Hold Up Her Arms

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and as I’ve been thinking about what I want to say this year, I keep coming back to a picture in Exodus that I recently studied. Most of the time when I write here, I’m writing directly to you, Hope Mom, but today I want to talk for a little while to those who love a Hope Mom, because I think this picture has something beautiful to show us about how we can care for one another when grief has made someone we love weary.

And while I’m writing from the place I know, the grief of losing a baby, I don’t think what Exodus shows us is only for this kind of loss. There are weary people all around us carrying all kinds of grief, heartache, disappointment, and burdens we may or may not be able to see. My prayer is that we would learn to notice them, too. That we would carry this picture with us into our families, our churches, our friendships, and our everyday lives, and become people who are willing to come alongside one another when the weight has become too heavy to carry alone.

In Exodus 17, the Israelites are fighting against Amalek while Moses stands on the hill above them with the staff of God in his hand. When Moses holds up his hands, Israel prevails, but when he lowers them, Amalek begins to prevail. And eventually, as you’d expect, Moses gets tired. His hands become heavy and he simply can’t keep holding them up on his own.

“But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”
–Exodus 17:12

There’s so much we could talk about in this passage, but I found my thoughts staying on the simple fact that Moses needed other people. God was the One fighting for Israel and God was the One who would ultimately give them the victory, and yet God, in His kindness, had given Moses Aaron and Hur to stand beside him when his own strength was gone. They noticed he was tired, they gave him somewhere to sit, and then they stood on either side of him and helped him hold up what had become too heavy for him to hold up alone. I can’t help but think about grief when I picture that.

When your baby dies, there are parts of the grief that belong only to you. No one else can know exactly what it’s like to be your baby’s mom and miss the particular child you love. No one else had the exact dreams you had for their life or imagined the exact future you did. No one can take away the empty space in your family or make you stop noticing all of the places your baby should be. Even another Hope Mom, no matter how similar her story may seem, can’t fully enter into yours because our babies are different and our stories are different and grief is as individual as the love we have for them. And while no one else can carry our grief for us, God never intended for us to carry it alone.

Throughout Scripture, we see God’s people called to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), encourage and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11), weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), and not neglect meeting together (Hebrews 10:24–25). Suffering changes none of this. If anything, suffering has a way of showing us just how much we need the people God has placed around us. There have been seasons when I’ve been able to open my Bible and remind myself what’s true about God, and there have been seasons when I’ve needed someone else to remind me because grief was so consuming that I was having trouble remembering for myself. There have been days when I could pray, and there have been days when I’ve been so grateful someone else knew how to pray for me. There have been moments when I could stand, and there have been moments when I’ve needed someone beside me helping me not to fall down.

I think this is one of the beautiful gifts of Christian community. Our help ultimately comes from the Lord, and Scripture is so clear about that. He is our refuge and our strength (Psalm 46:1), our keeper (Psalm 121:5), and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Those are places that belong to Him alone. And yet, one of the ways God so often cares for His children is through His children, through the friend who sits beside us in a hospital room or funeral home or church pew, who brings dinner when feeding our family feels like one more impossible thing, who remembers the date on the calendar everyone else seems to have forgotten, and who is willing to say our baby’s name without worrying that saying it will somehow remind us of something we could never forget. It’s the friend who keeps checking in after the first few weeks have passed and the rest of the world has returned to normal, while ours still feels like it has stopped.

Sometimes God’s provision for our weariness looks like an Aaron on one side and a Hur on the other, and as we enter Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, I think there’s something here for all of us. October is a month when you’ll probably see more posts about miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss. You may see statistics or pink and blue ribbons or candles glowing in remembrance on October 15. You may hear stories you’ve never heard before, even from women you’ve known for years, because sometimes it takes a month like this for a mother to feel like she has permission to say, “My baby lived too. My baby mattered too. I am still their mom.”

I hope we listen. I hope we remember that behind every statistic is a baby who was loved and a family whose story changed forever, and that we resist the temptation to believe that because someone’s loss happened five or ten or twenty years ago, she doesn’t need anyone to remember with her anymore. Grief changes as the years pass, certainly, and by God’s grace we learn how to carry it differently, but love doesn’t expire with time, and neither does the desire to know that the child we love is remembered by someone besides us.

Maybe that’s where awareness begins, not simply in knowing how often pregnancy and infant loss happens or knowing the right statistic to share, but in becoming more aware of the people right in front of us and being willing to come close. There may be a mom in your church whose baby died this year and you’ve wanted to reach out, but you’ve been afraid you’ll say the wrong thing. Maybe there’s a friend whose baby died many years ago and you’ve wondered if bringing up her baby’s name will make her sad, or you know an anniversary is coming and you aren’t sure if you should acknowledge it. I can tell you that you don’t need perfect words, and you aren’t being asked to fix her grief because you can’t. Aaron and Hur didn’t make Moses less tired and they didn’t remove him from the battle. They simply saw that he was weary and refused to let him stand there alone.

I’d love for that to be part of what Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month looks like for us this year. Send the text you’ve been thinking about sending and say the baby’s name. Remember the birthday or the day they went to heaven. Ask the Hope Mom how she’s doing and be willing to hear the real answer, and if you don’t know what to say after she gives it, it’s okay to tell her that too. Sit beside her anyway. Pray for her when she has words and when she doesn’t. And maybe most importantly, don’t disappear when October is over, because she’ll still be her baby’s mom in November and at Christmas and on Mother’s Day and on an ordinary Tuesday when something unexpectedly reminds her of the life she thought she’d be living.

I keep coming back to the end of Exodus 17:12: “So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.” Moses’ hands were steady, but it wasn’t because Moses suddenly became stronger. They were steady because someone helped him hold them up. And I wonder how many grieving mothers are sitting beside us with tired arms. How many are quietly carrying the weight of missing a baby while packing lunches and going to work and sitting in the pew beside us on Sunday morning? How many have become really good at saying they’re okay because they don’t know if there’s still room for their grief? And I wonder what it could look like if the people of God became known as people who notice when arms are growing tired and, instead of assuming someone else will come alongside or expecting her to keep holding them up alone, we come alongside her and help hold them up.

That’s the kind of community I want for every Hope Mom. I want her to have people who make room for her grief instead of trying to make it go away, who are willing to walk alongside her without rushing her toward being okay, who remind her of what’s true when she’s having trouble remembering for herself, who speak her baby’s name when no one else does, and who keep pointing her toward Jesus, our only true and lasting hope. Because ultimately, He’s the One who holds us all, and sometimes, in His great kindness, He uses the hands of the people beside us to help hold us up.

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One of the ways you can help hold up the arms of a grieving mother is by supporting the ministries that walk alongside her. Your gift helps Hope Mommies continue providing Christ-centered community, resources, and care to mothers and families grieving the loss of a baby.

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Jennie is the Executive Director for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Brian live in Oregon and have four children together— Trenton, Paige who has been in Heaven with Jesus since 2010, Mason, and Cora. If you were to knock on her front door today, you’d find her in something comfortable drinking a hot cup of tea, while trying to figure out how to balance all the things that make up a life. She enjoys spending time in God’s word, fresh flowers, board games with her kids, cooking, and evening walks in her neighborhood. She adores being a new creation in Christ and prays she reflects Him well on this earth.