45 results for tag: Brittnie

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 and place a tiny hat on his head. He is little, yet amazingly formed. The nurse ...

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, there I assume to meet their newest family member, gave looks of sympathy. They ...

Discussion in Grief: Soul-Care

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.  My third child and only son, Chance Michael, was born sleeping at 20 weeks gestation. At 18.5 weeks his little heart was beating, and by 20 weeks he was gone. The months following Chance’s death were some of the hardest and darkest of my life. They were months when I felt numb to the world, alone in ...

Discussions in Grief: Permission to Grieve

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 remember the first time I felt the guilt. It had been a few weeks since Chance’s funeral, my son who we lost at 20 weeks’ gestation, and I was alone, at home, with my two daughters, ages 15 months and 2.5 years. The memory box the hospital gave me sat on my dining room table, I could not yet ...

Discussions in Grief: Hiding

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.  "You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance."-Psalm 32:7 We walked toward the car, heads hung low, hand in hand. We had just learned that our baby, at 20 weeks gestation, was no longer breathing and after two hours speaking with a ...

Bear Much Fruit: Gentleness

I can't quite imagine the emotion of the scene. A woman, caught in the act of adultery, put on display before many, judgements falling free from her peers. If I had to guess I would imagine her voice was shaking, body trembling, and her mind racing with worry about what was about to become of her.    "At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around Him, and He sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to ...

Every Tear Wiped Away

Welcome to Hope Mommies’ In the Word devotionals. Over the next several weeks, we will be studying Revelation 21 together, which gives us a beautiful picture of the eternity that awaits those who are in Christ . In this series, we seek to lift the grieving mother's eyes up towards heaven and the imperishable inheritance that is hers and her precious baby's in Christ. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”Revelation 21:4 READ: Can you imagine a world without sadness? A ...

We Cannot Know God’s Ways

Welcome to Hope Mommies’ In the Word devotionals. Over the next several weeks, we will be studying the book of Ecclesiastes together, which centers on the truth that life apart from Christ is empty and vain. In its pages, we discover how to view our lives with an eternal perspective, enabling us to press into the Lord regardless of our circumstances. In this series, we seek to explore the wise principles presented to us by "the Teacher" in order to better understand what it looks like to walk in the fear and joy of the Lord even in the midst of our grief. “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed ...

Sharing Your Hope Baby With Siblings

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 have a brother. He’s five years old. He died in my mama’s tummy before it was time for him to come out. He doesn’t live with us, but he is alive. He is in heaven!”  I stood in silence, staring at my daughter from across the room. She ...

The First Time I Was Alone After Loss

It was a Friday night, exactly thirteen days since Chance’s funeral. I was home alone with the girls while Brandon was at a baseball game with friends. This was the first night since we’d lost Chance that I would be alone for a significant amount of time. Being alone is not something that has ever bothered me, and quite frankly, I enjoy moments to myself. But during that time, as I was grieving the loss of my son, I craved faces and people and bodies.  I knew I was taking a risk. I was putting myself in a vulnerable situation, but I kept telling myself it would be good for me and all would be okay. I also knew that Brandon needed ...