My story
Where I Was
Despite two uneventful births, my third pregnancy abruptly ended in miscarriage. I felt sucker-punched with the shock of the loss and longed for another baby.
Instead, I found myself walking the long, lonely road of infertility, every month a tragedy as I stared at only one pink line.
Finally, we at last conceived, heard a heartbeat, saw the precious flickering movement of a tiny soul, only to be asked a few weeks later to say goodbye yet again.
Instead of holding the baby we had prayed for, we buried her.
What I needed
The pain of the infertility and losses felt suffocating. My thoughts were like wild horses refusing to be reigned in, driving me into the exhausting cycle of anxiety and despair.
It is in situations like this, these brushes with the Fall, where all of your options seem like bad ones.
—Where is option D: none of the above?
Every decision deepens the pain and underscores the crushing reality of your loss.
And yet, I longed for God’s Word.
I knew I needed Truth to calm the wild horses of my mind, to lead them into green pastures and beside still waters.
But my mind was too unsteady to focus. my eyes would skim the words, wanting them to mean something, willing them to sink in.
What I really needed was for Christian community to come around me, to sit with me, to read His Word to me.
Instead, I often felt hurried along in my grief. I could feel the undercurrent of impatience when, months later, I still wasn’t “okay.”
Where I am Now
Finally, I came to the realization that healing is not equal to grief-reduction. In fact, to fully process a loss, be it of a loved one, a job, or an identity, one must fully acknowledge the value that its presence held.
Grief equals value.
The deeper the value, the deeper the grief.
I began to realize that the lingering grief for my babies wasn’t a weakness but a lasting testament to how much their lives mattered.
My grief honors the value of their lives, and it looks forward with hope to a story that is only just beginning.
Now I allow my grief to do what it is intended to do:
memorialize my babies,
memorialize life,
memorialize all that holds value in this world.
And my grief draws my heart so deeply to yours, friend, to speak into your pain in ways I once longed for: the gift of a voice reading Truth over you when you can barely get out of bed, coming alongside you in the not-okay-ness of this side of Heaven, where we long for the Better while sojourning in the Now.
Let us grieve together.
Let us honor our grief.
And may our grief anchor us to Hope.