My dear friend Kristie Duarte shared her testimony as part of her church’s Thanksgiving Day service last year, a day that also happened to be her birthday! Her words touched me, and I asked if we could share her testimony as a blog post. We have walked a parallel road since December 2020 when we both experienced the stillbirth of our babies. I hope her words encourage you with faith and hope.

On this very day, I was born in Honolulu, a bit too early with lungs not quite ready to breathe on their own. I found myself in the NICU living under an oxygen hood and in an incubator for the first few weeks of my life.

I was born into a family that did not yet know Jesus as their Savior, yet when I was three years old, God did a miracle: my parents were both given new hearts and an appetite for the living water and bread of life – Jesus himself.

It wasn’t until I was 19 years old that God called me out of my blindness and opened my eyes to know that I had sinned against Him. And that root of all my sinning- was not bad behavior or bad choices – it was a heart that preferred anything over him, a heart that did not treasure Him over all other persons and things.

The truth was, it was nothing in my own nature that made me want Him – it was His gift of a new appetite – one that now had a desire to know the very person of God, cherishing his grace, admiring his goodness, and trusting His faithfulness. Because of this, I am able to testify of His presence even when times are bad.

The title of Psalm 71 is “Forsake me not when my strength is spent.” The psalmist is crying out for deliverance, refuge, protection and in distress. Yet in the middle of the Psalm, he sings:

“But I will hope continually
and will praise you yet more and more.”

Just before Christmas in 2020, while pregnant with twin daughters who we named Hope and Praise, my husband and I found out that they no longer had beating hearts. Rather than go to the hospital, our family chose to plan for a delivery at home with our midwives.

One of our daughters, Praise, fit into my hand, curled up with every little inch of her body already created. She had ears, elbows, ten fingers, a tiny nose, two eyes, knees and tiny little toes. We felt a lot of grief, shock, and deep sorrow.

There were times when I wanted to erase the loss, the pain, the suffering… But now, in His grace He has shown me that there is HOPE AND PRAISE in loss.

An article from The Gospel Coalition entitled “Learning to Live with Loss” by David P. Barshinger described this well: “to wish my loss away is to wish myself away—to wish away the person God is graciously shaping me into.”

“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” Philippians 3:8 (ESV)

Through loss, He is shaping our hearts into hearts that love him more, treasuring him more than anything on this earth.

Barshinger writes:

The gain is that it is “God in his compassion is bringing us low so that we will lean on him alone.” What greater gain is there? Than to be able to be weaned off the world, and our hearts turned from the temporary so that we can learn to love him ALL the more!

To erase my loss is also strangely to erase my gain. So I choose to move forward. Again, the words of Barshinger have been meaningful to me:

“And so in the face of loss, I can choose to wallow in my weeping, or I can choose to walk—or limp and hobble—trusting in God’s goodness, accepting the ways he’s forming his people into new creatures, and clinging to the hope of a restored creation.”

I give thanks for the aunties, the kupuna in this church family – they walked through the dark times way before I did, and when I was there in the dark storm, they came to me and shared their stories of what God had done in their loss, and how He has carried them to this day.

So mahalo, thank you, to the generations who have walked this road of suffering before us. Mahalo for sharing your lives, your stories, your suffering, and your sickness with us younger sheep – so we can know what lays ahead and how to suffer well for his glory and be able to give thanks to the one who is using our suffering to “wean us off the world, turn our hearts from the temporal things, and love Him” the man of sorrows, all the more!

Kristie quotes from this article: Learning to Live with Loss (thegospelcoalition.org)