That one thing

By Carolyn Ferguson

2024 was my year of surrender. Again and again, my need for control was challenged as I faced crosses that were totally out of my hands. It started with my aunt’s death early in the year after a battle with lymphoma. Shortly after, my sister miscarried at around 12 weeks. My Pappy, the patriarch of our big family, passed away and I watched as my Grandma was helped to her feet to kiss his forehead before they closed the coffin. It was the only time my family was gathered together and silent.

It didn’t end there. My brother ended up in the hospital for a week with intense pain that still has yet to be properly diagnosed. Perhaps the hardest hit came about a month later when my mom went in for a routine mammogram and came out with a stage four lymphoma diagnosis—a rare and aggressive form too. That summer, she started treatment and I started a trinity of surgeries to remove my stage four endometriosis. To add a little salt to the wound, in 2024 TEN of my girlfriends were pregnant—friends, not acquaintances.

I thought maybe, just maybe, all of the surrender was finally worth it when I unexpectedly received a positive pregnancy test in late November. When that second line appeared, the first thing I did was book it to our nearest chapel and knelt before the Blessed Mother, offering this little one to her. It was the only way I could fathom peace after losing my two other children.

Oftentimes in life, the Lord asks us to give Him everything: our plans for the future, our goals, our leisure, our productivity, our relationships, our health—He asks and wants it all. It can be terrifying, but here’s the thing that radicalized my faith when I learned it several years ago: just because the Lord may ask for everything, does not mean He will necessarily take everything. The attitude we’re supposed to aim for is surrender. Is unattachment.

Often we find ourselves willing to give God anything—He can take my health, He can take this or that, but — we find ourselves saying — please just don’t take that one thing.

But that’s often what He wants.

Our “everything” often boils down to one thing. And that is precisely what He wants you to trust Him with.

What is your one thing? Is it having children? Is it losing your spouse, your boyfriend? Is it clarity?

And it can be excruciating when we are asked to surrender it. But again, I can’t share this enough:

just because the Lord asks for everything, it does not mean He will necessarily take everything.

The best story of this is exemplified in Abraham and Isaac. The Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice his own son, his child that He had prayed about for years. It came to the climatic moment of Abraham being willing to give God his everything before the angel stayed his hand at the last moment. God didn’t take Abraham’s one thing.

But this article is about addressing what do we do if God doesn’t “intervene.” It’s about what happens when God does take our one thing? What then?

This third pregnancy I felt fairly detached early on, perhaps out of a survival kind of mechanism. I needed to do anything I could to quell my roaring anxiety that the Lord would take this child too. Years ago I consecrated my womb to the Blessed Mother, and though this brings profound peace, I have to admit the anxiety is still there that Heaven will take me up on my offering. I figured if I could make it to our ultrasound at week eight, I would still have around 32 weeks to bond with this precious soul. But in the midst of that fear was also joy. As with my first pregnancy, I was pregnant once again with my two sisters: one with a little girl, the other with her second set of twins! What were the odds of that?

The day of our ultrasound the anxiety that I was able to suppress came roaring to life. I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt like I was in purgatory. The silence from the technician was punctuated only by the loud clunky keys on her keyboard. Peter stroked my hand gently as I stared at the ceiling, vulnerable. The silence felt like it was expanding within me as it dragged on, engulfing what little hope I had clung to. The soft explanation. Those dreaded words: “You don’t need to check-out.”

But in the midst of our devastation and my sobs was an undeniable muffled joy, because this wouldn’t just be our third loss…it was also our fourth. We were expecting twins. My dearest babies, our Lucy and our Jack. And now they had gone to heaven to be with Noel and Leo. Our pain was multiplied, but so was our joy.

Yet again, God took our one thing. And this time round, I’ll be honest—I feel so hurt. With Noel, I was engulfed by grief: this is what it feels like. With Leo, I was confused: this wasn’t supposed to happen again. With Lucy and Jack, I’m hurt: this one just really hurts, Jesus, it feels so, so unnecessary.

So what is our response? What do we do when God doesn’t block the blow? What do we do when the rejection letter comes in, when he walks away, when your dad calls late at night with the worst news ever…what do we do when God does indeed, take our everything?

There is truly only one thing we can do.

We turn our sacrifice into an offering. We choose to give what was taken from us. Suffering and pain and loss and immeasurable grief was NOT part of God’s plan—for humanity or for you. Fr. Mike Schmitz shares, “Death was not God’s will. That’s not part of God’s plan. That doesn’t mean God is distant. That doesn’t mean He doesn’t care. God is intimately involved with every moment of our lives…He allowed it to happen but He did not want that to happen.”

His heart is breaking with yours. He never wanted this either, and yet He allowed it. I know, that’s a really hard pill to swallow, and we likely won’t understand why until we are united with our loved ones in heaven.

Fr. Henri Nouwen writes in Finding Jesus, “In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for compassion is rachuwm. That word is taken from the root word recheck, which means ‘womb.’”

When we suffer, the Lord’s compassion melds with our own in so deep a manner that He suffers with us as intimately as possible—as if we are really and truly one body, just as a mother and child are one when pregnant. The womb is perhaps the most intimate place in the world, as well as the most fragile and most attacked. This is where we find the deepest Love mirrored on the Cross: take my body, this is my blood poured out for you.

In turn, our suffering is united to Him on the cross. And if you are grieving and have yet to experience the immeasurable richness of redemptive suffering, I so encourage you to do so. Fr. Henri Nouwen shares, “The invitation to suffer with God is probably the most profound thing that we see in the Christian tradition.”

He goes on to add, “St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross speak about compassion [which means ‘to suffer with.’] They speak about the mystery of suffering with Christ. They speak about their suffering as a participation in God’s suffering, and by that connectedness their suffering loses its absurd quality. It is still painful. It is still hard. It is still agonizing. It is still difficult. It is still lonely. But connected with the cross it becomes something new.”

You see, when we offer to the Lord what was seemingly taken from us, it turns our deepest heartbreak into the most beautiful gift. Even if you initially had no choice in the matter—now you do. Now you can decide what to do with your pain. With your baby. With your heartache.

Jacques Philippe writes, “Our freedom always has this marvelous power to make what is taken from us — by life, events, or other people — into something offered. Externally there is no visible difference, but internally everything is transfigured: fate into free choice; constraint into love, loss into fruitfulness. Human freedom is of absolutely unheard-of greatness.”

I pray that in the midst of your grief, that you might find that space where the Lord is grieving with you, and that you may find the strength through the Holy Spirit to give what has been taken and to offer what has been redeemed.