229 results for tag: Share Your Story
"May this be your experience; may you feel that the Hand which inflicts the wound supplies the balm, and that He who has emptied your heart has filled the void with Himself."
- Hudson Taylor, missionary to China
If I'd written my own life story a hundred different times in a hundred different ways, I never would have included this chapter: Our Second Miscarriage.
Back in January, Shawn and I were elated to read an instantly positive pregnancy test. Pregnancy symptoms set in quickly and we couldn't wait to hold our third sweet baby in September.
Fast forward a few weeks. Our first ultrasound would happen at 8 and a half weeks. I'd been ...
2022 was a year of loss for my family. We lost a job, friends, a church we called family, our home, and our four babies in two pregnancies. My husband got a job in another state and lived apart from our living children and I for three months. When it came time to leave our home, my heart felt the grief all over again. The waves crashed hard and strong. I was leaving the only home, my babies knew, although they had only been in the womb. We lost two pregnancies, our girls, Eba, River, and Vale in April, and then Karad in October. I lost the girls at the end of our first trimester, and Karad at the eight week mark. All four of them only knew this ...
My husband and I were at the hospital for a routine 20-week ultrasound for our second daughter. She had a strong heartbeat and was very active, but the exam took longer than it should have, and anxiety started to creep in. When the doctor told us that all was not well with our baby, the bottom fell out of my heart.
“Unfortunately, this baby has some things wrong with her.”
Those words will forever echo in my memory.
The doctor went on to explain that our baby had multiple serious physical defects, and more testing was needed to determine the exact nature of her condition. After answering our questions and going over a number of different ...
I found out I was pregnant in May of 2017. When I told my husband, we celebrated together, full of joy and excitement. Before we knew if we were having a boy or a girl, we were trying to pick our top names. I thought of Audrey, and instantly fell in love with the name. I knew that if we had a girl that would be her name. The meaning of Audrey is “noble strength.” We wanted to give our child a first name that had a strong meaning, and to me, Audrey was perfect. When I was 20 weeks, we were getting ready to find out the sex of the baby, and were both almost certain that the baby was going to be a boy. But she was a girl! Looking back now, this was ...
Eleanor “Ellie” Love Kropchuk was the most beautiful surprise. In March 2017, my husband, Matthew, and I were so excited to find out she was on the way to join big brother Timothy (three years old) and big sister Caroline (20 months). Since I already have two children, pregnancy was nothing new for me. But Ellie was different. My doctor even commented at one point, as we laughed together about how active Ellie always was, that this pregnancy was just different than the others.
Around seven months into my pregnancy, I created a playlist that I would listen to during my birthing time. God often uses music to minster to me in very unique and ...
In the emergency room I looked at the sonogram screen and couldn’t really see Adalynn Grace. I just thought the equipment wasn’t the best there since it was the ER. A few hours before I had a gush of fluid and didn’t expect to be told it was my water that had broken at 20 weeks.
Unfortunately, we had trouble with this pregnancy even before it started. My husband and I had prayed for 3 years to add this beautiful life to our family of three. We were over the moon to find out that we had been blessed again with another little girl. My oldest daughter was more than excited to find out she would be a big sister.
At the start of this ...
April 17 was a day that I will never forget. A day that will be etched in my heart my entire life. A day of great sorrow and immense pain—yet a day of hope.
My daughter was a healthy thriving baby until April 17 when I knew something was wrong. I had lost another baby early in pregnancy but got pregnant shortly after, leaving little time to grieve, process, and heal. It made this pregnancy much different than our son’s—who is living on earth. I was more cautious, hesitant, and fearful.
That day she wasn’t moving as much so we went in to get checked. From then, it was a blur of a day—but one that I can also seem to replay in my head ...
My husband, Ron, and I have been married for 14 years. We first met in 2003, and we knew instantly that God had brought us together. We were married four months later. We had discussed children and always said it was in God’s hands if or when we had any. When Ron was 18 he had a brain tumor. He had surgery, chemo and radiation—and is completely healed. Because of the chemo and radiation, he was told that chances were pretty high that he wouldn’t be able to have children.
Fast forward eight years, and I wasn’t surprised that we hadn’t conceived yet. We just assumed it was because of the cancer. My sweet husband knew it was a dream of ...
I once heard grief explained as if it were an ocean. We walk along the shore admiring the waves and then they unexpectedly brush against our feet. Sometimes the waves stay around our ankles, sometimes they carry us out waist deep, and sometimes they overwhelm us as if we were drowning; but at the end of the day we always end up back upon the shore being carried by our heavenly Father.
I have always clung to Esther 4:14, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as ...
Of all the big moments in life, nothing has quite changed me like grief. Most moments close one chapter and open a new chapter. But grief practically changes your DNA. I will never see life or circumstance the same way again. After two normal, uncomplicated pregnancies, I took pregnancy for granted. So, when we went to the doctor with our third pregnancy and they couldn’t find the heartbeat, our whole world seemed to stop. On May 17, 2014, we had to say “hello” and “good-bye” to Solomon Elijah. God’s peace was tangible in the hospital room. We had friends who had lost their son just the year before visit us while we waited. They wept with ...
