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I see you counting down the days and hoping that maybe this month it will happen.

I see you as the quiet tears fall down your face when you realize that once again, it’s not your time.

I see you sat in waiting rooms, dreading another blood test but knowing you would do anything to hold a baby in your arms.

I see you become an expert on levels and numbers and being so focused that some days you feel like you are losing your mind.

I see you sit in the doctor’s offices holding onto your belly and praying that it’s not true.

I see the pain in your eyes as you try and hold onto the hope that maybe they were wrong.

I see you weeping as you hear the news.

I see you as your heart breaks and you wonder how you will make it through.

I see you as you listen to all the details without hearing a word they are saying.

I see you as you realize the end has come before it really had a chance to begin.

I see you as you drive home silently not knowing what to say.

I see you as you grieve the loss of the life that was so short lived.

I see you as you hold your baby for the last time.

I see you as you to try to comprehend what is happening before you.

I see you as you weep in the quiet, cold hospital room.

I see you as lay there thinking that this pain will destroy you.

I see you as you say goodbye before you had enough hellos.

I see you as you try to figure out how to love one someone so much but then have to learn how to let them go.

I see you as they wheel you out of the hospital with empty arms.

I see you as you enter the house that was ready for a baby you will never bring home.

I see you feeling so empty and alone and wondering if you will ever be the same again.

I see you because I see me.

I see all the times that I felt so alone, confused, and heartbroken.

I see every doctors appointment, every diagnosis, every loss and some days I still feel them like they were just yesterday.

I see you, and I want you to know you are not alone. The grief and loss will hurt and probably for a long time but there are others that have walked this path before you and what I can tell you is that one day maybe weeks, months or even years from now the pain will begin to subside.

Although you will never be the same, you will learn to navigate this life even with the scars. If you allow the Father to carry you when you no longer have the strength, allow yourself to feel the depth of the pain and the loss, you will make it through and one day you will smile again.

The best is yet to come is a phrase I have heard many times before but over the last couple of years I have at times found it hard to believe that to be true. As I sat holding my sleeping toddler on Christmas Day evening the tears started rolling down my face as I remembered the last 2 Christmases and how they had both been tinged with grief and sadness. Christmas 2013 was just 8 weeks after we lost our son and Christmas 2014 we lost my grandma just a few days before. I had come to the end of those years exhausted and heartbroken and honestly I couldn’t see past my grief some days but as I held my little boy this Christmas I realized how much hope I had this year. It wasn’t because everything had been perfect. This year has had its own struggles and challenges but it’s also a year where I have begun to see the answer to many prayers, some of which I had never even spoken out loud.

As I started to reflect and pray about the New Year ahead I felt a new level of resilience and strength that I haven’t felt in a long time. 2015 has not only been a year of answered prayers but has also been a significant year in the healing of my heart and body. Until you experience grief, you never realize how long it takes and what an effect it has on you, physically, emotionally and spiritually. After experiencing years of infertility and miscarriage and then losing our newborn son I was bruised and battered from the battle and was almost “waiting for the next shoe to drop”. Every part of me was exhausted and there were many days it took all my energy just to get out of bed and face the day. But slowly over time I began to heal physically emotionally and spiritually.

As 2015 began I felt like it would be a significant year but I couldn’t say how or why. Then in the early summer of last year, it became very clear why this year would be significant in more ways than one. In May God called us to a new city and a new job. He called us to continue to trust him on the journey he was taking us on. When we said yes he began to show how much he loved us and remind us how faithful he really is. I’d like to say that I didn’t need him to prove to me that he was trustworthy but in my frail human nature there were many times over the past few years that I felt he had let me down. Even though He knew he had shown his faithfulness a thousand times before he knew what my heart needed.

That’s the incredible thing about God, though, he doesn’t just love me, He loves me extravagantly. He doesn’t just provide for my needs, He exceeds my expectations and gives me more than I could’ve asked for. He provided for every detail of our move from the jobs we got, to the house we live in, to the wonderful family who cares for Jackson when I’m at work.

I think the biggest thing I will take from 2015 is that the Father loves us in our brokenness and continues to lavish his generosity on us even when we are unsure and find it hard to trust him. He builds us up piece by piece and makes us stronger than we were before. People sometimes tell I’m strong and brave because of all that I’ve been through but honestly, it’s just my Heavenly Father in me that makes me strong. Without Him, I am frail and broken but in Him, I am whole, brave and strong.

So as I step in 2016 I step with new strength. I feel like this year He is calling me to be decisive and determined, to take on new ground. The word he gave me this year is resolute. Resolute means determined, faithful, and unwavering.

As I dug more deeply into what that word meant I found that the synonyms of it are faithful, loyal, constant, staunch and steadfast. As I read into each of those definitions the Lord began to highlight all the areas in my life that he wanted me to be resolute.

He also gave me the verse 1 Corinthians 15: 58.

The NIV translation says

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

And The Message translation says

“58 With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.”

As I read that verse I felt the Lord calling me to look at the areas of my life where I do things out of obligation or guilt or out of misplaced responsibility. He revealed to me that if those are my reasons then it will always feel like a waste of time but if I am doing them for him with determination then I will have a whole new perspective. If they are things that he has called me to do then that this the attitude I should do them with and if they are not what he has called me to do then maybe I should let someone else do them or just let them go.

I don’t know how the last year has been for you maybe it’s been filled with heartache or maybe it’s been filled with joy or maybe it’s been a mixture of both. Whatever it has been I urge you to reflect on the last and all that it has taught you and then ask God to show you what he has for you in this new year. Maybe 2016 is about healing for you or maybe it’s about breakthrough, maybe it’s about strength or maybe its persistence. Just allow the Lord to show you and then dig deep into what he is calling you into this year…. the best is yet to come!

Jackson was 5 months old on Saturday! I can’t believe that 5 months has gone so fast and that I have only blogged once since he came home!

The last few months have been a whirlwind. First Jackson arrived and so we were adjusting to being new parents and then I changed jobs which was another adjustment. We had the holidays and all the chaos that those bring plus right before Christmas my grandma passed away. That was a very difficult time for me and I still miss her every day. I think because of all the grief and loss I have been through in the last couple of years, it brought it all to the surface again and I felt so broken. Then right after Christmas, my house flooded and then in the same week my pastor and the youth pastor at my church (where I also work) resigned and moved away.

I have spent many days in the last few months feeling like I just was just trying to catch my breath. Like I was standing in the waves and every time I managed to stand back up I got hit by another wave. Now not all those things were bad things though many were. It was more that it was all happening at the same time.

I was chatting to my husband the other day and he was saying how I just didn’t seem like myself and I realized that I needed to start blogging again. During my time of grief, it was an outlet for me to express how I was feeling and process some of what was going on…and the funny thing is I hate journalling! When I sit down to journal it just doesn’t happen but somehow blogging almost seems like a conversation and so the extrovert in me finds it a lot easier to process this way. I think somehow it made me feel less alone. That somehow even though this was something only I could walk through, I had people walking with me, praying for me and encouraging me along the way.

Now as I have thought about the last few months it has definitely been a seen of transition. Transitioning from being a couple to a family again, from working one job to working another one, from living in a house that was reasonably organized to living in a house with no insulation or flooring! It was also a transition to get used to my grandma not being around and that was a hard one. Still, now I think to myself sometimes that I should “call nana and tell her that” and then I realize I can’t.

I think that’s the hard thing with transition though whether it’s combined with grief or not because I think that most of us don’t really like change. Even if we like the new, exciting things I don’t think many of like the process of getting there.

The dictionary says that transition means “the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another” and to be honest I think that means we are almost always in a state of transition. Hopefully, as a Christian, I am striving to be more like Jesus every day and that is going to mean that change and transformation have to happen in my life.

Transition is also a term that they use for the part of labor when you are getting close to the end when your baby will be born but also I’ve heard people say its also the part when you think you can’t take it anymore. I think that’s really interesting, right when you are about to get breakthrough is also the point when you want to give up.

I have certainly had many of those moments over that last few months; moments when I just wanted to give up. But what I’ve discovered is that perspective changes everything. Some days I would be so focused on the difficult parts of the changes that I couldn’t see all the amazing things too. The changes were stretching me and it was tiring and even painful at times. I was felt like saying I’m too tired, too busy, too sad to keep going and then I remembered God was still right there. Now that might sound silly because of course He was still there but it wasn’t about whether he had left me or not it was about whether I was listening to him or was my head so full of all the things that I couldn’t do that I couldn’t hear his voice.

So I decided to start changing my perspective and remember to listen to my Heavenly Father.  In many areas, I have already seen that breakthrough and for the places that I haven’t, I am relying on him for the strength to get through the time of change and transition.

The other thing I’ve realized is that during a time of transition you need the right support. Whether you are a new parent, or you are starting a new job it’s always easier if there is someone who is a few steps ahead of you. I even found this with my grief journey. It helped to have people around me who knew how I was feeling but also knew that I would make it to the other side.

Finally, I’ve realized that it’s better to keep your “eye on the prize” rather than on where you are at this moment. So whether that’s remembering that one day your baby will sleep through the night, or one day your job will be easier or even that one day your pain and loss won’t hurt so much. Whatever it is your breakthrough will come and eventually be on the other side. Now I also don’t mean that you should always be focused on the future but more that you can have peace in the present knowing that it won’t always be this way.
So during this time of transition and the many more that are sure to come I reminding myself to spend time with my Heavenly Father and listen to his voice, to find the right support and to remember that the breakthrough will come!

Recently I attended a memorial service for families who had lost babies at the hospital where we had our son, Oli. I knew it would be a day full of emotions. As I stood in that chapel with so many other families I was struck my how many broken hearts there were in the room; each one of us was in a different place on our grief journey. Some had just lost their baby and their emotions were still raw. Others were months or even years into their grief and the emotions were less raw but you could tell the pain was still there. There stood so many mothers who just a few months before had been overjoyed at seeing that little blue line and in a moment it all fell apart. Some had lost babies before they were born, others like us had lost them after a few short days in the NICU and others had lost them later on.

As we all sat there tears streaming down our face, listening to the music wondering why it was us sitting there grieving our children, each one of us missing our babies, the Chaplin stood up and gave a brief talk. He spoke of the journey of grief and the long road that we must each travel and then he said something that has stuck with me ever since. He explained that as a father he had walked his own journey of grief after losing his daughter to SIDS but as he walked that journey with his wife and countless other people he truly believed that, “no one could ever know the pain of a mother’s broken heart.” He was explaining how we each go on our grief journey as mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, yet there was something uniquely profound about a mother’s grief.

I don’t know if its because we carried them and so it feels like we lost a part of ourselves or that its just the way God created us, to be forever connected to our children. I think it’s a just part of God’s heart that he gave uniquely to mothers. Now please don’t hear me say that a father’s, aunt’s, uncle’s or grandparent’s grief isn’t valid or true. I think that everyone who has lost a child experiences pain & loss I just thought it was interesting that from a father’s perspective who lost a child and someone who has walked with so many through grief and loss that he thought there was something unique about a mother’s pain.

As I have been thinking about this over Lent, I started thinking about Mary and the loss and pain she experienced. I wonder how Mary must have felt on the day she discovered that Jesus was going to die. I’ve always wondered if she had always known. My guess is that even though she knew that he was her Savior that her heart as his mother would have continued to hope that there would be another way. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to stand at the cross watching your Son die knowing that it was unjust. The pain must have been unbearable as she watched her son take the pain and suffering of everyone on his shoulders.

I have no idea what Mary’s thoughts were or even how she managed to make it through those days. But, over the last few months, I have had a glimpse into what that must have felt like. I have always been struck by the fact that even in his final moments Jesus made sure his mother had someone to look after her. He knew that her grief would be unbearable. Until this year I had never really thought about how her grief must have continued even after he ascended to Heaven. I had always got stuck on the fact that he had risen and was in Heaven but his mother was still left without him. She still had to go on every day without the son she had raised and watched grow. Even though we know our children are safe and in Heaven, it doesn’t take away the pain of wanting them here with us.

Jesus was not only Mary’s son but her Savior as well and so he knew she would need someone to stand with her in the days, weeks and years ahead. This last year I have learned a lot about the power of people standing with you in grief. Some days are good and we don’t need people as much, some days are hard and we just need to know someone is there. Grief is so unpredictable and this can make it hard for people stand with you in your grief. A knowing smile, an outreached hand, a thoughtful text all make us feel slightly less alone. Even though it doesn’t take the pain or loss away it makes slightly easier to bear.

I think sometimes people get afraid that they will say the wrong thing and so don’t say anything at all that, I think a lot of the time that’s worse though. We just want to feel like we are not alone and that are children are not forgotten. I had one friend send me a gift and a card a few weeks after Oli had died,  it just said that she couldn’t imagine what I was going through but that she guessed it was hard to see everyone going back to their normal lives when I was still dealing with such unbearable loss. She wanted me to know she hadn’t forgotten. I wept as I read the card but they were good tears. They were tears of a mother whose heart was thankful that someone loved me enough to take the risk. Handling people in their grief is risky and unpredictable but I can tell from someone who has experienced it and continues to experience it, it’s worth the risk.

So I will leave you with this, at some point we will all know someone who experiences grief and probably the loss of a child and the question is will you choose to have the courage to stand with them when they need you the most?

Will you STAND with them when the world falls apart and they have no idea how they will make it through?

Will you STAND with them as they say goodbye to a life gone too soon?

Will you STAND with them as they pack away their hopes & dreams in little boxes that will never be opened again?

Will you STAND with them when it takes all their strength to just get out of bed?

Will you STAND with them when they need to cry?

Will you STAND with them when they just don’t want to be alone?

Will you STAND with them when they have nothing to say?

Will you STAND with them when all they want to do is talk?

Will you STAND with them on the good days?

Will you STAND with them when they start to laugh again?

Will you STAND with them remind and them that you will never forget the precious life we lost?

As I came to the end of the most difficult year of my life I began reflecting on what remains when everything else falls apart. When the world falls apart and nothing makes sense anymore what can I hold onto? As I reflected on this I was reminded of the verse in Corinthians about faith, hope, and love.

 “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

Hope is an interesting concept for us as human beings. I believe we are designed to instinctively put our hope in things. We make plans based on what we hope for. When I was pregnant I bought a stroller and decorated the nursery. I planned a baby shower. Now, none of these things were bad things (I had to prepare for the upcoming arrival of our son) but the problem is that when it doesn’t happen the way you expected you are more disappointed. It’s a natural human instinct to put our hope in things, especially when we believe they are what God has promised us. But that’s when our idea of hope can get blurry.

With everything that has happened in the last 12 months, I’ve wrestled with the idea of hope. I have hoped for things that I have seen happen but I have also hoped for things that have not happened or didn’t go the way I expected. I hoped that Phoebe (second twin) would survive and be healthy but that didn’t happen. I hoped that Oli would be well and that we would bring him home but that didn’t happen either. Those were big hopes and I fully believe that they were godly things to desire. The struggle for me was how to keep having hope after things had gone so wrong. How could I keep hoping in the midst of such devastating loss?

As I pondered this a deeper question emerged; do I really understand what hope is, and am I putting my hope in the right place? Many of us use hope in statements such as “I hope I get that promotion” and “I hope it doesn’t rain.” I’ve said many of these myself but I don’t think this grasps what hope is really about. Hope in an earthly sense is about expecting something to happen based on what we know. The problem with that kind of hope is that our knowledge only goes so far. We can’t see all the pieces and so when it doesn’t go the way we expected we feel let down. We can’t understand why God didn’t intervene and do something. After losing Oli I really struggled with the idea of hope because after losing the twins and then finding out I was pregnant again with Oli I had started to let myself hope again. I made plans based on the fact that Oli was going to be born and that I would be his mum. I started attaching things to what I was hoping for.

We look at verses like Jeremiah 29:11 and think that means that bad things won’t happen to us but that’s actually not the promise in the verse. The promise of the verse is that He knows the plans and that regardless of what we can see, he will continue to work for our good and that give us hope. But this kind of hope is different. This is the hope in who God is and that is something that won’t change.

After losing Oli I thought about the things that I knew God had promised me and what I could be sure of. When the world around you has been shaken you have to find what’s unshakeable. As I thought and prayed about this I realized that God never promised me that Oli would be okay or even that I would be pregnant in the first place. He did promise that he loves me and that he sent his Son to die so that I could live. He did promise me eternal life and that he would never leave me. So even though things didn’t work out the way I had “hoped” I’m learning how to trust and hope in who He is and not what I think he is going to do for me. And that kind of hope is like the hope spoken of in Hebrews 6:19  “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure”

It is something we can hold on to regardless of circumstances. His character never changes, so even when everything is shaken and the word falls apart we can hold onto the unshakeable.

And when we start to have this kind of hope it allows faith to rise within us.

The bible says “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11: 1). So it’s not about wishful thinking or about hoping for things that we have no guarantee of. Faith is an assurance in something and someone who has shown himself to be trustworthy. Faith is about trusting in a God that sent his son to die and who rose from the dead. Faith is knowing that we have salvation because of what he has done for us. It’s about trusting in the bigger picture about continuing to believe he has good things for me despite the painful events of the past few months. It’s trusting that one way or another God’s promises always come to fulfillment, but it is not always the way we thought. We can have faith in a God that love us and that will never change.

When I was growing up I was told that love is not just a feeling but a choice. There are days when I choose to love the people in my life even though they annoy me or make bad choices. But there is also a kind of love that I discovered this year that is unlike any other kind of love, and that is the love of a mother for her child. When I saw Oli for the first time there was no question about whether I loved him or not. The feeling was so overwhelming and so deep that I could never deny it. After losing him I began to reflect on the kind of love God has for us and the pain he must feel when we turn away from him. When you have loved someone that deeply, the pain of loss goes that deep, too. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for God to watch us turn from him after all he had given us. Although I cannot fully grasp the depth of love and therefore loss that God feels for his children, I feel like I’ve begun to get a glimpse of it. This year has given me a greater understanding of the kind of overwhelming incredible perfect love He has for us and how it reaches us in our darkest hours. The amazing thing about the kind of love He has for us is that it’s perfect. It has no faults. And that kind of love is like a light. It pierces through darkness and fear. Where there is light there is no room for darkness. Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space. As it says in 1 John 4: 18 “ Perfect love casts out fear”. God’s perfect love cannot occupy the same space as fear.

This year I have experienced things that I would have thought would have gripped me with an overwhelming and unending fear like losing the Ezekiel, Phoebe & Oli. But what I discovered is that even in the most painful and scary moments, if I allow God’s perfect love to occupy my heart, then there is no room for fear. The thing with this kind of love is that we have to allow it to occupy those spaces in our hearts where fear lurks. We have to give God permission to meet us in our fear with his perfect love. It might sound crazy but when I held Oli for the last time and said goodbye, I felt no fear. Instead, I felt completely enveloped by his perfect love.

In the days following Oli’s death, I have truly felt God’s love surrounding me all the time. Sometimes it is quiet and gentle, like his hand resting upon me, and sometimes it is powerful and overwhelming like a wave, but it’s always constant and it never fails me. So even though I come to the end of this year knowing loss and pain like I never have before, I also have experienced a love like never before. As I allow him to love me in the way only He can, my fear begins to disappear and hope begins to rise in my heart again. So as I stand on the edge of a new year I know that his love will continue to find me and that I can trust in His gracious plan for my life.