In memory of Jedidiah Luke

My watch stopped. The time was 10:50 Sunday morning, but the worn old watch read 10:25.

I thought it fitting. After perhaps the three most difficult days of my life, the watch finally got the message.

Three days earlier, my wife and I were filled with the joy of being expectant parents for the third time. We’d seen the baby on an ultrasound at eight weeks, complete with a healthy, beating heart. We were quite excited about the possibility of being able to hear that heart beat at our 12-week visit.

We sat in the examination room for some time, waiting our turn. Our 4-year-old sat in the floor playing with some blocks. She’d come along just to hear the heartbeat.

The doctor finally came and prepared the heartbeat monitor after greeting us. As I sat there waiting expectantly, the silence of the monitor was deafening. We were assured that we shouldn’t worry; sometimes it was difficult to hear at 12 weeks. Minutes later, however, an ultrasound confirmed what we feared; the little heart we saw beating a month earlier now lay silent.

The doctor’s warm consolation did nothing to ease the chill in my own heart. He gave statistics about the huge number of others who’ve gone through the same thing, but I didn’t care about anyone else. What about us? What about our child?

The next day, in a hospital waiting room, I opened a Bible to the story of David and Bathsheba. The child of their infamous indiscretion had died, but God provided another – one whose name will never be forgotten.

“And David called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him. And David sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and Nathan called his name Jedidiah, because of the Lord.” A note in the margin said Jedidiah meant ‘beloved of the Lord.’

We never knew the gender of our little one, but Leigh Ann says it was a boy. We had already decided on Luke (bringer of light) for a boy. Over the weekend, we altered it just a bit, to Jedidiah Luke. For a few short weeks, he brought light into our lives. He was beloved of the Lord, and of us.

I don’t ask why this happened; God is sovereign, His will is higher than mine. But this I do wonder: given the pain of this death by a natural cause, how could anyone purposely cause the death of an unborn child?

For the rest of the world, time moves on. Jeff Gordon wins at Sonoma. Chipper Jones picks up the game-winning RBI with a bases-loaded walk. Mike Tyson makes sickening threats against a future opponent.

But for us, time stands still. So long as it does, our world is one step closer to being the way it was. We don’t want life to go on; we want it to go back – back to the time when we saw an eight-week-old new life, complete with a healthy, beating heart.

But time can’t go back. It must go forward.

I need to get a new watch.