Prologue
When the Grain of Wheat Fell
As I write these words, my heart is still tender, and it still trembles.
Tender, because I think of the child I once held in my arms—Little Wheat.
Trembling, because what I am about to write is more than nineteen months of memories. These pages hold the joy of his birth, the long watches in the hospital, an irreversible loss, and the true story of how our family continued to hold on to faith in the midst of grief.
This book grew out of the life of a child, and also out of a loss we are still learning how to bear.
At 11:00 p.m. on January 17, 2023, our son, Zhang Xian—John Earnest Zhang—was born.
He was our first child, the child we welcomed after many years of prayer and waiting.
His arrival was never an ordinary family event for us.
He was our deeply loved son, a gift of life entrusted to us.
His life was like the light of early morning—gentle, quiet, and real. Nineteen months is so brief in the span of a human life, yet for a father and mother, those nineteen months were enough to change our lives forever.
At 4:44 p.m. on August 21, 2024, at Riley Children's Hospital, with us beside him in his final moments, Little Wheat's earthly life came to an end.
That day, we lost the child we could hold, kiss, and embrace in our arms.
This was a real death.
It is not a fact that can be erased with beautiful words.
Faith did not spare us from tears.
Even today, we still miss him. We still ask questions that have no simple answers, and we are still learning how to keep living with an absence that has left a permanent mark.
But death is not the final sentence of the Christian story.
Why We Called Him “Little Wheat”
Before Little Wheat was born, his mother had already given him this nickname.
The name came from the words of our Lord Jesus in John 12:24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
Later, this verse took on a weight in our lives far beyond anything we could have imagined at the beginning.
But we must also make something clear:
This verse points first to Jesus Christ.
He is the Lord who truly gave Himself for the redemption of the world, passed through death, and rose from the dead.
Little Wheat's death was not redemptive.
He did not pay for anyone's sins, nor could he take the place of Christ's unique and unrepeatable cross.
When we describe his story with the image of “a grain of wheat,” we use that image in the sense of testimony:
A life that seems exceedingly brief and small may, by the grace of God, cause those around it to think again about life, love, suffering, faith, and eternity.
In this sense, the brevity of his life did not make it meaningless.
We have already seen with our own eyes that his story has touched some people's hearts.
Some began to reconsider faith. Some came to cherish their own children more deeply. Some began searching again for hope while facing loss. And some, by walking alongside our family, learned more deeply how to weep with those who weep.
These are not Little Wheat's “works of redemption.”
Salvation is found in Jesus Christ alone.
These are simply the witness left by the life of a child under the light of Christ's grace.
Why Write All of This Down?
I am not writing this book because I have figured grief out.
Nor am I writing because I can now answer the question, “Why?”
Some questions still have no answer today.
I write because some things are worth remembering.
I want to remember the night he was born.
I want to remember the long forty-two days in the NICU.
I want to remember his smile.
I want to remember the first time he came to church.
I want to remember his little hand reaching out as he sat at the piano.
I want to remember those thirteen days in the PICU.
I want to remember how brothers and sisters in Christ, pastors, nurses, and friends walked with us.
And I want to remember that afternoon of August 21, 2024, when Mommy and Daddy said goodbye to him in the deepest pain.
I also want to record our faith honestly.
Not a faith that makes grief disappear quickly, but a faith that can still cry out to God even when the tears have not stopped.
Not a faith that pretends to understand everything, but a faith that dares to acknowledge human limitations and still holds on to Christ.
Not the claim that “everything must have a reason we can immediately explain,” but the act of entrusting ourselves, even when we cannot explain, to the God who has revealed His love and faithfulness to us in Jesus Christ.
This Is Not a Book of Answers
If you are going through loss, I do not want to use this book to tell you:
“Don't cry.”
Nor do I want to say:
“If you just have enough faith, it won't hurt so much.”
Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
The Bible does not describe grief as the opposite of faith.
Sometimes tears are the traces left behind by love.
So if you have also lost someone you deeply love, this book will not ask you to skip over grief.
I only want to sit beside you and say:
We have cried too.
Sometimes we still cry.
But we have also discovered that a person can weep and pray at the same time; can miss someone and worship at the same time; can acknowledge the cruelty of death and still wait for Christ finally to overcome death.
I write for those who are willing to walk with pain.
I write for those searching for a little light in the darkness.
I write for those who still believe but have grown weary.
If you have wept, may this book walk with you.
If you have waited, may this book walk with you.
If your faith has ever shaken, may this book walk with you too.
And if you have never experienced a loss like this, I hope these words will help you treat those who are grieving with greater tenderness, and cherish more deeply those you can still hold today.
What Is the Hope We Hold?
We do not have hope because we know every detail about heaven.
Scripture does not tell us what Little Wheat is doing at this moment; nor do we have the right to treat the pictures in a father's heart as reports from heaven.
As his father, of course I imagine.
I imagine seeing him again one day.
I imagine his smile.
I imagine finally hearing him call me “Daddy.”
These are the imaginings of a father shaped by love and longing.
They are precious.
But they are not the foundation of our faith.
Our hope is ultimately built on something more solid than imagination:
Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
The Christian hope is not merely a vague idea that “when people die, they go to a better place.”
We hope for the return of the Lord.
We hope for the resurrection of the dead.
We hope for the redemption of the body.
We hope for a new heaven and a new earth.
We hope for what Revelation says:
“God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, KJV)
So when we say that we “hope to meet again,” we do not mean that we already know how every scene in the future will unfold.
We mean this:
We entrust a deeply loved child—and ourselves—to the God who raised Jesus from the dead and has promised to make all things new.
A Grain of Wheat, a Testimony
This is not a book that romanticizes death.
If we could choose, of course we would want Little Wheat still to be at home.
We would want to watch him grow taller.
We would want to hear him speak.
We would want to take him to school.
We would want to take him back to China to see his grandparents on both sides of the family.
We would want to walk with him through a long, long life.
Losing a child does not become something “no longer sad” simply because others were later moved by his story.
When we speak of “bearing fruit,” we are not saying that suffering itself is beautiful.
We are saying this:
Suffering does not have the right to be the final master.
Death can truly take away a person's earthly life, but it cannot nullify the resurrection God has promised in Christ.
Our tears are real.
Our love is real.
And our hope is equally real.
For this reason, this book is both a family memory and a testimony of faith.
It will not prove that we were never weak.
On the contrary, it will tell you:
We were weak.
We were afraid.
We asked why.
We held our child and cried.
We sang hymns in the hospital room.
And there were times in prayer when we almost did not know what else we could say.
But in all of this, again and again, we still turned toward Christ.
This is the story my family and I have lived.
It does not have to become the story of every family that has lost a child.
Every person's grief is different, and every family has its own road to walk.
But if you too are going through some kind of loss that cannot easily be put into words, I hope that here you will at least know this:
You do not have to pretend to be strong.
You may weep.
You may ask questions.
And even while asking, you may continue seeking God.
May these words become a small seed in your life.
Not to give you a simple answer to suffering,
but to walk with you through the darkness as you continue seeking the Lord who was crucified and rose from the dead.
Because in the end, what causes death to give way to life is not our strength, nor is it Little Wheat's story.
It is Jesus Christ.
May glory be to Him.
And may everyone who reads this book, amid grief, love, and hope, walk step by step toward the Lord who has already conquered death.
Your fellow traveler on this earthly journey, Little Wheat's Daddy, Paul Zhang (Zhang Chongzhu)
Written in Indianapolis, Indiana On the eve of Easter 2025