God seeks to comfort those who mourn

By Brianne Edwards
Author of “A Thousand Pounds”

Few things make us wrestle with God as fiercely as suffering and the loss of a loved one. My story is no different. I was twenty-six and just establishing my place in the adult world with my first professional job, a new house, and two beautiful little boys—all while continuing to live out my faith the best I knew how. Then one spring day, my whole, tidy, predictable world was turned upside down when my 10-month-old son died unexpectedly during his morning nap at daycare.

With that, everything I thought I knew about the God of love came into question. I had been living my faith, trying to earn my way to God’s blessing, and asking primarily for him to protect my children and keep them safe. When our son died, I felt extraordinarily betrayed, and I found myself at a bit of a crossroads on whether I could continue to seek a God who let babies die.

As I was asking deeper questions of faith and really caring to know the answers, I was having trouble squaring two seemingly contradictory ideas. How could there be no tears in heaven if the possibility of hell was real? What if a mother showed up at the gates of heaven to find that her child was not there? I posed the question to my brother, who was a seminarian at the time. After a long pause, he replied with not an answer, but a piercing question: “Who are you trying to get to heaven for?”

Not long after this conversation, I read C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and was pierced in a similar manner as I read the chapter about Pam, a bereaved mother who was missing her opportunity to enter heaven because she was so adamant about being reunited with her son. All at once, I got it. I was going to have to learn how to love the Lord for his own sake and not just as a means to get to my child. If I truly loved Jesus first and foremost, I would have the opportunity for eternity with both Jesus and my son. If not, I may not be worthy of either of them.

And so began my quest to find a way to truly love the Lord for his own sake. Along this road that has brought healing to my sorrow, I have found a calling in bringing comfort to those who mourn. As I have grown a ministry in reaching out to bereaved families, what is offered as comfort to others also brings growth and healing to my own heart. This calling was discovered as I established a nonprofit, Lach’s Legacy, in memory of my son. The ministry grew as I got to participate in the co-creation of “Held: A Spiritual Retreat for Grieving Parents.”

Most recently, with a nudge from the Holy Spirit, I have felt called to write a book about my story of loss and finding my way to living again while carrying such an enormous burden of grief. A Thousand Pounds, published by CatholicPsych Press, is a memoir of life-changing loss, a companion for those in the trenches of grief, and a journey to authentic integration, peace, and hope. God has made his thumbprint known throughout the writing and publishing process. A Thousand Pounds is now in its final stages of preparation with an anticipated release date in June. It will be such a gift and an honor to send this story out into the world as another tool for God to use as he seeks to comfort those who mourn.