Daddy's Goodbye

This was Taylor's goodbye to Julia at her memorial service on Saturday.  I am working on filling in more of the details of her miraculous story and will share them as soon as I can.

For our sweet baby Julia Christine Shipman, July 13, 2013 – December 11, 2013.

Dear friends, this is a sacred moment.  Thank you for sharing in our life and in the life of our sweet Julia.

Looking out at all of you here, I am reminded of another sacred moment: the day Christine and I made our vows to each other seven and a half years ago in the presence of many witnesses – and many of you here now were there with us then.

Do you remember that day?  If you were there, you may remember that we stood up front with our parents, who read a prayer for us from the Book of Common Prayer.  One of the things they asked the Lord was this: “Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.” 

A strength, a counselor, a comfort, a companion.  Christine, I pray that the Lord would give me the grace to be all of those things to you as we pick up the pieces of our hearts.

And dear friends, we could not have imagined the degree to which we would need each of you to serve these roles in our lives as we have this year.  Part of our gathering here today is to acknowledge God’s faithfulness to us in a time of unbearable pain, and a very important part of that faithfulness is expressed right here in this room.  Simply by your presence here. 

It is important to us, in turn, that you know how grateful we are for the ways in which you have been the means of God’s grace to us in such a time as this.  We have needed you, and will continue to need you.

I’m sure that you understand that it is not easy for me to be up here speaking about Julia when losing her is still so fresh, so raw for us… when every fiber of our being cries “No!  I do not want to be here.  I want to have this week back, and do whatever it takes to keep our precious baby.”  I did not want to speak here this morning; I thought it would be too painful.

And it is painful.  But I concluded yesterday that I would regret it if I did not at least make the attempt to tell you about Julia… to at least try to capture the essence of who she was to us.

As her parents, Christine and I are sad that although many were touched by Julia, that we were the only ones with the privilege of experiencing the fullness of her beautiful spirit day-to-day.  And as Jesus reminds us, a light in a dark room ought not to be kept hidden.  Its light is life-giving, and it must be shared.  And so I would like to share with you about this little light named Julia.

Some of you may not be ready to hear some of the things I will share today.  And that’s OK.  But I must share my extraordinary experience with this little girl.

To understand Julia, we must first be reminded of the nature of God, her Creator.  The Bible is God’s bright message of His salvation to a dark world, and many stories from His Word could suffice.  But in trying to capture the essence of my experience with Julia, I am particularly struck by the story of Elijah seeking refuge and direction from the Lord when his life was in grave danger.  From 1 Kings 19,

“And God said, ‘Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.’  And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire the sound of a gentle whisper…”

Dear friends, this is as close as I can come to describing Julia’s life.  Julia was a gentle whisper of God—a soul closer to the veil between this life and the next than I have ever known—quiet, humble, and like other babies in many ways, yet from the beginning, somehow in a special way closer to the raw, unfathomable power of the creating God of the universe than you or I.

She was a spiritual being in a sense that is difficult to describe.  We know from God’s Word that each one of us is a spiritual being—that we are conceived as “souls with bodies.”  But it was even more than that with Julia.  I wish I had time to relate all the stories that made this so… like the magical moment when she picked her name at 18 weeks gestation; or the time when a young girl with Down syndrome ran to pregnant Christine to emphatically greet Julia while she was still in the womb; or when we stood in an airport security line in February with an older couple with a grown son with Down syndrome, and both instinctively knew at that moment that Julia would be diagnosed Down syndrome (which she was, in utero, the following week); or even the startling vision I had the evening before her death, of Julia’s risen spirit, grown and beautiful, standing on the staircase, pleased to see me as I arrived home from work.

I cannot express enough that it was just different with Julia—her soul was more present, more accessible, more immediate.  Those that had the privilege of meeting Julia and holding her will know what I mean when I say that her eyes sparkled with eternal joy, that the deepness of her gaze held something wondrous and mysterious that transcended words or heart defects or genetic anomalies.  Julia’s beautiful, wonderful, sparkly gaze touched me to the core of my soul, deep calling to deep, and convinced me more than anything before in this life that God loves me.  I cannot describe to you the gift that this child was to my spiritual journey: a cairn marking the way, a light in the dark, urging me to live a life worthy of that which God, in his mercy, has made me to be.

Julia was the sweetest baby.  We were amazed at her incredible patience.  She rarely cried when she wanted to eat, even when she was overdue and we were slow to get her what she needed.  Any time we scooped her up, her face would light up and she would beam ear to ear as we lifted her out of her bouncer and cuddled her close.  For Julia, her desire to be cuddled superseded any other need.

And yet, from the moment we learned of Julia—and this may sound strange to many of you—we also knew with more conviction than we cared to acknowledge that we would not be able to keep her.  Christine particularly had the sense early on that our time with Julia would be brief—so much so that she felt the need to record this sense in her journal entry for April 21^st of this year, three months before we would get to meet Julia.  I relate this and other brief anecdotes only to point to the nature of Julia’s existence with us.  This world was not her home, and the Lord made that clear to us in many ways.  But he also made it clear in all these incredible circumstances that we were chosen for her and her for us.

As for Julia’s choices, it is not lost on us that the name she chose for herself, Julia Christine, literally means “young follower of Christ.”  And it is also not lost on us that Julia went to be with Him at a time when we pause to remember His coming to the Earth He created as a baby, and wait in eager expectation for the risen Lord Jesus to return and make all things new.  With all of my being, I believe that she was His from the beginning, and this world was truly not her home. 

Come, Lord Jesus. 

Amen.