Hiding in the Upper Room: How the Catholic Sacraments Healed Me from Child Loss

Kelly and her husband Ryan were given a cross that no parent should have to carry … watching two of their children die before their very eyes. For years, Kelly battled numbness, despair, and anger, repeatedly asking God why? Though Catholic, she avoided attending Mass where she was haunted by images of the funerals, by other little children who resembled her own children, by people looking at her with sympathetic eyes or asking her questions she didn’t want to answer.Until one night when God visited Kelly in a dream and gave her the answer she’d been asking of Him. This dream punctured the ice of grief that Kelly had been trapped under and she felt a deep longing for intimacy with God. Through the sacraments of the Catholic Church, God has given Kelly a way to turn her grief into a mission of love and healing. Kelly reveals her gut-wrenching encounter with this unbearable sorrow. She shows each of us … the pain of her cross. We see her pain, bitterness, anger, despair, and brokenness-all symptoms of the burden of the cross. Suffering is real and it’s ugly and it’s very human. This is not only the story of a mother’s grief, however. Kelly shows us the depth of her pain so we may know the heights of Christ’s healing power.
-Rev. Garrett McIntyre, Pastor, St. Bernard Catholic Church, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana