Held Together
Our third child enters the world. The room is silent. There is no noise, only hushed commotion—no cries from my babe. The air is thick, but peace is present. I look up and ask my sister, “Does my baby look like a baby?”
“Oh goodness, yes,” she replies.
I then ask, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
All goes quiet for several seconds, and Dr. G gently replies, “It’s a boy.” Brandon lets out a cry from the sitting room.
The nurses gently clean off my son. They weigh and measure him. 6.6 ounces and 7 inches of perfection. They wrap him in a tiny blanket ...
In the Word: Before the Foundation of the World
Welcome to Hope Mommies In the Word devotionals. Over the next several weeks, we will be narrowing in on specific truths of the gospel to learn how they direct and inform us in our grief. 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!
“He was foreknown before the foundation of the world.”
1 Peter 1:20
"...this Jesus, delivered up according ...
Sustained Through Loss
"It doesn't get any easier, does it?" You meet kindred spirits in some of the strangest places sometimes. As I nervously stood in line at my local drugstore I dreaded what I was about to do. I knew I needed the medicine in order to have some form of closure and to complete the miscarriage, but something felt so wrong about it all. Deep within my soul I wanted to scream to all who were around me: "I'm not having an abortion. I promise. I was pregnant. I wanted this baby!" Thankfully I didn't have to. But that didn't make the situation any less uncomfortable for me. As the ...
Ask the Blog Team: I Find Myself Almost Obsessively Reading Other Peoples’ Stories of Loss. Is This Healthy
Welcome to our Q+A series, Ask the Blog Team. In this series, the Hope Mommies blog team joins together to answer questions that are commonly asked in grief. If there is a question or topic that you have wrestled with in your grief that you would like the opportunity to see how other Hope Moms have processed or answered, we would love to hear from you. You can submit your questions here.
I find myself almost obsessively reading other peoples' stories of loss. Is this healthy?
I loved connecting with others online about loss. I've even made some long-distance ...
Betsy’s Story
July 14, 2010, I waddled into the labor and delivery wing full of excitement and hope. This time it was real labor and I would soon be able to meet this long-awaited baby girl! It was my first time pregnant and it was a lot harder than anyone could predict. With active rheumatoid arthritis, my doctors and I had a master plan based on all the known research and statistics. I had an expert team of High Risk OBs and Rheumatologists monitoring every step.
Most women with RA go into remission during pregnancy as the body turns its attention away from attacking your joints to ...
Awakened to Motherhood
Each child gone ahead from among us is a precious person made in the image of God—and all having been made into Hope Moms, we together declare motherhood in each of our journeys. We are eager to go above and beyond in showing honor and love for one another (Rom. 12:10, 15). Through this series, we honor each other’s experiences of motherhood in love through our shared God of hope.
I began to taste the beauty of motherhood not when I conceived my first child but when I first began to give my life away in ministry to other women at the age of 13. Does that seem ...
Discussions in Grief: Numbness
Grieving involves new emotions and considerations often too many to numbers. When you find yourself in overwhelming grief, you likely feel buried and lost. In this series, we slowly and compassionately look at one aspect of grief at a time from a biblical perspective for the newly grieving mother. Click {here} to read past posts in this series.
I slowly climbed into the wheelchair ready to be escorted out. The nurse pushed me out of room 307 and down the hall of the labor and delivery unit. Nurses stopped and squeezed my neck and said their goodbyes. Strangers, ...
In the Word: Faith For this Outcome
Welcome to Hope Mommies’ In the Word devotionals. If you are joining us for the first time today, make sure you don't miss the first posts in this series here. Over several weeks, we are looking at 1 Peter 1:1-9 verse by verse. As we study this passage 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 along with us!
"obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your ...
To Know Him More
I know suffering. Most of the seasons in my adult life have been a season of suffering. From the emotional and sexual abuse I experienced to my early miscarriage, I have walked through much suffering. However, none of these forced me to truly dig deeper in my relationship with God than the death of my daughter, Chloe. She was stillborn in May of 2016, and it shook me in a way that nothing else has.
I did something after my daughter’s death that I really hadn’t done after my other sufferings: I pursued God. Really pursued Him. I wanted to feel His comfort, know I ...
Grief and Sod: Part 2
... continued from Thursday's post
“Don’t rush the grass,” my counselor said, as I retold to her the story. Oh how quick we are in our western culture to want the dirt gone and the grass grown as quickly as possible. And so it is with grief; we don’t want to do the hard work of entering into the grief process, of letting it be uncomfortable and messy for an unpredictable amount of time (Grief never lets you know when it will start to loosen its grip). We just want the end result, the beauty, the redemption, the truths tied up with pretty bows, “here’s what ...
