Links for Hope Moms: Winter 2018 Edition

We want to share with you links to posts, videos, and resources from around the web to uplift, help, and encourage you in your walk with the Lord as you grieve.

1. {Loving Your Friend Through Infertility} // Following the loss of a child, many Hope Moms, go on to experience secondary infertility. In this post, Meredith Hodge writes about how you can love and serve a friend who is struggling with infertility in a Gospel-centered way. “Mourning together not only unifies us as sisters in Christ, it is also a living example to those around us. Consider Jesus’ response when his dear friend Lazarus died: He wept. To the onlookers observing his grief, they responded to one another: “See how he loved him!” Jesus’ tears and mourning were a direct display of his character and heart. Rather than retreating to grieve alone, his public grieving moved those around him and drew them to him. Be a display of Christ in your mourning.”
2. {I Lost My Child. Then the Book of Job Made Sense}// “Job was still in my “things I don’t understand in the Bible” box when a weight of pain fell on my shoulders. My husband and I were married young, and I became pregnant eight weeks into our marriage. Few people are more hopeful about the future than a couple expecting their first child. That hope took a turn when a routine ultrasound left us with a devastating diagnosis: Our daughter would die soon after birth from a severe heart defect unless she had three open-heart surgeries. Grief can strike as quickly as lightning, and I held my swelling stomach with love and fear for my daughter and wept.”
3. {Does He Even Hear? Wresting with Loss, Prayer, and Hope}// “How could I, as the clay, ask the potter what he was making (Isa. 45:9)? The loss of my child didn’t make any sense to me, but maybe God was working toward a bigger plan that I could not see. I had asked God for the good gift of protecting my baby, and because He didn’t answer that prayer the way I asked, I denied that He answered prayer at all. What I couldn’t see at the time was that He had answered my prayer—just not in the way I had anticipated.”
4. {Flashback post: Hope for the Holidays: Hope Came Down} // “On December 21st, my daughter will turn 6. There will be no trip to the American Doll store. We won’t go get her first pedicure. She won’t unwrap any presents. We’ve never done any of those things because Kinley has celebrated every birthday in heaven. So, I will do what I do every year–I will make pink cupcakes. I will sing happy birthday. And I will miss my sweet girl. Then 4 days later, we will celebrate Christmas, and her stocking will hang empty, untouched, as the other stockings are taken down and rummaged through. A sad story to be sure. A dark cloud on the holiday season. Except for one thing I forgot to mention. One thing that flips this whole scene upside down. One element threaded through this story that changes everything. Another baby who was born on earth with a mother who would say goodbye too soon.”

Ashlee is the Editorial Coordinator for Hope Mommies. She and her husband, Jesse, have four children on earth and two little ones in Heaven. You can get to know her more by reading her blog, Beyond Undone.

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