I just read a fellow IF blogger's post about respecting the loss of the Dug.gars' latest pregnancy. I haven't bothered to look up the news story, as this person's post told me all I needed to know – that it was a loss at week 20, that they chose to have photos taken and share them, that they grieve deeply.
What interested me was the blogger talking about how people are judging them and how some are ridiculing them for publishing photos. As if a physical remembrance is reprehensible in our virtual world.
Who cares? And why do some people feel the need to blab about their opinion on how someone chooses to mourn? Not the blogger, but the ones she talked about. Her post was honorable and respectful for the most part.
What got under my skin is how some (the blogger and commenters) are framing their decision not to judge. Something to the tune of "I don't care for their religion, but…"
Wait a minute. Again – who cares? Why is okay to judge someone's faith in the context of claiming to be non-judgmental about something else they do? Can we be any more hypocritical and judgmental? Would anyone dare preface their opinion that way if the Dug.gars were anything but a brand of Christian, such as Muslim or Atheist or Jewish?
I'm going to close this idea right here.
What I am remembering today, in light of their loss, is my own. My losses, my journey. I remember the night DH and I watched Blue Lagoon sometime last year – soon after watching the female lead go through her naked pregnancy in the prime of her youth, I went to the restroom where DH later found me crumpled on the floor in the fetal position bawling my eyes out uncontrollably because I knew that would never be me. I remember having my first dead child sucked out of me through a D&C at week 12, and I remember the world's biggest blood clot dropping into the toilet as my second dead child left me at week 7.
I remember being trapped in a black pit of despair as I began my own journey of searching, of healing, of answers.
I remember that there is no such thing as rational grief, and I cannot help but honor however someone else chooses to express it.
Luke 6:36-38 (New International Version)
36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
