God Is with Those Who Mourn

On Bereavement Photography and Detention Centers

My daughter was recently hired as a newborn photographer working out of a local hospital. She enters rooms of new mothers and pitches the offer of a free newborn photoshoot right there in the hospital room. Parents have the option of purchasing the digital files after they’ve been edited and, as you might guess, it’s easy for them to say yes to a photo sesh of their squishy little one-day-old—barring any health-related complications for mom and baby.

I told my kid she was lucky when she got this job—that handling newborns all day is a fast-and-sweet dopamine rush that won’t make you high.

And, I thought nothing of the shadow side to this industry: bereavement photography. I’ve now learned there are newborn deaths in the hospital nearly every week. Sometimes a single. Sometimes twins. Sometimes one twin but not the other. Sometimes a premie. Sometimes a full-term baby. Sometimes a three-inch fetus. My daughter doesn’t shoot these photos herself but she edits them after the nurses take pictures. And because she lives in the same house as me, I have spent far too many minutes scrolling bereavement photos for which I have no words that do honor to the dead or to their parents, who sometimes pose in photos with their beloveds snuggled against their chests.

At times these deceased newborns look alive or at least recently animated. And other times, there is clear degradation of their features that likely began in utero. My daughter and I have talked more about pregnancy and fertility in the last two months than we have in the last 23 years, and I’ve found myself transported back to some truly awful obstetric experiences and some truly joyful ones. I know what it’s like to glow with victory after labor, and I know what it’s like to recede into bed pillows, devastated by pregnancy loss and emergency surgery. Both new life and death are sacred spaces, but outsiders can’t easily enter the latter space.

How does anyone other than a parent behold and bear the image of a living twin snuggled against her dead brother? How does a parent behold and bear the precious face of their deceased, nine-inch-long baby, her features like melted wax? Hamilton lyrics beat through my mind as I write this:

There are moments that the words don't reach. There is suffering too terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable.¹

If you follow me on social media, it’s no secret that I post stories about detainment centers around the country. I share stories of children whose parents have been abducted by ICE while they were away at school, stories of non-criminals and legal residents who have been arrested and detained and held without legal counsel or due process, stories of citizens who experience the same. In the news last week, a Human Rights Watch report² stated that the men at Florida immigration centers were forced to eat like dogs with their hands shackled behind their backs; detainees were denied medical care and meals and sanitary conditions. Some have died since arriving:

“Based on interviews with 11 current and former detainees at Krome North Service Processing Center, the Broward Transitional Center and the Federal Detention Center between January and June, as well as data analysis and conversations with 14 immigration lawyers, Human Rights Watch concluded in its report that people at these facilities were subjected to ‘dangerously substandard medical care, overcrowding, abusive treatment, and restrictions on access to legal and psychosocial support. The report also found that detainees were forced to sleep on cold, concrete floors without bedding and were given ‘substandard’ food.’”³

When I read about the conditions in the detention center, grief twists in my stomach the way it does when I look at curated photo galleries of deceased newborns and their parents. Shielded from view in the hospital are parents suffering the unimaginable. Shielded from our view—with the exception of some written reports and interviews—human beings made in the image of God long for their families and plead for medical care, food, and water. Some of them die.

These spaces are the very definition of godforsaken. The spaces where God is petitioned, cursed, and bargained with. The spaces of Job and Hagar.⁴ The spaces of Jairus⁵ and Joseph.⁶

When I’m feeling particularly wordless with grief these days, I pull up a morning prayer liturgy arranged by Brian Zahnd.⁷ As I pray through it, lines of the beatitudes leap out. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And another line from the liturgy: Be mindful of our frame, we are but dust / we can only take so much.

I cannot save detainees who are unjustly imprisoned, although I call my representative and senators frequently. I cannot reverse the death of a newborn or erase the pain in bereaved parent’s heart, although I grieve for and with them (and they will never know). The one and only thought that comforts me is this: Alligator Alcatraz may keep the public out, but it cannot keep God out. In fact, God is there among the poor and the suffering who are surrounded by alligators and pythons.⁸ While in one sense Christ is a detainee,⁹ in another sense God is with the detainees. God is, as one of my New Testament professors said in class, “on their side.”¹⁰ While Christians are compelled by Christ to seek justice for others when it is within their power to do so, Hagar’s God—the God who sees¹¹—never abandons the powerless and the suffering.

While justice for the powerless delays, it is the great Christian hope that full justice and the eradication of evil will one day be fulfilled in the reappearance of Christ. On that day, I pray we shout these words triumphantly:

Blessed are those who ate with hands tied behind their backs, for they will freely feast.

Blessed are those who were denied medical care, for they will be made whole.

Blessed are those whose parents were stolen during the school day, for they will receive mothers and brothers and sisters and fathers in abundance.

Blessed are those whose children died, for death will be reversed.

Thanks for reading. I’m a book-obsessed pastor, seminarian, podcaster, and author. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this Dear Exiles newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.

1. “It’s Quiet Uptown,” Hamilton

2. https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/21/you-feel-like-your-life-is-over/abusive-practices-at-three-florida-immigration

3. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alligator-alcatraz-florida-detainees-conditions-fungus-mosquitoes-rcna220205

4. Genesis 16 and 21

5. Mark 5:22 and Luke 8:41

6. Genesis 39

7. Water to Wine: Some of My Story (Brian Zahnd)

8. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyrnrnxy7yo Florida’s attorney general explained that the perimeter of the detention center is maintained by the presence of “alligators and pythons.”

9. Matt 25:31-46

10. Nijay Gupta, Northern Seminary

11. Gen 16:13-15