Keziah: A Little Piece of God’s Heart by Lizzie Grayson is the impetus for this blog. I read the book flying home last week from Cyprus, and I haven’t been able to get the subject out of my mind.
Keziah is a profoundly moving book about coming to terms with the experience of a stillborn child. It’s a book about a child “lost” and also ultimately about the sovereignty of God, faith, and praise amidst pain.
The author Lizzie Grayson shares she and her husband Mark’s experience with multiple pregnancies, two that ended with the births of their living and healthy children Joshua and Iona, and three that ended with a blighted ovum, a baby that died in the womb, and a stillborn child, Keziah.
Lizzie Grayson candidly relates her emotional highs and lows, her worries, fears, and weariness, and her questioning God’s design and intentions. She also catalogs in clearly stated spiritual terms what she learns about the Lord, herself, the Christian faith, the incredible support of faithful family and friends, and life itself. Their story is at times a tearful one, but it’s also one that, eventually, in the grace of God is a triumphant one.
No one knows why God takes a child home stillborn and Grayson doesn’t try to offer special wisdom much less clichés. What Grayson and her husband offer is their tale of woe, comfort, and joy as they walk with the Lord, not always understanding but trusting. In the end, they conclude from experience that “God is good,” not simply because he in time blessed them with a living and healthy baby girl, Iona, but because he blessed them with a child in heaven, Keziah.
I know personally Keziah’s grandfather and grandmother, people of profound spiritual commitment and gracious spirits. So somehow I’m not surprised to learn their daughter and son-in-law are people of similar strong Christian faith.
This story brought back memories. When my wife and I were in our early twenties we “walked through the valley” with a couple whose beautiful daughter was stillborn. They had two sons who looked like their blonde father. Then they had this little girl whose jet-black hair and features copied her mother.
The wisest thing the preacher did, I thought, was recommend our friends allow a complete funeral process. My wife assisted Mother in preparing. I drove Dad a few miles along the interstate and will never forget his quiet but deeply felt grief during that drive. We attended the wake with them, viewed the little girl with them, heard the pastor speak briefly but meaningfully to them, went to the cemetery with them, and stayed with them for a time thereafter. I claim no special part for us, but I will always be glad we were able to be there with our friends through this time.
The process of “Good-bye, for now” that the funeral day allowed may not have brought immediate “closure”—who can feel “closed” when they’ve lost a daughter? But the process made a profound statement that this deceased little girl was not a “thing,” not an “it,” not a trauma to get past, but a human being living forever in heaven. Like Keziah’s parents, to this day our friends celebrate, more than thirty years later, the existence of their daughter and their trust in God’s perfect will.
I recommend Keziah. It’s a personal, practical, and powerful book.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
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