Ask the Blog Team: What Did You Wrestle With God About During the Early Days After Your Baby Died?

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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I had supernatural peace in the early days about what was to come and what happened after Anna passed. My questions were more related to “what’s next?” Don’t worry, the other questions came eventually, but early on while still experiencing immense grief, I felt like my diagnosis was a death sentence to my motherhood. Looking back, these worries were merely a distraction, and I would have liked to have given myself more freedom to grieve first before doing the research of what would come next medically speaking. Regardless, God provided for me in the spiritual and also the physical sense through it all. He knew my needs and provided in ways I could never have thought up.

I struggled to find Him. “Where are you?” I would ask. I felt at a loss—that I was forgotten—and questioned even if praying was the right thing to do if I wasn’t sure he was even listening. That feeling was legitimate as grief is so all-encompassing and blinding. But now I can see how some people were placed by Him in my life to help my husband and I. I can see looking back that at the time, He showed up through our loved ones. He was walking with us through our grief the whole time.

Was my baby who was missing vital organs a whole person? I had never really asked myself or God a question like this before Baby P was born. But I wrestled with it after my loss. Now I do believe that he is whole in heaven.

I wrestled with God’s sovereignty. I had a lot of well-meaning friends and family tell me that losing my daughter was just part of life. I really did not find that comforting and needed God to be in absolute control because it just did not make sense why He would not heal her otherwise. What ultimately comforted me was knowing that God is the “one who kills and brings to life” (1 Samuel 2:6). I wrestled with understanding the Lord’s sovereignty and eventually was comforted knowing that the Lord was in control in the hospital. I was never alone, nor was my daughter, and God was not sitting back wondering if He should intervene. He also was not waiting for me to show enough faith to save her. He had lovingly and graciously set the time frame of her life, and I eventually learned to rest in that fact. 

After my losses, I wrestled with God about my body. My first three pregnancies were seemingly flawless. I was healthy, my babies were healthy, and there were no complications. In my mind, my body was just so beautifully capable of child bearing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I attributed these “perfect” pregnancies to myself, to my body. So when my next two pregnancies ended in miscarriage instead of a bright-eyed baby, I was angry with myself. Why had God allowed my body to perform so well with my first pregnancies only to fail me and my sweet babies? Had I not been taking care of myself well enough? Was there too much stress in my life? Did I need to change up my diet? Exercise more? Get more sleep? I had to come to terms with the fact that I simply was not in control. While there is certainly good reason to make healthy choices as a way of stewarding my body for the sake of God’s glory, I could not eat, sleep, or exercise my way into a perfect pregnancy that resulted in a healthy baby coming home with me. Life and death are in God’s hands not mine. He is the one who ordains our days and determines our course. Mediating on this truth relieved me of the guilt I felt over the death of my babies, and strengthened me to deepen my trust in the Lord and His plans for me.

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