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Please enjoy an excerpt from Ree’s upcoming book:
“It Is Not Well With My Soul:
Healing & Forgiving God After Tragedy”
(A Multi-Media Memoir with Creative Prompts)
All Rights Reserved. Ree Boado © 2025
Ch. 3 - Dismantling MY Distorted Faith
“Please don’t take her from me! Why does everything good in my life get taken away or ruined?!”
I instantly felt like I was 10 years old, crying in my room after my father had raged on us again, taking away privileges, when I didn’t even know what I had done wrong. I blamed God and I blamed myself. Clearly, I must’ve done something wrong to deserve this. Wynter had stopped breathing while I was nursing her. Did I suffocate her as she was breastfeeding? All the medical staff assured me this wasn’t possible. Was God punishing me for that awful fight I got in with my husband a few days prior? Oh how I regretted that one. Was I somehow unworthy of stewarding such a pure and precious gift in this life? What had I done to deserve this horrible agony? Maybe those old lies I had once believed were true. Maybe I was unfit to be a mother.
Tragedy has a way of unraveling your deepest held beliefs and shoving them in your face so you are forced to look at them. I thought I had healed past my old way of thinking that God was always punishing me for something. Growing up, I was always striving to avoid punishment and prove my worthiness of love to both of my parents, but especially to my father. Apparently I was still seeing God through my earthly example of a dad and some part of me blamed myself for Wynter’s death. But deep down I knew life’s happenings couldn’t just be a result of what I’d done or hadn’t done. I wasn’t that powerful.
Another distortion of the Christian faith, formed from my early church experiences, also began to resurface. The belief that “praying with faith would always move the hand of God” was one I desperately wanted to believe in my helplessness. We prayed so intensely into the late night hours and I clung to any scripture that appeared to support this belief that God would heal our daughter because of our faith. But once again, we were not in control. Our actions weren’t powerful enough to be the cause of her death or the cure. Her life was not in our hands.
So many questions about God entered my mind in those horrifying 24 minutes before resuscitation, then over the seven days on life support, and during the aftermath of saying goodbye to our newborn daughter. Did God intentionally choose to take Wynter or did he allow her to be taken? Why give her to me only to take her away? Was this in fact Satan’s doing? Was this my doing or the medical staff’s doing? Did I not pray with enough faith in God’s ability to perform a miracle? Who was the true person to blame for taking my daughter’s life?! I desperately wanted someone to pay for this injustice. I wanted someone to feel my rage over this atrocity, though it could never bring Wynter back. I wanted to avenge my only child’s death.
I read lots of books about suffering and losing a child in those first few months. Desperate to find answers to make sense of this chaos within and figure out what was true, I even wondered “Is God actually real? What if all this Christian stuff I’d always believed wasn’t even true?” Honestly, I just wanted to die because of the awful pain of my soul being ripped in two. I was confused. Why would God finally give me this precious gift of a daughter at 40 years old, only to take her back so soon? I was so angry and so incredibly wounded by him. Why would he hurt me so deeply, knowing all I had been through already in life? Maybe he never really cared for me. Maybe I had made him up as a coping mechanism to get through a difficult childhood. How could I know what was real or who to believe anymore? I had put my trust in him through so many hardships in life, and now when I finally felt I was coming into a season of joy and peace, he dropped this horrific bomb on me?! My heart was crushed and my hope was buried under a pile of grief.
Before giving birth, I was concerned that I might not bond properly with a child because of the way my relationship had always been so distant and awkward with my own mother. No heartfelt talks on the bed as I blossomed into a teen, no shopping sprees or spa days, and no warm, lingering hugs that soothed the soul. My mom has a hard time connecting on a deeper heart level and I have strong suspicions that Autism may be the reason for this. But from the second I laid eyes on my little Wynter girl, I knew that I would be an entirely different mother to her. I felt the most overwhelming sense of love for that little gift in my arms and a desire to protect her at all costs. It was the most helpless experience when she stopped breathing. Why would God allow such deep pain upon deep childhood pain? I didn’t know if my heart could honestly survive this agony. Why is God for everyone else but me, I kept wondering to myself.
Church felt awkward, since we were now “the couple whose baby died” and worship songs became painful. If I had to hear another song about the God of miracles or God fighting our battles, I thought my ears would explode! So many church songs and sermons simply didn’t feel true for our story at that time, so we often opted not to go in the early months.
I quickly realized if I was going to survive this and not spiral into complete depression, I had to find some personal perspectives on suffering. So I read the books that people sent me and I grabbed everything off my bookshelf about suffering. I read Holding Onto Hope by Nancy Guthrie who lost two infants back to back to the same disease. I reread parts of When God Weeps by Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic woman who suffers with chronic pain and has also overcome breast cancer. I watched YouTube videos about the book of Job and I searched for other Christians who had lost children and made their way back to trusting in Jesus. I had a hard time reading the Bible, so I listened to the audio version. I read about what the Bible has to say about heaven in the book called Heaven by Randy Alcorn and I listened to various sermons about suffering. I was trying desperately to understand this God that brings suffering and healing, a seeming contradiction. Who is this God and is he real? Does he care that we’re in pain? Why are we here? Why am I still here and not my daughter? And where exactly is she now?
An old mentor of mine in Phoenix recommended I read Imagine Heaven by John Burke. I devoured that book early on. This study of over 100 near death experiences (NDE’s), spoke deeply to me as I imagined my daughter being in a place without suffering. The author, a Christian pastor, attributes his research of over 1,000 NDE’s to be a big part of what led him to believe in Christ. The book compares these experiences with what the Bible says about Heaven and Hell and whether or not we should take them seriously.
My theological background in college told me to be cautious of elevating experience over the Bible, yet I knew that the Bible clearly showed instances of supernatural experiences. My roots were in fact charismatic and I had experienced some things I couldn’t explain.
I read the book with an open mind, making sure the descriptions lined up with what I had known to be God’s character and truth, despite my current doubts.
Turns out that there are thousands of these experiences from reputable people, with little to gain, from all cultures and religions. The events largely reflect the same Heaven and Hell the Bible describes, though individuals filter them through their own personal worldview. Many have come to know the Jesus of the Bible through having an encounter with him in their NDE. I was fascinated.
My sister Becky had an out of body experience when she was hospitalized at four years old with a ruptured appendix. She didn’t flatline like most of the people in the book, but she saw her body below her on the operating table and later shared details with my mom that she couldn’t have known while being unconscious. While Becky hovered near the ceiling alongside a peaceful presence, she looked up and could see into Heaven. She remembered seeing gorgeous green hills, people of all ages walking around and children playing duck duck goose. She wanted to stay and play with them but was told she had to go back. Her experience has always stayed with me.
I still had all my foundational Christian beliefs in my mind, but now my heart's knowledge of God’s goodness was shattered. I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces, but I was trying to. My brain struggled to reconcile God’s goodness with all that my heart was experiencing. But as I searched for answers, read other people’s stories of loss and hope, and I poured out my anger and hurt towards God, something began to happen. I started to remember...
I remembered how God had been good to me in years past. How the truth of his word was the light that guided me out of my scary and spiritually abusive childhood. Jesus had been the only reason I survived my upbringing without a complete breakdown. I remembered that faithfulness was my word he gave me earlier that year, and how he had been showing me that he wanted me to remember all he had done in my 40 years on this earth and how he had never once left me.
Slowly I began to see small ways that he had been trying to prepare me for this tragedy that he knew was coming. I still wanted to know why he didn’t intervene or why he wouldn’t warn me directly, but of course he wouldn’t want to steal my joyful experience of pregnancy.
I was so overjoyed to help my daughter grow and to meet her. I even wrote a song for my daughter in pregnancy that I later understood to be my “letting go song”. Being a singer and songwriter, I longed to share this part of myself with my girl. I believe God gave me this song months before her birth so I could play it at her memorial, when I didn’t have the strength to write something for her then. I had no idea these words would mean what they came to mean that week I was with my little Wynter Monet Celisa in the hospital, as I watched her light fade into eternity.
“Celisa” (means “song of joy”)
- written on May 18, 2018, 5 months before her birth and death
Celisa, your sweetness
Is melting my heart again
A bright joy in sadness
You’re showing the way to live
Bright star, dark night
Shine your pure light on me
You lie there, so peaceful
I’m learning the way from you
To trust in, our father
He promised he’d bring us through
Let go, lie still
Just know, we’re held up
Celisa your sweetness
Is melting my heart again
You're melting my heart again
Years later, I wrote the bridge in the recording studio:
We’re holding you, he’s holding us
We’re held up
The journey of grief and relationship with God is so unique to every person. In the early days, I really wanted to find a book that could basically tell me how to get through this with my faith intact. In one sense, this book is an attempt to help you do that through showing you my process, though I’m fully aware there’s not a one-size-fits-all path to healing from child loss or any loss. Part of your healing process is the seeking to understand, as you communicate with the Creator of all life. Ask your toughest questions and search his word relentlessly for the answers. Scream, cry, cuss and pray your heart out to God. He will hear you and find you in your search. He found me.
Over time, I could see I was making my way through the massive heartache and experiencing that God truly does stay nearest to the brokenhearted. He was still in control when my world felt out of control. I didn’t get all the answers to the questions that cycled through my mind, but as I sincerely searched for him (not just the answers), I started to sense that he was still there and cared deeply about my loss. He was not indifferent and he had not left me as I feared. I realized it was his face shining brightly through the loving people who showed up at my door at just the right time, and it was his beauty in the budding spring flowers, reminding me that I too could bloom again. All the good on display in the world was because of him and from him. Even the purity of my sweet daughter was his gift. Death had marred my life, but his presence was not gone. The Lord began to comfort me as I allowed myself to remember his kindness. He was giving me strength and support to keep moving forward, even when I didn’t fully trust him. I was still angry and hurt, but I was slowly starting to believe his intentions were not to harm me, as he lovingly began to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart.
It’s interesting how many people tell you you’re so strong once you lose a child. Even the oldest acquaintances seem to come out of the woodwork just to tell you this. Honestly, it was annoying to hear when I didn’t feel strong at all. Crying at the drop of a hat, doubting God’s goodness, and yelling at him in the car didn’t exactly paint the picture of a strong, faithful follower of Christ. Trusting him continued to be a challenge over the years, but I have asked the Lord often to help me trust him. Maybe this simple prayer, “God help me”, is an act of trust in itself and maybe that’s all he’s asking.
SONG LYRICS
(other sample songs from the upcoming album that accompanies the book)
How Long (Psalm 13)
How long oh Lord, will you forget me?
How long oh Lord, must I weep in the night?
How long oh Lord, will you forget me?
How long oh Lord, must I weep in the night?
Each day I wake, my body aches
I cannot get relief
So how long oh Lord, must I wait for peace?
(Chorus 1)
I will sing to you
Like I’ve always done
Speak your words of truth
Show me you’re enough
That you’re stronger than the waves of grief
In my darkest night
You can be my peace
How long oh Lord, will you forget me?
How long oh Lord, must I beg in the night?
How long oh Lord, will you forget me?
How long oh Lord, must I beg in the night?
Each day I wake, my spirit aches
I’m hoping for good things
So how long oh Lord, till you answer me?
(Chorus)
I will sing to you
Like I’ve always done
Speak your words of truth
Show me you have won
Over all the wrongs my eyes have seen
In the perfect storm
You can be my peace
In the perfect storm
You can be my peace
(Bridge)
Peace… save me from this wretched life
Peace… the darkness is thickening
Peace… I’m searching for your light
How long oh Lord, did you forget me?
I need you Lord, be my peace in the night
Oh I need you Lord, be my peace……. in the night
All Rights Reserved. Ree Boado © 2024
River
I been up and down this river
Looking for what washed away
Water running through my fingers
Lying in the dark by the riverbanks
I been up and down this city
Watching all the faces shine
But the sun is going down so quickly
Stealing the light from these innocent eyes
(Chorus)
Oooh
Down by the river
Meet me down by the river, river, river, oh
Pretty little bird, come nearer
Won't you take me on your wings
Fly me off into those mountains
Up on the heights where the sorrow won’t sting
Cause I been waiting by this river
Watching my reflection show
All the water falling into water
I’m slipping away here and nobody knows
(Chorus)
Oooh
Down by the river
Meet me down by the river, river, river, oh
(Bridge)
Meet me down
Don’t let me down
All Rights Reserved. Ree Boado © 2025