91 results for author: Constance Ray

Prayer: When God Seems Silent

This month I cover various topics on prayer. Many of them were inspired by ideas found in a little-known book on prayer, Long Wandering Prayer by David Hansen. It has become a new favorite. Sometimes it feels like we are praying to a brick wall. We have tried everything we know (including some of the ideas I mentioned last week, and more) and still it’s as if our prayers get sent out and nothing comes back. Like we are being ‘ghosted’ at a divine level.  We might determine that we have failed at prayer. Or we might determine that God is not as loving or faithful as claimed, and doesn’t care to respond. Friend, neither of these are ...

Gentle Ideas to Help Your Prayer Life in Grief

This month I cover various topics on prayer. Many of them were inspired by ideas found in a little-known book on prayer, Long Wandering Prayer by David Hansen. It has become a new favorite. Prayer can be a tricky and difficult thing for all of us even when we aren’t in a season of grief. A gifted British preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, once said, “everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.” Adding the loss of a baby can make prayer feel absolutely unreachable. For me, in the months after William went to Heaven, prayer was next to impossible: I wasn’t sure how I felt about God and didn’t really want to talk to Him, but ...

Mental Health Moment: Grieving Styles

Before my Hope Baby, William, went to heaven, I had a career in mental health counseling. God has used my training and subsequent experience as a Hope Mom to help me understand more intimately the human bereavement journey. One of the most basic, yet in my opinion, vital concepts to know about grief is the various grieving styles people exhibit. While I will describe some of the categories, it’s important to note that there are as many grieving styles as there are people. We all internalize and express grief in personal ways–and these ways are affected by our personalities, histories, relationships, the nature of the loss, culture, and our ...

Asking Why: Did My Baby Die For a Reason?

Hope Mom, I know you are hurting. And when we hurt, we want to be comforted with reason and rationale–to know that our pain is not in vain. I do not know why your baby died or what God’s purposes are for the situation around their passing. You, no doubt have heard many answers, and I imagine most (if not all) of them are unhelpful.  One of our wonderful blog writers, Lindsey Dennis, has written a gentle response based on Biblical truth to the question “Why did God allow my baby to die”. I encourage you to reflect on it before reading further.  I want to continue Lindsey’s wisdom by addressing another situation: witnessing something ...

Asking Why: When You Don’t Get an Answer

We all want to know WHY.  Why me? Why this baby? Why this diagnosis? Why on this day? Why in this way?  It’s only natural to ask why – from the time we were little we have been asking “why” to make sense of our world. So, of course we ask these questions when it comes to our greatest heartaches. In asking this question, we are trying to wrap our minds around something that was never meant to be–death.  Last week I described how God put eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11); when we encounter the opposite of eternity (death) it not only breaks our hearts, it breaks our brains, too. What I’ve learned about asking ...

Confusion in Grief

There is nothing quite so jarring to our daily rhythms as loss. Whether it’s the news of a fatal diagnosis, an unexpected stillborn, or an out-of-the-blue miscarriage, our minds get stuck, shocked, and confused when they are asked to comprehend the death of our beloved babies. Even though we have lived in a fallen state our entire lives and expect a certain amount of death, when it actually strikes a loved one–our own flesh and blood–our minds and hearts are left disoriented. In the early weeks after William’s passing, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Literally.  My husband and I were displaced, living in my parent’s home. We ...

The Only Way Out is Through: Hope in Raw Grief

Last week I shared briefly about my personal experience with the death of a baby, and with the secure Hope God shared with me. While we Hope Moms do have the hope of a future reunion and eternity with our heavenly children, we still have to walk through the painful, confusing aftermath of their deaths. I’ll share some of my experiences right after loss, and then explore what the Bible says about our suffering. While in the hospital recovering from my c-section, I was presented with all sorts of “next steps”--ways to care for both my body after surgery, as well as William’s body after death. I didn’t want to do any of it. I wanted to go to ...

God’s Gift of Hope: Kelly’s Story

Greetings Hope Mommies Community! My name is Kelly Ransdell, and I have been involved with Hope Mommies since 2017. I’ve held various roles including Founder and President of the Houston Chapter, retreat small group leader, Hope Group leader, and now as a member of the Leadership Team as the Ministry Support Lead. This particular letter comes at a time of great grief for my home state of Texas, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge the July 4th tragedy and loss of life.  My childhood consisted of several summers at Camp Mystic, and I have friends who have lost their daughters in that flood. My grief runs deep for all of you; you know a ...

Grace in Grief – Learning to Extend Compassion to Others

When you’ve walked through the unimaginable loss of your baby, it’s easy to feel like you've become an expert in grief. You know the weight of the pain, the depth of the sorrow, and what it feels like to question how you’ll ever move forward. You know what cuts deep and what offers even a little bit of comfort. But if I’m honest with myself, before I lost my daughter, I had no idea what it truly meant to grieve. I had experienced loss in my life, and I considered myself to be an empathetic person. Yet, I know I’ve said things, forgotten things, and acted in ways that likely hurt others who were grieving. Even now, as I continue ...

Moving Forward in Grief vs. Moving On from Grief

For a mother who has lost a baby, one of the hardest things to hear is the well-meaning phrase: 'You have to move on.' The idea of moving on can feel like a betrayal—as if healing from your baby’s death requires forgetting, as if the love you have for your baby has an expiration date. But grief and love don’t work that way. The truth is, we don’t move on from our babies. We move forward with them. Moving on implies leaving something behind. When people talk about moving on, it can sound like a call to let go, to put the past behind us, to return to life as it was before. But life can never be the same after loss. A part of our heart is ...