38 results for tag: Hope Mommies Retreat

Streams in the Desert: 2020 Retreats

I’m from the Pacific Northwest, and if this area of the country is known for anything, it’s rain.  Yet, in 2006 my husband and I were living in Southern California for a short time, and they were in a drought. It was my first encounter with a real drought; there were limited water supplies, and the earth was parched. There were water restrictions placed on households by the city, and I remember thinking, “If only it would rain”.   Fast forward four years to the stillbirth of my daughter. I was back living in the Pacific North West, and though the physical earth wasn’t in a drought, my soul was. Everything within me felt dry ...

Get to Know Her: 2019 Retreat Speaker

How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh, that just breaks my heart,” when looking at a picture of a mistreated puppy? I know I have. And I thought my heart was broken when the boy I had a crush on didn’t ask me to the school dance.  December 24, 1995 was the day my husband, two young daughters, and I were anticipating welcoming our newest family member—a baby boy! We had presents under the tree and were waiting. On December 15, Zachary Robert was stillborn due to a “one in 10 million” amniotic band cord accident. Our lives—and the lives of my parents, our extended family, and even our daughter who was born later—were ...

Kristin’s Retreat Experience

A few months after Abby died, I received a Hope Box in the mail. It was my first introduction to Hope Mommies. I was intrigued. Their annual retreat was something that caught my eye, and soon enough, I had convinced another Hope Mom to go to this retreat with me in Texas. It all sounded like a great idea at the time, but as the weekend of the retreat drew near, it sounded like a terrible, anxiety-ridden, I-think-I’m-gonna-pass-out kind of idea. I mean, lots of talking with people I don’t know? PANIC. Bunking with roommates? NOPE. Before Abby died, I would have loved a weekend away, but now my anxiety made it difficult to venture far from ...

Amanda’s Retreat Experience

Mother’s Day, May 14, 2017. Harrison’s Birthday. I had envisioned that weekend to be completely different. My first Mother’s Day. A day to celebrate that I was now a momma. Instead, we said hello and goodbye to our sweet boy on that day. I was in complete shock that something like this could even happen to us, but I knew the best thing I could do during this time was seek to biblical truth. I constantly questioned the Lord, asking why it had to happen to us. Why did our healthy boy only live on earth long enough for us to fall head over heels in love with him before being ripped from our arms? Why didn’t He take me instead of ...

By His Strength: 2019 Retreats

Grief is the intended consequence of losing someone that you love. Grief is natural—even though it feels anything but—and we can know this to be true because of the lament we see in the Psalms. "My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'" Psalm 42:3 "Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish." Psalm 25: 16-17 I am currently eight years out from the stillbirth of my daughter, and though I have in no way fully processed my own storm of grief, I have been walking this rocky terrain for a while, and ...

Testimony Tuesday {Brandi’s Retreat Experience}

My name is Brandi Popke, and I am Hope Mom to Madison and Hannah.  Madison would be 12 this year and Hannah would be 10.  Both of my girls were born full term, but only lived a few hours due to Polycystic Kidney Disease.  It was just this last year that I learned about the Hope Mommies community and the support it offers on social media.  I had no idea the amount of support was so great until I went to the retreat in March. I signed up for the retreat as soon as I came across the information online—completely terrified and excited at the same time.  Other than my husband and a few loving friends along the way, I have traveled this journey of ...

Testimony Tuesday {Amy’s Retreat Experience}

It’s not something you sign up for, or even a thing that passes through your mind when you make a commitment of faith to leave all and follow His plan for your life. When I moved to Bucharest, Romania to work as a missionary with orphan kids, I couldn’t have ever imagined where my life would take me. Would I have still come, If I knew? I can still remember being led down a long white hall, the kind from communist times, which is no surprise since Romania has recently come out of all that. I was led into a hospital room that seemed darker than usual. I was left alone for the first time since I found out that my baby girl’s heart was no longer ...

Secured {Hope Mommies 2018 Retreat Theme}

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.” Psalm 91:1-4 NIV This psalm of protection is where the theme for the upcoming Hope Mommies Retreat comes from. Secured. We would love to have you join us March 9-11, 2018 as we look deeply into Psalm 91 to discover all the ways our babies, our grief, our hope, our ...

Testimony Tuesday {Katie’s Retreat Experience}

I had just survived the first year without our deeply longed for son and I felt ready to connect with other moms who, like myself, had faced unthinkable tragedy and yet still chose to trust in our Lord and Savior. I wanted to hear from mothers who were further down the road of grief than I was, hoping they would reassure me that the incapacitating weight I’d been carrying would somehow lighten over time. I knew that the burden of living the rest of my earthly life without my son would never go away, but I needed to see in the flesh, these moms who had survived what felt impossible to me. I’d been in a deep cave of darkness for over ...

Get to Know Her: 2017 Retreat Speaker

I sat down to exhale. The sticky plastic chairs of the Pediatric ICU waiting room offered little comfort, but I didn’t really care. I just needed a place away from the chest tubes and breathing tubes and feeding tubes and the beep-beep-beep of the monitors. For just a minute. I had been immersed in my own pain for a few days. We had gone in to close the hole that my girl’s first tracheostomy had left in her neck, but recovery did not go as planned. Instead, my baby girl went blue and looked at me with searing panic in her eyes—and I ran into the sterile hallway and broke the late night silence with a yell for help. So, we wheeled back to ...