Get to Know Her: 2017 Retreat Speaker

I sat down to exhale.

The sticky plastic chairs of the Pediatric ICU waiting room offered little comfort, but I didn’t really care. I just needed a place away from the chest tubes and breathing tubes and feeding tubes and the beep-beep-beep of the monitors. For just a minute.

I had been immersed in my own pain for a few days. We had gone in to close the hole that my girl’s first tracheostomy had left in her neck, but recovery did not go as planned. Instead, my baby girl went blue and looked at me with searing panic in her eyes—and I ran into the sterile hallway and broke the late night silence with a yell for help. So, we wheeled back to the operating room where they replaced the tracheostomy tube that allowed her to breathe.

It wasn’t our first battle, but it was a hard one. And I needed to catch my breath.

I sank into my new reality as I put my head back on the chair, and I looked around me for the first time. Other mamas like me sat with faces long from exhaustion, their stories at once different from and similar to my own.

And it was then that I saw her.

She stood in the middle of a circle of family, linked together with that particular shock of fresh grief.

She pulled the lid off a box, and her cries broke free as she looked inside.

I recognized the Hope Box—the MOPS group I led had recently hosted a Hope Box Gathering and delivered several boxes to local hospitals. Including the one where I sat at that moment.

I watched her open the box and cross a threshold into unfamiliar territory.

While I don’t know the shape of her particular grief, I know just what it’s like to be thrown headfirst into a new reality you don’t want. To have to navigate through a wilderness that seems so cruel and lonely.

I also know that there is something both weakening and empowering in walking that wilderness. In the wilderness, there is no shelter of comfort to hide under. We are exposed, raw, as the heat beats down on our skin. The wilderness may burn, but it also refines.

Isaiah 43:19 says, “Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”

And like an oasis in the middle of a desert, our Father God revives. He infuses us with a strength we do not naturally have; and as we realize that we are not strong enough by ourselves, we understand with a new sense of wonder that our God is Glory itself.

And in wonder, there is beauty.

I look forward to being with you in March, to marvel together at our great God and the beautiful inheritance He gives to us, His daughters.

Registration for the 2017 Hope Mommies Retreat is now closed.  The response to this year’s Hope Mommies Retreat has been greatly encouraging! Thank you to everyone who has registered to come. We are so excited to spend a weekend remembering, hoping and growing in Christ with you.  If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email director@hopemommies.org.

Shannon Owen lives in Houston, Texas with her husband, Lee, and their two girls, Avery (6) and Kate (2). In 2012, between her two girls, she miscarried a baby at 8 weeks due to an ectopic pregnancy; read more from Shannon about her Hope Baby here. She taught high school English, but traded in her grammar textbooks for board books after Avery was born. However, words and stories are still very much a part of her life. 

During a lengthy NICU stay after her daughter Kate was born, Shannon dusted off her pen and started a blog to keep friends and family updated on Kate’s progress, but kept writing because it was catharsis. Kate was born with a congenital, non-progressive muscle and joint disorder as well as bilateral vocal cord paralysis, which causes a blockage in her airway.

Shannon also writes for Abide, an audio prayer app, and has had some of her reading plans featured on YouVersion. You can find her at shannonowenblogs.com.

Shannon and her family are very involved in their church, Houston’s First Baptist. Shannon and Lee help teach high school juniors and seniors, and Shannon leads and teaches in the women’s ministry.