Question
Dear Gramps,
When my wife and I were married in the temple many years ago, we naturally thought that we would have children but, that didn’t happen so easily. After a few years of trying with no success, we turned to infertility and adoption. With adoption, we had no such luck. We finally conceived after several attempts at artificial insemination, but to our great disappointment we lost our son (who was stillborn). This loss on top of not being able to have children has been unbearable. We tried again and were finally able to have another son, who we named Nicholas Don. Other attempts to adopt and have more children have never worked out. I love my son more than you can imagine. It has been ten years since we had the stillborn. After all that my wife and I have been through, I cannot get rid of the bitterness and anger that I feel. I’ve tried praying and reading the scriptures, which does give me peace, but I’m having a horrible time with thinking that the Lord doesn’t care about me. It’s this ongoing process of praying and feeling at peace and then this feeling of abandonment which then turns to anger and thinking, Oh well God doesn’t care about me anyway. I just feel like I’m drowning in a sea of despair.
Don
Answer
Dear Don,
We don’t know at what time before birth the spirit enters the body. If any stillborn was endowed with a spirit, that child will live in the eternities. If the parents are worthy of an eternal increase the child will be theirs in the resurrection.
With respect to your feeling that God doesn’t care about you, let me suggest that you reflect on the circumstance of another childless couple–Abraham and Sarah. They went through life barren. However, both Abraham and Sarah, although they had been promised a posterity by God, and were barren long past the age for bearing children, never murmured or complained, but served God as selflessly as perhaps no other couple. Even when Isaac was born in their old age, Abraham did not murmur when he was commanded to offer his only son as a sacrifice, which would have made null and void the former promise to him of posterity.
So, if the Lord loved Abraham in spite of not blessing him with children, how could he not love and care for you as well.
Gramps
