Ask the Blog Team: How Do You Handle the Fear of Something Happening Now to Your Husband or Living Children?

Welcome to our Q+A series, Ask the Blog Team. In this series, the Hope Mommies blog team joins together to answer questions that are commonly asked in grief. If there is a question or topic that you have wrestled with in your grief that you would like the opportunity to see how other Hope Moms have processed or answered, we would love to hear from you. You can submit your questions here.

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In the year following our loss, I did wrestle with these fears. A lot. I don’t think they were there before that time, but they pushed me to realize how ultimately I lacked faith in the Lord’s sovereignty over my life. He dealt with the root cause of all my fears in life through losing Anna. Those fears do still arise at times, especially now that I have another child, but the verses and truths I learned in that deep grief still carry me through. I also honed the skill of praying immediately in my distress rather than trying to carry the burden in worry.

Yes, I do. Sometimes the fear is a lot to handle, but I try to turn to the Lord in prayer, and I memorize Scripture. I pray that I would fear God alone, and that He would remind me of His faithfulness. I also have to remember that although the Lord has entrusted my children to me, they are ultimately His. I try to memorize Scripture about God’s character and faithfulness and try my best to get my eyes off of my fear and myself and onto the Lord. I am not perfect at this, and I do struggle with fear a lot, but through prayer and memorizing Scripture, I have found that I can turn to God instead of giving into my fear and freaking out. 

Yes. It’s a low key fear in the back of my head that has been with me ever since my dad died in a car accident when I was 17. The total randomness of my dad’s accident and the total randomness and rarity of my son’s Trisomy 18 diagnosis make me acutely aware that our own lives and those of our loved ones are extremely fragile and can be gone in an instant. It brings me some peace to meditate on Psalm 139:16.

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

This verse grounds my anxious mind by reminding me that though life is fleeting and death can feel random and unexpected, it does not catch my God off guard. Nothing happens that is outside His will and His timing as much as it may be outside of mine. I trust Him with the timing and duration of our lives that He appointed from the beginning. Having experienced the sting of sudden deaths, I also make it a point to say, “I love you” as much as possible to my husband and living son, and make sure my loved ones know just how much they mean to me.

While I do fight against the fear of something happening to my husband or living children, I find that fear settles into my heart most often when someone close to me announces a new pregnancy. Since experiencing the loss of two of my babies, my first gut reaction to the news of a friend or family member’s pregnancy is almost always fear. I’m afraid that their pregnancy will end like mine did. Afraid that they won’t bring home their baby from the hospital. Afraid that their lives will forever be changed by the the bitter cup of infant loss.

I have to often remind myself of the work that the Lord did in my life through my suffering, and remember that this good work that He began in me will be brought to completion one day. And while I would never wish the pain of experiencing the death of a child on anyone, I can trust that God will be faithful to them just as He always has been to me, because that is just who He is. Nothing can thwart His purposes. In Him we lack no good thing. Nothing, not even the loss of a child, can separate us from His loving kindness.

Looking back at God’s faithfulness throughout my grief does not remove the ache of loss that I still carry so close to my heart, but it does allow me to walk forward rooted and grounded in eternal hope and gives me the strength to rejoice in the news of a friend carrying new life within her instead of being crippled by fear.

I occasionally do feel those fears creeping in. I have to force myself to stop and remember that the same God who walked with me through the deepest valleys of losing my babies is the One who will still be my Good Shepherd if He chooses to lead me through another deep dark valley. I have to remind myself that I gain nothing from worrying about what might be, and I can find unshakeable peace by trusting in the one who gave His own Son for me and has promised never to leave me. Losing my babies did indeed steal a sort of innocent assumption of safety and health, but in its place is the assurance that whatever comes (even sorrow or loss), God will still be there with me, no matter what my fears or my feelings tell me.

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