Finding Faith Through Tragedy

I feel called to share with you my testimony of my relationship with our savior, Jesus Christ. I am still struggling to find the essence of my own belief, yet I realize that I am called to share my story so that it may lead others to find their own path to salvation. It is my hope that from my own life's tragedies, hope faith, and goodness can be shared by others.

I was brought up in a Christian home. My father and grandfather are both Baptist ministers, and so church and the teachings of Christ have always been a part of my life. As a child, I followed these teachings blindly, not questioning their validity, or taking the time to dive below the surface of my own beliefs.

It was not until I became a teenager, that I began to lose faith and question the Church. I never set out to intentionally let my faith falter. I started off simply trying to explain every little aspect of the Bible. I starting asking why did this happen and how are these things possible? Instead of just having faith I wanted to rationalize everything. Once I started nitpicking it was easy to delude myself that I could pick and choose what parts of the faith I wanted to believe in. In time like many young people, I rebelled from my upbringing, not out of any deep rooted belief that the Church was wrong, however it was only because its teachings did not coincide with the life that I began enjoying at the time. Simply put, I discovered girls and anything that placed limits on what should and should not be done outside of marriage, was not something I wanted to be a part of.

During this time I still called myself a Christian, because I still believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and that he died for our sins so that we may all have the chance to enter the kingdom of Heaven. What I did in my everyday life though, was to make excuses to myself for why I should be able to continue my behavior. I told myself that many of the teachings found within the Bible were not really the teachings of God, but were instead placed there by men who wrote their own ideas and moral guidelines under the pretext that these were the ways of Christ. In time, as I continued to live a non-christian way of life, and as I made more and more excuses for my behavior, I slowly fell farther and farther away from my own roots and beliefs. Somewhere along the way, I lost a piece of what made me whole.

By the time I was seventeen, my son was born, and I had all but given up my Christian values. I rarely went to church, and made no real effort to disguise the secular lifestyle that I was leading. In early 2000, for the first time, I fell madly in love. She was the mother of my son, who by that point was nearly two years old. As we met regularly to spend time with our child, love flourished between us, and she became the first woman with power over me to make me desire no one else but her. We were married in 2001, and although I settled into family life quite happily, I never made an effort to reunite with the church. After years of doing things my own way, changing just did not seem to appeal.

In November of 2001, my wife and I were awaiting the birth of our daughter. Both of our families knew we were expecting, however my wife and I kept one secret closely hidden. We were having twins. We thought that it would be a grand surprise to show off two little girls in the hospital when everyone was expecting one. The months leading up to the arrival were probably one of the happiest times of my life. Both my wife and I hinted around that we wanted twins, and picked out two names that we claimed we were trying to decide between. We never let on though that my wife really was expecting two perfect little identical girls.

On November 17, 2001 at 3:08am my wife gave birth to a very healthy 3 pound 4 ounce baby girl. Just one. Ten minutes earlier precious little baby "A", as she was labeled on the monitors stopped breathing. At first the nurse just thought that the heartbeat was being masked by the others and by the time it was discovered that something was wrong, it was too late. She was stillborn soon after. This is something that until very recently few people have known. I have always been one to hide my emotions and pain from others, and since we had one healthy little girl, my wife and I made the decision to keep the knowledge of what happened to ourselves. We saw no reason to cause other people pain and heartache with something that they did not know. So instead we swallowed our grief, and came home with Heather Marie, who I attached myself to and did not let out of my set any more than humanly possible. She had no choice but to be a daddy's girl, because I was wrapped around her little finger from the start.

Looking back now I should have been thankful that the Lord blessed me with one beautiful healthy little girl. Instead, I allowed myself to become consumed by hatred over the loss and turned my pain against the church. I remember vividly telling God one night soon after the loss, that if he could not see fit to save the life of the little girl that I never knew but dearly loved, then I wanted nothing to do with him. From that moment on I led a completely Godless existence, caring only for my family for which I believed was forsaken.

Fortunately for me, the Lord does not give up on us as easily as I gave up on him. Instead he gave me continual subtle hints that I was not following the path he had designed for me. Over the next six years, I seemed to fail at every endeavor that I set my mind to. As I fell farther and farther away from the glory of Christ, I slowly lost everything that at one time made up my personal being. My weight soared and my health declined. I gave up my college dreams even though I was more than half way finished with a degree in history. By July 2007, I had lost everything important to me including my freedom when I found myself incarcerated for a crime which I was admittedly guilty of. Still even then I was unwilling to reexamine my faith in the Lord.

Then it happened in November 2007, that I lost the one person in my life that I thought would always be at my side. During a weekly visit, and with no prior warning, my beautiful wife, who I loved with all my heart told me she was leaving. Devastated does not begin to describe the heartache I felt. I was completely beside myself. I stopped eating. I could not sleep. I truly did not care about anything.

Three days into my despair, a fellow inmate by the name of James St. Phillippe, a Haitian immigrant awaiting deportation, approached me and asked me if I had turned to the Lord for guidance. I told him no, and out of respect for James refrained from telling him exactly what I thought about religion. Later that evening he approached me again with a list of scriptures that he asked me to read.

Late that night sometime after midnight, as I lay in my cell unable to sleep I reached for the bible and read the first scripture on James' list. It was Proverbs chapter 3. It was truly as if a whole new world opened for me that night. For the first time since the death of my little girl I prayed. I asked the Lord simply that if it be his will that my marriage end, then to please grant me the peace to handle it emotionally.

I can not express to you in words the sense of calm that engulfed me that night. I am still hurt by the separation from my wife, but I am uplifted by the knowledge that the Lord will not make me endure something that I am not strong enough to handle. My faith was reborn that night and for that I remain grateful. I am not sure what the Lord has in store for me, but I do know that I do not have to go through this life alone. The Lord will provide for each of us if we only have faith in him and trust his judgment. I can only now hope that from my own mistakes, I can somehow lead others to find the peace that I have so recently come to know. Everything else I leave simply in the hands of the Lord.