Joshua Longbrake

Andrew and Christy Bauman, my friends from grad school and Mt. Rainier companions, lost their baby boy Jackson Brave to the damned hands of death this winter. Grace and peace to both of you, Andrew and Christy. Much grace and much peace.

Dan Allender wrote this in response:

May It All Be True

We had this privilege to be with colleagues and friends at the funeral of their son Jackson Brave Bauman just a few weeks before Christmas. I sat with my wife in a lovely church with mourners who had come together for the sole sake of grieving with Christy and Andrew. Jackson Brave Bauman, their son, died before taking his first breath. He was perfect, except his heart stopped beating. His mother and father began the service carrying his teeny coffin down the aisle to the communion table where a plump brown bear, a toy meant to greet his arrival into this world, stood somber awaiting his departure to the earth.

Everything about death is wrong. Everything. It is wrong even when an aged body that has lived well and suffered enormously dies; even when it is supposedly best to let go of this life—death is wrong. But it strikes the heart, as obscene, a mockery of all that is good and full of hope to see the body of a child dead.

On each side of the communion table was a picture of Brave. In one photo his grieving mother and father held their beautiful, perfect boy. On the other side, his body shot from the angle of the head downwards was as if looking at a slumbering doll.

We sat near the back of the church and I neither attempted to look around, nor could I stare exclusively at my feet. I occasionally took in both photos and the waiting bear. Each time I looked at the family portrait, I started to cry; when I looked at his sleeping body I wanted to rage. I felt like a metronome of grief and blasphemy.

I love Andrew; I only know Christy from a few conversations. I like many had anticipated the immensity of goodness this young couple would soon know. My last words to Andrew about the coming birth were to remind him that Brave was about to ruin his life and he would never, excepting a few, regret the ruin because the joy he would know in being a father and allowing his son to father him through Jesus would make every loss and heartache worth infinitely more than the suffering.

I had no idea how deep was the truth and lie of what I said. Is his death worth the agony and loss they will suffer for a lifetime? Is the privilege of being the one to carry him and watch him grow in the womb that became his tomb infinitely worth more than the suffering they will bear? To say, yes, is not mine to write. To say it is possible is only to speak of the remarkable hearts of his mother and father. It is possible that in a year, or a decade, their loss will be part of the scars they come to treasure as an emblem of the day they will be introduced and restored to their son.

I only know how they grieved and spoke of their son. The service lasted over two hours. I have never been in an event where I did not know if I could bear one more minute; even more, I did not know how I could ever endure it’s ending. The words spoken by their pastors, friends and family, their doula, and the pastor who married them held little hope. They spoke for us all grief, confusion, anger, and above all the agony we felt for Christy and Andrew. They also spoke of the immense beauty of Brave and the courage of Andrew and Christie to hold, love, and cherish their little boy. There were moments in the accounting of his birth and the time of his advent when laughter incisively creased the sorrow—their humanity was not merely heroic, it was life giving.

Mom and Dad sat on the floor below their son’s casket and we each, row by row, came to the front to place a flower on his casket and kneel to hold and touch his mother and father. Their faces were raw with exhaustion and silhouetted in sorrow. They wept, at times wailed. What was spoken over them and for them, for us, was a sorrow that didn’t deny resurrection, nor did it offer a hope to assuage the part of us that simply can’t bear hearing the body wail.

The resurrection is the hope that allows our heart to bear a portion of the wail, courageously enough not to mitigate the horror, nor deny the hideous wrong of death. It is what I understand it to mean that we do not grieve as unbelievers do. Believing grief is meant to be deeper and angrier and more full of confusion than unbelieving sorrow. We must engage God who can and will give comfort; and could also have healed the heart of their son. How do we go to a God who offers comfort when the same God could have enabled the Bauman’s to escape the current need if only death had been swallowed by life?

At the end of the service, Christy and Andrew spoke. It may have been the bravest public utterances I have ever heard. Christy began by saying, “In the last 3 days, we have aged 20 years.” We sat in awe as they each spoke of their love for their son and their cry to their community to not forget Brave. Neither offered us relief from the anguish, except in their goodness to grieve, full faced, raw, and unashamed. It was their stark and utter human beauty that made the loss not merely deep, but unbearable. The beauty and horror of their agony was too compelling to escape.

And what I found myself saying, again and again, then and today: What if this is all a carefully staged fable? What if nothing of this is true? And at one level, even more disconcerting, what if the gospel is truer than I can comprehend; what if it is truer than truth?

Soon after the advent of Jesus his mother and father fled to Egypt to escape the murderous envy of Herod. His soldiers had been told to take the life of any male child two years or younger. Mothers all over Bethlehem held the bodies of their sons and wailed. Did the story happen just as it is told? I believe it did. I heard the sound of a single mother wailing to know it is true. I know it now. I know how my body heaves and the limbic system floods my brain with both aversion and bonding in the presence of beautiful boy’s death face.

Is it all true or a mere fable? Am I willing to bet my death and far more my life on a savior being born in Bethlehem and the advent of a new kingdom that seems palsied and powerless before such loss? This is what I believe. I saw a kind of humanity and goodness in the wailing that is truer to life than the pleasantness I encounter in most religious settings. I saw a beauty and care for life in the honor that baby boy received in talking about his face, hands, and the dreams of his mom and dad than I see at the height of celebrations of graduation or other accolades of honor.

I don’t know how they will ever be able to enter another advent season and function in the flurry of holiday busyness and rush to get a last minute gift. But I know this—the agony of those mothers and fathers who lost a son to the cruelty of death will never be lost to them. And the hope that the Christ-child will return and ride a white steed to introduce them to their man-child Brave, will mark them each Christmas until the day they die.

I can’t hold their grief as if it is my own. I will not remember each Christmas in the same way as they will and as those who walked each step of this Via Dolorosa of their suffering. But in remembering his death, I am again called to weep and to cry out in desire, no, desperation—May it all be true, Prince of Peace, turn our wailing one day into joy. Make my heart as human and beautiful as Brave’s mother and father. Turn our broken hearts to you. Turn our hope to your risen Presence. Tell us again the story of your birth, death, resurrection, and ascension and in the midst of grief bring us the scandalous joy that only your loyal love can provide. We confess you alone are our life and story.

(source: http://www.poopedpastors.com/blogs/may-it-all-be-true/)