Old Testament stories sometimes seem outlandish to us today in 2017. Take Abraham and Isaac for instance. By God’s command, Father Abraham takes his son Isaac up a mountain and prepares to kill him as an offering to the Lord (anyone see the foreshadowing of what God actually does for us in sacrificing His son Jesus? Ok good. Just checking). Crazy, right?!?!
Well, on Oct 30th, 2013, I learned what it meant “to lay ones child down” and offer them back up to God. This time it wasn’t on Mount Moriah, though. Moriah was in my womb.
I was in my first trimester, and Jacob and I had already seen the beautiful flicker of a heartbeat at an early ultrasound. We were prepared & expecting to go full term, just like we had with our son one year earlier. But at my next OB appointment, that flicker was gone, and I was devastated.
I’ll spare you the details of this tragedy (I’ll share Moriah’s full story another day,) but will tell you that having this baby almost killed me… literally. Our bathroom looked like a murder scene. I hemmoraged for three straight hours, went into shock and was passing out. But I vividly remember saying to Jacob, “if I passed the baby, that was it” when her little body perfectly encased in a water balloon like yolk sac left mine.
And I knew what Abraham must have felt like… hating his body for doing something that his mind and heart were screaming NOT to do. Only He was laying down his son out of obedience to God… I didn’t have a choice. And an angel stopped Abraham from killing Isaac that day. For us, there was no saving our little one.
How my husband came up with the name Moriah is beyond me. But he KNEW it was the Mount where Abraham, the Father of our Faith, laid his son down. So in faith, we also laid our daughter down.
The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Hope and Healing 