When God Speaks in the Fire

The picture that burns

It's deep night and I'm crying. Not tears of sadness, but of that wonder that takes you when you understand you're witnessing a miracle. Because I'm holding a picture I didn't think existed in human albums: the one where God decides to show Himself.

You at thirty-five years old, kneeling beside the hospital bed. Hands clasped that don't pray words but only whisper: "Why?" Your wife sleeping, finally, after thirty-six hours of labor that ended in the most terrible silence in the world. The empty crib beside her.

"Do you see this moment, little one?" I whisper while my heart breaks for the pain you haven't lived yet but that I know awaits you. "This is the day you'll discover that sometimes God draws closest precisely when He seems farthest away."

And you'll discover that the most sacred places are born from the ashes of broken dreams.

The picture comes alive and I relive the nightmare every parent fears more than their own death. I see you entering the hospital with the smile of someone about to become a father and leaving with the eyes of someone who no longer knows who he is. I see you coming home and not being able to enter the nursery you had prepared with so much love.

I see you walking like a ghost of your own life for months. Going to work, talking to people, pretending everything is normal while inside you everything is ashes. I see you avoiding my eyes because you know you'd read the same question burning inside you:

"Where was God when our baby needed to breathe?"

And then, one June evening, something happens that will change everything. You're burning in the backyard all the things you had bought for him. The crib, the little clothes, the toys. A bonfire of broken dreams that sends flames toward a sky that seems empty to you.

And suddenly you understand you're not alone.

Not because you hear a voice. Not because you see an apparition. But because while you watch those flames devouring what was supposed to be the future, something inside you recognizes a Presence that wasn't there before.

It's as if your pain had become holy ground.

Like Moses, who was tending sheep in the middle of nowhere when he saw that bush burning without being consumed. Moses who had forty years of failures behind him, who had to hide in a desert because he had ruined everything he had touched.

Moses who thought God had forgotten about him.

But God had only brought him to the right place to speak to him.

"Take off your sandals," He said to Moses, "for the place where you are standing is holy ground." (Exodus 3:5, NIV)

Holy ground. Not comfortable ground. Not easy ground. Holy ground.

Little one, when that evening you kneel beside that bonfire and finally cry all the tears you had kept inside, when you scream at God all the hatred and desperation that have eaten your soul for months, when you yell at Him that you don't understand why He allowed this, He won't answer by explaining the why.

He'll answer by showing you who you've become.

He'll show you that this pain you thought had destroyed you has made you capable of embracing other broken hearts. He'll show you that this loss you thought had emptied you has filled you with a compassion you didn't have before.

He'll show you that you've become holy ground.

"I am with you" doesn't mean "I'll prevent terrible things from happening to you". It means "when terrible things happen to you, I'll be so close to you that your pain will become the place to meet me".

And do you know what will happen, little one? Three months after that bonfire evening, when you meet that couple at the supermarket - the ones who avoided you because they didn't know what to say - you'll see in their eyes the same pain you've known.

And instead of running away like everyone does, you'll approach and simply say: "I know. Me too."

And they'll cry. Not from desperation, but from relief. Because they'll have found someone who speaks their language. The language of those who have been in the fire and know you can survive.

Like Moses, who returned to Egypt not because he had become stronger but because he understood that his weakness was the perfect channel for God's strength.

From that evening on, your house will become the refuge for all couples going through what you went through. You'll become the man who knows how to embrace without saying anything, who knows how to cry with those who cry and laugh with those who start hoping again.

You'll become holy ground for anyone who needs a place where they can take off their sandals and meet God in the middle of pain.

And one evening, ten years later, when you hold in your arms that child who will arrive when you no longer expect him, when you see in his eyes all the love you thought was lost forever, you'll understand something that will change you for eternity:

The first child was never a loss. He was a bridge. A bridge between the before and after. Between the man you were and the man you became. Between your closed heart and your heart opened wide to all the sufferings of the world.

"Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." (Exodus 3:5, NIV)

The pain you thought had destroyed you was the burning bush where God was waiting to make you who you were always meant to be.

Sleep, little Moses.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about that time when you'll be sixty years old and discover that the end of one season is always the beginning of another.

--Mama who knows that God transforms every loss into holy ground