Discovering God's Fingerprint in Misfortune

 

 

    Somewhere out west, a sturdy sapling grows from the decay of a huge fallen tree. The irony of such simple splendor from crumbling ruin is exquisite to Heather Gemmen. She cherishes a photograph of her daughter Rachael standing on that log and holding tight to the baby tree. "It may look like there's death and ugliness, this log fallen down, but out of that springs up this beautiful little sapling. And that's how I see Rachael," Heather says. "[She is] the gift out of the ugliness that happened."

    One October night, Heather awakened to a light in her bedroom. Thinking her husband Steve had returned home and switched on the overhead fixture, she sleepily asked him to shut it off. The room plunged into darkness, but the man in the doorway was not her husband. In the inky blackness, Heather could barely see the stranger pull a knife from his pocket. In spite of her struggles and offers to pray for him, the intruder overpowered her that night. But Heather would have the ultimate victory.

So they will be called
oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD,
that He may be glorified.
Isaiah 61:3b

    In the months following the assault, Heather refused to become embittered toward God. "I wonder sometimes, Where did my faith come from?" she says. "I know it's a gift from God, because I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own." Her church drew tightly around the family to offer support. "So many people were caring for me, believing for me, and giving me reason to hope—telling me I'm worth loving. I'm sure that's what saved me."

    Letters and cards poured in. Friends visited to deliver meals and pray over the hurting couple. "Our whole community was affected by it," Heather relates. "But as a whole, the church was incredibly strong and supportive." In their gentle care, Heather recognized God's grace is sufficient. And so, from a haze of anger and hurt, a seed of hope emerged.

My foot has held fast to
His path; I have kept His way
and not turned aside.
Job 23:11

    Through counseling, Heather and Steve recognized God's love had not diminished. And it was "the church, being God's hands here on Earth" that demonstrated His love, Steve says. Heather echoes her husband, "I was definitely hurting and scared. I had lots of fear, but was also able to say, 'I know that God is going to make good out of this.' It sounds crazy that I believed it . . . and again, I think it's because people were praying." In her book Startling Beauty, she refers to this as "riding the waves of prayer."

    Those waves would cradle them through the next crisis: Heather discovered she was pregnant. The couple found themselves unable to choose a course of action. For Heather, no option felt right. Abortion was out, adoption seemed too painful, but keeping the baby was unimaginable. However, as the months of indecision dragged by, the unimaginable began to appear possible. "Somehow when there is a child inside you, there is a maternal link—no matter how the baby is conceived," Heather says. "I fell in love with this child."

    For Steve, the right path revealed itself more slowly. A visitor left him a slip of paper with names and telephone numbers of two men who had been in his situation. One couple had given the child up for adoption; the other had kept the baby. "I couldn't believe someone could keep a child of a rapist and love it like his own," Steve says. "But there it was. Someone did it. It was possible."

    Although he never followed up with either of the men, the note represented a turning point in Steve's journey. Slowly, he began to see the unborn baby through new eyes. In her book, Heather recounts breaking into sobs after a meeting with prospective adoptive parents. "All I know is that when I watched [them] leave this house, I knew what it felt like to see someone walk off with my baby," she told Steve. Her husband corrected her. "It's our baby," he said. "If we're keeping it, we have to start talking that way."

For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be
compared with the glory
that is to be revealed to us.
Romans 8:18

    Their baby Rachael is pushing toward pre-adolescence now. "She is so gorgeous. And I'm not biased at all," Heather laughs, "but she is so beautiful." Steve adds, "I'm so glad we did [keep her]. Rachael is a great joy in my life . . . I wake her up for school in the morning, and the first thing she does when I kiss her is smile."

    Somewhere out west, a sturdy sapling grows out of the anguish of personal tragedy. And she is exquisite.

—Tracy Hillwig