When Your Arms Grow Tired

Last week, I wrote to the people who love a Hope Mom about a picture in Exodus 17 that I recently studied and haven’t been able to stop thinking about. If you haven’t read that post, you can read it here. I wrote about Aaron and Hur and the way they noticed Moses’ weariness and came alongside him when he could no longer hold up his own arms, and I wondered what it might look like for us, as the people of God, to become better at noticing when someone around us is weary and helping carry what has become too heavy for them to carry alone. But I keep thinking about the other side of that picture too, because maybe right now you’re not Aaron or Hur noticing someone else’s tired arms. Maybe you’re Moses, and you’re the one who is tired.

Maybe your baby died recently and you’re still trying to understand how this can possibly be your life, or maybe it’s been a year or five years or fifteen years, and most days you know how to carry your grief now, but then something happens that reminds you that knowing how to carry something doesn’t mean it isn’t still heavy. Maybe October itself makes your grief feel a little closer to the surface because there are pink and blue ribbons and stories of babies everywhere you look, and while part of you is grateful that pregnancy and infant loss is being acknowledged, all of that awareness can also make you even more… tired.

Or maybe you’re doing okay right now, and I hope you are. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that grief has such an ebb and flow to it, and there are seasons when the weight feels lighter and seasons when, sometimes without much warning at all, it feels heavy again. There are days when I can talk about Paige with a smile and so much gratitude for the ways God has used her life, and there are still days when I simply miss my daughter and wish she were here. Both of those things are true, and after all these years, I don’t feel the need to make one of those truths cancel out the other.

Maybe that’s part of why this picture in Exodus feels so close to me as a Hope Mom. 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. Moses knows what he’s supposed to be doing, and he keeps doing it for as long as he can, until Scripture tells us, “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)

I love how much tenderness there is in that picture because Moses was tired, and no one seemed surprised by it. Aaron and Hur didn’t stand beside him telling him that he should be able to keep going, and they didn’t tell him to dig a little deeper and find more strength somewhere within himself. They saw that his hands had become heavy, they found him somewhere to sit, and then they stood beside him and helped him hold up what he simply couldn’t keep holding up on his own.

Grief asks so much of us in this way because we have to keep moving forward when someone we desperately love feels like they have been left behind. Life keeps moving whether we’re ready for it or not, and eventually we learn how to keep moving too. But moving forward doesn’t mean we stop looking back at the life of our baby, and it certainly doesn’t mean we want everyone around us to stop looking back with us. We need people who understand that we can continue living the lives God has given us while still carrying our babies with us, and who are willing to remember them with us along the way.

And I think that’s what I love most about Aaron and Hur. They didn’t make Moses less tired, and they didn’t remove him from the battle. They couldn’t change what was happening in front of him or make the hard thing suddenly not be hard. They simply saw that he was weary and refused to let him stand there alone. And, Hope Mom, that’s what we want Hope Mommies to be for you.

We can’t take away your grief, and we would never pretend that we can. We can’t make you miss your baby less or somehow make what happened okay, and even those of us who have experienced the death of our own babies know that we cannot completely understand your loss. We may know something about what it is to grieve a baby, but we don’t know what it is to grieve your baby. We didn’t dream your dreams for them or imagine the years you thought you would have together, and we don’t carry the particular memories and hopes that belong to you as their mom, but we can help hold up your arms.

Sometimes that might mean sitting beside you and listening while you tell us about your baby, or saying their name when it feels like no one else does anymore. Sometimes it might mean remembering a date that matters to you, praying when you don’t know what to pray, or reminding you of what’s true about God when grief has made it difficult to remember for yourself. And sometimes it may simply mean being a place where you don’t have to explain why you’re still sad, why a pregnancy announcement can make you genuinely happy for someone and deeply sad for yourself at the same time, or why an ordinary Tuesday can suddenly become a hard day simply because you miss your baby. We can’t remove you from the battle or make your arms less tired, but we can see that you’re weary and refuse to let you stand there alone.

And I hope you hear something else in that too. If your loss is new and getting through one day still feels impossible, I don’t want you to believe that the way grief feels today is the way it will always feel. I don’t mean that someday you won’t miss your baby or that enough time will somehow make what happened okay, because that’s not how grief works. But by God’s grace, we do grow stronger. We slowly learn how to carry what once felt impossible to hold, and there can be laughter again without the guilt that sometimes comes with it, days when grief doesn’t take up quite so much space, and moments when we realize that the arms that once felt like they couldn’t possibly hold on any longer have become steadier than they used to be. And when that happens for you, whenever and however it happens, we still want to be here.

We don’t want to walk alongside you only until you’re able to stand on your own again and then decide our work is finished. Your baby will always be your baby, and you will always be their mom, and we want to keep remembering with you as the years pass and grief changes and life continues to grow around the empty place your baby left behind. Maybe someday you’ll be the Hope Mom with enough strength to stand beside another mother whose arms have grown tired, because I think that’s one of the beautiful things about this community. Sometimes we’re the ones sitting on the stone needing someone on either side of us, and sometimes we’re strong enough to stand beside someone else, but we never stop needing one another, and we never outgrow our need for Jesus.

And as I’ve been thinking so much about arms, especially tired arms, there’s one more picture in Scripture that I love. Deuteronomy 33:27 says, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Moses’ arms grew tired, and eventually Aaron’s and Hur’s would too. Ours will too, because we are human and grief is heavy and there will be days when we simply don’t have enough strength of our own. The people beside us won’t always know what to say or how to help, and even the people who love us beautifully will have limits, but underneath all of us are His everlasting arms.

I don’t know how tired your arms are today, Hope Mom. I don’t know if you need someone to help hold them up or if you’re beginning to realize that they’re a little stronger than they used to be, and I don’t know what grief will look like for you in all the years still to come. I only know that there is room for you here in all of those places. We want to stand beside you when your arms are tired, keep standing beside you as they grow stronger, remember your baby with you, and keep pointing you toward the One who is holding all of us for as long as the Lord gives us to walk this road together.

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.