WHEN YOU CAN’T FIND THE WORDS FOR THE BABY YOU’VE LOST

[Trigger Warning for Infant Loss]

I always fumble for words the month of October.

How do you articulate pain?

How do you put into words the emotional rending of the words "no heartbeat?"

How do you describe the loss of air as you struggle to breathe, plunged suddenly into this new reality of an empty womb?

So many years later, and I still sit here wishing to eloquently memorialize these little ones we never held, and still I cannot find the words.

Because when you hear your baby is gone, words are not what come to you.

Only shock. Numbness. Denial. Anger. Disbelief.

And a cry so deep it feels outside of you.

"Just breathe” - though breathing feels unnatural against the weight of the pain.

"Pull yourself together” - even though all you want to do is crawl in a hole and sob yourself to sleep.

But out of your hole you must come, to make agonizing decisions about the final resting place of your child.

Where is option D, "none of the above?"

I DON'T WANT TO BURY MY CHILD.

This is Infant Loss Awareness Month. And for me, this was infant loss.

And yet somewhere in all of this, as I sat sucker-punched on the couch with the reality of the loss, feeling as emotionally lifeless as my womb, my eyes fell on a framed quote just given to me a few days before:

Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there. —CH Spurgeon

I chose in that moment to anchor my soul upon Divine Love - and I would be lying if I said it wasn't a wrestling, too. Long days, long nights, long months, long years--and yet, each year that passes, I honor my babies with my grief and I honor my God for His love that reaches into the darkest of places and holds space with the most difficult of questions, that never rushes or hurries healing, but weeps at Lazarus’ cave, even though resurrection is just around the corner.

Shiloh Joy and Elise Hope - we will never forget you.