A Letter to the Grieving Mother
Dear Mother,
Recently you found out that the precious baby you were carrying, the gift you have been longing for and planning for, has left your womb. You had your whole world come crashing down around you. You had a knife thrust right into your heart, right into your family.
Tears can never be enough. Tears can never release the emotions you feel right now. They cannot even begin to convey the aching, agony, and deep, deep, gut-wrenching sorrow you feel.
There are a million questions that begin to flood your mind. Questions that keep you up at night. Questions that seem to not have any real answers. Doctors, specialists, scholarly articles, testimonies from other moms—none of them seem to have the right answer for you.
This is your baby, your child. Even though he or she may not have taken a breath of air, your baby was living on this earth. However short that life was, it was real.
As the days pass, you will grieve. You may be washed over and over by the ocean of grief and sorrow. You may not feel like you can come up for air. You may sob until there are no tears left. Keep grieving. Do not hold it back. Call out to those who can pray for you or come to sit with you.
There may be days when you feel numb. You may feel like you are just moving through the motions, and you may even laugh or smile. Or perhaps you feel like a robot just moving through life—when people ask how you are, you smile and say you are fine, because to say anything else will bring tears.
Even now, a year after Ezekiel’s stillbirth, there are times when I cannot talk about him without tears. Tears are good, though not for every situation. So I find myself hiding them. Until one day, the dam breaks and they come flooding over me and I am sobbing again.
There may be days of anger and confusion—days when you are very angry with the God you love. Perhaps you will come screaming to His throne just wanting to throw things like a child in a tantrum, your heart breaking in a million pieces as you cry out in anger. You may tremble at this thought, but it happens. Yet God sits on His throne in patience. He is waiting for the anger to pass. He is waiting for you.
Then the “why.” This question resounds in your heart over and over. Why did this happen? Why did God take my baby? Why does it hurt so bad? There is not an answer that will take away the pain. In fact, some answers will anger or irritate you. It seems like nothing can comfort you, nothing soothes the hurt. There is no answer. At least not one that we can fully understand with our hearts, or one that will satisfy the ache in our souls.
I have learned that the presence of God is the healing balm. Just sitting quietly with Him—sometimes without any words, prayers, or cries—just sitting with God is the balm for our hearts. That is what we need. We cannot comprehend the heart and mind of God, but we can feel His love, and we can be healed by it. This is what God is waiting for.
This healing does not happen in one fell swoop. It happens over time. It happens as we come continually to Him, as we rest in Him.
Once healing begins, you may feel like you are growing again, that life is getting back to normal. Or that may not be the case. There may still be days when you can’t get out of bed, days when the tears don’t stop. The healing of a heart broken in a million pieces takes time, patience, and rest. Be patient with yourself. Others may have a time table for you grief, but God does not. Whether your grief is short or long, it is your grief, your sorrow. God is there through it all—sometimes silent, sometimes through the gentle presence of a friend, and sometime thorough His Word. He is there.
Pain is a reality of life, a terrible reality. And I believe there is nothing that compares with the pain of losing your child. Take a breath. Close your eyes. Wait and listen, and feel His presence wash over you. Let that be a healing balm.
- Dawn Byington
Hope Mom to Ezekiel
In 2017 we finally got pregnant. After 10 years of trying. We had two beautiful children, but wanted to try for one more. At twelve weeks gestation, we discovered our sweet Ezekiel had Trisomy 18 and would not be carried to term. Though the doctors said he would pass by 16 weeks, we had the privilege to carry him to 33 weeks. We delivered a beautiful, stillborn boy on January 30, 2018. That journey changed our lives.
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