I have been trying to write this story and this post for about 14 months. Every time I sit down to do it I just can’t seem to find the right words and my opinion of God continues to change daily, but if I edit it anymore it will never be posted. Still not sure I’ve gotten it quite right yet, but it’s such an important piece of our story that needs to be shared that ready or not, here it is……

I don’t know that there was ever a time in my life when I had an unwavering belief in the existence of God, but that didn’t stop me from asking for a miracle as I was rolled into the operating room the morning that Ava was born. I laid down on the operating table, closed my eyes and whispered, “please,” to the God I wasn’t sure existed as the first incision was made. Ten minutes later, when my baby emerged from my belly kicking her legs, I caught a glimpse of a miracle. Fifteen minutes after that, when her lifeless body was placed on my chest, I was sure that one of two things was true; either God didn’t exist and every thing I had ever believed was complete bullshit, or he simply didn’t care.

When my dad arrived in post-op and said a Hebrew prayer over my daughter’s lifeless body I feigned interest, and when the hospital chaplain asked if we’d like to have a rabbi come to visit I only said yes because I figured it would be helpful for my family. I was too hurt, too angry, too betrayed, and frankly, felt too foolish for ever believing in God in the first place to care whether or not a rabbi came. As far as I was concerned, God and I had nothing left to talk about, and it was a relationship I had planned on terminating. Until the Rabbi came.

We were 200 miles from our home and my parents were even farther from their community and their rabbis, so the chaplain sent over the Rabbi that worked with the hospital. I wasn’t sure any clergy we already knew would be able to provide comfort so I was positive that this random stranger who happened to be a rabbi wouldn’t be able to offer much either. Still, I politely shook his hand when Rabbi Baskin introduced himself to us in my hospital room the next day. Then I let my eyes glaze over as I tuned everyone out and wondered why I had even agreed to have this guy come in the first place.

My husband, Travis, introduced the Rabbi to my parents and told the story of how they had driven overnight from Minnesota to be with us in Colorado when they heard I was having complications with my pregnancy. Rabbi Baskin eagerly responded that he had lived in Minnesota many years ago and was a rabbi in Rochester. Travis smiled and said, “I’m from Rochester. When were you there?” The Rabbi estimated a timeline in the 80’s and Travis asked if he knew his parents. The look on Rabbi Baskin’s face was a mix of shock and horror as he realized he had met Travis before.  

Almost 29 years earlier, on July 5, 1987, Travis’ mother gave birth, prematurely, to triplets. Megan, Alex, and Logan all died in the hospital within a month of being born and now, standing before us, almost 900 miles away, less than 24 hours after the death of our daughter, was the same Rabbi who presided over their funerals.  

It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room as everyone repeatedly gasped, “oh my God.” It was unbelievable. I could see the Rabbi’s mind immediately return to 1987 and he kept repeating, “little Travis. You are little Travis?!” He shook his head as he recalled everything he could about the little boy at his siblings’ funerals nearly 29 years ago. A few minutes later our 18-month old son entered the room and Travis tearfully introduced him to Rabbi Baskin saying, “this is our Logan.” The rest of our visit was filled with hugs and continued expressions of disbelief for this incredible chance meeting. I sat on my bed silently watching this reunion unfold and suddenly my mind flashed back to our wedding five years earlier. Travis and I were standing under the chuppah, holding hands, as Rabbi O. told us, “coincidences are when God wishes to remain anonymous.” I smiled to myself as I recited that phrase over and over in my head and somehow I felt a sense of comfort wash over me. Like a good friend that sits quietly not having to say anything, I felt God with me in that room. It didn’t matter how, or why we were here, or how angry I was, or how many questions I had, all that mattered was that I wasn’t alone. I put my questions and anger on hold and allowed myself to feel the comfort of an absolute and undeniable presence of a divine being in that moment. 

Since that day I have spent countless hours contemplating my daughter’s all too brief life, and death. I have questioned the meaning of our suffering and I have tried to understand the role of God in everything that has happened. I have questioned God, I have thanked God, and I have blamed God. I have listened to the cliche words of comfort that I’ve been offered by well-meaning friends and strangers as they tell me things like, “God has a plan,” or “God only chooses us for what we can handle,” and to be honest, I don’t believe in any of that. I actually believe it to all be kind of crap. I used to loosely believe in divine intervention and miracles, but now I just can’t believe that’s how things work. I can’t believe that God singled me out. I can’t believe that God chose me or my daughter or my family to suffer. I can’t believe God filled my placenta with clots to teach me something or to make me stronger or to punish me or to lead me on a path of enlightenment and self improvement. I also refuse to believe God ignored my prayers and chose not to help us, or that God decided to let my baby die, or allowed me to get pregnant just to endure the loss of my daughter, or that he ended her pain by bringing her death. I don’t believe God had a hand in any of that, but I also don’t believe that God left me alone to suffer.  As I have spent almost two years recounting our story and my experiences, I have seen more and more coincidences unfold that seem less like random events and more like the anonymous work of something or someone bigger. 

Maybe it was just coincidence that led us to discover a problem with Ava’s growth. Maybe it was just good timing that my best friend, whom I hadn’t seen in years, happened to move to Denver a few days before we were sent there and was able to stay with me at the hospital every day. Maybe it was an eerie movie choice that Travis and I were watching Gone Girl as Ava’s heart rate plummeted on the monitor and the emergency plans for delivery were set in motion. It could have been a random fluke behind such a fitting soundtrack of Beatles songs in the operating room with Yesterday playing sweetly in the background as the surgeons made the first incision, and the crescendo of Live and Let Die building as Ava’s heart slowed and then stopped beating. Maybe it was the drugs that made me blurt out the name, Ava, which we had never mentioned in all our name discussions, but whose origin comes from the Hebrew name Chava, meaning Life, the same meaning of both mine and Travis’ Hebrew names (Chaya and Chaim). Maybe it was just absolutely random chaos that resulted in the same Rabbi from Rochester, Minnesota walking in to our hospital room in Denver, Colorado almost 29 years after meeting Travis under similar circumstances. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe all of that was God, the Universe, the Divine Being, Source, whatever you want to call it. Maybe it was something bigger than all of us that brought those coincidences, big and small, into our story.

Coincidences are when God wishes to remain anonymous. I’ve thought about that phrase over and over and the more I think about it, the more I believe it to be true. Maybe Ava didn’t die because God had forsaken me or because God chose us for unbearable suffering, or because God “has a plan for us.” Maybe that’s not how God works. As time goes on I am believing more and more that God doesn’t interfere in every tough or tragic moment in our lives, but perhaps we are sent a sign instead, a coincidence, God’s way of telling us that we aren’t all alone in our misery. The most comforting moments I’ve had since Ava’s death are with the people who don’t try to fix me or offer sage advice. I have found the most comfort in those who are quiet and allow me to breathe when I need to breathe, and allow me to speak when I have something to say. Maybe that’s just what God has been doing for me.

I still wished for that miracle, for my daughter to magically take a big breath and cry out loud after they told me she was dying, but I’m coming to terms with the realization that maybe that’s just not how things work all the time. Sure, I’ve seen and heard about a lot of accounts of what people would call a miracle, especially when it comes to medicine and circumstances of life and death, but that’s not the miracle we got. And for the sake of healing my soul, I want to stop trying to figure out why we didn’t get our big miracle and instead focus on and appreciate the things we did receive. I’m trying to reconcile my faith in the Universe and to do that I must accept that God is not going to rush in and save the day for me and make it all better when things get tough. God didn’t save my daughter but I can’t allow myself to believe that God caused her to die either. I can’t believe that God was responsible for her death in the same way that I don’t believe God was responsible for my survival either. God didn’t pick me up out of my depression, or fix my broken heart, or teach me how to live again, I did those things for myself, but I’m trying to believe that I wasn’t alone. Beyond the love and support of an amazing network of family and friends I do feel in my heart that God was there too, just not in a miraculous, divine intervention kind of way I had hoped for and come to expect. There have been times in this journey that I have felt so painfully alone. I have cried to and pleaded with God, and I have felt immense anger and disappointment when it seemed like there was no response, but when I take the time to reflect I can’t help but wonder if maybe I wasn’t alone after all. Maybe I didn’t get my fairy-tale miracle, but maybe God has still been with me, sending me coincidences as if to say, “I’m here,” while simply walking beside me, allowing me to stumble and fall, and as painful as it may be for both of us, allowing me to struggle in order to learn how to pick myself back up again.

And maybe not. Maybe a coincidence is just a coincidence. Maybe there is nothing in the universe beyond our own simple existence and maybe believing that there’s something more out there makes me weak, or gullible. Or maybe I’m clinging to my belief in God like a child holding a teddy bear in the night, but if it gives me the courage to make it through the darkest and scariest times, maybe that’s all the proof I need in the presence of a divine being guiding my way out of the darkness. So while I didn’t get the miracle I was hoping for and Ava’s lungs never filled with air, mine do every day. Every morning I open my eyes, and my heart continues to beat, and my lungs expand and contract, and I try to accept that those simple miracles are all I get, and I’m trying to accept that they are enough. And my relationship with God might forever remain in the “it’s complicated,” category, but at least for now, it does exist. And on those days when I am most filled with doubt and feeling most alone, a coincidence always manages to appear and I hear the words of Rabbi O. on my wedding day, and I remember meeting Rabbi Baskin in the hospital in Denver, and I surrender myself to the comfort I feel in the Universe reminding me I’m never totally alone and I never will be.