You Don’t Have to Carry This Alone
One of the questions I hear most often from women considering the Hope Mommies Retreat is, "What if I don't know anyone?"
Every year, I smile when I read that question because I understand it completely. Walking into a room full of strangers can feel intimidating under the best of circumstances, but after your baby has died it can feel nearly impossible.
What if everyone else already knows each other?
What if I'm the only one who cries?
What if my loss was too early? Or too late? Or too many years ago?
What if I don't fit in?
Those questions are complet...
We Remember Because They Lived
Hope Mom,
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day is this Thursday, and I’ve been thinking about you as it gets closer because I know there are so many different ways a day like this can feel. Maybe you’ve been looking forward to lighting a candle and saying your baby’s name, or maybe October has brought your grief closer to the surface than you expected. Maybe it’s been many years since your baby died and you’re wondering what this day will feel like this year, or maybe this is your first October 15th without your baby and you still can’t quite believe ...
When Your Arms Grow Tired
Last week, I wrote to the people who love a Hope Mom about a picture in Exodus 17 that I recently studied and haven't been able to stop thinking about. If you haven’t read that post, you can read it here. I wrote about Aaron and Hur and the way they noticed Moses' weariness and came alongside him when he could no longer hold up his own arms, and I wondered what it might look like for us, as the people of God, to become better at noticing when someone around us is weary and helping carry what has become too heavy for them to carry alone. But I keep thinking about the ...
When Grief Touches Everything
Hope Mom,
We’re here. We made it to another Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. This is my sixteenth October to be a part of, but before my daughter was stillborn, it was a day and a month I didn’t even know existed. Being a Hope Mom and being part of this community is nothing I ever wanted for my life, but it has also been such a gift. I have seen the Lord care for me through so many of the women I have met here, and I’ll be forever grateful for His kindness in giving me these friendships and women who have helped me carry both my grief and Paige’s ...
Hold Up Her Arms
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and as I've been thinking about what I want to say this year, I keep coming back to a picture in Exodus that I recently studied. Most of the time when I write here, I'm writing directly to you, Hope Mom, but today I want to talk for a little while to those who love a Hope Mom, because I think this picture has something beautiful to show us about how we can care for one another when grief has made someone we love weary.
And while I'm writing from the place I know, the grief of losing a baby, I don't think what Exodus ...
We Lament What Has Not Yet Been Restored
One of the things I love most about Scripture is that it never asks us to hide our grief. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells the truth about living in a world that has been fractured by sin and death. It gives us permission to weep, to ask hard questions, and to long for the day when everything broken will finally be made whole. The Bible never treats our tears as an inconvenience to overcome or a weakness to hide. Instead, it continually reminds us that God sees, hears, and draws near to those whose hearts are broken.
That is why I have always loved the ...
And If Not, He Is Still Good
You’ve probably seen it on a coffee mug, a wall print, or maybe a T-shirt. And if not, He is still good. It’s one of those phrases that gets passed around so often that it can begin to feel like something pretty we say when we don’t know what else to say. But for those of us who have buried a baby, these words aren’t decoration. We have had to wrestle with whether we really believe them.
Is He really still good when our babies die?
I don’t believe in the prosperity gospel, the lie that says if we love God enough, pray hard enough, or live rightly enough, He ...
You Don’t Have to Be Enough
From the moment I realized my baby wouldn't live, I felt my utter inadequacy as a mom. Cries I would never be able to comfort. A face I would never fully memorize. Milestones I would never get to celebrate. Questions I couldn't answer, for myself or for anyone else. And underneath all of it, the weight of watching the world move on without her in it. I lived with the nagging fear that I was broken. That somehow, in the most important thing I had ever been asked to do, I wasn't enough.
Maybe you've felt that too. Maybe loss has left you wondering if you failed your baby, ...
He Restores My Soul: What Does That Really Mean?
After our Leadership Summit this May, when our team chose He Restores My Soul as the theme for our 2027 retreat, I came home and began praying slowly through Psalm 23. I found myself reading it over and over again, lingering on familiar words that I've known for years, and asking the Lord to help me see them with fresh eyes. As I did, I kept coming back to one simple question.
What does it actually mean that He restores my soul?
If I'm honest, there have been seasons in my own grief when those words felt almost impossible to reconcile with my reality, because my ...
In His Hands
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Psalm 95:4-5
Oh, Hope Mom,
There are so many mysteries that belong to God alone. While we can truly know Him through His Word, through prayer, through worship, and through life with His people, we will never fully comprehend the fullness of who He is or the wisdom with which He governs every detail of our lives.
After loss, that reality can feel especially difficult. When your baby has died, God's purposes can feel ...
