1104 results for author: Ashlee Schmidt

Comfort For Hope Siblings: The Joy of Heaven

Dear Precious Child, I see you there, smile on your face but pain in your eyes, longing for your Hope Sibling. You feel so many feelings, just like we do. You feel all the things within a matter of seconds, just like we do. Sadness, confusion, a bit of anger. Your mind races with questions as to why your meant-to-be sibling now lives in heaven instead of our home. You expected to spend hours snuggling on the couch and lending a helping hand with feedings and bath time. Instead, you now have memories of a casket far too small and a permanent resting spot which we plan to visit on special milestone days, like his birthday and Christmas. Recently, as I ...

Another Way

"I said to the LORD, 'You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.' As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight." Psalm 16:2-3 When you go through something hard, it strips away the fake. Have you noticed that? The harder the thing, the less tolerance I have for the frivolous. I want to get down to the essence of life, to spend time on the things that count. I think that’s where David is when he writes this Psalm. I’ve wrestled with “Why?”—as if knowing the answer to that question would bring some kind of healing or closure. And people will try to answer that question for you with pithy statements ...

Lauren’s Story

My husband and I and our three small children moved from Nevada to Texas in the summer of 2014. Soon after, we were thrilled to learn I was pregnant with our fourth child. Our other three pregnancies and births had been so straightforward and we had no reason to think this one would be any different. On November 14, 2014, my husband and I went to our 20-week anatomy scan.  During the scan, my husband and I happily chattered away, totally oblivious to how long the doctor was looking at our daughter’s brain and heart.  After the doctor finished the anatomy scan, she first told us our baby was measuring small.  We absorbed the news, but even then, ...

A Prayer For the One Who Feels Envious

I see you and I’ve been there. More importantly, God sees you and hasn’t cast you out. The sin of comparison, jealousy, envy—it’s heavy, but it was also paid for with Jesus’ blood. You don’t need to hide it from Him, nor from this community. You can be honest and exclaim, “God this doesn’t feel fair that she gets to keep her baby when I don’t!” You can lament, “Lord why her and not me?” My Anna died on October 7, and I was met with a close friend being pregnant the very next month. Not only was this a blow to my infertility struggle, but it was so soon after my loss that I felt completely forgotten by her and by the Lord. My ...

A New Name

I like the Psalms because they are honest. They’re joy and pain and longing and grief and anger and worship—all mixed up and raw, just like our hearts. In college, I took a poetry class—I had been writing angsty poetry in a cool-looking journal since high school, so I thought I knew what I was doing. Turns out, I was pretty terrible. The problem was that my goal in writing was to “share” something kind of obscure and then spin it into something nice and happy. Because I thought that’s what Christians were supposed to be. Nice and happy. After getting paper after paper back with more red pen on it than my actual writing, I went in to see ...

In the Word: A Revival

Welcome to Hope Mommies In the Word devotionals. Over the next few weeks, we will be meditating on Psalm 19 together. As we study these truths together, we’d love you to use the comments as a place to dialogue with us about what you are learning and share your answers to the questions below. We pray that you hearts will be encouraged as you dig into God's Word each week with us!  “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul” Psalm 19:7a READ: Perhaps you are wondering if you will be under this veil of grief for the rest of your life—Will I ever feel like how I used to feel; will I ever feel any sort of normalcy? Think about ...

The Gift of Greater Witness

In Philippians 1:12-14, Paul talks about the joy of being imprisoned. He wasn’t joyous about his imprisonment. He was joyous because his imprisonment helped him spread the good news of Jesus’ salvation and encouraged fellow Christ followers to do the same. I never wanted to be imprisoned in the jail of grief after losing my son. No one does. I think of Paul in a dark, damp jail cell sharing how God is good, faithful and always with him. The jailers and other prisoners didn’t think he was crazy. They believed Jesus was the salvation of the world. He shared and they believed. After losing my son, I had a choice about whether to succumb to the ...

Amy’s Story

A year after Nate and I married, we found out that I was pregnant with our first precious life. Twelve weeks into that pregnancy, we learned that our baby no longer had a heartbeat, and my heart felt like its own pulse was forever altered. Two and a half months after our miscarriage, I found out I was pregnant again. There was an excitement and renewed hope I hadn’t tasted in months, and yet a crouching, nagging hesitation left me anxious to grasp onto any certainty that this little one’s life would not end in another miscarriage. My desire to have certainty clouded any ability to see and handle the brutal reality that I have never been, nor ever ...

A Prayer for the One Who Feels Stuck

Dear Hope Mom, I see you there, under the covers, the weight of your grief like a blanket so heavy you cannot muster the strength to remove even the slightest corner. I, too, remember laying there feeling as though my entire world was shattered forever, while the rest of the world continued spinning on its happy axis. I, too, remember feeling too burdened to take a shower, make a sandwich, or even pick up my phone to distract myself, because once again the phone reminded me of everyone else and their perfect, happy, sorrow-free life. I know the feeling, dear one. Do you feel like you remain in the same spot in your grief journey, at a loss for what ...

In the Word: Warm Glory

Welcome to Hope Mommies In the Word devotionals. Over the next few weeks, we will be meditating on Psalm 19 together. As we study these truths together, we’d love you to use the comments as a place to dialogue with us about what you are learning and share your answers to the questions below. We pray that you hearts will be encouraged as you dig into God's Word each week with us!  “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, ...