Who am I now?
Hi friend,
Welcome to Part 2 of our Identity After Loss series. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.
There are questions that come after loss that you never expected to ask. They don’t always show up right away. Sometimes they hit you in a random moment, and other times they come all at once. But eventually, many of us find ourselves sitting with the same question.
Who am I now?
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Who Am I Now?
Before loss, I didn’t spend much time questioning my identity. I knew who I was. I knew what my life looked like. I had ...
Today belongs to you, too.
Happy Mother’s Day.
As I type these words, I feel the weight of what they hold for a Hope Mom. I wish I had the perfect words for you, something to say that could meet every ache and every question sitting in your heart. The truth is, I don’t, but I can sit here with you, and I can remind you that you are not alone in any of this.
I am praying that you feel carried by the grace God has for you today. He will meet you in each moment as it comes. You don’t have to have what you need for the whole day all at once. He will give it to you as you go. His grace is ...
When you don’t recognize yourself anymore
For most of us, there is a moment after loss when we realize something we didn’t expect. In our grief, we begin to see that we’re not just grieving our babies, but the million little losses that come with it, too. One of the biggest is noticing that we don’t quite feel like ourselves anymore.
I’m sharing this as part of a short three-part series on identity after loss, because this piece of the grief journey can feel especially disorienting and hard to put into words. If you’ve felt this too, I hope you know you’re not alone.
Before I walked ...
What does it mean to be ‘in Heaven’?
Our Easter service a few weeks ago included the song Death Was Arrested; the song’s bridge reads:
Oh we’re free free forever we’re free
Come join the song of all the redeemed
Yes we’re free free forever amen
When death was arrested and my life began
As the song played, I immediately thought of my Hope Baby, William–he could have sung these words with me that very moment and meant every one of them! He is free, redeemed, and his life began the moment he woke up in Heaven.
Did you know the same is true for you and your Hope Babies? They are worshipp...
Will I recognize my baby in heaven?
One of the things that happens after losing a baby to miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss is a battering of questions from deep places in our hearts, such as, “What will my baby be like in heaven? Will they always be a baby? Will I recognize them? Will they recognize me?”
These are tender, personal questions that come from love and longing. We were created to know and be known, and that desire runs especially deep within families, and with our children, where bonds feel so immediate and instinctive. And while Scripture doesn’t give us explicit answers to each ...
What if my baby wouldn’t have chosen Him?
Every year at our Retreat we host a Q&A hour. This year we had more questions than time to answer them. The hope of our Leadership Team is that we can address some of them in this newsletter or on our podcast. One of those questions was,
“How do I know my babies are in heaven? What if God knew they wouldn’t accept Him later, so they didn’t go to heaven when they died?”
I think it’s likely she was asking, “If God knew my child wouldn’t choose Him later in life, is this why He chose to take them now?”
What hard thoughts we Hope Moms wrestle ...
Is My Baby in Heaven?
He is Risen.
Hope moms, Jesus Christ is God, put on human flesh, and died for our sins that keep us eternally separated from God. He rose from death, conquering its power over those who believe. While joy in this season may be hard to come by (and that’s ok!), let this truth bring even a small flicker of light to chase away the darkness.
In honor of the Easter season and the glorious future Jesus has won for us, this month we will be covering various ideas on the topic of Heaven.
The first two weeks, Kelly and Jennie will cover Biblical answers to common ...
Holding Space on Holy Saturday
I’m always caught off guard by how tragedy is inevitably invaded by the ordinary. I am sure you can relate. After our babies died, didn’t it feel so wrong that most of the world went on as usual? I remember emerging from the silence of the hospital, the quiet of the house, the darkness of the day of her funeral, and feeling so disoriented by the routine bustle of life. People in cars driving places. Laughter on playgrounds. Shoppers downtown. Planes taking off from runways. Didn’t they know what had just happened? I remember having to resist the urge to scream, ...
From Self-Protection to Divine Keeping
When William passed into glory, I felt very confused about the Lord and my relationship with Him. I had many questions in my soul. Who was this God who had the power to deliver a multitude from sure annihilation (Ex 14), yet didn’t heal a tiny baby? Could I trust Him? My initial conclusion for quite some time was: I think not.
Although I continued to press into His word with the company of my Hope Group and fellow local Hope Moms, my heart remained closed to any sort of intimacy with Him and trust of Him to do the right thing for me going forward. For a time, I ...
When Circumstances Don’t Match Our Faith
Isn’t God strange? He is so full of seeming paradoxes. He is all powerful and perfectly loving, yet allows evil to happen. He is everywhere all at once, but we often experience Him as distant and inactive. Our experience of God seems to contradict what He declares about Himself in Scripture.
Even the great King David wrestled with this seeming contradiction; his short but powerful poem in Psalm 13 gives us a glimpse of his raw despair and the seed of faith that carried him.
Psalm 13
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you ...
