I’m not one to place my faith primarily in signs and coincidences. But something happened in the California desert several years ago that I can’t deny was God speaking to me. On a Diet Coke can.
When I was married, my wife and I tried to have children.
It didn’t work out. Her first miscarriage occurred the same day I interviewed for a job I didn’t get. It was a dark, heavy time. I wanted to be strong for my wife, but I also knew my fumbling support could only go so far. In a real way, the miscarriage was a unique pain only she could carry.
At the time, I was a new Catholic and I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn’t know the protocol. Were we supposed to have a funeral for the unborn child? Our doctor, a Catholic, assured us that the loss had happened early enough in the pregnancy that a formal funeral wasn’t necessary. So we weathered the loss the best we could and moved on.
About a year later, we tried again.
She miscarried again. I was surprised to learn how common miscarriages are. People told us that many women don’t have a baby until after a number of miscarriages. This was news to us, and something we hated having to learn the hard way.
After the second miscarriage, one Sunday in church, we sang a hymn with the verse: “How sweet to hold a newborn baby, and feel the pride and joy it gives.” I looked over at my wife. She was weeping. It felt like a cruel moment. Why did we have to be going through this?
Due to a number of other circumstances, about a year later we divorced. We never had children.
Flash forward about three years later…
By now, I’d had enough time to heal in many ways from the pain, anger, and grief of my divorce. I was living on my own as a single man again. I decided to take a personal retreat to a monastery in Valyermo, California, two hours north of my home in Los Angeles. I booked a three-day stay at Saint Andrew’s Abbey, an austere, peaceful retreat center in the desert. It was so secluded that when I arrived, I had lost my cell phone signal.
I checked in to my simple room, strolled down to the abbey bookstore, then went for a jog along the dusty road outside the monastery. I did a little spiritual reading that evening, then went to sleep.
I still wasn’t exactly sure why I had come here.
I had no specific purpose, I just felt like getting away for a few days. On the second day of my retreat, I sat in my bed and read a few Bible verses. Then I broke out a spiral-bound notebook and pen I’d brought. What would I journal about? I took some time to settle in and pray…
After a few minutes, seemingly out of nowhere, I started thinking about my ex’s miscarriages. I had not thought about it in years, but suddenly thoughts of that hard time came rushing in on me. Specifically, I started to think about the children we’d never had. I began to weep.
I opened the notebook and started scribbling. I felt moved to write personal letters to the children we tried to have but never got to meet. I named them. I told them I loved them and I would have tried my best to be a good father to them. I said hello and goodbye.
It was a strange experience, but I surrendered to it.
Maybe that’s why I had come to the desert, even though I didn’t realize it. It was time to grieve that great suppressed loss. Several pages later, I finished the handwritten letters, then offered them—and my never-born children—up to God. I entrusted them to Jesus’s loving care, and I finally let them go.
After it was all over, I was a sobbing, slobbering mess, but I felt peace. A huge weight had lifted off me. I could only assume it had been a divine encounter, a long-delayed appointment with God, who knew I still needed healing for this particular loss.
Emotionally exhausted but feeling free, I needed a break.
I wiped my eyes, set down the pen and paper, and walked down the open-air corridor to the retreat center’s Coke machine. Back then, Coke had a marketing campaign in which they’d put names on the sides of the aluminum cans. Your can might say “Mike” or “Jenny” or “Best Friend”.
I plunked my quarters into the machine. The Diet Coke can tumbled out. I picked it up. The name on the can: “Dad”.
I stood there, stunned. Now, you may or may not believe in seemingly mundane coincidences like this. I’m generally skeptical about such “signs.” But that day in the desert, I knew that it was God reassuring me. He was letting me know it was Him who had moved me to grieve my unborn children back in the room.
He was letting me know He understood my loss and He felt it too. I also knew in that moment that it was going to be okay. I was going to heal and move on. And so was my former wife. And our kids were now safely in His care.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be a father. Maybe. Maybe not. But I know that it’s okay. Because God hears the cries of the poor and He comforts the broken-hearted. Sometimes He does it by a great, unexpected move of His Spirit and then confirms it in the smallest of ways. He is going to take care of all of us.
