31 results for tag: Kayla

Guarding our Minds in Grief

Before experiencing loss, I had a general understanding that Satan has a level of control over the world today. Yet, I often lived flippantly, as if the effects of this invisible war waging above had me out of reach. I failed to accept the full reality of this spiritual battle enough to seek my own preparation before it became my spiritual battle. I constantly allowed my fear to reign and sought out my own short-term resolutions until illness, pain, suffering, the obvious presence of sin, and death completely shattered that false reality. Evil’s reign in this current day suddenly became extremely personal and offensive, like Satan brought his ...

A Prayer For the One Who Feels Envious

I see you and I’ve been there. More importantly, God sees you and hasn’t cast you out. The sin of comparison, jealousy, envy—it’s heavy, but it was also paid for with Jesus’ blood. You don’t need to hide it from Him, nor from this community. You can be honest and exclaim, “God this doesn’t feel fair that she gets to keep her baby when I don’t!” You can lament, “Lord why her and not me?” My Anna died on October 7, and I was met with a close friend being pregnant the very next month. Not only was this a blow to my infertility struggle, but it was so soon after my loss that I felt completely forgotten by her and by the Lord. My ...

The Gift of Deeper Community

I’ve received many gifts as a result of my suffering, but I can attest that the deeper community I’ve experienced because of it is high on the list. As a reminder, I read my original story of losing Anna posted by Hope Mommies in 2018. One of the highlights even then was how the church around me truly changed me and ushered me into a new world of deeper community. A community who carried me through my grief, learned what biblical joy and lament truly means, and provided practically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually for me for years. Because of the support I received, I am able to be there for the women who come after me. The sister of ...

Discussions in Grief: Fear

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.  Anxiety and worry have been consistent struggles in my life before loss and after. It wasn’t until I experienced the profound grief of baby loss that I was able to identify the root of my anxiety as fear, and the root of my fear as a lack of trust in the Lord. In my loss, I suddenly became sensitive ...

Cliche Comforts: “It Will Happen When the Time is Right”

“When the time is right…” What a common cliché in many of life’s struggles! This saying quickly forms on the tongue of those who awkwardly don’t know what else to say to a friend experiencing a painful waiting. Waiting for a baby, waiting for a husband, waiting for a job, waiting for an “all clear” diagnosis; it’s all too easy to simply say, “It’ll happen when the time is right,” and brush off the hurt with an imaginary end date. On the surface, as is the case with most clichés, it’s an innocent, harmless, partial truth, and occasionally even slightly comforting. But at its core, this phrase is unintentionally leaving us ...

Renewing Your Focus

New Year’s resolutions have a bad reputation. Often, our goal is to make this life as easy as possible, not regarding the Lord’s greater plan and trustworthiness, and elevating our own desires above His authority. We often find ourselves living with this temporary, humanistic view of time—we are impatient, frustrated in trials, lacking in perseverance, not living with eternity in mind, worrying, not trusting God for provision, or living in fear. Grief has tempted me to live this way. In missing my baby, I ache so fiercely that, sometimes, I simply just want it to end. Grief brings on fear, worry, and a difficulty in ...

Freely Given, Freely Received: Seeking Reconciliation

It was only a few weeks after Anna died and I could sense that she was pregnant. Why wouldn’t she just tell me and get it over with? And how could she hide this knowing how badly I hurt? I talked with my grief counselor about my fears. I expressed how hurt I was—as if my friend getting pregnant was a direct attack on me and my grief. I was jealous, I was envious, I was angry.  I wasn’t angry at God for allowing it, I was angry at her for letting this happen so soon after my loss. I realized it was incredibly selfish, but I needed time to heal first before dealing with a new baby so close to home. I felt so neglected by God in my ...

Comforting Others

When I think of God’s comfort in the tender days following Anna’s death, I have memories of Him holding me close, carrying me through the dark wilderness of pain, and covering my eyes from a scary wilderness of towering trees marked with anger, fear, envy, and death itself. This is how I metaphorically imagined His loving shield of comfort in poetic terms. Although I could not see it, I knew from Scripture that He was going to safely carry me through all this heartache into the brightly lit opening of the forest on the other side.  I also remember the new way the Psalms comforted me after experiencing loss. I read over and over again ...

When the Tears Won’t Stop

God’s Word speaks thoroughly and abundantly into every season of the heart. As we study His Word, we learn that within its pages are found the ultimate source of comfort and peace for the sufferer. In this series, we will seek to carefully and compassionately apply these ancient, scriptural truths to feelings and experiences that are common in grief. I remember being in the hospital, not knowing when I’d leave, but knowing that it would be without my baby. The numbness and anxiety were too tense; the tears barely came. Oh how I wished I could cry hard to release the tension. Each night—somehow—the darkness and stillness would ...

Streams of Living Water

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. "And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment."Revelation 21:6 READ: The topic of eternity generates a variety of ...