But when that happened and I was called on
to do a graveside service it prepared me to be present for another woman at the
hospital. For the graveside service I had time to read Why Bad Things Happen
to Good People.
Incident
Shortly
thereafter I was “On Call” when the phone rang from Marin General. A woman had just lost her baby in the
process of delivering it. She demanded clergy to tell where God was in her
situation. I told her I didn’t know why what had occurred had but we needed to
believe God was there anyway. She took it in and asked to baptize her dead
child. (which I had also done with the SIDS baby.)
The next
day she told me she had a tilted womb and would try again to have a child. She
was also saving her “Mother’s Milk” for dry women with live children. I’ve rarely
seen such courage.
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