Conversations with a 4-Year-Old

Last week my four-year-old said something that - for lack of better words - rocked my world. The words that tumbled out of his mouth took my breath and brought tears to my eyes all in one fell swoop.

Before I tell you what he said I feel like I should offer some background information…

Back in May when we had our miscarriage after a long, stressful IVF journey - we never told him we lost the baby. At first, it was because we just couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about it. I shut down. Ben told our family and that alone was hard enough. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the look on his sweet little face or the questions he’d have if we told him the baby was gone. You can imagine the questions we’d fielded throughout the IVF process. The other reason we didn’t tell him was simply that we wanted to preserve his innocence for a little longer. There’s plenty of time to learn about death - we were in no rush.

The rest of my year included a lot of me questioning God. I mean a LOT. The fact that my faith looked nothing like it used to filled me with shame - so much so that I was embarrassed to tell my husband, and I tell that man everything. (Probably too much, if I’m honest!) He’s really only known the me that had an unshakeable belief in God.

I can’t point to the miscarriage and say “Yep. Right there. That’s where I let the doubt creep in.” I can’t point at an exact time and say that’s when my faith started changing, it feels like it was just gradual. My mental health was absolutely affected by IVF; the daily hormone shots, the pills, countless appointments, surgeries, scans, trying to avoid covid so my strict schedule wasn’t thrown off and I’d have to re-start the process - it all got really heavy. Not to mention other things that were happening in my life simultaneously. It really was the perfect storm.

My faith has been hanging on by a thread. A very, very thin thread. I’ve talked to God about it, talked to my husband about it, talked to friends about it. I’ve prayed for God to help my unbelief.

Fast forward to last week. Tripp (my four-year-old) was doodling with his crayons at the kitchen table and I was lost in my head while washing dishes - when he randomly says with all the confidence in the world “mama, you know what happens when baby’s go to heaven? They become angel baby’s.” My eyes have never filled with tears faster. I had to take a few minutes to put words together and then I asked him “how did you know that?” To which he replied, “I just know’d it.”

That simple.

This kid. My never-ending reminder of God’s grace and goodness.

And no- I don’t have any answers to all the questions I’ve had for God this year. But what I do know is that He doesn’t just speak to me through preachers on Sunday morning. He speaks to me through my husband, through music, through nature, through my therapist, through friends and family members - especially when they don’t realize it. He pulls me closer through poetry, through the words strung together in books. He doesn’t shy away from using ordinary people and things and words to remind me of his faithfulness.

But mostly, He speaks to me through my four-year-old walking, talking blessing.