False Teaching: How Bad Theology Almost Killed My Faith
“Her son died a few years back.” The older gentleman across the table interjects, “She just isn’t the same. She’s lost her faith.”
The words sting my heart like a bee under bare feet. I see the pain in his eyes. I do not believe he speaks with judgment but from a place of helplessness. Nevertheless, I recoil. The words cause a throbbing. It is hard to hear this candid conversation coming from those who are not walking the road of parental bereavement. I wait for the judgement. Will it come? Does it matter?
Maybe it is because I am a bereaved mother that these things put my nervous systems into high gear or maybe it is because I wrestled with what it meant to be a believer the year before my son’s stillbirth.
I think back to a sweltering August day in 2011. Jon and I are driving down a country road on our way to Indiana. We have a surprise for my family. Full of joy and beaming with a pregnant glow I snap pictures as we glide through a sea of midwestern crops. Even the fluffy corn stalks seem happy today, swaying in the shimmering sunlight. I am twenty-four years old and full of all the optimism the world can contain. No fears or apprehensions cross my mind. In April I will have a baby. This is all I see; all my vision will hold.
A few weeks go by after returning home from our trip. Jon buys me a sub sandwich for dinner. That day’s lunch becomes a last meal of sorts. What the doctors first call morning sickness they eventually call Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a rare pregnancy condition.
The pain of the body
In the weeks and months that follow, I trade working as a nurse for frequent ER trips and home health visits. I trade water for IV fluids. I trade eating for looking at food on Pinterest. I trade health for starvation and wholeness for doubts and emptiness. The dizziness, nausea, malaise, and retching keep me from the practices of my faith. Reading the Bible, I find comparable to taking a book on a tilt-a-whirl. I have no strength for church or community group. I do not even have strength to shower or wash my hair. Four walls enclose me and make up the sum of my life, a comfortable tomb for my pain-riddled body. With each pound lost, it seems I lose another ounce of faith. The God who was always near in the eight years since my conversion, is now far, gone away from me.
In the fall a rare day of feeling well(ish) comes along. Providentially, it is unseasonably warm. I awake to sunbeams peering through our wooden blinds. Jon and I are invited to a little backyard party across town and we decide to go. The car ride there is a short one. It is wonderful to bask in the sun. To let my pale skin and dark hair greedily consume the melanin-giving rays. Like every day, a bag of IV fluids sits in a backpack that rests on my shoulder. The pump connected to the bag makes a low churning sound every fourth second as it pushes the fluids through the tubing and into the line that goes directly to a vessel by my heart.
The pain of judgment
Once at the party I find a comfortable place to sit. It is not long before my medical equipment becomes a curiosity. A sweet middle-aged woman sits down beside me. We talk for a while, sometimes being interrupted by others that come and go. Eventually, I begin the process of packing up to go back home. As I am leaving, the middle-aged woman stops me.
This article was originally published on Rebecca Davis’ website Here’s The Joy on December 28, 2021.
